If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
January 3, 1963
Dallas, Texas
Emery Lamont landed with a thud on the pavement, hands and knees digging painfully into the gravel below. He spat blood and stood up, pushing the now dirty blond hair away from where it had fallen over his eyes.
"Five?" He asked, noticing the way he was alone in his landing and the cloud of blue still above him. "Five!" He shouted. "Five!" But it was closing up, shrinking, shrinking, shrinking until it dispersed with a 'pop', leaving behind absolutely nothing. Emery could see the blue sky above and the tops of buildings but no Five, no Allison, no Klaus, no one.
He heaved, hunching over and hacking as he spat more blood and wiped at his mouth with the sleeve of his blazer- Five's blazer that the boy had leaned to him when he has shot a few days ago.
A few days? He thought as his legs clumsily brought him forward and to the end of the alley, he was spat out from. Or a few years.
He was on the edge of a street now, across from him- an old-timey movie theatre with a restaurant beside it. There were shops and bakeries and people mulling about, donned in their cocktail dresses with puffed sleeves and bright colors, the men in their striped shirts and vests overtop.
"Do you have a jacket there bubba? You'll catch death without one." A voice said. Emery's head whipped to the side where he saw a young lady and what looked to be her son, gently placing a hand on his shoulder, lips pursed in concern. The lady sucked in a breath upon taking Emery in closer. "Are you alright?" She asked, pulling away. She was scared.
Emery looked down at his burnt bandages, torn best and nails stained with blood beneath them.
"I'm quite alright." He said, hesitantly adding on "Ma'am" to the end.
The lady just smiled and patted his head as she continued on her way, son clutching her other hand as he waddled loyally beside her.
"Bubby?" Emery questioned under his breath, walking across the street and ignoring the honking cars that yelled at him as he walked over to a hotdog stand stationed on the other side.
"Would you be able to tell me what the date is?" Emery asked the man running the stand. "The exact day and uhh where we are?" He added.
"I might could do that for you." The man responded, tilting his hat down to get a better look at him. "Why you askin' such questions boy?"
"Look, can you just tell me?" Emery said, biting his lip as he waited anxiously. "Or should I go and find someone else."
The man cracked a smile. He had a chipped tooth and his teeth were out of line. "You ain't from around here are you." He said, less of a question than a statement.
Emery sighed but forced a smile on his face. "Yessir. I'm traveling you see, don't know where I'm going which is why I hope you could help."
The man stared at him for a second longer before he relented and squared his shoulders. "If you look behind you, across the street there, you'll be able ter see that's the bank of Dallas." The man said. "As in Texas. Son, you're in 1963- January to be exact if you didn't already know."
Emery barely managed out a 'thanks' before his legs were carrying him backward and onto the street. He snapped out of his daze though when another honk pulled him from its depths and he ran across the rest of the road until he was standing in front of the aforementioned bank.
Dallas. He thought. Texas. As in 1963. He'd been here once, right before the assassination of JFK, the killer- Five Hargreeves.
"What the hell did you do Five." He said aloud, gaze drifting back up to the area where the cloud had spit him out. But of course, it wasn't there.
He frowned, gaze falling lower as he spotted instruments set up on the roof of the building straight down the alley ahead. Cameras and odd contraptions like radar dishes and something that looked like an off-brand solar panel. Emery frowned as his gaze sloped further down and he could see a sliver of a camera face leaking out at him from behind draped curtains. He stepped closer and then he was walking up the short flight of stairs onto what looked to be a back door.
He knocked and then tested the door when he received no answer. Locked. He knocked again, this time with more vigor, and was greeted with much of the same. Cursing, Emery turned away from the door, ready to give up and wander the streets for everyone else when he spotted a distorted paperclip of perhaps just a regular thin wire of steel laying forgotten and lodged in the pavement.
Emery knelt beside it and pulled it free, holding it up to the light and raising a brow. This would work.
He shaped it with the pads of his fingers and went back to the door where he put the end in and moved it around, pressing his ear to the door near the lock until he heard a 'click'. Smiling in triumph, Emery twisted the clip and pulled it out, pulling the door open in turn.
He stepped through and was greeted with a small foyer with a set of stairs to his right that led into a short hallway and a waiting bench on the right with a singular wilting white flower in a clear vase.
He trod up the steps carefully until he reached the top and was faced with two doors. He raised a bandaged hand closed in a fist, ready to knock on the one straight in front of him but then he heard something move beyond the room to his right and pivoted to face that one instead. He lowered his fist, instinctively knowing knocking would do him no good, and tried the handle. Locked. He scoffed. No surprise. He set to work with the wire again and the door swung open in a manner of seconds.
"Ahh!" A pitched cry of alarm greeted him when the door swung open and the resident inside nearly spilled a fresh pot of scalding coffee over himself.
"Careful," Emery said. "You wouldn't want to burn yourself. Trust me- it's not a pleasant feeling." He added.
"W-who are you?" The man asked, setting the pot down and blindly searching for some sort of weapon in the wide array of drawers in the kitchen. "Wait. You're one of them, aren't you? I saw you appear in the alley. Just like the others."
Emery frowned, a crease forming between his brows as he stepped forward. "Others?" He asked, surveying the area. He saw the camera he saw propped up against the window that he had seen from outside and let his gaze scan the rest of the room.
He was in the 60s. There was no denying it. From the old appliances and the technology to the way the man dressed and acted. He must have looked alien with Five's schoolboy shirt and his 'slight french accent' as Five had put it so many days- years ago at Griddy's.
"Aliens." The man said. "I've been tracking them for years, studying anomalies in the sky and irregular channels."
Emery hummed as he moved further into the room, studying the papers plastered onto the wall. UFOs and alien conspiracists that somehow managed to make the paper were dutifully organized in a messy pattern across the span of two walls. "And how many have there been?" He asked.
"Six of them including you." The man said. "All in this specific alleyway that you appeared down."
Six. Someone hasn't made it- yet. They must have all arrived at the same location at different times over the past few years.
"And when was the first anomaly?" He asked.
"1960." Came the response.
Emery sat down, suddenly winded from the onslaught of information.
"Are you alright there bud? You look pretty banged up." The man asked, hesitantly coming to sit down next to him, offering a wet cloth. "There's a restroom around the corner if you want to freshen up."
Emery nodded. "Why aren't you trying to kill me right now?" He asked.
"Because I've spent the better half of my whole life studying your kind." Emery scoffed. "Why do you assume I would kill you?"
Emery sighed and pushed himself up. "Because I lock-picked my way into your building." He said. "And I guess I've just gotten used to people trying to kill me."
"Well, I won't kill you, friend!" The man called out after him as he found the washroom and flipped the light on. "I'm Elliott by the way!"
"Emery!" Emery shouted through the door, unraveling the bandages from his hands and tossing them in the trash. He didn't look at the skin as he turned on the cold water and splashed his face with it, letting it run over his hands for a moment after. He carefully peeled Five's shirt over his head after and tossed it aside, looking in the mirror to assess to wounds.
He peeled back the gauge and cringed as it gripped his skin as he pulled it off to reveal the stitches beneath. The cut wasn't as angry looking as it once had been and the raised bump where the skin was cut had gone down. He wet his hand and rubbed away the excess dry blood. His chest was another story. When his eyes rose and saw the angry marks left, he sucked in a breath, and this time- he had to look at his hands too.
"I uh have some burn cream. If you'd like." A voice called out from beyond. Elliott. "I made it myself after an unfortunate incident when I spilled coffee on myself actually and the pharmacy ran out and-"
"Thanks, Elliott. I'll take it." Emery interrupted the man before he could ramble any longer.
The door opened and then Elliott was thrusting out his hand with the ointment container, trying- and failing to divert his eyes when Emery opened the door and greeted him.
"How'd you uh, how'd it happen?" Elliott asked, gesturing to the marks.
"Oh, you know," Emery said, taking a dollop and spreading it across his chest and ergo his hands. "Alien stuff, it gets pretty rough sometimes." He said.
Elliott was barely containing his excitement now. "I can't believe I'm actually talking to you, it's crazy."
"Crazy." Emery plastered on a smile. "Say uh, do you have any extra shirts? Mines uh, well." He gestured lamely to the ruined fabric on the floor.
"Oh! Yeah! I'll be right back." Elliott said, bounding away and into an opposing room that Emery could not see. A bedroom perhaps. He returned a moment later with a washed out blue button up of which Emery donned with a thanks. The thing itself was five sizes too large but he wasn't about to complain any time soon as he handed back the burn cream and made his way back to the front door.
"Wait, where are you going?" Elliott asked.
"Going to find my family." Emery said.
"Oh." Came the reply, less engaged now and ridden with sadness.
Emery paused. "Thanks for your help Elliott." He said. "Would it be too much to ask if you gave me regular updates?"
"No. None at all." Elliott smiled.
"Thanks." Emery said, smiling once more as he twisted the doorknob and swung the door open, exiting with a final goodbye over his shoulder and a promise to come back if he could.
Now for the elephant in the room- he had absolutely no idea where the Hargreeves were nor which of them were here and who was still traveling through time, waiting to be dropped off in that alleyway.
Off to a great start, as per usual.