The Elsewhere Files

Counter Intelligence - Mission One

Camera opens on Kiera and the Major sitting at a table with a map spread out before them. Neither one is talking and the camera picks up the fresh scar on the Major’s cheek, the bandage still around Kiera’s burned wrist. Both Kiera and the Major have stiff body language, as if uncomfortable around the other.

[Crowe]: “Sir, HQ is reporting multiple indicators that there is an abnormally large Elsewhere pocket forming at these coordinates.”  The Major’s tone is clipped. 

[Kiera]: nods, then looks at the map blankly.

[Crowe]: “Anything to report sir?”

[Kiera]: shakes head negative, remains quiet.

[Crowe]: gives Kiera a cold stare. “I’ll coordinate with HQ then sir.” Kiera returns his cold stare and rolls her eyes, visibly scoffing at the Major. Kiera walks over to the hotel bed and collapses onto it. There is only one bed in the room, but it is large, more than capable of holding both Kiera and the Major without it being intimate at all.

Camera screen splits into two. One side over looks Kiera’s shoulder as she once more writes in her journal. The other side watches the Major as he contacts HQ, but does not hear the conversation. The screen watching over Kiera’s shoulder picks up her narrative.

[Kiera-as-narrator]: My arm itches. Everyone assures me that’s perfectly normal for a second and third degree burn as the skin grows back. The pains pretty steady now, I can bear it without taking too many meds, though the Major doesn’t know that. He once told me not to write things down I didn’t want getting out. But he doesn’t read this anymore. I know he requested a transfer off this case, I overheard him discussing it when he thought I was taking a bath. Can’t say as I blame him, or anyone else for that matter. They all know it now. I’m a death sentence. Get paired up with me and you won’t even last a year. HQ told him to ‘handle her’, me, until they could find a suitable replacement. Hopefully it’s someone old and single, no one to miss them when I inevitably get them killed.

If things go according to plan, Jareth is the last person I’ll ever hurt again. The Elsewhere pocket HQ is sending us to… I know of it.  It’s been calling to me ever since the night I helped 2,697 people die. That’s how many people didn’t make it out of the town when the Elsewhere Pocket came up. Half the town, ripped away and replaced with the surface of the moon. Outside the pocket, the grass is green, the sky is blue, air is polluted and gravity keeps your ass on the ground. One step inside though and you die. There’s literally a duplication of the lunar surface there now. How? No one has a clue. The government or the military shushed it up but the interent’s gone loco trying to figure it out.

I’ll let greater minds than my own tackle that. All my attention lately has been focused on resisting the siren’s call to the North. Whatever’s there wants me, can feel me and is trying to lure me in. I just need to find a way to ditch Dudley-do-right before I go to Thanatos’ arms. No more people should die because of me.

Camera looses Kiera’s narrative voice as it zooms out, the screen with the Major picking up the sounds. The Major closes his cell phone and opens up his black notebook. Like for Kiera, the camera zooms in on the words and picks up the Major's narrative voice.

[Crowe-as-narrator]: Subject is keeping things from me. HQ confirms that other EWOCs with sensitivity have picked up traces of large Pocket. Intel from subject is no longer reliable. Has not made another escape attempt, though is still willfull. Antagonistic. HQ confirms that there will be a replacement after investigation into this abnormally Powerful pocket.

Let her be someone else's problem.

The camera looses the narrative voice as it pulls back. The split down the screen disappears as both Kiera and the Major close their record keeping notebooks.