"You knew about the Shannons the entire time?" Mark thunders. "Before I was even assigned, you knew that the Dr. Shannon you idolized at the hospital was hiding a third kid, and you thought, hey, I'll help supply her illegal contraband to cover up the biggest crime that could possibly be committed. Why not!"
"Calm down, Mark!" Emily tries desperately to reason with her brother. They had sent the kids to a neighbor's for the evening, but if Mark keeps going at his current rate not only the kids and neighbors but the entire city will be able to hear about Emily's involvement in some not quite legal activities.
"Screw that!" Mark yells. "You ride my ass for sticking my neck out and being reckless when it isn't necessary and then you do this? You … you assisted a jail break! Y-you … wait, how did you even get your hands on firearms and spare rebreathers?"
Emily scoffs, throwing her hands in the air in frustration. "God, Mark," she shakes her head. "Don't be so naive. Enough cash can get you anything if you know the right people."
"And you know these people how?"
Mark's eyes are blazing, and he shakes with shock and fear, fear that after everything he's done to keep his family safe and out of trouble hasn't been enough.
"There's a guy at the school," Emily sinks into a chair with a defeated sigh. "We had a Gen Ed class together. Being a student is his front, though, he's a trafficker. Drugs, money, weapons … people. If you need something, he can get it."
"So you waltzed up after class and asked for some contraband?" Mark is still hysterical.
"I didn't go to class!" Emily yells in exasperation. "That's the problem – okay, I didn't need anything illegal other than a better income to support my family. Just after I started working at the hospital some gunshot victims were brought in. I recognized Ti – the guy – from class. Apparently, the whole lot of them had been part of that big gambling bust recruitment was involved with? The one all over the news? Agents were everywhere, we didn't have enough doctors staffed, and I was the only one who seemed to notice that their stories weren't aligning with the injuries. They were traffickers, Mark, traffickers who just happened to partake in illegal gambling on the side.
"One thing led to another," Emily continues, "and he offered to cut me in if I kept my mouth shut. I was already stopping classes and picking up extra shifts at the hospital since you were between gigs. After that, I went back and started working with him for more money. It's usually just taking packages or information to different locations and dropping them off – easy – so when Dr. Shannon needed help, I already had the connection to get her what she needed."
Mark's face is ashen. He thought he had everything under control. He had thought wrong. Because not only is his family not in Terra Nova, they aren't even meeting the bare minimum of living standards he'd thought they could take for granted here in 2149.
He doesn't know who specifically his older sister has gotten herself involved with but it sure as hell isn't going to continue.
"We're leaving anyway now, remember?" she reminds, but Mark's torn-to-shreds conscious isn't the slightest appeased.
"Damn right we are," he growls. "We're leaving first thing in the morning. Get the kids and start packing."
"Where are we going?" Emily pleads with him to slow down and think rationally. "We don't have that much of a plan yet!"
"We're getting out of the city! Away from your unnamed creep," Mark snaps. "We'll get on the monorail as soon as it opens and ride it to the end. We'll stay at a shelter until we have another plan."
Emily is crying now, looking at Mark in disgust. "Right," she chokes. "We'll take the kids to sleep in a place known for junkies and pedophiles only because you can't get it through your thick skull that I've been dealing with this for almost two years and two more weeks won't change anything."
Mark is sure that Emily keeps yelling but he can't hear anything besides a ringing in his ears. Two years. For two years his sister has been willingly helping the people that Mark has done everything in his power to keep his family away from, the kind of people Jim Shannon lock up – that's who his big sister has become, someone who deserves a cell in Golad, who should be filling the place Jim is unjustly rotting in.
"I don't even know you anymore," he spits.
"Anything I've ever done is for you and the kids – no different than you – so you don't get to make me out as a bad guy," Emily sobs. "I only want what's best for us."
Mark never liked the idea of possibly having to take a life on the job; it is a necessary evil. However, he's never wanted anything more than to slowly kill the guy who dragged his sister into this life. Mark replays all of the details his sister had shared, trying to determine how to track him down. He knows what school he goes to … what his priors are … "Wait," Mark asks, "you said this guy was busted with that illegal gambling group. How are you still working for him? Did he not go down?"
"Oh, he went down," Emily rolls her eyes. Her voice is thick as she wipes her face. "But he was high up in the food chain of this trafficking organization. Since TN lottery winners were involved, recruitment was handling the case but didn't know how big of a mess they stumbled into. Word is Tim turned in a bigger fish, so he could walk free, continuing the enterprise with less competition in the market."
Mark goes slack jawed. "Tim?" he asks.
Emily is at a loss for words upon realizing she let his name slip.
"As in Timothy Curran? Is that his full, actual name?"
"Mark – I'm begging y—"
"WHAT THE HELL IS HIS NAME?" Mark screams. Emily is fluttering like trash blowing about on the street, and though Mark hates to see his sister so vulnerable and broken, his empathy has up and left, his mind spinning with bigger problems.
"It's the alias he's been using since the bust now that recruitment has tabs on him or whatever," Emily quivers. Mark could yell sometimes, but never like that. "I honestly don't know what his name was before the bust, I just have good faith that it was different. How do you even know it, though?"
Mark shakes his head, trying to steady his breath.
Maddy, Maddy, Maddy … Her name drills through his head on a loop. She'd been alone with this guy all day, possibly still this very instant, all the while thinking she'd solved everything. If Curran is onto her scheme in anyway or gets word that Terra Nova now sees her as an expense rather than an asset, she is as good as dead, and it is all because of Emily. If Emily had reported him that night in the hospital after he was shot, he wouldn't have been able to cut a deal worth shit after being booked for trafficking. Instead, the villain had secured the cushiest deal possible.
"Listen," Emily tries to reason, unaware of Mark's downward spiral of turmoil. "I know this is a lot, but things will get better. That's why we're going to get this fresh start. We are going to get the kids a safer and more comfortable lifestyle. Neither of us will have to do such reckless shit anymore. We'll start being upfront and honest and everything else our parents weren't. But I'm begging you to let this drop and not go after Tim. We're leaving; he won't even know where we are. I've heard that he started as a foot soldier then assassin for one of those private armies. I know you're strong, but I also know he's more than capable of taking what's most important out of your life and leaving you begging for death. Don't get caught up in that when you don't have to."
Maddy, Maddy, Maddy … he is going to leave Maddy begging for death … he will torture her to get hold of Zoe or whatever recruitment wants and she'll die before caving. A sickening image of the petite Shannon girl bloody and beaten and broken enters Mark's mind and stabs him right in the heart. He is suddenly overtaken by a fierce wave of nausea.
"You were the one who got caught up in it when you didn't have you," Mark coldly reminds his sister. "If you had come to me a year ago and pointed out how tight money was, we could have strategized together. You think that this guy won't be able to track you or our family? You say you did this to help us put all you did was put the kids at risk." Mark grabs a handful of his hair and pulls on it, desperately hoping he can wake up from this nightmare.
But this is his reality now.
"Keep telling yourself whatever you will so you can sleep at night," his voice cracks, "but I'll be thinking about everyone whose lives were destroyed by the drug and weapon and slave information you passed back and forth. I'm sorry, but this isn't how you support a family." He storms towards the door.
"Where are you going?" Emily calls after him helplessly.
Mark turns his head back toward his sister. "Timothy Curran was my replacement on the Shannon Case," he states. "You did what you could to help the Shannons, yeah? Including putting a psychopath in their house to look after their kids."
Emily freezes shock-still, her jaw dropping to the floor.
Why did she take the cash that first time? Why didn't she just report him? How could she not realize how much danger this put them all in, no matter where they went?
Mark wants to ask but he also knows the more time he spends questioning Emily about things he knows could never truly be answered, the more time the Shannon family is in very immediate danger.
Mark has worked security for so long. He saves lives for a living while his sister has been going around wrecking them.
"I'm going to try calling in some favors with friends I have in the business," he tells Emily indifferently, "so the Shannons have a safety net. Then, I'll be returning for Macey and Stephen and three of us will be getting far away from here. If I have a time, I'll put a bullet in your friend's chest for good measure," Mark winks sadistically. "I'll be back before the pilgrimage. Don't get our siblings killed before I return."
With that, Mark dashes down the hall to stop whatever Curran is up to, and Emily sinks to her knees in the door way, tears streaming down her face as she realizes she is losing everything she ever worked to protect.