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 )

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"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."

Swallowing, Bucky remains by the cabinet as Steve plays the slide. In the back of his mind, he wonders if this is how HYDRA programmed him, shoving one piece of data after the other into his head like he was some kind of computer, some blank slate that could be overwritten again and again. Were there pieces of him, like this datacenter, in Siberia? Pieces of the real him, not the weapon HYDRA made him? The sound of the list of numbers slides into the background until they start again and Kellix speaks again.

Just a piece. They'd have to see them all.

They don't have time. They don't have time and Bucky's not so sure about demolishing the cabinet now, though he does his best to hide that from Steve behind mental walls of corrugated steel and barbed wire.

It's Sam Anders that Steve sees as the voice plays. A sliver of an all-encompassing whole circling a single moment. It finishes, repeats. Hollow. No searing holy fire burning in that place.

A shake of his head, expression twisting up. He pulls the slide back out, moving to return it to the place Kellix holds open, a slip of his own uncertainty passing between the link to Bucky. He'd been right. They'd never be able to look at all of them.

"This is all of them?" One last look at the cabinet, and a metal fist punches into the layers of glass.

Bucky raises his fist and begins to smash away at the glass as well. It splinters on the first impact, sending shards flying. His stump rests against the side of the container to steady him as he winds up for a second. Blood stains the glass inside and drains down through the sleeve, but he continues for a third and fourth hit. However, on the fifth, something entirely different happens. When his fist makes contact, electricity sparks from his right fist to the stump of his left. Burning through the delicate electronics of the data cabinet is easy enough, but the current bursts from the overloaded circuits and floods the glass with an electric field that sends a shower of glass raining on all of them.

Behind mental walls, only the weapon survives and it pushes more electricity through the plates to guarantee their destruction. Its skin bubbles and boils in places along its fingers and the remaining metal of its left shoulder superheats to melting the synthesized fabric pinned there. No one will stop it. The weapon does not fail its missions. Pain is temporary and unimportant, though uncomfortable.

The weapon screams in frustration at that pain as more glass pops around its hand. Glass frosted over with heat flies in dangerous fleets, some catching on his sleeve, some tinkering against the other data cabinets, others flying well overhead into the rest of the office proper.

~~welp.jpg~~

It's destructive and terrible, and then it's over and what remains is nothing but fragments of slide pieces and ruined flecks of organic material - a battered storage file and the quiet that comes after the end of something.

Androids don't feel extremes. Kellix knows this to be true. Maybe that's why he has no trouble stepping back from the destruction and nodding, perfunctory. "Thank you for your help. Would you like me to take you to the silo now?"

Dammit -

"Give us a sec -" Not that they an extra second, he's reminded for the millionth time tonight. He glances at Bucky again. ( Coin. Check your pocket. )

The image of Sam's token waits on the other side of the walls Bucky's surrounded himself with, and it takes a long moment for Steve to pull his focus to Kellix.

"You should know, we're not going back to the Bearings after this. You got somewhere safe to stay?"

The weapon sucks in air as it stares down at the remains of glass and burned-out electronics. Someone is looking at him and he looks away. The whispers at the edge of his mind speak of a coin and he knows where it is, which pocket, tucked close to his side. With a bloody hand and singed hand, he reaches into his pocket to produce the challenge coin. Wings.

He pays no attention to the other conversation going on as he runs his thumb over the insignia.

The android tips it's skull toward Steve, visual receptors clacking softly against the sides of their sockets. He inclines his head. "I will find somewhere safe. My secondary programming requires it." There's a flicker of internal systems as his attention strays toward the other man in the room, then back.

To Steve: "Do we need to wait much longer? I worry someone will come here if we stay."

God bless Sam Wilson.

At the question his gaze shifts back to his friend, the warning spurring him on. He can't predict how Bucky'll react if they run into more guards. "Let's go, Buck. We gotta get to the others." And the bomb, possibly both together at this point since they haven't heard any explosions.

He starts to head toward the door to check for anyone in the hall, glancing at Kellix again.

"You could come with us." Sam Anders would have offered. "Can't promise we can bring you back home, and there'll be more fighting like this. But you're always gonna be going somewhere new."

Maybe to places with people like Sam.

Bucky only half-realizes he's being spoken about. Weapons are rarely directly addressed outside of mission briefings. This feels more like mid-mission rather than a briefing or debriefing. He doesn't know where he is or who he is, outside of a weapon on a mission. Additionally, he doesn't add to the conversation, instead trying to discern the mission parameters from what he's hearing. Bomb and escape is the best he can tell, but did hebplace the bomb and forget where? How did he get here? Where are they going?

Kellix is following close, but seems to have no problem with arresting motion the moment Steve does. The offer seems to startle him though. Even reduced to his basic components, its impossible to mistake the way the android's spine straightens or the angle of his skull as anything else. He emits a firm whirring noise. There's a click, click processing sound and--

"No, but thank you. It's kind of you to offer, but I'm not allowed to travel outside my operational grid without the express permission of my owner. Besides, I have other things to do. This has afforded me a measure of latitude that others don't have. What kind of person would I be if I didn't use it?"

Statistical probability says a happier one, but he has never operated under the influence of happiness. He doesn't believe he requires it.

"We should move now."

He blinks at Kellix's empty face, a sentiment in his words that resonates with Steve all at once. Whatever comes of Concordia's future, the Nest's meddling or the Enemy's meddling should never be the sole guiding hand - it should be shaped by the people of this world. People like Kellix included. His mouth curves upward at one side, and he offers a half nod. He'll save the parting words for later.

Steve turns to Bucky once more, making sure that he's following -

( Buck - I know you're confused, but there's a bomb that needs diffusing. We need to locate the rest of the team. ) Only the words slip through, his discomfort and concern shielded as best he can manage. As much as he hates resorting to them, direct commands work best whenever Bucky's brain goes scrambled. ( We gotta move quick and quietly - ) --a beat, the directions back to where they were meant to split up transferring between them-- ( and with non-lethal measures, alright? )

Bucky keeps to himself as he follows, stopping and starting when Steve does. His head continues to buzz and echo with the programming and the new orders that filter through his ears. Diffuse bomb with non-lethal methods. He doesn't question why non-lethal the same way he wouldn't question an order regarding no witnesses. He receives orders and he acts upon them, he is a weapon to be pointed in a direction, not an actor on his own wishes.

Quick and quiet. Non-lethal. He can do that.

He nods and his brain surges with an affirmation that yes, he's following the orders. Though he doesn't purposely broadcast the sentiment, his shields are non-existent at the moment.

(no subject)

onemind - 2017-01-07 20:31 (UTC) - Expand

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