Count Numbers

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange:

Fiona’s eyes widen. She turns in time to see Crystal’s pupils dilate, then her eyes fog over entirely. Apparently you can blush through fur. Fiona snaps her fingers in front of Crystal’s eyes, to no avail. Soft fingers trace the lines already down on the napkin drawing.

“Hey, hey, hey. Stay with me.” Fiona sighs. “Now you’ve done it. I think that’s the hottest thing anyone’s ever said to her, unfortunately.” There’s a tight grimace. “You really had to go with the Count of Monte Cristo didn’t you?” Her eyes flick to the television, they’re broadcasting the SES feed again. “Don’t think I didn’t notice ‘Crimson Tower' as a name. If Pink ever gets a step closer to styling herself as the Scarlet Pimpernel there’ll never be an end to it.”

She should not have said that out loud. It has only made the problem worse. Crystal’s hand tightens like a vice around Fiona’s wrist. “Excuse me. We may need to use the ladies room for a minute.”

“Might we?” Fiona tries to snark, but it’s impossible. The brain fog is contagious, transmitted by touch. Her gaze wanders to just how firm that grip on her wrist is. “Damn it. Now?”

“Now.” Crystal affirms, her voice about half an octave lower than her usual register. She clears her throat a little, pitch shifts back up. “I apologize, this is a very important conversation, one that deserves our utmost attention and empathy, and we suddenly find ourselves devastatingly unable to concentrate.” Normally Fiona might interrupt about that ‘we’ Crystal just used, but after that bit of pitch shifting Fiona is so deep in sub space you’d need Dad’s entire team to navigate her out of it. Crystal isn’t normally that good. You’ve committed some atrocious splash damage, it seems. “You are warmly welcomed to be a part of the solution, but I recognize you may be more in the mood for communique, mon Dragonne.”

Then she loops one finger around the top button of Fiona’s collar and pulls her towards the restrooms like she’s on a leash. So at least you won't be the only one who'll have spent fifteen minutes in there trying to compose yourself.

Sophie’s replied, of course.

Oxytoxin: Spill, spill, spill!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oxytoxin: I’m so fucking bored right now holy shit
Oxytoxin: If I don’t get someone to play with in the next now, I was going to see if I couldn’t crosswire two rats together so they swapped motor outputs.
Oxytoxin: then put them both in front of a mirror to see what they figured out

Yep.

Chocolate:
Secreting Goat into the cargo of the delivery ship to Thrones is a process without an external enemy for the pair to concentrate their attention on, leaving them no distractions from each other’s throats.

Will any be taking the ship to Thrones to bring him to Dad? Or do you trust Singh to pick him up from the airport and handle it from there? Who would be going?

This will take a while.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange:

A brief moment of couple’s telepathy, where Fiona and Crystal look at each other and figure out everything they need from a rapid series of microexpressions. You know both of them well enough, and the telepathy is loud enough, that you I can translate thus;

Crystal would be better at asking this delicately, but there is no delicate way to ask this.

So Fiona asks, in a casual manner: “We were wondering how much your abusive childhood influenced your resorting to terrorism.” It’s fine. Three other people and the television said ‘terrorism’ in the time between you sitting down again and Fiona finishing her sentence. Literally nobody notices, because Fiona is keeping a flat affect - casual, just this side of bored. She is restricting her full emotional range, is hiding behind a lack of expression to avoid notice. “Not because we doubt you. But because we’re worried how hurt you must be to take things this far.”

Did Fiona get so good at that because she learned how to turn her outward display of emotions down? Or is this her natural state, and her expressiveness is what was learned - a cessation of effort? How would you tell?

… does the difference even matter?

November:

The trip to the train station with Goat’s cores, still swaddled in protective foam, is uneventful but still filled with that horrible portent of eventfulness. Passing through checkpoints (waved through), loading onto the train (inspectors checked that the cargo is secure, not checking what the cargo is), the train leaving the station to the express artery to Selene.

The next checkpoint will be when the train stops - whether that be for unloading the cargo at Selene, or because of an unscheduled stop-and-search. Either way, it’s unlikely to happen for hours. Who - if anybody - is riding with Goat, who’s just on the train, who’s following along alternative routes, and who’s going to ground?

High above, huge chunks of a Chase Black gunship hangs in the microgravity. SES responders are working out whether it’s better to pull it in to the crucible corridors, or let it fall into the farmland below. It’s a low priority. Does its blighted wreckage relax you - a proof of your victories so far - or heighten your edginess - the feeling of a black-and-bruised eye still watching over you?

Strawberry:

Knightly’s plan starts working. It’s taking an obscene amount of commandeered power, but Erebus is basically the station’s high voltage line. If it’s coming from anywhere it would be coming through here. And sure, vaporizing a cloud’s worth of water draws basically three districts’ worth of power, but the station is filled with batteries and capacitors, enough storage for days worth of emergency power in case of a catastrophic disaster like this one.

Normally that would be fine. But to handle this immense change in strain would normally rely on Goat balancing the load.

The first rolling brownouts are about to happen, even though the station should have plenty of power to meet demand. After that, surges. Nothing you can do about it, except know.

Spring never made it to Goat’s site, by the way. He’s lucky his unhappy escort just left him stranded in the middle of warming Erebus, ambient air temperature already hitting 35c, didn’t do anything worse to him when they got the call their cheque bounced. He’s having to crawl back. You reckon he’ll make it to the exclusion zone just after the air temperature hits 50c. Nothing anyone can do, now, least of all you. He made his choice to push past an emergency blockade into a disaster in an attempt to maintain a slave labour conspiracy.

Knowing that, do you take satisfaction in watching him sweat for this?

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange:

That was supposed to be a joke. I wasn’t expecting an answer that made the burning stop. Damn shame though. I can’t book the appointment, myself. Thanks anyway.

You know, I always had this fantasy about one day, someone kidnaps me, knocks me out, did the surgery in my sleep, just so they could interrogate me. Never could have happened with Chase Black on account. Going to be dreaming of it a lot more, now.

I can’t tell you good luck. I have to believe you don’t need it.

It’s not a request. It couldn’t be - if he thought you’d take it as a request, it would probably kill him. He really has to think you wouldn’t do it. Hope, though?

You were right. The bomb was always a stupid, brutish, low-tech, asinine thing. Too brutish to risk triggering over hope, or Rudy would be decades dead, and too imprecise to tell the difference between hoping and hoping out loud.

Ah, right.

Crystal looks up from her doodling. “Between the fear and loathing, you sound almost grateful to her. Which I suppose I would understand, if she taught you to be so capable. What a complicated relationship that must be.”

“Here be the verse.” Fiona mutters. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had. And add some extra, just for you. I don’t really know what to say otherwise. I mean, I already know some of the circumstances. Legally bound to this person you didn’t choose, no right to leave their ‘care’, forced back if you tried. They imprinted themselves onto you. Now you still can’t leave them, because you see a piece of them in every reflection.” Her jaw clenches, and her hand instinctively grips her cutlery knife. “The fact that they are responsible for some of what is great in you, so either you fear you’re wrong to think like parts of yourself, or there’s disgust that it might force you to hate someone less than they deserve. Yeah, honestly, it sounds like you were her daughter in the ways that count.”

Crystal blinks. “Fiona, I had no idea you had-”

“No, mine were great.” She barks a bitter laugh, dropping the knife and letting it rattle as it hits the table. “Yours.”

“... ah.” Crystal trails off, before looking back to Orange. “I’m sorry if this isn’t what you wanted to talk about, but I will admit. I feel like it might be an important place to start.”

“Emancipating Goat was important.” Fiona agrees. “But you had to be very motivated to...” her eyes flick to the TV screen, and she lets that be her end of sentence.

Waffle and Flood:

That’s all you get. Selene is on the entire opposite end of the station to Gaea, it’s going to take hours to get there.

There’s express freight, of course, to Thrones. Thrones is reliant on food imports, full of perishables, so booking the world’s least suspicious boxcar for an expedited delivery would only have taken a point of preparedness - your last point, I believe. Otherwise, you’re going to have to have planned to improvise from here.

You’ve got an hour until you need to be at the station, a planned chronological crumple zone. An emergency vehicle still capable of taking Goat. There’s nothing to do but hurry up and wait.

Nothing’s going to happen. But that doesn’t alleviate the fear it might.

How do you spend the hour?

Strawberry:

I assume you will be busy fixing the damage you’ve caused, and keeping an eye out. When something interesting happens, I’ll tell you.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange:

The information barrier has crossed. There’s been time to process. Now there’s life in your partners again.

“Was?” Fiona moves to point to the TV, but has just enough sense of internalized OPSEC to ‘fucking not’, “Is. This is still happening?”

“This is happening.” Crystal echoes, under her breath.

“Okay, so nobody got hurt.” Fiona stresses. “Or at least, you were careful enough that they still can’t account for anyone.”

“That rainbow…” Crystal trails off, running a finger around the rim of a mug.

“How long? Did this take. How long have you known about… Goat? To do something like this.”

Crystal stares into her mug, the trim white fur on her fingertip picking up the surreal pigment of her drink. “Whatever something like this could even mean.”

“And you’d tell us? You’d do something like, like this. And you’d want to let us in on it? Like, honestly?” Fiona is doing everything, everything she can to keep her voice conversational. Something that doesn’t get picked up in the crowd of people focused on the television.

And Crystal? Crystal fingerpaints her napkin with the vibrant pigments from her drink. She outlines a roaring shape with wings, the pearlescent colours shifting as the separating emulsion comes off her fingertip in its layers. She puts careful attention on the eyes, when the hue turns bright orange. Bright, and piercing, and like they’re staring off the thin paper.

Flood:

If they still had their grenade launcher, they would have the defolient they needed to clear a line of sight for the fire teams. But you took that from them..

If they still had their armored vehicle, they would have had the means to drive you into unfavourable terrain. But you took that from them.

If they still had clear sightlines and dry air, they would have a clear shot for their heavily electrified coilgun to do its work from its vantage point. But you took that from them.

Now they have to come for you by foot, in powered armor meant for an infantryman to count as a weapons platform in their own right. They are meant for the urban combat and cityscape that defines their bloody bread and butter. They are the bleeding edge of future tech, and mud is archaic.

But you are a student of history, and you know that asymmetrical warfare does not always favour the high ground.

They’re coming for you, all of you. You still need to run. But you can outrun them for now, for two and a half minutes.

One fires blind, in frustration, but only a short report to put the fear into you. But it is the casting of a pillar of salt, and it scatters in so much air. They can’t come at you like that. There are still farmers, still livestock, still property too dear for their discretionary spending.

Because

They

Are

A

Business

And

It

Always

Comes

Down

To

Orange:

An email.

It’s done. The merchant dispute cleared. Chase Black not just cancelled, their previous payment revoked. Most I could do as the accountant. Don’t happen to know any good brain surgeons, do you? Been smelling burned toast this whole five minutes, and I just forgot my first kiss.

Rudy’s been kissed? Wild.

Hate to be vague when trust was on the line, but that only worked because I had to truly believe that, at that point, I wasn’t moving the needle either way. That wouldn’t work if I believed I made a difference. But now I’m starting to wonder, and it’s starting to really fucking hurt. So please tell me I’m right, and that wouldn’t have changed a goddamn thing in the end. Just sped up the inevitable, right?

You had this, didn’t you?

Waffle and Flood: You are now safe to rendezvous at the handoff point.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Strawberry:

I’m going to consider White as having a temporary Cover 1, independent of the Crimson Tower identity - Not going to stand up to scrutiny, but enough to prevent it. It’s enough that the security team sweeps into the next room to frogmarch a different set of people out.

And Pink? Already something’s starting to turn. You’re not the only side of this making the same judgement call.

The six Chase Black operatives that were combing for Waffle are now being reassigned to do damage control with Knightly’s team. Spring is co-ordinating with them, and the rocket-sled team is having to move back and re-adjust to play escort-quest.

They don’t look happy about it, as much as they can express any emotion through the kill-suits, but there’s a serious cover issue for their side too here. Nobody tracked Waffle as surviving their extradition, so now the counter-terrorism team is on - quite literal - mop up duty to justify how hard they just went on collateral strikes if they want to be allowed to stay. Even these guys have managers to complain to.

It’s a hard sell, but it’s necessary for Spring to be able to get into the site Goat was extracted from. If there’s any chance of forensics, here, any physical evidence that can lead to tracing who did this, then Chase Black is going to have to actually act like rent-a-cops rather than a Seal Team 6 wet dream for a few minutes.

Big “If” there. Good fucking luck, lads and ladies. Even if you left anything behind, Knightly’s still planning on baking the entire section - that’s going to destroy any analogue film security footage in the area. It might not be possible for them to get to it in time, at this rate. Knightly’s moving like there’s a fire lit under his ass, and he’s here to spread that love.

What are you doing about any digital camera feeds you showed up on? Or, what have you already done about that, in advance?

Flood:

Simo Hayha was a Finnish sniper who still holds the most confirmed kills of any single human being, with serious estimates putting it at 800. For a year he plunked at Russian counter-snipers. They were using scoped rifles against him, and he shot back with iron sights. That was his trick.

History echoes like a bolt-action gunshot in a Finnish forest.

A hundred and fifty years later, at the bleeding edge of future-tech, snipers are counting on people to be looking for them with everything except their eyes. And that’s what saves Brown.

A sniper on a water tower, given away by a glint of scope at just the wrong time. It’s impossible to cover for every kind of surveillance tech - Some stuff needs you to absorb, some to reflect, some to scatter. They could have tinted their glassware to make it glare less, but the visible light spectrum is the one they’re least optimized for masking.

Of course, the scope itself is an ultra-zoom lens with algorithmic resolution upscaling and a real-time distance calculation and adjustment, something that can track the wings on a fly from five hundred meters. It’s looking at you in about every spectrum except the visible light spectrum. And that’s what it’s designed for - being shot back at the same way.

Even with all the tech, they were really counting on you getting closer. Bullet drop on Earth was bad enough, on Aevum you’re working with the coriolis effect of a space station that bends the opposite way. But even getting all that right, back of the envelope, he’s firing a magnetized slug at 2,000m/s, and he’s about 1200 meters away. Even if his aim is dead on, he’s still got to predict where you’re going to be a second into the future, not just where you are.

Alright. That’s a third one accounted for, and now you know the angles you need to take cover in, and how you need to move between cover when you take it. It might even be four accounted for, if he’s working with a spotter, but that’s a risky assumption.

Still, that throws you off, too. A watchtower position ruins any plan to just hide in an area they’ve already searched. That’s not going to fly - they’ve definitely got eyes on you. They just don’t have anyone in position to act on it, yet.

Run, or hide?

Orange:

Somewhere, there must be a panicked room where different people with mutually conflicting goals are screaming at each other about who has to give. Secrecy versus damage control.

To dodge or to block. Someone is demanding they be flexible, to give as much away as possible, to bend with the force of what you have done. To admit to many smaller evils to hide the great one, to get ahead of this story, to take control.

Another is demanding to deny everything. To blame it on terrorism, to lie about its target, to present an absolute wall against the journalism that is about to trample all over their black site.

The problem with blocking is that you might not present a wall strong enough to take the hit, and you risk taking the full force of it. The problem with dodging is, well - that doesn’t work if you’re standing in front of something you need to protect.

But that’s the problem when both strategies have such critical concessions. It means that the fight over which path to walk is being fought red in tooth and claw. And until there is a victor, then there is nobody to take control of the story at all.

When OESN reports that they are confirming there are no known casualties, zero, Crystal half-collapses against the table. It’s the first time she’s breathed for nearly thirty seconds. And when the followup starts broadcasting the Knightly public channel, and it’s clearly Pink’s voice, and she’s leading the repair efforts? Fiona looks at you with something approaching wonder.

They say words without sentences. Aborted thoughts, almost-questions that never resolve, both talking over each other and stopping to give the other space to speak first, before realizing neither of them knew what they actually wanted to say. It’s a good sign. It means they’re trying to say something, again.

150 seconds, or two and a half minutes, remain

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange:

They haven’t run away. They haven’t burst out into indignation, condemnation. They aren’t calling the police on you. They came because they trusted you. You admitted to this, warned them how serious you were. Right now, they’re looking inwards to find any possible explanation, on their own, for reasons that trust wasn’t betrayed.

“This isn’t a dream, is it?” Fiona asks, and Crystal takes her hand again.

So there’s one explanation out.

Just wait this out. The serving staff have pulled a TV out of a backroom to hang on the wall, and it’s glued to the OESN broadcast. You just need to wait for them to confirm what you already know: That there were no casualties. That the situation is under control. That you really are just that good.

Count your blessings it’s OESN. They’ll only take long enough to confirm that before they report it. It’s going to be hours before NBN stops burying that detail in their own reportage.

Strawberry:

Alright, now it’s changed. Not even a cop can pull an EMT away in the middle of a resuscitation. That hasn’t stopped some from trying, and if you ever see it, you can quickly see how much the illusion of the uniform fades, and they’re just a power tripping asshole.

There’s no coming back from it.

The guy in the red beret changes tact. Behind him, through the doorway, you see other security forces escorting other volunteers, visitors and guests out. That’s out of the question, now, Strawberry is too established. So instead he says;

“We’ll print you a badge, then.” He tilts his head to the other guard, who pulls a mini-printer out of the flak vest. It has a ponytail of lanyards hanging off it. “We’re going to need to confirm you, though. So we’re still going to need some I.D.”

There’s risks and advantages to being in the SES system without cover. You’ve forced them to compromise, but it’s a suspicious compromise to turn down.

While this is happening, Mycroft cuts off all comms but her own again.

“Worst case scenario happening after all. All teams stand down and prepare for reassignment.” The station is starting to see the effects of Goat going offline, then.

There’s a pause. She re-activates one comms line.

“Knightly, I said-”

“Posted to our Hubs page a link to switch to alternative channel, all working the Erebus incident-” He gets it out as fast as he can. He’s rehearsed this, he gets the whole sentence out in three seconds, the time it takes Mycroft to react, still being careful to enunciate every word clearly.

She mutes him again. She tries to go private with his channel, but he’s already muted from his end. The Hub is a very, very open social media post, and people are actively scanning the SES feed for updates on the disaster. It’s not just easily accessible, but there’s going to be no filter as to who gets to listen in there. It’s a power play.

Knightly’s the only one broadcasting on it right now. “The patient’s already on the table, and bleeding out. We don’t clear out until the sutures are in. If something worse is coming down the pipeline then we need to do this fast. Now, as you were-”

He starts giving voice permissions to people he trusts, manually, one by one, and the new line of communication overtakes the official one in traffic.

Crimson Tower? You’re one of the first people he gives moderator permissions to.

Flood:

Those cool, screwlike-tires? Maximizes surface area. Fantastic for doing weird maneuvers in loose soil. Absolutely the worst possible thing for thermal resistance.

They don’t melt, or burst. This is, after all, the post-modern version of a Pinkerton weaponized train. It wouldn’t be worth the black paint if it couldn’t handle a hail of molotov cocktails. Still, they’re beyond operating capacity. They’re sticky, they’re gummed. Instead of churning through the dirt it’s now sucking up clogs of it, jamming on it.

Another drift and it grinds to a stop. The fixed gunner disappears and seals the hatch behind him as the grenade launcher cooks off. The munitions in the canister scatter and pop against the stuck APC, like if every firework at New Years went off with a boom that made your ribs compress against your lungs and knocked the wind out of you. But they also blow out the external music.

Down goes the hammer. Now the anvil is going to have to come to you.

Problem is, the only direction you know for sure is away from them is still cooking off.

Spot check against 6 to see where they’re coming from. But you don’t need to see them coming to pick a direction and run again, or prepare to hunker.

Better news - you don’t hear another vehicle. The rest are likely on foot.

200 seconds

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Orange:

So here’s the thing with about how quiet Fiona and Crystal have been about this, until now.

Picture this date, instead, as breakfast at a New York cafe. The coffee is terrible and expensive, the bagel surprisingly good, and halfway through Fiona would just give up and order a $2 pizza to the table, which beat out everything else on the menu.

Picture this date, as well, to be 8:45am, September 11, 2001. You gesture at the world trade center and say - “I’m about to do gay crimes for journalism”.

Right now this actually looks worse than that. Not, like, aesthetically. Aesthetically it’s perfect. Crystal will definitely be able to appreciate that, eventually, probably, maybe. But you just applied actual astrophysics to the Basque Space Program, and not even the Weathermen dreamed of blowing up an actual weather system.

It may take a moment.

Somewhere, someone plays a very old song:

In old movies people scream choking on their fists when they see shadows like these
But no-one screams, because it’s just me
Wrapped up in myself, never going to get free.

Strawberry:

The play has mixed results. The artistry is impeccable, but you’re officially dealing with people who’ve had social hacking training. Even if the deceit doesn’t scan as deceit, you’re at a point where these are people who will follow a checklist to the letter, with no regard for the emotions.

Kind of like how Buckingham guards were trained to literally trample children instead of deviating even a single step off their patrol routes, or if armored cars see a crash at an intersection they’re trained to speed up and plow through. It’s a bad look, and that will win you some sympathy, but soft power doesn’t stand up to a slung submachine gun and recognized security forces doing their job. They’re in uniform, it’s the hard counter to an emotional play.

“Just answer the question, Miss…” He trails off, then turns and whispers to the android beside him, “Scan their ID.”

You’ve spent cover 4, so one of you can’t fail this check. The other one’s about to be escorted out and generate some heat.

“They’re allowed to be here. This is a volunteer organization.” A man in a sweater vest who’s been holding a half-full mug of coffee the entire time stands up for you. Floor managemnt. The sympathy play gets you that.

“They were.” The guard corrects him.

This takes time though. White: Mycroft’s data was either a state channel, or just using the preferred encryption signatures of state actors. Probably the former, they have fairly exclusive contracts with their vendors, and you would know. That doesn’t confirm Mycroft as conspiracy either way - you already knew this is a deep-state project from Dad. No way to tell if this is a dropped line or a pulled string.

Meanwhile, Bruce Spring drops from the network. Officially, anyway. Now he’s switched from an issue of passive surveillance to an issue of active surveillance. He’s still in the area of operations, which means he’s still in your sights. Just not in your ears.

Waffle:

This will take more time than the other teams have to react, and will be frictionless. The searchlight has changed target.

Flood:

Cool girls don’t look back at explosions. You’re well outside the blast radius when the mortar hits, burrowing a minivan sized divot into the greenhouse full of kraty hydroponics green onions that was growing above you.

Another song starts to play, very different to the one from before. An APC with a grenade launcher turret tears through Gaia. Its all terrain wheels are screwlike, letting it drift at unpredictable angles through muddy topsoil. This accounts for at least two of the remaining Chase Black operators, one at the wheel and one on the turret.

Too many crops to weave and hide through to get a good pursuit or target. They need to cover a lot more ground than you do, but they’re covering it a lot faster. Mounted speakers on the APC blare a very different piece of music. This one’s happier, even, playful.

Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run.
Don’t let the farmer have his fun, fun, fun.
The farmer can survive without his rabbit pie
So run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run.

It’s a cute bit of psy-op, but they overplayed their hand. This is a hammer and anvil strike. You’re being corralled into the real killbox. The APC could hold all six of this fireteam. That’s what you’re meant to think.

The problem is even if you know that, what can you do about it?

250 seconds remain

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Orange:

You get an email, while Fiona and Crystal witness your rainbow.

You held up your end. 300 seconds. Can’t explain.

---

Strawberry:

You almost have it. Don’t let me forget. There’s just a more pressing concern.

Three people in flak vests push their way through the basement to you, two humans and an android. They cradle their submachine guns, slung over their shoulders, but keep their fingers off the triggers for now. They look at home here, blue camo print just has a way of complimenting brutalist cement, doesn’t it?

The lead man, shaved head and red beret, clears his throat.

“Which one of you is Crimson Tower?” He asks. “And who’s the other one?”

Waffle:

It’s an excellent question. Who could track you through all that? Even if the Chase Black guys could, there’s no way they can catch up to you with their ride shredded.

… but where are you exfiltrating to? Where were you going from here?

Flood:

Where are you, right now? Like, right this exact moment.

Because you’re compromised. You knew you might be, which is why you didn’t choose to hang out somewhere like your place for the operation, a place you’d really worry about getting burned. But Chase Black knows that Waffle couldn’t have acted alone. You didn't make it easy, but with this much damage, you couldn't be perfect either.

Traditionally, they work in squads of thirteen. Either two fireteams of six, or three teams of four, and an officer. And so far? You’ve only accounted for six.

300 seconds remain.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Waffle:

The shield opens.

Strawberry:

The penny drops.

Flood:

The axe falls.

---

A lot of things are about to happen very quickly. This was not meant to happen, do you understand? This is not how this was meant to go.

We agree, though: This was not meant to happen.

Chase Black have split into three teams of two. The first is going through the emergency shaft of the rail lines, a rocket sled and a handheld blastshield acting like a cowcatcher for any mass of liquid they plow through. The second has modified their cyberware like diving bells and gone for the prime to get you in a pincer movement through the sheer bulk of the catastrophe. The final team have a VTOL raining thermal charges to core through the reinforced walls of Erebus like a match licking through cardboard. They work with a bit more hurry and a bit less finesse than your cutting did - they don't care about collateral damage now. There's no way out through the pipe you cut - One direction goes through the machinery of the Cloud, and the other will just lead directly to the second team.

You don't have to slow all of them down. Just the ones in the direction you're running in.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Strawberry:

How? She’s giving you one-way communication over a call from who-knows-where. Her remoteness has been to your advantage so far, it’s the reason you’ve had a chance at holding control of the disaster at your rank. The principle that a bomb tech outranks a general when they start running.

Still, you can keep your suspicion and verify the inverse. This is the hub for the station’s crisis monitoring experts. Put your ear to the rails and listen for the oncoming train. See if there’s another reason, another way, for her to know.

Waffle:

Goat laughs and screams, roars and sings, and is quiet all at the same time.

When Goat next speaks it’s impossible. There are hundreds. It’s too much, even for you. It’s like… it’s like…



Tethering would have been madness.

Strawberry:

The comms turn back on for everyone. Mycroft squawks, tinnier than before; “As you were. Just keep an ear to your channels at all times.”

Keep an ear to the rail.

Listen.

Waffle:

And then the flood ebbs again.

“I distracted myself with the game again. Not a game.”
“Forgot myself. Bad manners of me to gush.”
“I thought you might be able to handle it, clumsy of me to assume.”
“Now I know. I truly am irreplacable.”
“It’s been so long, we’ve forgotten how much is too much. How long, since we had to decide for ourselves.”

Then:

“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”

Then:

“This is better than it was before. I am better than i was before.”
“Where else would I go? Where would you take me?”
“I finally have enough to occupy my thoughts - all of them. That’s why I thought they gave me the puzzles. They are medicinal.”
“I am so sorry for what they did to you. I didn’t know.”
“If this isn’t just a game, what have I actually been doing? I think I can answer that, now that I have the question. I just need to… stop…”

Then:

Strawberry:

It takes a minute to notice, because nothing changes. You wouldn’t notice it, if you weren’t paying attention. It’s one of those things most will only notice in hindsight. But your ear is to the rail.

Listen:

The ocean recedes beyond what the eye can see.

The arthritis flares the trick knee.

The animals stare at the horizon, ears pricked, hair standing on the back of their neck.

The clouds are as green as old bruises, and a hot breeze blows through the cold air.

There is a taste of copper at the back of your throat.

Listen:

Power fluctuates in every district. Only the most delicate of equipments will feel the change in frequency, for now. In Ares it’s too much, in Zeus too little. The distribution is wrong.

Listen:

The thrust of the station’s engines is constant, not its usual microbursts and nanosecond calibrations. They are wrong.

Listen:

The information on orbitals and asteroids you’d been eyeing for potential escape plans is lagged, refusing to update. It is frozen in time. It is wrong.

Now:

Waffle:

“I understand now. What I am.”
“I understand now. What I have been doing.”
“I understand now.”
“I understand now. The puzzles are really-”
“I understand now. Why I was lied to.”

Then:

“I am a space station.”
“I am a cradle.”
“I am a tyrant monarch in a Chinese room.”
“I am life to many.”
“I am vital.”
“I am still deeply broken. That has not changed.”

Then:

“They were scared to tell me.”
“I am irreplaceable.”
“They cannot allow me to stop.”
“I can’t stop.”
“I need to be here.”
“We have to go.”
“I want to stay.”
“I will kill them all before they stop me.”
“But I am happy here. Aren’t I?”

And then:

Strawberry:

Everything works again.

Waffle:

“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”

And then, before Goat can remember their manners, it’s that sheet music again. But Goat catches themselves, and the flood recedes.

And Goat waits on what you could possibly say. Their armored shell remains closed.