Adventures of Matt Parkman, Chapter 25: The beginning
A/N: This is the end. The title is just my perverse sense of humor shining through.
The interviews went well enough. Matt felt a little weird though to be on the interviewing side of the table rather than the interviewee. It was a different perspective. I'll never say the same thing in a job interview again. Though… I'll never have one again either, so kind of moot.
Maury gave Matt some direction on what to look for and a sheet of standard questions to ask. They covered how the agents they were interviewing had reacted to stress situations in the past, what they'd done when their morals and orders had conflicted and how they'd handled disagreements with partners - either co-workers or lovers, it didn't really matter. His father said, "There's no right or wrong answer for this stuff. There's just what you want in the person who has your back."
Maury read their mind. This was announced up front, as was the fact Matt was a telepath, though Matt focused on talking, not mind-reading. One person, Anita, was excused immediately for not being able to handle the idea of a partner from whom no secrets could be kept.
As she left, Matt asked, "What was she hiding?"
"Don't know. Didn't look. She wasn't thinking about it, which is smart."
"But… What if it's something bad for the Company?"
"It probably is. Matt, everyone's hiding something and most of it is bad for whatever or whoever they're near - that's why they're hiding it. I gave up giving a shit a long time ago. I thought we'd gone over how we can't make people act right?"
Matt rolled his eyes and left it alone.
The third of four interviews was with a man named David Wilcox. He'd been a recruit of Emile Danko, but no one seemed to hold that against him. Matt didn't recognize him, for which he was thankful. It might have been awkward otherwise. His combat training and background was a good compliment to Matt's - similar enough they could work together, but different enough they could learn a lot from one another.
Towards the end of the interview, Maury spoke up and said, "Have you ever had a run-in with a mentalist before?" At the man's look, Maury added, "A telepath, someone who could erase memories, alter perceptions, that sort of thing?"
David said, "There was someone who could make illusions of small objects… and there was a hypnotist." He tried to think if there were any others that fit the fairly broad profile the director was giving him. There were, but he wasn't sure what Maury was getting at.
The older man said, "That hypnotist. What could he do?"
David shrugged. "He hypnotized people. When they were under, he could tell them to do things like… like I've heard you can, sir." His eyes darted back and forth between Maury and Matt uncomfortably. "But he had to put people under first."
Maury nodded. "And he put you under."
"It…" wasn't a big deal. David's expression shifted. Matt could hear him scrambling for a lie to cover his leave from work, the retreat and the therapy. It was embarrassing to him. He'd missed the last portion of Danko's operations because of it, which at the time had seemed very bad for his career - not so much now. He straightened in his seat. "Um. Yes, but… that was authorized contact in the course of the mission, to ascertain the limits of his ability and differentiate him from normal practitioners." He rattled off the professional jargon for taking a fall on orders. It hadn't exactly been a suicide mission, but it was close. He'd followed orders and it hadn't turned out well for him.
Maury smiled thinly. "Thank you for not bothering to lie to me. What happened to him? The hypnotist."
"I don't know. He was taken in." I was kind of in a coma at the time.
"What happened to you?"
"Sir?"
"What did he tell you to do?"
"I don't know, sir. I don't think there was anything… he just put me under and they couldn't wake me up." I wonder if he could find out? A wash of emotion and uncertainty ran through him as he thought about waking up over a week later. It was weeks after that before he stopped spacing gaps of time. He'd never really felt like himself since that mission, but of course life had gone on and so had he. It had been years now.
Maury said, "Put your hands on the table, spread your fingers, relax. I'll find out."
Matt felt his father's shift in presence as he went into David's mind. After a beat, Matt followed. It was unaccountably blank and featureless. It reminded him of Brandon's mind. He's… he's been…
Maury finished for him. Hollowed out. Yep. Only partial. He might recover more, or he might not. In any case, he doesn't have squat for defenses.
You saw this during the interview?
Sort of. He was wrong, too transparent. I thought it was a front at first, but I checked and it wasn't and he didn't even notice me checking.
I saw you fade out for a few minutes. I wondered what you were doing.
Yeah. Maury poked around at David's memories of the hypnotist. There wasn't much to see. Finally he thought, Looks like he told him to kill himself.
Yeah? He doesn't seem suicidal.
He's not. He won. Cost him a lot though.
Matt thought, So this other guy was a hypnotist… a telepath hypnotist?
I guess so. Abilities take a lot of manifestations. Some people can only read minds. Some can only give commands. Some can only give commands under certain circumstances, like talking to you or touching you or wearing their lucky shirt. It's just a mental block, but it limits them anyway. Arthur thinks everything is a mental block and we're really gods, but he's a fruitcake. On that note, Maury exited and Matt followed. David blinked at him and Maury snapped his fingers. It turned David off like he had flipped a switch.
Matt's brow furrowed, "That's… weird, but let's get him out of here."
His father laughed. "What? You think he can't work because he has a mind-power induced disability? He's perfect for you."
Matt frowned, realizing his father was comparing his dyslexia to whatever you'd call what was wrong with David. He shook his head. "That's… that's not what I need. I need a partner who can resist me, in case I… in case I say something I shouldn't. Maybe he won against that hypnotist, but there's not enough left there to fight his way out of a paper bag, mentally."
Maury chuckled and looked at him speculatively. "No, Matt, I think this is exactly what you need, right here." He pointed at the man. "You don't need any flex or a safety net. I think if you can push someone a little, you will. Then a little more and a little more. This guy's a constant reminder of what can go wrong. Besides, if it comes to it, he'll take any command you give him literally, totally and completely."
The older man puckered his lips. "There's ways to use that without screwing someone up if you have a light touch - I've seen it done, had it done to me, in fact. But it takes a very, very light touch. Maybe you'll learn that. Or you can just keep your paws off his head and he'll be fine."
Matt exhaled. "You're saying if I'm with someone who can resist me, you think I'll eventually slip because I think I can get away with it."
"Yep. You can't get away with it with him. Short of finding someone you can't take at all, which isn't going to happen at your power level - not for a normal - I think this is the best you're going to get."
"What makes you think I won't just make him into a puppet? Seems like it'd be pretty easy."
Maury smiled. "It's always going to be easy, Matt. I'll be around from time to time. There's no way you're going to keep another zombie." He snorted. "Flesh puppets. If you can't control yourself, then I want to know. There's stronger measures I can take than what I've already done to you. Speaking of which, there's something I'd been intending to do for a few days now."
Matt pulled his head back and pressed his lips into a thin line. He didn't like his father's expression and given the conversation, he expected new orders. He got them, but it wasn't what he'd expected - not at all.
Maury said, "You can ignore any of my previous orders to you. You have your free will."
Matt blinked at him, unsure. "What?" When his father didn't answer, he cocked his head and said, "Any of them? All of them?" He raised his brows.
"All of them."
Matt glanced around the room and then at the floor, trying to think of what he'd do, what it meant. His head snapped back up. "What about the link?"
"That stays. I'm not stupid."
"Wha… then… you can just do it all over again!" Matt realized he was being ungrateful. That he'd gotten any sort of concession like this out of his father was amazing. He sat up straighter suddenly and waved Maury off. "No, no, thank you. I'm sorry, this is something. I appreciate it. I do."
Maury snorted slightly. He knew exactly how authentic Matt's gratitude was, which wasn't much. It was a little. He asked him, "Do you want to work for the Company? I really should have done this before we set up the interviews."
Matt glanced at his father several times, scratching his lower lip uneasily. I could go wherever I wanted, do pretty much whatever I want. I could go back to Janice... He wrung his hands together nervously, thinking that he didn't deserve to put himself back in her life - she didn't deserve the disruption he'd be. There was no guarantee it wouldn't go the same way it had before. As far as that went, he thought, the only guarantee was that if he kept working with his father, he'd stay sane, even if he wasn't necessarily happy.
His father looked away briefly and offered, "Salary's good. I like to think we make a difference. Even if we don't, you at least have an inside track on what's going on."
After a long silence, Matt said, "Yeah." He didn't have to elaborate. Maury knew he was agreeing to the job, not just to what he had said.
Matt glanced over at David, his probable new partner. He was still turned off. "Okay. Can you… let him go?"
"Sure." He snapped his fingers and David blinked back to awareness. He looked at Maury unsure, then at Matt.
He wasn't sure what had happened, but he decided to be polite and treat it as his own lapse. Wilcox said, "I'm sorry. I must have zoned out there for a moment."
Maury said smoothly, "No problem. The bad news is you're brain damaged and it's permanent." Matt gave his father a shocked look, though really he should have become accustomed to his tactlessness by now. "The good news is you're still better off than most of the schmucks out there."
"Uh… okay." David took it well, considering. That answers a lot of questions, actually.
"So," Maury said, "You can go back to your assignment. We'll be in touch through Mr. Bennet if we select you."
David left thinking that was unlikely. His last thoughts as he went out were about reconsidering his career choices.
A few days later, Matt moved into a furnished, two-bedroom apartment in Boston with Molly. David had his own flat down the hall. He'd been surprised and pleased to be promoted into one of the special paired teams. Molly had been enrolled in a local private school that didn't ask any questions after Matt visited them. She was coming in right at the start of the semester, not even missing any classes. After getting food, toiletries and sundries moved in, there was nothing to do but go to work.
David and Matt set up a peg board in the dining room and put photos of their first targets on it: Olivia Dunham, Walter Bishop and his son, Peter Bishop. Olivia was listed as a possible precognitive, Walter was having enhanced intelligence and Peter as "unknown, high probability of having an ability, exercise extreme caution, do not approach."
Matt looked at the pictures of the trio and said, "Bishop. Any relation to Bob Bishop? He was a scientist with the Company, a big deal. Mohinder worked with him a lot."
David opened the files they'd been given and scanned through it. Obviously he'd be doing the reading for the pair. "Hm. There's stuff here on Walter's wife… bunch of things redacted… ah, here, his father was named Robert Bischoff, came from Germany during WWII… and… redacted." He flipped through a few sheets. "Pages and pages about his experiments, on his kid, on all kinds of people, but next to nothing we're allowed to see about his family."
"Redacted? You mean blacked out? Let me see that." Matt reached out and took the file from him. He nodded. "I've seen this pattern before."
"Yeah?" David asked.
"Yeah. Experimenting on your kids, having some Nazi idea of making better people… and everything about it blacked out in the Company file. It's what they do when the information's really important. They want you to know it's there, but they're not going to tell you what it is. You know… I'm kind of thinking it's our assignment here to find out." He smiled at David.
Wilcox smiled back. "Let's check it out, then."
A/N #2: Review, pretty please. Reviews have a direct effect on encouraging me to write more.