station72 | A CURRENT FLOWING

Entry tags:

A CURRENT FLOWING

CHARACTERS: Everyone (really)
WHERE: Outside of the Memory Bank, On the Lam, The Stealth Ship, and Station 72
WHEN: DAY :052/DAY :001
SUMMARY: Things don’t go exactly as planned. When do they ever?
WARNINGS: Violence, death, allusions to weaponized suicide. Will update further if necessary.

THE RIGHT PEOPLE:
Erastos Loke & Friends
When you finally catch up to Erastos Loke - his paper, his pens, his elegant furniture and his heavily-lidded eyes - it doesn’t take long to get him to talk. All he needs is a little persuasion or a lot of torture? Or, wait. Maybe we got those two mixed up. Either way, he starts to give the strike team intel once the screws are turned on him.

You’ve already begun to suspect most the information Loke gives over. H+H1 has stayed hidden by avoiding any strong organization and by staying extremely low-tech. Additionally, the most powerful members have been quietly manipulating Concordia’s politics and security to keep the actions of the organization obscured. They’ve tipped off Gorram Saffit, they’ve mislead and blackmailed the police. When you begin to press Loke about who gave them the devices that have allowed their bombs to become so deadly, he tells you frankly that he doesn’t understand them. They were given to him by a man - or someone who looked like a man, he clarifies, when Carata asks - who he had assumed to be some wealthy foreigner until he realized he couldn’t find any evidence of the gentleman’s existence. The mysterious stranger had given Loke the devices which consisted of two dozen small parts that could easily retrofit almost any bomb and allowed them to bypass Concordian security systems looking for highly modernizes tech. Prior to the stranger’s involvement, Loke had already been working with a number of his H+H1 associates - the stranger had sympathized and supported them, and the devices provided the power they needed. Who else has access to these devices? No one. Only Loke.

Unfortunately, when the hosts ask further probing questions about the mysterious stranger’s identity - Did he say who he was? Where he came from? - something goes very, very wrong. Erastos looks briefly stricken, then dabs at his nose. It’s bleeding? Quite a lot, actually. He barely has time to cry out before he begins bleeding from his eyes, his nose and his ears. Then Loke drops to the lush carpet beneath his feed, dead. Oops.

Before the hosts have time to react, an alarm starts to blare through the townhouse. Apparently Loke has a second security system tied to his vital signs. Suffice to say, your cover probably won’t survive this long. It might be a good idea to get the heck out of dodge and make your way to the rendezvous point for extraction.

IN THE GAP WHERE IT SPARKS:
The Memory Bank & H+H1’s Bomb Squad
Thanks to the Batman + Prep Time and the Jr. Technophile, the bomb planted by H+H1 deep in the depths of the Omega Memory Bank is successfully located and disarmed although not without cutting it dangerously close to the wire.

Unfortunately nobody gets the chance to wipe the sweat from their brow. The H+H1 bomb squad knows the exact moment the bomb was supposed to go off, and they know exactly when they’ve failed. So even though Sirius and Company seemed like they could handle three average everyday people, they don’t get the chance. The lead Bomber makes the subtlest move towards her pocket - and triggers a secondary, smaller explosive on her person. The three members of the bomb squad are eliminated (hope you were standing a safe distance away, Sirius n’ Co), and while the collateral damage isn’t anything to sneeze at, it’s far from destructive enough to destroy the bank. Further, the explosion isn’t laced with any EMP blasts. While the hosts may not even be injured, the explosion definitely trips the Memory Bank’s fire suppression system as well as its local alarms. Soon (very soon), Concordian Public Security and Fire Teams will be on the scene. The hosts won’t want to be there when they arrive.

SHEPHERDS AND YOUR CROWNS OF STARS:
Escaping Concordia & Returning to the Station
With Loke dead and the secret of the Enemy’s retrofit tech gone with him, and H+H1’s plot to blow the Memory Bank hamstrung by the efforts of the hosts, it’s time to get off planet. Lets be honest: your cover identities were never going to survive this. Luckily, between the minor explosion and a jail break causing riots under the city, Public Security can’t exactly rally their forces to come chasing after the hosts. They have much bigger fish to fry. Carata and Nirad made sure that all the hosts - Loke’s infiltration squad, the bomb disarmament group and the prison breakers - knew where to meet up after their respective assignments: a concrete channel for runoff where a familiar bus is waiting to sweep you all away to the outskirts of the city. It’s less pressing to be invisible now. No one will be left on the planet to suffer the consequences; any comatose members of the Nest have been carefully packed into the bus too. Isn’t that nice?

Once they arrive at the outskirts of the sprawling diamond-glittering city, a point of black in the sky elongates and expands as the stealth tech strips back from the ship that once brought them all here. With straggles wrangled and comatose friends carefully stowed, everyone boards the ship and rockets off from Opia’s surface. Concordia with its high rises and neon, its holographic advertisements and its press of humanity, its ever present buzz of synthetic paired with organic, falls rapidly away below the ship until it’s merely one bright point of many on a densely populated planet. And then Opia too drops away, becoming a dark marble in a deeper, blacker space. When the stealth ship jumps away, it does so with a nauseating jerk.

It’s a short trip back to the Station, the closest thing any of you have to home. Cathaway and Prince are waiting there to collect their equipment (though any additional souvenirs are yours to keep) and to welcome them back.

It’s been a long time and there are new faces to greet you. Time to get caught up. Set your clocks to DAY: 001.

((OOC Notes: Feel free to play any of these events out. We’ll dip in with NPCs and so forth if it seems necessary/y’all ask, but feel free to take control of anyone if it lends to your threads. Backtagging and backdating is, as always welcome.

As of this log, all hosts have (more or less) safely arrived back on Station 72; all hosts - newly hatched and old hats - may now interact. YAY!

If you have any general questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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[It's something all right.]

Finders keepers? [Cathaway sounds mildly amused as she approaches the wall, running her hand idly across the faces of a few of the compartments. Isn't that what Parker's worried about? Being taken by something she doesn't belong to?] How funny.

[After a few moments of consideration, Cathaway comes to stop before one hexagonal compartment. It's no different from any of the hundreds of others in the room, but on this one she depresses an invisible section of the compartment cover. It ejects a handle, which she twists, then--

Her attention flits to where the two of them stand. She looks to Steve.]

It's been a very long time.

[--then pulls the compartment from the wall. It slides back on some invisible rail, not so different from a long file cabinet full of slices of a human's mind. It contains a slab cased on the sides and top in some transparent material, and inside it lays a man who at once is nothing and everything like the Steve Rogers standing beside Parker now.]

[ Those people. Hm.

But Parker isn't holding his attention. His gaze fixes on Catheway's hand as it slips across the compartments. There's a knot in his chest, jaw held painfully tight, and there's an awful moment where the edges of his vision blur and his face starts to go numb as he stares down at the man under the glass. ]

How long? [ Like listening to a voice across the room on the radio. ] What happened?

[ Did he fall asleep like the others? Is this where they all end up if they aren't killed in action? ]

[ NO, THAT'S NOT FUNNY AT ALL. ]

[ Parker, not really seeing the connection there, instead just blinking slowly at her without much of an expression, before turning her back to them to walk around the chamber, hands in her pockets. Not too much, just trying to take in all the details she can possibility get and trying to visualise the path of their walk to here, wondering if she could eventually come back to it.

She doesn't really turn when Cathaway talks, because who cares, but it's Steve's voice that makes her look at what's going on there. And half freeze. A creepy crawling feeling rides up her spine, a weight in her stomach setting uncomfortably. She stares at the glass, the man underneath, and slowly looks up to the woman-thing and glances at Steve, before muttering something to herself under her breath. Probably "are you fucking kidding me" kind of mutter. ]

It's difficult to say exactly. [Time travels strangely in the multiverses and this secret place between them.] But we remember him from when Cathaway was a younger woman. He was in one of the first broods we oversaw, and we've seen lots of them.

[The man in the compartment is perfectly preserved, perfectly quiet, perfectly-- No, not still. Not quite. He moves so slightly it might as well be imperceptible, but somewhere in that body a facsimile of life must remain.]

He's unconscious, and has been for many cycles. [Maybe if it were Sam Wilson or Bucky Barnes or someone equally familiar with this version of Steve Rogers, they might notice the subtle lines at the corners of his eyes, the wrinkle in his cheek from frowning. But looking down on him like this, it's hard to say if he's really so much older than he was in whatever moment he'd been taken to the Station.] We believe he's the last of his brood still in storage here. The rest that were have been absorbed into the Station as their symbiotes withered, but this one is still technically alive.

[Barely.]

Maybe the Station recognized your mental patterns and thought he would like it if his things were passed along to you. It adapts how it can to please us - even those of us who are barely connected to it.

[ Storage. Technically alive. His ears buzz. Catheway's third person narration makes it all the more unsettling and unfathomably alien. ]

Absorbed? [ Bile rises in the back of his throat and he can only just manage to tear his gaze from the glass to face Catheway again, expression drawn tight. ]

[ Her eyes move between Steve and Cathaway and the man that isn't really Steve in an attempt to make sense out of all of this. Trying to analyse Steve's face, as if, in case he's following all of this bullshit, it would make it easier for her to do so too (it wouldn't), but she finds it leads to nowhere.

Not for long, however, as Cathaway delivers that her creepiest information as of yet. The hairs in the back of her neck rise, the skin in her arms turns into goosebumps and a unsettling twist settles in the depth of her stomach. If it didn't feel so absolutely terrifying, out of some weird horror movie, she would feel vindicated for all the distance she has tried to put between them. Instead, all that comes out of her mouth is a humourless laugh, a breath of both incredulity and horror. Like saying "I told you so" without actually wanting to say it. ]

What?

[ She stares at her for a second, before turning to Steve, are you listening to this bullshit kind of eyebrow raise, and back to Cathaway. ]

Are you fucking kidding me?

[ Okay, she does say it outloud this time. Cool. ]

[Maybe she's on the verge of saying something to Steve, explaining the particularities of what exactly she means - the air moves faintly with the intent and, given their current surroundings, surely it can only be the shape of her mind turning to do so -, but Parker's exclamation quiets her. Her attention cools. She turns her eyes to the girl, hand idle at the storage compartment's smooth handle.]

Ah. Your world must bury their dead. [Her reflective gaze flickers to Steve.] Is there a problem?

[ His gaze flicks from Parker, back to Catheway, his face blanched. ]

Is that what'll happen to Sam and Angel? [ If they don't wake up, if all the others that've gone to sleep don't wake up. ]

[There's a sharp sense to her that softens then, not so much smoothing in the wake of Steve's mortification as giving way to it.]

Comatose hosts are moved here only after the rest of their brood has either died or also lost consciousness. We keep them here long term. If a host dies in their sleep, the Station recycles the remains over time. Otherwise, they stay here-- [She sets her hand on the transparent shell of the compartment; it retracts briefly under the touch of her hand, then peels back to allow access to the chamber, the man sleeping heavily inside it. She could touch him now, but doesn't. The quiet of his distant mind unnerves her on an atomic level.] --and can be visited at any time. They stay here until they either wake up or until they don't need their body any more.

Edited 2017-01-31 15:09 (UTC)

In my world, people choose what happens to their body.

[ Parker says, looking at her like she's insane. Like somehow the tradition of burying dead bodies is less creepy than that (objectively it isn't, subjectively it is, but in all fairness, most people prefer cremation nowadays). Nevertheless, even though she tends to be less than fair to the Station and its habits, you can't blame her - or Steve - to find it a little jarring, but you would find it too if you were used to seeing the sky blue and watch it turn red.

Not that she would take it any better, considering she has her mind set on how to judge these people. ]

Just to be clear-- [ She says, looking at Steve and not Cathaway. ] --If I die here, shoot my body out the air lock and leave me to rot in space.

[ Preferable to being assimilated, apparently. ]

Is this how you treat every living, and apparently dead, thing? Something to be symbiotic with? To be assimilated? "Be one with"?

[ He went to visit his mother's grave once a year, remembers the day they buried her with stark clarity - a chill in the air carries the scent of freshly upturned dirt and Mrs. Barnes' perfume. His gaze meets Parker's, narrowing for a second. He could snap at her in that moment - she's always only thinking of herself and no one else, but that doesn't make her any less wrong.

His mouth is dry and his gaze slips back to the man in the compartment, exposed now. ]

There is no space here to shoot your corpse into, Addison. The Station exists in a multiversal pocket. There is nothing around it. [She smiles at her. It's decidedly chilly.] If you'd prefer your body to be transported into a universe and left there, tell your broodmates to do so for you. We won't stop you.

[Somewhere, there's a sensation of thread unraveling as her patience draws thin.] A body is a collection of cells and organic material, not a being with thoughts, emotions and opinions. Those are vital to the mental link between hosts and the Nest. The dead have nothing to be symbiotic with. We can't support the storage of every body indefinitely; this system is merely meant to avoid waste.

[Recycling is good for the environment, kids.]

But by all means, do what you like with your dead. We believe the Darkling burned his.

It's Parker.

[ She says between gritted teeth and it's about the only thing she offers to this conversation, both because she is tired of being lectured and told to accept how things are done, and because she isn't a very patient woman. But especially because they like to call her Addison like they had earned that right. ]

You sure like to talk when it's bullshit you get to say.

[ She narrows her eyes, frown creasing her forehead and shakes her head. Instead of listening, Parker decides to turn her head to Steve as if that would help her ignore Cathaway's presence (it doesn't, she's listening, but she's pretending not to because she's a mature adult). But when she meets Steve's eyes, it's not hard to tell he seems upset with her for-- well, whatever. It's not like it's hard for her to unknowingly upset someone. But it makes her frown deeper, like she wasn't expecting that (nor does she realize why he is upset, and would probably be angry in return for him to think like that). Not from him and not now.

She thinks, wrongly, maybe, that he's into what the crazy cat lady from space is telling him. So that's all that she needs. ]

Who? [ She asks distractedly, still staring at Steve and his look. She turn her face to Cathaway and winces slightly. ] You know what, nevermind. [ She shakes her head, turning her back to her and giving Steve a once over, before heading to the exit. ] Have fun with your stupid shield. [ Baka.

She's off to continue to edge herself into a corner of depression and self-destructiveness like a responsible adult. ]

[ His gaze trails after Parker for only a few seconds as she dismisses them both to make a hasty exit, mouth hanging open. It snaps shut, and he shakes his head, still a bit dazed. He can't hold onto his annoyance with Parker. ]

Can't blame her for getting upset. We all agree to this - stuff, but it's been slow-going learning all the rules. [ Not like there's a guidebook.

Well, not one in writing.

He sucks in a breath, eyeing Catheway again. ] What was that about the Darkling?

[ He still has trouble forming his mouth around that name. ]

[There's a flat, remote chill in the room that descends as Parker storms away, though maybe it has nothing at all to do with Cathaway. Certainly nothing in her expression or the line of her shoulders seems to shift along with the sensation. She blinks slowly to Steve.]

She would have less trouble if she wasn't so suspicious.

[But what harm it could cause either of them is likely negligible. Parker would either grind herself to dust or adapt.

With a small motion of the hand, Cathaway reseals the transparent shell of the container.]

The Darkling arrived with a body - his mother. We offered to keep her here, but he preferred something else. If you want to know more, you'll have to speak to him.

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A CURRENT FLOWING

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short tags for short-circuiting brains

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slinks back in here with shame

sshhh