[HATCH LOG] IS ANYONE THERE?

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: Day :150
SUMMARY: Today is the day you wake up.
WARNINGS: None; will edit if necessary.

A MOMENT AGO it seemed like you willingly took the hand of someone beckoning to safety.


NOW YOU WAKE UP in one of many chambers of Station 72’s nesting deck. If you had wounds, they’re (mostly) gone; if you had doubts they are - for the split second between dreaming and waking - gently reassured. This is correct. This is right. You’re safe here. The only question is what here is exactly.

The compartment you find yourself in is small, though gently padded for comfort with enough elbow and head -room to not be wholly claustrophobic. Still, it’s difficult to re-orient yourself; the best way to get to the chamber’s built in ladder and down to the smooth, polished white floor of the nesting is to simply roll over onto your belly and go out feet first.

First thing’s first though: get rid of that tube running from the rear wall of the chamber to the base of your skull. The moment you’ve done that, there’s the sensation like a rubber band popping - a string in your hand being jerked. The headache that punches in falls like the heavy end of a hammer - not serious, but surprisingly abrupt - as a of combination confusion, resolve, anxiety, certainty, delight, and fear and expectation finds you. In fades after a moment, churning to a low dull pressure and a faint hum. It’s feels like standing outside the door of a small party, sounds muffled and incomprehensible. Some pieces rise and swell above the others then fall again. Strain your ears and realize you’re hearing nothing at all.

On the plus side, you’re not hooked into the compartment anymore. Slide out and onto the ladder, though not too fast or you’ll miss the small cubicle built into the wall near the mouth of the chamber. In the cubicle are all the things you brought with you, every small piece you own of the home you left behind. There’s a neatly folded pair of something like white pajamas there as well. They’re definitely in your size, though you have the option not to wear them since you’re still in the clothes you left home in. Granted, for some of you that might not exactly be a blessing. Your clothes haven’t exactly been laundered or repaired, so best hope you didn’t bleed or sweat on them too much during your escape.

Sliding free from the chamber pod and stepping out onto the ladder, you’ll find yourself in an open space. The room is broad and pale and clean, its sloping walls featuring dozens and dozens of holes like the one you just wiggled out of. There are more ladders and a few other people climbing down, or stareing, or already down on the nesting deck’s floor but the sixteen - seventeen, including yourself - people present would hardly fill even a sixth of the room’s available accommodations.

The noise is louder when you near any of the others. It’s as if you've entered the party yourself. Identifiable now is the low wash of feelings, a hum of emotions that only serves to make the slight headache worsen. They feel genuine. They feel like they could belong to you. Still, that pressure in your head doesn't worry you --Shouldn't it worry you? Does worrying - about the headache, about the world and people you left behind, or the strange place you’re in now, the odd collection of people you’re with and the fact that you feel strangely drawn to five or six of them - make the headache better? Or worse?

If you manage to push the sound aside and listen with your true ears, you'd notice you can't hear anything besides this small group of fellow hosts: their footsteps, their oddly sharp breathing. There’s no sound of traffic, no wind in the trees, no birds, no hum of a ship. Only circulating air and silence.

You may not know what a brood is, but finding yours is easy. There are minds among these strangers that call to yours, their voices louder than the rest, their feelings sharper. The nearer to you they are, the more comfortable you feel. Is that strange? You don't know them, but you do. There are few answers to be found on the nesting deck.

Eventually you will have no choice but to head out of the room. There’s only one way out that you can see: up through a spiraling hallway that arches overhead. When it opens again the space seems slightly less alien. There are doorways of a kind lining the walls and each one opens to a small, nearly normal room. There are no doors, so it's easy to see all the rooms are vacant. In seventeen of them there are items neatly stacked on the bed. Most are hygiene supplies. Some of them - a toothbrush, comb, razor - may be familiar to you. Others less so. There's a flat horizontal ledge beside the bed with a small light and a single drawer. Another table, apparently built into the wall, sits across the room with a chair. A mirror is on the desk; it’s slightly mundane and not quite to the Station’s style.

This room is yours for the moment. It doesn't mean someone won't want to trade - or take. Beyond this life support deck stretches the rest of Station 72. It is quiet and and twisting and perfectly inert.

At its most familiar, the Station is merely a still, empty ship with broad chambers and gently mottled light. At its worst, it’s an Escher painting of strange angles and bizarre platforms that seems grown as much as built. There are many ways to many places and while it seems all doors and passages open to you, there’s an unshakeable feeling that the space doesn’t quite match up - that there’s even more to the Station which you can’t yet see. Don’t get lost!




For now, you reach the floor of the nesting deck. When you do, something blooms in your mind. A voice, disturbingly lacking any identifying traits but warm and comfortable like sweetened milk, says:

( ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬...There you are...▬▬▬..Welcome to Station 72 ▬▬. )

If you follow the thread of that voice, you’ll eventually find your way either to Cathaway on the bridge or The Prince in the training wing.

---

((OOC Notes: Welcome to Station 72! Feel free to check out the SETTINGS page for more information about the Station. If you have any questions about the setting itself, feel free to ask them there; otherwise, please direct all questions to either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages.

Prince’s top level should be live in the evening! Keep an eye out for it if you want him to give your character the introduction spiel instead of Cathaway.

Happy hatchday, everyone! :) ))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[polyphonos]

"Of course." She seems unsurprised by it, to take that for granted. That Lexa bothers to even voice the fact is the oddest part about it, but already she can tell something of this girl's frankness - some similarity there with The Prince himself, maybe. It was easier to do things, to convince yourself of certain truths, when you spoke them aloud.

Cathaway accepts her hands, curling her fingers loosely around Lexa's. The contact is mild, gentle. She has no need to hold tightly, but the gentle hum of skin on skin as she focuses her mind is nearly a perceptible thing. Cathaway breathes out - easy, rhythmic, no more deep or serious than any breath before it - and tugs on the line which connects them. It opens easily: pulling one the pieces that make up a larger, thicker rope - the cord comes unraveled and open and they go together like a stone slipping under water's surface.

Here: the taste of something sweet, something bitter. Small seeds snapping between teeth. It's summer and the grass is long, yellowing in the sun. There 's a boy on a shaggy animal in the field their father tilled. He raises his hand and waves to them. They raise their hand and call back in return. Elsewhere, the dark unfolds around them. It's pricked by countless stars and one, rugged fleet of ships: the Pride, the Valiant, the Bold. They flick a series of switches in their own cockpit and across their private comm, Marvel says "I've got some weird readings on my sensor board, Skipper."

"Ten four, I see it too. Changing heading to check it out," they say and bring the fighter slewing around with the port jets.

The wind cuts across their face. This high on the city's evacuation tower it stings with a bitter cold. Their lips are chapped. They lick them and tighten the tow line around their waist before moving to the edge of the flat platform. Below them, the rest of the city is dizzyingly small, buildings and roads and sports fields turned into a patchwork quilt. They've been doing this job - maintaining the magnetic lines that slingshot transport from the ground and past the planet's atmosphere - for five years without being scared of heights, but that was before Kellog's safety harness failed and he turned into a smear at the bottom of a tiny impact crater. Now they can't get the image out of their head. It's been five days since this site's last serious accident, says a poster on the locker room wall. Before that it had been in the triple digits, but now they know all that is is a false sense of security.

Don't fuck it up, they think and tighten their harness one last time before they ease over the edge of the platform.

The field erupts: dirt and long grass shredding into the air as a massive animal breaches the earth's surface. The shaggy animal the boy is on shies away with a human sounding scream and bolts as the giant serpent shape smacks its heaving belly out onto the earth, it's ugly broad head and razor teeth swinging around. It ignores the boy, ignores the animal though both are closer. Instead, it's huge powerful body comes twisting in undulating loops, razoring through the grass toward them. Small stones scatter. Small debris whips through space. It travels at impossible speeds, a cloud of of high velocity death.

"Break to nine!" Marvel shouts and then the debris cloud, moving faster than their fighters sensors can accurately track, shreds through the fuselage of his ship. It explodes, a dazzling star on their port as they lurch their own ship up with a jerk. A fraction of a second. They clear the field's trajectory by a fraction, radioing back to the fleet to warn them about the incoming collision before they'd had time to process that they're alive and their partner isn't. Then the debris cloud changes direction and speed, reversing through space and gnawing after them.

A figure leans out over the platform after them. They think, for a second, they're going insane because the figure has no face and then the stranger puts their hand on the safety line clip. They feel the line shudder, but that's not possible. There's thousands of pounds of tension on the line and it's made of some kind of super strong material - they can't remember it now, but it's really fucking strong - and it shouldn't be possibly for a person to do anything to it. The faceless stranger lifts the line with them on it and unhook the safety clamp. Then they drop them.

Somewhere else there is a pack of animals on their heels. You push your brother to the ground and scream an apology when you do it. He falls, cursing them, and the animals overtake him: bound across his prone form and leap to catch them. Somewhere a city is on fire. Somewhere the sky is blotted out by ships. Somewhere there is a man with a pen and a metal business card and he stabs them with the second one, not the first. In some there is collateral damage. In some the creatures and metal and men tear through the world and family and strangers to get to them. In some it's just them: a small dark room, something noxious and poisonous coming through the crack under the door.

They fall for a long time. The city rushes up - patchwork to buildings to streets populated by black dots that rapidly gain color and form. They will die and no one will know how it happened, just that it did.

Then Cathaway takes her hands away from Lexa's. She winds the split cord back into a single, narrow strand.

[adamance]

It is not the first time that Lexa has experienced flickers of memory that are not her own, yet she feels as if she's in the driver's seat for them. In her dreams, the past commanders have reached out to her to show her their experiences, ensuring that she understands the world as thoroughly as she does in her waking state. Sometimes, these dreams come with fury and anger; other times, they come with a sense of acceptance and approval. Of late, they've been the former and very rarely the latter. Lexa's selfishness would cost them all. Her willingness to believe in Clarke would cost them all.

No, it seems that something else would cost them: an outside force.

There is no way of knowing that her people are safe outside of her own knowledge. She knows (or believes) that there hadn't been a massacre left in her wake. She knows (or believes) that she would have been alerted, that all of her training would have made it impossible for that to escape beyond her attention. But what she doesn't know is if Clarke may have been dragged down a hallway while leaving her room, cast aside.

Lexa has no way of knowing if Clarke lives, if Octavia is inside of Polis or out, if her soldiers lining up to set up the blockade were seen as a potential barrier between them and Lexa. Would the word have reached, even with them just collecting outside of the walls at Polis, or would it have been too swift, with another string of bodies lying on a field waiting to be discovered?

(Just like her people had been found so recently, but this time torn apart and not left with an obvious array of bullet wounds.)

She has no way of knowing, and had she stayed, she would have died. The end results would be the same.

It takes her a long, silent moment to process this. She stares off to another part of the wing, eyes on a specific point as she brings herself to balance. There are so many possibilities, and the only thing that remains certain is that she has her life, and she still has the fire that she carries inside of her.

All other knowledge is an unknown.

"Why are we not being prepared to fight and stop them?" It had been a question posed to Prince. The point remains: if they can save people from their impending death, why can't they use the intel gathered to strike sooner? To prevent and take more of their forces? To gain more information? Even sacrificing potential hosts could get them the information they need.

(That Lexa leaps to that conclusion is more of an example of her upbringing, but it's one she doesn't flinch from, not in the least.)

[polyphonos]

A click of her tongue. It's sharp, a wordless kind of reprimand more like a mother than a clan's leader. That she is neither is unimportant; Cathaway folds her idle hands gently across her middle and says, "Patience, Lexa Kom Tri Kru. What part of this makes you think that isn't the case?"

She knows nothing of their purpose, nothing of their equipment and standing; the question makes her sound like a silly girl wanting to fight a beast large enough to crush a world with thrown stones and sharpened sticks. "Wars can't be won without the people to wage them. Focus. How many hosts do you recall hatching with? What of the Nesting Deck and its empty chambers? Who would you have fight these creatures - would you do it with just your two hands?"

A look is leveled in Lexa's direction, heavy with expectation. Clearly these aren't rhetorical questions.

[adamance]

"I know the importance of numbers," she says, chastising her in her tone. With Lexa comes a thick air of condescension, one that is heavily developed by her time as a commander and in her training prior to her Ascension. She has ordered hundreds of people to fight and die for her—and recently, because of Skaikru, they have done more dying than living. She's had to regroup.

"And the importance of waiting, not blindly asking for blood." Now. It's a new idea, one that she's still settling into. The fact that these things attacked her, and possibly killed any of her people along the way, sets her on edge. But she sees the greater threat posed by them.

"But I was given the impression that we had no means of acting. That we would not act." Lexa and Prince hadn't been very good at communicating, essentially.

[polyphonos]

"Then the impression you have taken was incorrect." Her gaze is no less direct, no less significant but her tone is a patient counterweight to Lexa's attempts at chastising. It's a gentle correction - Cathaway doesn't doubt that somewhere between the forced quiet of the Prince's mind and this young host's raw determination that something has been lost in translation -, but it wouldn't do to let the girl labor under false assumptions for the sake of being coy.

"We act by interference. Our time away from the Station is spent undermining the will of those who would eradicate us. We strike where and when it's possible for us to do so. This isn't war, Lexa Kom Tri Kru, but we do what we must to ensure our survival. That necessitates caution and patience; eventually our numbers and intelligence may be enough to act in earnest, but for now we must be content to move in the shadows. We must play by counter moves until that time.

"Believe us when we say we have no desire to let this force chase us forever."

[adamance]

"You're mistaken," she says, all too quickly. It's not with a hint of arrogance or with an attempt to chastise her. Lexa's experiences run counter to everything that Cathaway is telling her. This isn't war is only a delusion. "Everything you've just described is war. It's a losing one. One of attrition. But it is war just the same." Calling it what it is won't make a difference, but they shouldn't lie to themselves.

All of it reminds her too much of the Mountain Men and their success at keeping her people in lie. They spread myths. They insisted that they would wipe them out if they took up more proficient arms. The parallels are eerie, uncanny, and she knows it makes her a little more emotionally invested than she should be. She'll have to meditate to deal with that feeling.

"I hope that you will call upon those of us with experience. I know better than most the importance of survival. I'm not as rash as you would have yourself believe." That is a defense, but it's important to her: she wants to assert her experience here. She may be young, but she has a great deal of it.

And with the fire of the commanders past burning inside of her, she has even more available. She knows they will guide her back to her people.

[polyphonos]

It's a common thought among young hosts. Surely no one has thought to ask such a thing, to suggest such a plan. Surely they are the first to have experience leading, to know how to fight, to know how to correct a perceived wrong or misstep. Thank the stars and universes that they have come, and now finally this conflict can be finished if only Cathaway and The Prince would listen to their sound advice.

She gives Lexa a fixed look, something stilling in her expression even as she tips her head, a clear indication of her piqued attention. Cathaway stands very square and very easily, her hands folded before her as if by habit.

"Very well. Give us your thoughts."

Though she knows nothing of their position, their armaments, their numbers or those of their enemy. Though she knows nothing of this place or the endless multitude of systems outside it.

[adamance]

"You've already heard the beginning of what I have to say. I'll come to you when I know more." She doesn't know much of the people who woke up with her, and though she's already forged a few alliances, Lexa also doesn't trust these connections. They are tenuous and uncertain, and if anyone chooses to betray her, then she will have to ... take care of the matter.

"I do have more questions. About what it means to be in a brood. About these abilities we've supposedly been granted. He wasn't willing to discuss my frustration long enough to clarify these matters." As if the blame lies squarely on him.

(A part of Lexa knows that her own emotions got in the way of seeking answers. She hates her current instability.)

[polyphonos]

She hums. It's a small, abbreviated sound but between it and the flickering connection between them, there's a sentiment of being amused. "Of course. In time we would welcome your input." Funny, that the girl asks for patience and gives no such courtesy in return. The Prince would find it infuriating; no wonder they'd fit together like oil and water.

For a moment she considers asking Lexa for specifics - for direct questions that can be answered simply. But she suspects it would annoy her, so instead Cathaway simply speaks to both subjects with as plain a hand as she can manage: "Your brood is dictated by your symbiote; they are the hosts and symbiotes which are closest to you. If you think of the Nest as a--" How best to put it? "A tree, they are the branches which share the same limb. The reach the rest of the Nest, you must inevitably pass them. You're connection to them is naturally strongest as a result.

"As for your abilities - by bonding with you, the symbiote refines some of what your body is naturally capable of and encourages certain functions over others. In effect, it maximizes your body's potential beyond what your mind could manage on it's own. Physicality, mental processing, cell production and repair is all heightened by it. The symbiote also has its own natural ability and through the connection, the host is able to channel and use what the symbiote cannot effect on its own. Host and symbiote work together to strengthen each other, just as broodmembers work to protect one another, and broods work in conjunction with each other to form the Nest. There are no disparate pieces."

[adamance]

The upsides of having this thing inside of her are apparent. As a normal human, she's never seen any of those advancements, but she can certainly see where she would benefit from them. Being able to endure a battle for much longer, for instance, would do wonders for her. Lexa reflects back on her recent fight with Roan. Though he had been stronger physically, she had been able to make it out of the fight alive—and as the victor. With a boost in her strength and healing, she would have had no problem taking him on.

It's a curious factor. It's also something that she'll have to test.

But first, more questions: "Will the symbiote act to ensure that you don't harm your brood? There are sometimes weaker limbs that need to be discarded." Her statement is harsh and callous, but it doesn't come from a place of judgment, as if she's met someone who should be thrown away just yet. Still, her people have been known to do that: to cut away the weak, to excise them. How she'll have to adjust her thinking is a factor that she needs to know.

"And how do I come to find out the symbiote's ability?" She is hesitant, and that rings true through their connection. Prince had made it clear that there would be consequences, and they are ones that she isn't comfortable with. Still, knowledge. She's here for that knowledge, all so that she can act accordingly.

[polyphonos]

Ah, so it's to be one after the other then. There's an economy to this type of questioning that she can appreciate even if it's mildly exhausting. Cathaway rattles off the appropriate answers almost by rote; there's a mild sense of her attention thinning - something elsewhere catching her attention even as she speaks honestly enough:

"It discourages harming other hosts, other symbiotes. Many abilities that a host or symbiote might have may be more unpredictable or less effective when used against another like yourself. But there is no absolute fail safe. Rather, it becomes-- difficult due largely in part to the fact that your brood and other members of the Nest are not so much individual to you as a part of you. Severing such a limb would be as cutting yourself to pieces. Not impossible, but decidedly--" A pause. Pulsing red hot thoughtfulness, taste of copper and a swimming, aching hollowness. "Unpleasant."

She shrugs then, presently ambivalent to the matter. While sometimes a necessary consideration, she preferred to let these things happen on their own. Most hosts who would present a danger to the Nest had a way of getting themselves killed before it was required of her to take them to task. That, often, was the better lesson for the whole.

"As for your symbiote's ability, it will make itself known to you naturally in time. As your connection deepens and your symbiote grows with your mind, you will find it by instinct. It will be like a skill you've always had, something natural to you. Many find their ability when it becomes necessary for their survival or to complete a particular task, though some find meditation on the link to be sufficient to trigger the realization."

[adamance]

Idly, she wonders what it's like to lose a member of the Nest. That aching hollowness is familiar to Lexa, in a way. Necessary evils have their place, and even with those they've sent out of their developed society, there are those she's allowed to die for a greater cause—those she's sent to die. Here, she doesn't think that it will be the same. Too much is granted in the connection. Loss can be felt on too many sides. Those ill-equipped with dealing with this will be even less inclined to risk it.

She'll have to see how the others take it, how they come to comprehend it.

The mention of meditation does the trick, and she wonders if the spirit of the commander might help her in this. Likely not, but there is still a hint of curiosity to it. Still, she intends to meditate, to drift away and let it speak to her if she can.

"That will be enough." Not inclined to thank people on a regular basis, there's a hint of hesitation, as if she's considering the right manners here.

"Thank you. Do tell him to be more patient with us in the future. I won't be the only one with these questions." She's met others who don't trust the arrangement. So, she won't be the last.

[polyphonos]

Cathaway tips her head in reply, the barest version of a nod. "Of course. We will forward the message, Lexa Kom Tri Kru. We only ask you afford The Prince the same patience. We know he can be abrasive to the young, but we assure you his intentions are nothing but for the good."

A truth in all respects. She wouldn't refuse the excuse to delicately prod her broodmate over his short temper, but whatever the ground for Lexa's own irritation with him - the Prince meant well enough.

"When you see him next, perhaps treat him as you would a leader of people much like yours. We suspect he would warm to you if that were so."

[adamance]

"He should feel free to do the same in return." The words come because Lexa is meant to enforce her power. She is meant to be strong, undaunted in the face of things like this. Among her people, declarations of power are only one part of it, but she can't relent. She can't depart from her identity that quickly (or ever: it's more likely to be ever). She is too accustomed to making statements and following through with them.

"But I will be sure to offer him the same courtesy." It isn't only patience that she's asked for her, and she knows that among some, it would be pressing her luck.

Frankly, her recent encounters with other leaders has left a bitter taste in her mouth. These arrangements should come with a balanced weight.

[polyphonos]

"Good." She nods, simple approval like the prickle of cool water slipping along the link between them. "Of course," said flippantly, an absent musing as the directness of her attention begins to slip... elsewhere. "It's a shame neither your people or his are here to appreciate your standing. But I'm sure we will all manage accordingly."

An exhale. She turns the line of her shoulders and steps out from her place before the girl, moving to take up that easy rhythmic pacing around the bridge's perimeter again.

"If there is nothing else, we recommend you time this opportunity to find your brood and know them."

[adamance]

"I intended to. Thank you for your answers." There's a hint of resignation to these words. Lexa's taken to being a leader for so long that she doesn't just see finding her brood as a necessity; she sees it as the duty of someone who is naturally inclined toward leadership. Though she refuses to see them as her people, she still understands the necessity behind it.

As it is, that fades, because Lexa takes her responsibilities too seriously to sit in a state of resignation for too long. She turns to leave the bridge, mind calming as she sets about the rest of the Station with a goal in mind.