"Any ideas yet on how to effectively deal with, what do you call him? Adam ?" Reece asked Henry.
"I'm still working it out," Henry replied. "But many murder suspects are placed on a suicide watch; perhaps that can work for us here."
VVVVVVVV
Reece had very verbally shared her hopes with Henry that his idea of having extra surveillance equipment installed in and outside Adam's cell would work to intimidate him and make him think twice before offing himself in front of so many witnesses. Frankly, she couldn't see that man being intimidated by anyone or anything let alone an overabundance of electronic monitoring devices. As she left the surveillance room and headed back to her office, she sincerely hoped they could at least manage to keep him contained so that he could face the justice he deserved. But … containing an Immortal was near impossible and a milestone of the strangest kind that she hoped never to have to repeat.
vvvv
It was well past the lunch hour, approaching mid-afternoon, and Jo regretted having passed on the delicious breakfast that Abe had cooked that morning. She was surprised that she still had an appetite after having been in such close proximity to Adam.
"He frightens me," Jo admitted to Mike as she shuddered, standing near his desk and remembering to keep her voice lowered.
"That makes two of us if it'll make ya feel any better," he also admitted. "But I feel braver with him locked up."
Jo chuckled softly then explained further. "It's not his … condition, as Henry calls it, that frightens me. It's the way that he thinks. The way that he doesn't … feel." She shuddered again; her slight smile now gone. "I just hope that Henry never becomes … emotionally empty like him." Her eyes, though lowered, darted back and forth in a worried manner.
Mike was having none of it. He quickly left his seat and put his face in hers. "Not the Doc," he adamantly told her. "He'd never get like that creep. Deep down, you know it, too, so get that outta your head right now."
A smile broke out on her face again and she nodded, blinking back tears. "Yeah," she whispered in response. "I do know." She smiled more happily at her caring partner coming at her in full big brother mode. "Thanks, Mike."
He straightened up and nervously wriggled his fingers before shoving one hand into his pants pocket and rubbing the back of his neck with the other. "Yeah, well, you're welcome," he replied. "No more goofy talk," he added, pointing a finger at her.
"No. No more goofy talk," she promised him. While she mentally entertained herself with images of a handsome, smiling, and dapperly-dressed Henry from different time periods, Mike asked when Henry was to meet with Adam. "He should be there right now."
vvvv
Adam sensed a presence. The familiar, deliberate footfall that approached his cell echoed to him from the abandoned subway platform earlier that year. The footfalls stopped in front of his cell and he opened his eyes. "Hello, Henry," he said. "How nice of you to visit me again."
The snide sarcasm in the older Immortal's voice caused Henry to work hard to restrain the anger and disgust in his own as he quietly uttered the man's name in reply. Adam, likewise, heard the emotions in the younger Immortal's voice. He sat up on the side of his bunk but stared straight ahead at the opposite wall.
"You've come to mark my boundaries," Adam told him. He turned his head slightly to his left to partially view Henry standing on the other side of the bars with his hands clasped behind his back. "Am I right?"
Henry raised his eyebrows slightly and blinked a couple of times as he lowered his head and shifted his feet. "You might say that." He raised his head again and jutted his chin out at him. "I need to explain the need for these many surveillance devices."
Adam turned his head away and stared at the wall again, the smugness on his face replaced by quiet anger. "You, of all people, Henry, should know better than to put me in this situation," he hissed.
"This ... situation ... is the result of your own actions and misdeeds," Henry replied. "Make no mistake about that," he hissed back.
Adam stood up and turned to face him. "Isn't it enough that I was imprisoned in my own body for months?!"
"Again, the result of your own misdeeds," Henry countered.
Adam slowly walked closer to stand face to face with Henry. But instead of gripping the bars like a desperate gangster in a 1930's movie, he kept his arms pinned by his sides. The outer edges of his thumbs, Henry noted, were pressed against the outer seams of his pants in a manner that suggested he'd had military training at some time in his incredibly long life. Not entirely implausible, Henry thought. Perhaps he'd served during a time when he'd held strong convictions and was still "a decent man" as he'd once claimed he had been.
"You're under suicide watch," Henry informed him.
"As if that has ever kept me from seeking my … path to freedom," Adam smugly shot back with a slight wiggle of his head.
"And, I assume that any witnesses would be summarily dealt with," Henry stated with confidence.
"I have always acted only as the situation has demanded," Adam responded. The pride in his voice and demeanor left Henry sickened.
"Well," Henry began as he raised his eyebrows and glanced over his shoulder at the electronics behind him. "That may have worked for you when there were just a few witnesses." He stepped back and turned to the side. "What if your so-called path to freedom was broadcast to the entire world?"
Adam's cheek muscles flinched and his lower lip twitched to the side as he seethed with anger while he viewed the equipment with renewed interest. "Surely, you don't intend …"
"Oh, absolutely," Henry replied, cutting him off. "Imagine the, ah, Times Square jumbotron broadcasting your movements on a 24-hour basis to a constantly-changing throng of hundreds, thousands. Over a period of time, who knows how many millions will have become acquainted with your likeness?"
The older Immortal took great exception to the gleeful manner in which the ME spoke and motioned with a flourish toward the equipment as if it was a prize on a game show. Henry turned to face him again, his glee tempered with determination.
"And one has to wonder on what other social media platforms you and your day-to-day activities will be viewed; and by whom?" Henry speculated.
"You wouldn't dare!" Adam growled.
"Oh, wouldn't we?" Henry replied, seemingly unmoved in the face of the man's growing anger. "Imagine how the viewers in the government, for instance, would react to your odd way of escaping. They would leave no stone unturned to find you, Adam. They would subject you to the most painful type of scrutiny in order to find out the secret of how you escaped."
"You're bluffing!" Adam rasped.
Henry stepped aside again. "Take a closer look."
Adam's eyes widened only slightly when he saw what appeared to be live images of Henry and himself being fed into Times Square on the jumbotron. "Impossible!" he barked. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. A humongous throng watching him in real-time. He gripped the bars and cast an uncharacteristically troubled gaze at the images. With that infernal equipment installed inside and outside his cell, how could he ever …
"Don't worry," Henry said. "The audio feed has not been enabled yet."
"What is it you want from me?" Adam asked in a lowered voice.
"Take your punishment, Adam," Henry told him. "Would it not be better to remain imprisoned for now, rather than become a permanent guest of some government's medical testing facility?"
"That can only work for so long and you know it," he reminded Henry in a raspy, angry voice.
"It would work long enough for our mutual purposes," Henry replied.
Adam scoffed and turned his now dark, angry glare to meet Henry's. "I assume that if I agree to take this difficult path, you and your colleagues will agree to keep me safe." Henry nodded. He looked Henry up and down. "And why would you trust me to keep my part of the agreement?"
"Because I believe that no matter what level of degeneracy you have now fallen into, you have proven to be a man of your word," Henry began. "It's simply a fact. You have kept your promise never to harm Abraham in any way. You even helped him to find out who his biological parents were. Both he and I will be eternally grateful for that. That proves that there must still be a shadow of decency left in you."
Adam released his grip on the bars and stood at soldier-like attention once again. After several moments of indecision, he said, "You give me little choice. For now."
vvvv
A skeptical Mike Hanson listened to Henry fill Reece in on his conversation with Adam and the bargain they'd struck. Reece questioned the older Immortal's trustworthiness.
"Lieutenant, I don't expect you to fully understand my reasoning behind all this," Henry attempted to explain. "But whether his past decisions have been good or bad, he has been true to his word."
"Sort of like 'honor among thieves'," Mike said. "Only in this case … "
"Something like that, Detective," Henry replied with a shake of his head and a slight smile, although there was very little to smile about regarding the troubled Immortal.
"So, we keep him safe from being experimented on," Jo began, "and he agrees to … stay put."
Henry chuckled. "In a nutshell, yes."
"And what happens when it becomes apparent that he's not aging?" she asked him.
He schooled his features and fell into a pensive mood for he hadn't quite figured that out yet. "The only thing I can tell you is that I will always be there to see that he remains safe. Imprisoned but safe."
"That might take forever," Mike muttered.
Henry failed to reply. But they each knew that if anyone could stand eternally vigil over the other Immortal, it would be him.
VVVVVVVV
Notes:
Is Adam merely biding his time until he can escape; for is there really any way to contain him? Hopefully, his immortality will eventually expire and Henry can really relax one day. Maybe in a hundred thousand years. Who knows?
But Adam definitely doesn't want to go through what he did at the hands of the deranged Josef Mengele during the Second World War. Regular prison or maybe Club Fed would not be so unbearable to him. At least for a while.
The next chapter will speak to Adam's trial and incarceration. Naturally, he won't elect to have a jury trial for he realizes that the fewer witnesses to his record of crimes, the better. But will things go that smoothly? Nope (shaking my head and grinning). Nope. To all still following along with this story, Thank You, stay tuned, and stay safe.