station72 | [MISSION LOG] BRAVE NEW WORLD

[MISSION LOG] BRAVE NEW WORLD

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: The Station + Concordia
WHEN: Day :000 - ???
SUMMARY: Leaving the Station; the arrival and first days on Concordia. Concordia pt.1.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary.

IT'S EARLY IN THE DAY and something feels strange. It’s not unlike when a new Host - not one of your brood, but close enough to feel the tug - comes awake on the Nesting Deck. But it’s just the initial tug. There’s no noise, no hum of confusion or volume. Today, it’s just there: a sensation of presence that a moment ago wasn’t. Soon after follows a prickling awareness of urgency. A small electric bolt through the mind. Cathaway doesn’t use words in the mind, but her meaning is nonetheless easily understood: come to her on the hangar; your presence is required.

On the hangar there is a sleek, low profile transport ship. Before it stand Cathaway and Prince and in their company is a stranger: a short woman with warm skin and dark hair, wearing unfamiliar colorful clothes and a quick, pleasant smile. You’ve never seen her before, but you know she’s a Host.

“This is them?” Her voice is light and sweet. Prince, occupied by a databank, glances up at her then nods once. There’s a tension in his shoulder and through his jaw - a distinct contrast to Cathaway and the stranger who lack both.

“Lovely.” Her tone is breezy and easy, delighted. “Hello, it is so nice to meet you all! My name is Carata. My partner and I have been away on duty for a few months, but it’s become clear that we need backup on our assignment. We are hoping you can help.” Carata motions to the mission equipment in neat kits at her feet. There is one for each young Host.

Prince folds his pad down into its smallest form. His expression is set and serious.

“You will be joining Carata and Nirad on the planet below to assist them with their mission. Your datapbank will provide you with information about the planet and the city where you will be stationed. This mission is covert and the planet itself has no contact with other planetary races, so you will need to do your utmost to blend in.”

Cathaway sharpens slowly beside them: a dull pencil being sharpened to a point as her attention curves back to this place, this instance. She unfolds her hands. “You’ll be provided with an earpiece that should allow you to interface with the local technology and a fake identity for your cover on world. Please mind both carefully and be sure to keep your databanks offline. It would be inconvenient if they were networked while on planet.” From the way she says it, it sounds like ‘inconvenient’ might be an understatement. “This mission shouldn’t be inherently life threatening. Your primary goal is to investigate the anti-android movement. Carata and Nirad will be able to tell you what your databanks do not.”

“You should listen to them,” Prince adds. “Rely on their experience and knowledge to help you succeed in your task. Be mindful, and treat them with the respect they have earned.”

At this Carata laughs. It’s a bright, joyful sound, her hands coming up to clasp in front of her chest, “Please, teacher, you are too serious. I am sure they will do very well. Come along then! Gather your things; we must leave as soon as possible. I do hate to leave Nirad alone for too long.”

Turning her back to the Hosts, Carata takes Cathaway’s hand for a moment Nothing is said, but there’s the distinct impression of something passing between them. They release their grip, then Carata turns to Prince. She places her hands on his shoulders and goes up to her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. He doesn’t return the gesture, but those with sharp eyes will note he does lean down slightly to make her job easier.

Gather your gear, get anything from your rooms you might not want to leave behind. In two hours, everyone attending the mission will be buckled or strapped into the transport as Carata readies the ship for takeoff. She explains, neatly and concisely, what they believe the enemy to be doing in Concordia. Then, with a turning of the deck, the ship is freed from the embrace of Station 72.

It will be a long time before you see this place again.

     I. THE WHEELS ON THE BUS
The flight to Concordia is surprisingly short. By the time Carata's finished her explanation, you've passed into a new universe. It comes with a strange wave of something akin to nausea. Outside the transport's starboard viewports lays Opia in all it's glory: a beautiful blue marble speckled with sixteen landmasses and swathed in thing clouds like spun sugar. From this distance, clusters of light burn from specific points on the continents like a map of grounded constellations. As one of the great megacities of Opia comes curling from around the edge of the planet, the transport ship begins to descend.

Atmospheric entry is smooth. The transport drops at the outskirts of Concordia on what is, hilariously, some kind of large parking garage. It has engaged the most sophisticated of its cloaking technology to do this and Carata urged everyone to disembark quickly so the ship can return to orbiting the planet before it's detected.

"It will be back," she says flippantly. "When we've finished our job."

The ship departs. It's quiet and still for a handful of minutes; Carata seems unconcerned and gives little in the way of direction or instruction. The city flashes around them - bright lights and neon masking the fading of natural light - and nearby, a roadway hums. Eventually the sound of a car pitches louder. A set of headlamps shear from the long line of cars and in moments a long, squarish transport van pulls up and parks at the top of the garage. The side door slides open to admit everyone. In the driver's seat is an android - shining metal and cheerful as it greets every host by name. Beside the android in the van's passenger seat sits a tall, dark skinned man who - much like Carata - is obviously a host.

Welcome to Concordia.

     II. HOME SWEET HOME
It's a long drive into the city. The buildings get taller, the lights get brighter, the streets get busier. There are throngs of people on the street, dogged by endless rows of neon bright advertisements. Traffic is either miserable or flowing depending on the neighborhood and trams run on tracks fifty feet or more above the roadways. Streams of people files from the pavement to the subways, countless numbers of escalators leading down.

When the bus finally stops, it's in front of a building as tall as any others. The signs here mark this section of the city as BETA BLOCK and when you get out and into the building lobby you find that the door opens for you automatically. A chime rings through the interfacing ear piece and when you enter the elevators, the only floor accessible to you is NUMBER EIGHTEEN. When you disembark, a kind voice welcomes you by home in your ear. There are a large number of rooms here in Bearing - stake your claim, everyone! Nirad and Carata already have a couple of rooms in the Southwest corner of the building, but the rest are open. Time to settle in!

     III. FEET ON THE GROUND
You're given the rest of the night to sleep (or...whatever), but by 9AM the next morning everyone is awoken by Carata's voice in their head. She's clearly not shy of using her symbiotic connection.

( Good morning! I know this is quite a lot to get used to. I believe this is your first true assignment? But I have always believed that the best way to learn something new is to jump right in. ) The words are accompanied by the sensation of someone clapping their hands together, a cheerful kind of practicality. ( You’ve been given a credit card. I encourage you to go out today and learn what you can about this place. Talk to people. Listen to the news. Be sure to remember your cover identity, and don’t hesitate to call if you find yourself in trouble. )

There is nothing pressing to the suggestion, just the sensation- light. Airy. Fun. She switches track after a moment, a thoughtful addition: ( There is also a rally in town today. It’s being run by The True Children of Opia, some minor little hate group-- ) She seems to wave off the unsavory aspects as she forges ahead, ( They aren’t affiliated with Humans + Humans 1st, but they do have very similar ideologies and it is quite probable that there is overlap in their membership. If you would rather, it is also quite likely that there will be protestors there as well, both members of Mind Life and those who are adamant about pursuing digital resurrection. Please do be careful, though, sometimes those rallies can be a little... ) An image of an oily substance catching flame, quickly and hotly.

( Whatever you chose, simply do your best to get your bearings. ) She seems to realize the unintended joke there, given the name of their current residence, and a bright happy flash of color accompanies it. What a delightful surprise. ( Prepare yourself for what is to come. Nirad and I will continue our investigation in the meantime. )

((OOC Notes: This is the catchall log for the first stages of the Concordia mission. You'll notice there's no set ending date, so use this log however you like - alternatively, feel free to start your own logs in the setting! Don't worry; we'll be keeping a close eye on things, so if something big starts to happen that necessitates a new long, we'll make sure to keep our bases covered and all of y'all updated. Just be aware that dating forward farther than :010 may get a little dicey.

If you have any mission specific questions, direct them to the OOC post here.))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

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[ Though her blood is still on his clothes, and grief is at the forefront of his mind, he believes he's ready for this. He feels a trace of reluctance, leaving the two others he's awoken with, but he does it all the same. There are worse things he's turned away from, however madly the connection hums at him, urging him to stay near to Bellamy and Parker. He follows Cathaway, instead - her vibrancy is nearly enough to drown out all these new sensations, if only by drowning himself in her. ]

She carried me into the world, it was only right that I carry her from it.

[ That, and: ] The one who came for me also said "whatever could be carried". I thought I should at least try.

[ If it had been impossible, he would have had to leave her. And then his grief would be a different creature entirely, brought on by absence, rather than presence. Even if she was dead, he could guarantee her the due respect she deserved: a son's respect, and his anger. ]

If she had been alive, could she still have been saved?

[Their steps are marked by a strange, muffled hollowness; though the corridor is long and seemingly empty, their foot falls don't echo as they might in any regular place. Cathaway tips her face to him, but doesn't shorten her stride and doesn't fully face him - it's the quirk of attention, marked by a small thoughtful hum.]

Do you mean could you have brought her with you, were she alive when you left your home? [There's a question there, lingering between them; had she been killed by the thing that had come to his world to find him? Sometimes such things happened. An unfortunate reality, but a potentially problematic line of inquiry. She opts to disregard it as unimportant (because, ultimately, it likely is; his mother is dead no matter who or what killed her).] We're unsure. The Station isn't as comfortable for sentient minds who lack a symbiote of their own; it's possible she might have been brought here alive successfully, but unlikely she could have stayed for long.

[ She had died just before the alarm had been raised, and the enemy had come howling down in search of him. In the chaos of the moment, he had been caught vulnerable - and he had come to the Station. Exchanged one connection for a many number of others, all far more needy and louder than what he had known.

Could Baghra have been saved, had he known her just a little better? Had he remembered how willing she was to commit to action? Had she been saved -- would she have come as well?No, not her. He remembers her tone, and the way her blind eyes saw. And he tells himself: stop living in that moment. Live in the thousand once more. ]

It's possible, [ he echoes, touching a hand to the wall, seeking out visual cues so that he might remember where things are in relation to another. ] But, she clearly preferred death. She was old. She was tired. [ And he needs to change the subject: ] Who are you, Cathaway? To us, I mean.

[The mental shift is like a ship changing course; she can feel it in the air, in the tenor of his mind's young, too-obvious murmuring. If there were things she could say to address the low, fleeting glances of his thought process she ignores them, doesn't give voice to them. She can't help the awareness, not with the very young connection of his mind and the symbiote, but it's rude to acknowledge it.

Luckily, the new topic is a simple one. She answers as if by rote.]

We are a teacher and guardian here. We help to maintain Station 72 and do our best to see that you and others like you are prepared for whatever place you find yourself called to.

[ He wants to laugh. Once more, he's the one who needs to learn. The student. Someone in need of guidance, and the demotion from leader to pupil vexes him. ]

Station 72. [ It's the first time he's heard this place given name. ] Seventy-two of how many? Are we connected to all of them?

[ And even in asking these questions, he feels like a lost child, looking to someone for answers. How far does this state of odinakovost span? What is its depth? Will he ever be able to control it? Because as it stands, he cannot even control his own tongue. Or his damnable need or immediate understanding of what is going on, what is expected of him. His laugh is wry -- ] I suppose you've heard all these questions many a time before. I apologize.

[That wins a small, but distinctly genuine smile tilted in his direction. It's small, a shred bittersweet given the moment - the circumstance of their meeting - his mother's corpse in holding and, of course, for the particulars of the questions he asks.

The small charms on her wrists jingle faintly as they make their way up the length of the living quarters, past a series of doorways and then beyond: into another chamber, another nearly featureless hallway. There's a sense of moving down.]

Yes, but we understand why. We asked them once ourselves a long time ago. [Sometimes it feels like a different person did, that the version of her who thought to ask has evaporated; that isn't true, but occasionally the mind plays tricks on itself.]

We don't actually know; we've never seen another Station or known anyone to come from one. It's possible this is the only one left.

[ Cathaway smiles. His caution deepens. Though her expression is sincere, it has been a long, long time since he lost faith in people and their authenticity.

To know that once - she, too, was in the same position as he was, provides him a modicum of reassurance. Clearly, there is something - innumerable - about her. She speaks, and she has the voice of a Many. He doesn't understand it, but he assumes it has something to do with the sense of otherness that flows through him now. The knowledge that there are others, connected to him like the thrumming strings of a balalaika. Each one a different pitch, but each one lending to the eerie symphony within his mind.

Whatever answers Cathaway had received, in her time spent as a newborn like him, they must have been enough. ]

I hope that isn't the case. If we are what is left... I worry for our collective futures.

[ They seem to be going down, now. He wants to know where she is taking him. This is far from the young man he feels so deeply entangled with, and the young woman like a thornbush on fire. ]

What do you teach, Cathaway? [ What have I to learn, is the question he's actually asking - his tone fitted with all the terseness of a prideful man. ]

[There, a vague murmur of agreement for that sentiment - if this is the only Station, there's is a very lonely fight indeed. But she can see no farther except by the connections built through this place. If there's more, something deeper or flung further, she cannot touch or name it without losing her usefulness to this Station and to these people.

So: mysteries still, even after all this time.]

We teach how to survive and how to use your abilities and your connection to the nest as best as you're able. The connection between mind and symbiote isn't a natural one and many find it difficult to adapt. We're here to ease that transition as much as is possible and to encourage the connection between broodmembers and broods so that we all might operate more efficiently. In time, when your symbiote's ability begin to manifest, we may help you learn how to control that as well.

[Down, down, down they go. If there is change to either the light or structure of the Station, it's so natural as to be easily missed. Eventually though they reach a chamber that's cool and quiet with a strangely triangular. In retrospect, it's very different from the vaguely hexagonal chambers and pathways they started their journey in.

In the smooth slate grey walls there are a number of closed compartments. As Cathaway approaches one, a handle unfolds from the face of the hatch. She lays her hand there, but doesn't yet move to open the compartment; instead, she lifts her eyes to him and regards him frankly.]

Would you prefer to be alone with her?

[ If their common enemy was as vast and all-encompassing as he had felt at the Spinning Wheel (a hunting cry, burning like ice as it crawled down from the skies and into the jagged peaks of the sikurzoi, bearing down upon him, upon all of them; and he had left, so that they might be spared) -- if it was the same enemy, then this Station being the sole survivor was indeed the worst possible outcome. ]

I have 'abilities', [ as if to confirm that he did still possess them, his fingers hook into the air before him. Darkness, liquid and heavy, pooling between his fingers. Dripping down to the floor below them. Vanishing as it struck against metal. A sense of relief within him - this ability is vital, as vital to him as drawing breath and feeling his heart beat. ] I don't understand the need to learn something additional, when they have served my needs.

[ There is a mote of defiance in his voice, alongside the caution.

If his question goes answered or not, within the next moment, his ears have gone temporarily deaf to Cathaway. Her hand rests on the compartment's pull, and his mouth has gone dry. Does he wish to be alone, with her corpse? Is this a moment wherein he would prefer the company of a stranger, to the depths of his own grief? The Darkling draws near to the compartment, to Cathaway. He stands at her side, and his fingers tremble momentarily, as if ready to seize the handle and throw the compartment open for himself. ]

She was my teacher.

[ (The brilliant sensation of long-fingered hands pressing against bruises along his face. A rift, deepening between he and a dark-haired woman the older he grew. Eyes, once protective, looking upon him accusingly. Disappointed. Guilted. And then, his own fingers pushing thick, black tendrils into those eyes -- blinding them once and for all. Look upon me at the last, his voice, furious and hurt and driven by a madness no longer contained.) He cannot contain these thoughts, these memories -- ] Much like you have offered to be.

[There's no point in defying the symbiote ability. She could say as much of course, but would there be any purpose in that either? No, of course not. It's not a question of whether the ability is necessary or wanted. These things will manifest as they're required, and he will either manage or he won't. So she doesn't bother to correct him; part of her job is to let the man learn by his own experience should that be more helpful than simply telling him what he ought to know and do.

She finds people often learn best when allowed to think they've made decisions for themselves.

Which is why, ultimately, she continues to simply rest her hand there at the compartment's handle. She makes no indication to open it; after all, he hasn't answered her question yet and she wouldn't want to be inconsiderate. Instead, Cathaway regards him plainly. After a moment, she asks--]

How did she die?

[Inconsiderate. Necessary.]

[ How, indeed. ]

She - [ Fell? No. ] She jumped.

[ And in doing so, she created a window of opportunity that was exploited by the rebellion he sought to stifle.

Cathaway hasn't moved, and he does recognize it's because he has failed to answer her directly. Part of him still wants to seize the handle in her place, and draw it open to see the woman who was mother and mentor, of his own volition and his own strength of will. But his grief -- it wells in his chest, and causes him weakness, and he must answer her: ] I would be relieved if you stayed, Cathaway. She is dead, but I feel she would have welcomed your presence more than my own, at the end.

[ She is a stranger to him. She is stranger still, in manner and depth of being. But, in this moment, he feels he would hold himself together best, and not fracture into pieces, if there were eyes upon him. ]

[She nods and doesn't hesitate any longer. Drawn out by a tug on the handle, the compartment slides free of the wall. It's a long triangular tube, vaguely like a drawer, and made of some glass-like translucent material. It takes up only a fraction of the otherwise strangely featureless blank wall of the chamber. There are no other compartments here; no other handles. But there is room enough to suggest there must be more out of sight. The chamber is very large.

There's a fringe of something like frost on the far side of the glass, but it's faint enough that the body inside the container is easily visible: the woman carefully and comfortably fitted into the narrow width of it, given as much respect as a dead body dictates. She is, for all intents and purposes, exactly as she was on upon arrival. After a moment's exposure to the open air, the sides of the triangular compartment dissolve as if melting until all that remains is the slab beneath the corpse.]

We thought to keep her here until you woke and told us if you preferred some alternate means of... tending to her.

Ah.

[ And there she is. Arranged as peacefully in death as she was not in life. The side of her head, matted down by her blood, is precariously turned away from him. It doesn't matter, how she has been arranged. She is dead, and her blood has soaked the front of his black-upon-black kefta, unseen but present. Like this, she looks -- fragile. In a way that her dancer-strong body had never been, for as long as he had known her. Since birth, for centuries. And she, like many Grisha before her - the ones who's power kept them alive for innumerable years- had chosen her own end.

Even though Cathaway still stands besides him, he lays his fingertips upon the glass that separates him from her. ]

There is a vigil to keep, and then I will cremate her. [ A bitterly ironic end, he thinks, for a Grisha - viewed as witches by the fearful and the hateful. ] But, after the mission is over.

[She studies the shape of his hand there against the transparent frame. The lines of his fingers don't quite obscure the corpse's features from her view.]

Of course. We will be happy to assist you with such an affair if you need it.

[Her hand lingers just there at the slab's handle. It's a good means by which to anchor herself here in this dark place; otherwise she has some inclination to drift, to expand herself outward. This chamber of the station is very still, very quiet, and she finds it faintly... unsettling.]

Would you prefer to spend some time with her or should we put her back in her place?

[ Though she offers her aid, the pantomime of a smile that spreads across his face - polite but deeply void of something, suggests that he won't accept. That he's grateful for her offer. He pulls his hand free from the glass casket that she is now kept in - silent permission for Cathaway to return her to the network of anonymous tombs within the mausoleum. ]

How many others are interred here, Cathaway? Did they fall to this "enemy"?

[ He positions himself, turned towards the door they entered through; ready to leave, ready to turn his thoughts to other topics.

The mission. Their enemy. Anything other than the woman in the wall. ]

[She acquiesces as he steps back from the casket. With a seemingly light touch of her hand, the compartment slides smoothly back into the wall. Once in place, the seam lines around it seem to evaporate, leaving just the handle behind until she removes her hand. That too reforms into the wall once she's drawn back from it though, leaving them once more in a quiet unmarked chamber - far from any murmur of shared mental space save for the two of them.

Cathaway dusts her hands as if to dismiss the topic entirely, or to shake whatever sensation of weight might be there clinging to her own mind. Still, she is happy enough to move with him as he turns for the doorway leading from this place.]

We have personally calculated sixty individuals in either death or stasis, including your mother and the handful of hosts in stasis on the Nesting Deck itself. But it's possible there are more being kept elsewhere on the Station in a place we don't know to look. [An easy shrug, apparently unconcerned that there might be dead bodies in other walls.] Most of those bodies are in stasis as their minds attempt to reconcile the symbiote within them. It's an unfortunate but common side effect; we are suitable hosts for them, but not perfect ones are sometimes there are complications. As for the dead... some of them fell to the enemy, certainly, but we don't make a habit of harboring corpses long unless their burial rights require it. Some of them fell ill. Some of them died while in stasis. Perhaps some of them simply grew old.

[ He has been isolated all his life, and within a natural lifespan, he has gone from sharing his mind with a single person - the means to his desired ends, the queenpiece to his king - to sharing with an untold number of others. There are approximately sixty others upon this Station that, were they not still or deceased, he could potentially be shared among. The hosts who have been... unable to reconcile are the most worrisome, as he did not leave his world to wind up in a catatonic state.

That won't do. That isn't the end he will allow himself.

Like Cathaway, he is glad to step away from the stillness of the Station's -- tombs, for lack of better. A question on the tip of his tongue, and he must ask it. ]

What happens to those who are able to reconcile?

[She moves from the chamber, that dark quiet place, with an easy step and a faint jingling of the charms at her wrists and fingers - happy enough to lead him away again through the faintly shifting catacombs of this Station.]

They go elsewhere on assignment - either in accordance with the messages this Station receives, or at the behest of an agent already on the ground in a a particular multiverse. Sometimes we receive information from deeper in the Nest indicating where the Enemy has tampered with the multiverse and what must be corrected; other times there'so only a sensation of direction and we must send reconnaissance out to determine what's been done and where it's occurred. Most healthy host and symbiote combinations are currently away on such missions.

[She flicks her eye-line toward him.]

There are perhaps forty agents currently away from the Nest.

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[MISSION LOG] BRAVE NEW WORLD

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