station72 | TWO MINUTES CLOSER TO MIDNIGHT

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TWO MINUTES CLOSER TO MIDNIGHT

CHARACTERS: Everyone (except new hatches on the Station)
WHERE: The Omega Memory Bank; Erastos Loke's townhouse
WHEN: DAY :052
SUMMARY: The hosts on Concordia race against the clock to track down and deal with H+H1's bomb; meanwhile, a small team infiltrates the home of Erastos Loke, one of the leading members of H+H1, in an attempt to learn about his invovlement with the Nest's Enemy.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary.

A HOUSE DIVIDED had better be successful this time, or else there might be explosive repercussions. Acting on the intelligence Ilde and Petre gleaned from Kusuma Ming (don't ask what happened to Fahima Hanne in the process), the hosts split their numbers in the wee hours of DAY :052: Sam, Lil' Sam, Aoba and Carata make their way to Erastos Loke's townhouse to press him for information on his H+H1 associates and, hopefully, ascertain how he's connect to the Nest's Enemy; meanwhile, the bulk of the group rushes to the Omega Memory Bank where Ming has confirmed H+H1 is attempting to set off a bomb, the result of which would be to cripple Concordia's relationship with technical memory storage and have long lasting repurcussions for the integration of android and organic life. That doesn't even count the small group currently trying to rescue Bellamy and Murphy from an underground jail...

Luckily, the hosts have the resource of another another at their disposal. Loke's townhouse is close enough to the Omega Memory bank that inter-brood communication should be possible for all hosts, and some older hosts may be able to communicate to those outside their brood if absolutely pressed. There's a lot of ground to cover, but between all of you it should be possible.

...Hopefully.

CONFRONTING ERASTOS LOKE
[OOC PLOTTING POST]
     I. BREAKING AND ENTERING
Erastos Loke's townhouse is located in a quiet upscale neighborhood of Concordia's Beta block. Though armed with a fairly beefy private security system (a silent alarm that alerts Public Security should someone without authorized access exist on the premises for more than two minutes), the small group looking to infiltrate the townhouse will be networking with Pidge to override the security system. Which just leaves Loke's organic bodyguard to deal with before they get to the man himself.

Loke's bodyguard is exactly what you'd expect. They're a big beefy, gender-neutral individual with a small caliber projectile weapon and training in a few different Concordian martial arts. They have a focus on disarming and apprehending over lethal force, which should give the hosts an opening - that said, the body guard is dangerous and could potentially shoot off a message to PS if they have the opportunity to do so, so better to either avoid them entirely or make quick work of them.

Upon entry, the townhouse is quiet - it is, after all, almost three in the morning - and the old-money design sensibility is more than a little haunting in the dark. A pale bust swims out of the low light, it's carved eye sockets dark; a painting of a young woman on the second story landing seems ghoulish among the quiet. And there: a murmur of movement on the upper levels - the creak of footsteps on older wooden floors, a light eking out from under the doorway of a study door.

     II. TURNING THE SCREWS
Assuming no one hecks it up - and all of you are admirably competent, ...aren't you? - and the guard is taken down without alerting Loke to your presence, the hosts will successfully find Erastos Loke in his office. There's a news outlet feed humming away at a low volume on a holographic display against a blank panel of the office's wall, but the man himself doesn't seem to be paying it much mind as he's currently making notes on a series of pieces of paper. The faint scratch of his pen (it's very old, downright antique) is almost louder than the murmur of the news feed.

If you're lucky, he isn't armed.

OMEGA MEMORY BANK BOMB SQUAD
[OOC PLOTTING POST]
     I. HACKER VOICE: "I'M IN"
Gain access to the Omega Memory Bank by any means necessary. Remember, a low profile is ideal but this isn't exactly the time to be subtle if that means failure. The Memory Bank has extremely tight security, so it'll either need to be overridden entirely, delayed, or flat out avoided in some way. Protip: magic and supernatural abilities are extremely useful on this world; it turns out that Kellix also has some limited backdoor access to the Bank. Weird?

     II. DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Once inside the Memory Bank, the hosts have a lot of ground to cover. The bomb could be on any one of the Memory Bank's eighty levels of data storage, and there's no telling what the bomb looks like or how it operates. Maybe one of your friends over at Erastos Loke's can help you with that? To further complicate matters, you might run into a Memory Bank technician or two - and are they actually technicians, or are they the H+H1 bomb squad in disguise?

     III. DROP THE B-B-BOMB
Pidge and Bruce (and anyone working with their group) will ultimately manage to track down the bomb. Where it's located, how they find it, and what they ultimately decide to do with it is up to y'all. Call on your friends if you're so inclined, but be aware that there's definitely a small window of time. It looks like the bomb's ready to go up in, oh, fifteen minutes.

     IV. IT WASN'T ME OFFICER, I SWEAR
Sirius (and anyone working with him) will find himself facing off with H+H1's bomb squad. How he finds them and where they're located is up to you (though for the record, they're definitely moving away from the bomb and attempting to make their way out of the Memory Bank). The squad is comprised of three organics: a young woman with a considerable amount of technical equipment disguised as server maintenance gear, a square faced older man in a security officer's uniform, and an middle aged man in a technician's coat. They're all very armed and very dangerous.

((OOC Notes: Good luck, everyone! Results for who finds the bomb/bomb squad were randomized from the sign-ups and plotting list; if you have any questions, thoughts or ideas don't be afraid to use the event plotting post to throw them into the hat.

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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bucky latches onto the offered support from Steve in a heartbeat, leaning heavily on the link without meaning to. He traces the emblems on the coin twice more before he pulls his only usable hand from his pocket. Non-lethal, from this distance. He flits through the magazine of tactics like one might a flipbook. One tango would be easy, but two in deep conversation with each other might be more difficult. He's only got the one hand.

He blinks as he considers his options--- none of them good.

But they have to be good enough. He's not going to let Steve walk into this.

His gaze follows the overhead lights to the checkpoint and the hallways past the two technicians. A distraction to break them from the conversation, then go in for the pressure points. Then they have maybe one or two minutes tops to get out of the area before the technicians wake up.

Bucky traces out a mental plan for Steve as he reaches down to untie his shoes with one hand: throw one shoe for distraction, tangos turn away, Bucky will move up and take down the technicians with three pressure points up the arm.

"When they go down, we have sixty seconds to get past them," he says aloud for Kellix's benefit. "Where are we going next?"

Because they can't fumble around for directions with a time limit.

"Through the security checkpoint, down the hall and to the left at the second intersection. There's an office at the end of that hall. That's where we're going. There may be additional personnel between here and there. You'll need to incapacitate them ahead of me, if you please. If I make visual contact, I may be obligated to use lethal force."

There's a pointed lack of emotion to the statement. Every word is crisp, perfectly enubciated. He's determined to feel nothing about it.

The plans are mapped out, their connection steady - Steve's mind acting like an anchor, solid and immovable in spite of buzzing nerves.

It's a hardened look that Kellix receives when he explains the rest of the route, and the risks. Unfortunately, it's a little late to start questioning the robot about his directives, they don't have time to go back and forth over what he can and can't tell them - but it counts for something that Kellix warned them first. His expression smooths over, attention turned down the hall.

"Not gonna let that happen." Under his coat his skin itches, covered with a layer of glinting metal with the activation of his symbiote ability. He'll be close to Kellix while Bucky knocks out the techs, barring any changes to the plan.

"Ready when you are."

Edited 2016-12-23 07:29 (UTC)

Listening as he tugs the laces free of the knot tying them in place, Bucky nods, drawing a mental course following Kellix's directions. Beside him Steve is steady and unflinching and Bucky roots himself deeper in that foundation. His shoe comes off easily enough and he watches the two technicians continue to converse for a handful of seconds longer.

He clenches his jaw before throwing the shoe in an arch over the heads of the engineers. As soon as the shoe releases from his fingers, he's darting down the hall towards his targets.

Nothing like a projectile to get the attention. One of the engineers ducks; the other seems bewildered, but jumps when the shoe collides with the door. "What the--" And then Bucky is on them, for better or worse.

Meanwhile back around the corner, Kellix has gone still - tipping his skull faintly toward the sound of Barnes closing in on them. He won't move until he's sure they've been dealt with, but once they have he's quick on his articulated feet plates: swinging around the corner and moving at an absolute clip for the door. Once there, he jams his skeletal hand against a sensor plate and twists his face back the way they'd come to avoid looking forward. "The door is open. Pass through it please."

It's like the night in front of the convenience store.

When Kellix darts forward, Steve follows, glancing at the downed techs. Still breathing.

With a furrowed brow he'll pass through the open doorway.

Bucky follows the plan to the letter. The more startled of the two is hit first. Bucky presses hard on the radial nerve, followed in an instant by the median and a strike under the ear. Without waiting for the first tech to drop, he assaults the second with the same sequence of pressure points.

"C'mon," Bucky calls out once both techs are down, but breathing. No time to waste.

He doesn't look at Steve as they follow Kellix to and through the open doorway.

They move as a wave: the door pops, Bucky through it first to neutralize any technicians or engineers and then Sam and Kellix after him. It may not be subtle, but it's effective and if they're lucky they'll get where they're going and do whatever it is Kellix is trying to do before anyone manages to raise the alarm.

--Is it strange that the local AI security hasn't flagged this activity yet? Or maybe it has. Maybe a silent alarm has already been tripped?

Either way, they're committed. Following Kellix's direction, they finally reach what is clearly some kind of head administrative office. Kellix lets himself in without any fanfare. It's (luckily) empty. The office is dark for a moment, then a series of lights click on. He moves around the sleek steel desk to the back wall which appears to be a series of five by seven rectangles. He draws one out from the wall. It's evidently a massive file cabinet-esque storage rack. He pulls it a few feet out and begins to visual examination of the interior.

Inside the rack are thousands of rectangular slides. Each is some kind of transparent glass-like material housing a slice of organic matter.

"Excellent," Kellix says after a brief examination, then slides the rack back in. "Please help me destroy this."

He steps far enough in to get a look at the drawer and the contents, though that still leaves the same questions he's had this entire trip -

"Why? What is it?"

Bucky's about to ask the same question, but Steve beats him to the punch. He still steps forward, though, to get a better look at the material the plates seem to be made of. Destroying them by hand won't be easy or quiet, so he's not sure what Kellix means by helping him destroy them.

He places his hand onto the wall. Given the android's skeletal appearance, his stripped facial plates flickering in a way that must articulate some expression if Kellix were fully fleshed, it's impossible to lend the gesture any concrete emotion. Is it fondness? Sympathy? Regret? Fear? Loathing?

"This is the last hard copy of my owner. They would prefer to not be on file, and have requested that I destroy this datacache."

Confusion flickers across his expression.

"Why?" A quick shake of his head, starting again. "Why not do it themselves if they don't want it?"

Kellix regards Steve for a beat too long. A blank pause? It's difficult to parse without further context.

"This is the very last hard copy."

They're dead, Jim.

"Who was he?" Bucky interjects as he steps forward to run his thumb over the plates. There's a whole lot of these. "How are we supposed to destroy these?"

His mouth opens in a silent 'oh', then closes again with unspoken apology coloring his features. He watches as Bucky's hand moves over the plates. That question of Kellix's owner was one the android never seemed to be able to answer before.

"Can we see who they were - with this?"

He's still not sure he considers this murder the same way he would flesh and blood, but he'd like to know for sure who it is they're about to erase from existence.

Edited 2016-12-31 19:49 (UTC)

Kellix pats the wall. "Don't you have tools? Or skills? Abilities that can help you ruin things?" Bros, he's been in your apartment for a long time. He's heard and/or seen some shit. "We could just take some of the slides, but I don't know if that would destroy them or just...confuse the copy."

And there - even if the physicality of the android is difficult to parse, here Kellix at least sounds uneasy with the idea. It's against his core programming to bring suffering to his owner. And from experience he knows there is nothing as agonizing as losing pieces of your mind.

"I don't know exactly how to operate this technology. I believe it's largely just storage. Maybe it's possible to load a fragment for viewing, but not the entirely of the copy data. Would you like to try?"

Bucky is well aware of how to break things, especially lots of things, but he was hoping to not use those skills if he didn’t have to. The plates are a heavy glass and not only are there civilians around but members of the Nest too, flickering lights in the back of his mind. Swallowing, he sends Steve a silent mental nudge: he can take care of this, they don't have time to go digging through technology they don't understand.

"No," he replies without waiting for Steve's input.

His jaw clenches.

"Watch the door."

Bucky gets a nudge right back.

( You watch the door. )

You're not sending him away while the adults talk. He's the one that got them into this by following Kellix.

"We can smash them." He holds out his fists, skin hardening to metal in an instant. "But if it's alright with you, I wanna try viewing first."

"If you like." Kellix draws the sleeve back out of the wall. He walks it back to its full length; the storage container is so long that he's nearly on top of the desk at the center of the room before the catch at the back of the container stops it from sliding entirely free from the wall.

"Pick one."

Bucky glances over at Steve to tell him to leave when the latter’s skin glimmers in the dim light of the data center. Is that… metal? When the hell has Steve been able to do that? Did something happen to him? Or was it… the Nest? His ability? Bucky still has no idea about his own, but is not about to trust the glass of the data files to not tear right through Steve, metal hands or not.

“We don’t have time,” Bucky reminds Steve with another mental shove, and one more once the container opens to its fullest.

It's not like Bucky's wrong, they really don't. He doesn't push back at the mental shove, but it probably feels like pushing against a brick wall right about now. He reaches in, touching the closest glass slide at random and looking to Kellix for some kind of confirmation.

Kellix shrugs in response. Seems legit, Steve.

"I'm not built to integrate with this hardware, but there may be equipment here that could."

Luckily, there aren't many options to choose from. The office is minimalist - the sleek desk, the cushy chair, a series of compartments built into the walls. Maybe there's a player for the slide in one of them, something similar to the projector nodes which dot the memorial gardens surrounding the Bank.

Taking a look around the office, Bucky doesn't see anything that he recognizes, considering he ran through the gardens at top speed to accompany Steve and Kellix. Instead of replying out loud, he turns to Steve to see what he wants to do, though he's tempted to get to smashing the cabinet and getting back to finding the bomb that threatens to decimate the tower.

With that he pulls the slide out, carefully placing it on the desk as he stars searching through the rest of the cabinets, quickly trying to find something where it might... fit.

"Sorry about this. " To Kellix, to the glass slide as he picks it up again, gently slipping it into the first node he finds.

"I understand." Kellix's hand is resting gently on the top of the long row of slides, his fingertips hovering over the narrow gap left by the slide Steve has taken from the storage file.

Once located, the slide slips effortlessly into the node and begins to play. A voice is projected into the room. It seems to resume in the middle of reciting a complex series of numbers. It pauses, thoughtful, and then resumes: "--four to the thirty fifth power divided by--".

It goes on for some time, cutting abruptly before the data file resets and begins to play again from the beginning.

"It's just a piece of them," Kellix says from where he stands alongside the file. "I think you'd have to see them all to make sense of it."

TWO MINUTES CLOSER TO MIDNIGHT

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wow thanks gmail stacking

womp womp, also we are cool with doing a summary for this if possible!

yup yup

sets this in ur laps

oic

oh man sam is in so many places

god im the worst im sorry

no no, apologize to sam

poor sam

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