[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

[circumspector]

[ Does she? What is she, anymore? The machines aren't talking, the safe place she could always hide her mind when the world was too bright. ] I don't...

[ She'd never been without it, never been without this thing. The calmly guilting voice that's soft as fingers into her hair. 'You don't want to lose control again, do you, Angel?' Hushing her before she could even get the words out that she couldn't breath. Because she had been a child, and all children scream. All children cry. Most of them didn't vent life support with their crying. ] I don't know.

[ It's ridiculous, she's been this way her whole life. C'mon Angel, you can do better than that, right? ] The variables have changed, when you -- [ is saved her, the right word? It's how she feels. No one else might think that, but it's true. Saved her, but hadn't undone. ] took me out. Took me away from it. But now nothing is answering, the machines aren't the same, they aren't talking the same.

[ Which is mad, when she says it out loud, issue is, there is no words. Something is cut off, there's no gut low undercurrent of vaults. But maybe they were in part of the galaxy where their weren't any vaults. She wasn't exactly missing it or the eridium. But the hum of technology more real than her own heart beat? That she aches for, pines for, and it comes screaming up. Like stomach bile the first time she had too much eridium, dry heaving in her mind. Like being so hungry, the body tries to throw up. Not a little, but whole, a mind built for processing. It hears with a thousand ears, it sees with a thousand eyes. No please, don't see the waste of a dead body, see, see this, see it's infinities, it's beauties, she could build with that, she could make unreal things with that. Her veins are wires across and planet, and with it she watches, not one by one, but all at once. Listens to the machines speak in strings of numbers and jolts of electricity, chattering as information was sent back and forth, where with a thought, she could change it all, and with it, she watches, a planets worth of violence and blood and life.

She looks down at the collar, taking a breath, gripping it tightly again. That's the problem. With this, she knew her limitations as much as her own strengths. But without it -- ] I don't know, now.

[ and that's the horror, she used to comfortably know as much as man kind had ever written down at a touch, at one pulse of light, now - now she's what? ]

[polyphonos]

[Patience. Patience. She thinks the word many times, a pulsing rhythmic repetition that beats a steady, gentle current against the frenetic wave of the young host's mind. Everything gives, everything opens, everything bows like a tree bough run through by the wind. Here, the benefit of the young girl's narrow connection: the newness of it is is too tender, too raw to explore; she and all her wild fear are too far from the Station to hurt anyone that way, to ruin how the great monolith operates, to strangle anyone. Cathaway thinks that if she could ever learn to slip deep enough to bring the Station unmoored, the clawing uncertainty will have been tamed. Tempered. Gentled- by the rest.

The Station is in no danger. But that doesn't change that she could still be a threat now with her keen young mind.

But all could. Cathaway suspects the collar will make no difference.]

You can do whatever you like with it. If you wish it away, we will cut it free for you. If you'd rather keep it until you are certain, until you trust yourself with the health of your brood and all around you, we will be satisfied with that as well.

[Privately, she believes it is best to be at one's best - but better still for the girl to reach that conclusion herself. There's a fortification of will that comes with making decisions for oneself that perhaps will help quiet her.]

[circumspector]

[ It's more choice than she's ever had in her life. No trickery, no guilt, just what she wanted to do and she's stiff and awkward with it. Stretching a muscle she hadn't used for a long time. Staring down at it, because the truth is she never wants to wear it again and to hell with everyone else.

Sobers, calm, restraint. She learned those things and even if her body is weak and unused, her mind has always been keen, so she holds it, considering. This was one part of the system. She's got plates in her head that are result of another. Her thumbs brushes over it again. Formulates this plan, little by little. ]

I'll give you it, for safeties sake. [ Step one of it done at least. ] Then... I can write you the program that talks to these. [ Her head tilts, letting the plates catch the light as indication. Pieces of metal that were grafted into her skull, so old now that the skin had healed cleaned around them. Then again, with so much eridium in her system, everything healed cleaning. ] So that it'll tell you if... if I'm losing my grip at all. A warning system, effectively.

[ Looks up, nervous, what if it's awful. But it's a compromise for the safety of others and some much needed bid for freedom. ] Does that... will that work?

[polyphonos]

[It's a thoughtful solution. Granted, it requires them both to be in a place where such a thing is convenient - where a signal from the collar might somehow find the plates. Cathaway knows such a thing won't always be true; that there will be instances where the young host will be very, very far away indeed.

But that's a problem to be solved at a later date. For now, this will do. She nods in agreement:]

Very well. That seems agreeable enough to us.

[She lifts her hands; the charms at her wrists and elbows chime and the curl of her fingers is exceedingly soft, inviting.]

Would you like our help with removing it?

[circumspector]

[ She's assuming, quite incorrectly, that this will be like Hyperion, like any other megacorp. That there is technology quite literally grafted into different people that she can send these warnings to. How she's used to living her life, after all, in corridors that are far too similar to these that makes the assuming easy to do, for her mind at least.

But this woman seems impossibly different, there's something so coaxingly gentle, that she's so unused to. It makes stepping in close easy, like coming home to something she lost ( killed ) a long time ago. ]

Please, if you don't mind. [ Her head bows when she comes close. It's not like she's very tall to start with. Already bared from the way her hair is raked across and tied up.

She's shaking, like this is ceremony, like letting go. Her fingers rest on the tops of her thighs and curl up sharply into the soft material of her clothes. Steady, steady, steady, just keep still, Angel. ]

[polyphonos]

Of course.

[She reaches without any pretense, touching the hard metal line of the control collar; she's careful not to brush her skin against Angel's, delicate about how she navigates the flat planes of the collar until she finds-- ah, there. A clever mechanism. It would be difficult to undo without being able to see it fully, to use both hands to time the release.]

Be calm, child. There's no need to shake.

[Steadying, sturdy. She gives Angel an easy smile before she sets the release and the collar goes to pieces under her hands. There is some contact then, her knuckles humming faintly against Angel's neck as she turns her hands to catch the offending components of the collar - and then it is finished. Cathaway draws it away, snaps the control collar back together so as to not damage or lose the pieces, and then holds it out to Angel with a matter of fact air about the whole ordeal.]

And done simply.

[circumspector]

[ It's choked her - too long now, been yanked by it, pulled around by it, made to do awful things because her mind had the misfortune to live in this body. She could feed energy through her body until her blood was nothing but light and it had never saved her. Feels something like a hysterical fit of laughter in her throat, when the words come out and done simply.

It comes off, that restriction that dictated every choice she had made, every choice she didn't get to make. Her fingers dart up to where it had sat, smoothing over it quickly like she's reclaiming it as hers. Hitches in one breath, deep as she can, just to feel this skin that is too heavy, pull against her hand, but there's nothing to stop her now. For a second she can be everything Jack ever feared about her, rip it all apart just like he was worried she would do. Grab the machines, grab the ships onboard network in the snare of her mind and burn it out, vent oxygen, shut down life support systems, it might take her longer now, and maybe she can't but the idea that she could if she wanted to.

Like stretching old muscles, the marks fade from blue to white, her eyes are stinging and she takes the control collar. The fact that she can do it so calmly and so detached, as if it's nothing. The sky has fallen down, and this woman just holds the remnants so casually in her palm. Offered up simply like laws of the universe are so easily molded. But staring at it, it somehow makes this real, makes this solid, not just something loneliness and longing made her dream up.

Shakes her head stiffly once, can't say anything. What was there to say, except half mad babble of I died, I'm dying, I'm dead against the scream that builds up and up and up, I'm alive, I'm living, I will live. The sky has fallen down and it was done with such tenderness, the gentle brush of knuckles and she doesn't sob so much just stand there confused, elated and horrified. Somewhere between wanting to throw up whatever is in her stomach ( burning chemicals ) and tear something apart with her bare hands.

Does none of it. She's crying, blinking, staring at the collar, out of confusion and without knowing what to do, she wants to step forward and weep. Needs to be grounded, tethered back, trying just to breathe, breathe, breathe. To go from fighting, screaming and dying, to standing here right now, where her body is foreign and her mind is untethered and she feels like she'll lose contact with the ground. So scared, that this isn't real. ] What do I... what am I supposed to do now?

[ Give her guidance to this freedom, the lessons her father never gave her, except to reject him, define herself in his negative space. Without the weight of Jack, she doesn't know how to be. ]

[polyphonos]

[The wash of sensation - of living, of dying, of cracking open and being dragged out into a long, bright smear - tastes like copper in her mouth. Sings like a note. Burns like a fire twenty million light years away but still gives off heat. It's tempered exhilaration, wild pulse stopping fear, bone deep satisfaction.

Cathaway clucks her tongue and reaches to wipe the girl's tears with her thumbs. The touch is gentle, the contact sizzling with purpose.]

Unfortunately, we have no satisfying answer for you. Simply do best as you can. [There's no single thing she can say that would be reassuring in the moment. Anything she could offer would be like trying to catch water in a net.] Don't be afraid to ask for help - from your brood, from the Prince and us, from the Station. If you make your home in this place and with the people in it, we suspect you'll be fine.

[Or close to it in any case. The rest could be managed as necessary.]

[circumspector]

[ It shouldn't hurt as much as it does -- it's a practical bit of kindness. Smearing tears away as she stands there like a child with skinned knees and grazed palms. Turned up for inspection, to dab away the blood, but she understand that is meant to hurt too. The little hiccuping rise and falls of shoulders, moving with each little pained noise. The cringe when antiseptic ( stop crying, Angel. No, I said, stop it. ) cleans a wound of infection.

It hurts, being touched hurts with how much she wants someone to do just that. Be careful, be gentle, be caring. Tears she knows are a way to sooth, chemically, a reaction in her mind - a mind that is being drawn out further in a way that's different, that's like using a muscle she hadn't before. Yes, she can manage it, because she learned that like others learned walking. But this is hard to deal with, being so starved makes even a mouthful too much, is what she realises. She'll have to be careful, though the lower part, says if they have done this, made this connection, then they already have her. For what, she doesn't know, and it'll take some time to work out if she truly cares if she's being just used again or not ( expectation is that, because how could it ever be otherwise? Nothing personal, just that is what people did, after all, her included. )

Glances up, careful, blinking her mind quiet, ordering it precisely till she comes to the one word that matters. Us. ] I'd like that. I'd like that a lot. [ Admits it softly, like it's a most precious secret that she's so starved. ] It is us though, now, isn't it? What this headache is? [ Maybe not this heaviness, this confinement she feels, but she knows what that is. Coming off a three year drug induced heightened state was going to come with side effects, even if they had some how managed to fix massive internal organ failure. ]

[polyphonos]

Correct.

[She draws her hands from the girl's face, her damp cheeks, and instead sets them at the top of Angel's head: smooths her hair back, touches her fingers delicately to the warmth of her scalp and hardly makes contact with the plates there at all. There's a fondness in it, a tentative warmth that's as unexhaustible as it is personal (selfish). Easy, easy, easy. Be still, be gentle. Whatever place the girl had come from was behind her, could be made irrelevant - a pain tempered.]

Whatever you choose to do now is for yourself - but that self now extends to every host on this Station, to each one beyond it. We are part of you as you are a piece of us, so we must treat ourselves fairly.

[circumspector]

[ She calms by seconds, first the shake in her hands, then the tremor of her shoulders, the quick little rise and fall breathing of a muted kind of hysteria, that she wills gone as the fingers are so, so light, and so, so careful. It's not like when she would wake from sedatives with the ghost of scientific fingers on her back and nothing but metal adornments stapled into her spine, her head, monitors on her heart and lungs.

This has nothing but the purpose of touch to it. Her eyes shut, letting it do it's work, and eventually, she at last stills. She had never been very good at I, that this extension to we becomes natural a thought as breathing. So eager to accept that irrelevancy of the past, to erase that part of herself, like birds malt feathers, so she could leave it behind now. It was done, there was this wholeness now. From machines to herself to the great vastness this woman presented.

The pause was as she looks down again, blinking her eyes open. The most important part done, there's this strangeness to deal with that isn't her abilities or this cracked open hole in her head. ] I feel heavy. [ and she realises, at once, that what she feels ( not her mind: love,hate,hurt. but her body: muscles,skin,bone ) she is tired. It has been years and she's still just that child needing permission. Can she remember how to do it? sleep, eat? she'd done it before, so she ought to be able to do it again. ] Is it... alright if I sleep for awhile?

[polyphonos]

[They are disparate pieces of ten thousand vessels made to work in symphony - salvage retrofitted to join into a whole, the gaps and unsealed edges raw until the symbiote could fill them. Until the cracks are filled, until the machine becomes a singular piece of equipment functioning in time, they must all do double the work to perform to capacity. There is no efficiency in this; their place is one of necessity.

In time, adaptability will increase the rate at which they function or they will break. There is no middle ground.

Today and in this place, Cathaway smooths dark hair back from the young host's eye then places her hands to cup Angel's face. She smiles at her like she is a child, asking silly things at the end of a long exhausting day.]

Of course. Do you know your way back to life support?

[circumspector]

[ She'll work hard, for this choice, she'll do whatever she's asked. More so, she craves it, the ability to move and twist and go like others do. She's no interest in breaking when she's just gotten her own legs back. But right now -- well, eridium was a hell of a drug. She'd be lying to say she was fine. Whatever they'd done to her and certainly made it possible for her to be alive. But whatever it was had to be working overtime to heal so much damage. It left her shaky, overwhelmed and weak.

She nods, brief, back the way she came. Away from others might help, give her the time to work through the rest of the crash. ] Yess, ma'am. [ Wets her lips, swallowing back on the dryness. The exhaustion builds quickly. ] I just... plug myself back in?

[polyphonos]

Correct. There is a small scar, just there-- [She lifts her hand and places it gently at the base of her skull; she has one too, under the sheet of her silvering hair.] --that will help you find the right place. The Nesting Deck will give you the benefit of aligning your mind with the symbiote while you sleep, but if you'd prefer to rest elsewhere any room on the Life Support deck is acceptable for you to take as your own. You passed through it on the way here.

[She is, undoubtedly, talking about the open-door cabins directly adjacent to the nesting deck.]

[circumspector]

[ Just sleeping might be good, but she's more interested in getting a control of herself as quickly as possible. Being without the collar is terrifying, but even more so if she doesn't look into how to establish that control by herself. ]

I'll go to the Nesting Deck. The sooner this headache stops the better.

[ Her hand comes up, brushing against her neck, feeling for the scar and finding it quickly. Rubbing over it, briefly contemplating. Seems that everything was sorted, for now. She could think about it more, after the slept. ] Oh, my name is Angel. [ lets go of something, all knotted in her chest that she unravels little by little. ] Thank you, again. I didn't think there was a way out anymore.

[polyphonos]

Angel.

[It's an affirmation of a kind, punctuated by the easy incline of the woman's head. She knew it already, but she appreciates the sentiment. Besides, it is a good name; there is a part of her that enjoys the meaning in it. It has been a long time since the last new hosts hatched and went; perhaps such a name is fortuitous of good things to come, of fire licked swords and justice being meted - of miracles.]

You're very welcome. Let us know if there's anything more that can be done to assist you. We are here for you at any hour.

[circumspector]

Yes, ma'am.

[ She's going to go in a second, but she hovers. Like she's trying to work out if this is... appropriate or not. This woman is to teach her, train her? She isn't sure. It might be good, for once, to have someone that will guide her rather than use her, at least not to hurt people until she wants or needs to.

It's a lot of things and definitely rather than weigh them all, sleep seemed easier right now. Laying in the quiet dark for awhile, it will be dreamless and she will finally remember to break up time and consciousness. But before that --

She steps forward quickly, eyes down, shy, shy of rejection and being pushed away and that this isn't somehow appropriate, but she wraps her arms around Cathaway, quick and light. A second to just press her face against her shoulder, take one comfortable second just being like that -- it means nothing, not really, but as much as being reached for is terrifying, to reach back is somehow infinitely more so. She did this before, and it doesn't matter she killed the last woman that did this for her, she says into the small space. Goodnight. It doesn't matter that it's not night, not day either, space is without the same rhythms, it's normal. It's what people do, and she can have that now.

Then she lets go, and she feels -- somehow lighter for it. Ducking her head once in goodbye, and turning to go to the nesting deck and find that comfortable numbness again. ]