Category:Ficathon, Shortfic, AU.
Title:Dawn of a day.
Author:Keenir.
Request:Elric3960
Tom and Ryland's working history.
Summary:In a world where Tom knew about the inhibitor early on, he has a talk with Dennis; and a theory is offered up.
Spoilers:Pilot.
Can be set either in very early s2, or in that 9-month space where (in the canon timeline) Tom was suspended. In this timeline, there was no suspension.
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Tom half suspected that Dennis Ryland was keeping the primary lights of the Theory Room off the better to catch the big brains unaware. The computers had been turned on though, the monitors off, to save time once the brains arrived.
He was here to get some answers, something the brains were used to giving. Nobody who knew the big picture like Ryland did gave the brains enough to put it all together. "You're sure we shouldn't bring Diana aboard?" Surely, he reasoned, a CDC-trained doctor was the perfect person to tell about the inhibitor.
"Skouris?" Dennis asked. "Absolutely not.
"Maia trusts her." And it'd be useful for Maia to trust us more.
"And as useful as a precognitive would be to what we're doing, we can't afford to take that risk. It's chancy enough that we've lowered her and Shawn's doses." Dennis had needed to be convinced to do that, particularly in the wake of their learning that Tom's nephew had drained nearly all the life out of another kid; a compromise had been reached: decrease Shawn's meds, put in place covert observers.
"She could see –"
"She could see anything, Tom. What do you think'll happen if she says we lose?"
We need to keep his from turning into a war. "Then we try harder, we redouble our efforts."
Ryland smiled. "Very noble. But how many people do you think work at NTAC in the hope of making a difference? What would her telling us that we're doomed – before we've done anything – do to morale here?"
"Good point."
"You've got a lot of good ideas, Tom. It's unfortunate that some of them just aren't practical." I recruited you, in part, for your ideas.
"I appreciate it." I appreciate both this job, and for telling me about the…conspiracy's still the only word for it. It would have been so easy, Tom reflected. Things had been so hectic to say the last back in the first three months that the returnees had been out of Quarantine, it would've been simplicity itself for Dennis to not say a word about the promicin inhibitor program. The only time he could've said anything is when he did, right after me and Diana arrested Oliver Knox… I could've gone to the hospital to spend time with Kyle, could've gone home and ended up in another argument with Linda; instead, what happened happened, Dennis bringing me aboard. He didn't have to, but I appreciate that he trusted me enough that he did.
"So then I took out my gun and shot her," Ryland said.
"Shot who?" Tom asked.
"Things not going so well at home?"
"They haven't gotten worse." There was a measure of comfort one could derive from constant sameness, one's heart didn't react as strongly to each individual hurt. "You?"
"The same. We've been thinking about a vacation…once this settles down."
If it ever does, and I hope it does. "Cancun?"
"Mt. Ranier. She's got a cousin out that way she hasn't seen in years." It was at that point that the Theory Room's door opened and in walked Dr. Pacella, who hesitated, seeing he wasn't the first person to arrive in the room this morning. "We let ourselves in."
"No problem," Marco said, putting his sport coat on a hook and his satchel on a desk. "I was going to finish organizing the stuff you asked me for, but since you're already here…"
"How 'bout you just tell us, Marco," Tom said.
How 'bout you let me start a pot of coffee first? Seeing the look on Baldwin's face, No, I didn't think so. Pulling a book from his satchel, he opened it and pulled out a handful of recently-printed pages that he'd kept in the book for safekeeping on the ride in, handing the pages to Ryland and Baldwin. "There's a number of theories dealing with ways to extract information from the future, but almost all of them run into a fundamental problem."
"Paradox," Ryland said.
Nodding, "Kinda hard to predict something, when predicting it affects what people do and how they handle it," Tom said. "You said 'almost all.' What's the other one?"
On the clearboard, Marco drew a flattened baseball diamond, then put a vertical line down the middle. On the left side of the line, he wrote Forward; on the right, Backward. "According to one theory regarding the cosmos, the universe will reach a point of maximum expansion," tapping the vertical line. "Once it reaches that point, everything will begin to contract back to a singe point," tapping the rightmost corner. "Here on this side, time runs backwards."
"So Maia," Tom said, "can see the future because it's really the past?"
"Good for her," Ryland said. "But why doesn't it hold true for the rest of us?"
"Because if this is right," Marco said, "and we're over here," the right side, "we'd just be repeating what we did over here," the left. "We'd see the universe as expanding, eggs breaking, and milk going sour…even though that's all time-forward stuff. Now some information can be passed from one side to the other, left to right, right to left. Just not a lot of information."
"So Maia's not really seeing the future, she's seeing the past of reversed time?"
"If the theory's right, then it would make sense that whatever abducted the 4400 considered that's how human brains work: we remember the past.
At that point, Tom's phone rang. Answering it, "Baldwin."
"You'll give me this number," Maia said. "She's in trouble."
"Who is? Maia, who's in trouble?" as Dennis and Marco quietly picked up phones to listen as well.
"Mo- Agent Skouris," Maia said, catching herself. Were there limits on how much information could go from one side of the diamond to the other? Had Maia just witnessed the outcome changing? Or was there no way to upset the applecart? "You need to help her." She sniffled. "Nova has her at," gave an address, and hung up.
The three of them did likewise, setting phones in receivers. "Let's go," Tom said.
"Take back-up," Ryland said. "That may've been a bit of foresight we just heard, or it might've been a lure for an ambush."
Tom nodded. "Feel like getting the adrenaline pumping?"
"Much as I'd like to join you, I've got a full day of teleconferences with D.C. ahead of me, and the first one's in," checked his watch, "half an hour. Let me know how it goes."
With a nod from them both, Tom and Marco left. "'Nova,'" Tom said on their way to get Garritty and Park, "you think it's a group or a nickname?"
"Could be either," Marco said. "Question is, why'd they pick that name? Because a nova nearly as destructive, but not as visible as a supernova?"
So they're thinking we'll see what they do, but never find them? We're about to prove them so wrong. "Sounds likely." Or because, being 4400s, they see themselves as being the new, the start of a new thing?
"I get a gun, right?"
I know that look. "Absolutely." That way, there's less a chance you do something crazy to rescue Diana on your own.
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The End