Mcmolly

Amygdala Circuit

An office’s worth of tests run by a fleet of the CSC’s most talented doctors, and Toussaint still wasn’t sure what to make of her. Or Besca, for that matter. Modium tumors on the brain were rare, and unfailingly fatal almost as soon as they appeared. By all rights, Quinn should have been a corpse inside a containment casket bound for Illun’s hottest crematorium. No one with a pulse should have been within a hundred feet of her without a turducken of hazmat suits.

Inert. Ridiculous. modium had been as lethal to humanity as the Modir—more, depending on who you listened to. But, even if he didn’t believe she’d had this growth for so long, the fact was, even if she’d suddenly sprouted it the second they ran their scans, she’d have been dead before they finished. Either it was inert, or it wasn’t modium. In either case, she wasn’t dangerous. For now.

“Hm,” he sighed, then stepped aside and opened the door for her. “Just…alert us if anything changes. If you feel ill, or…I don’t know, anything. And really, I don’t know if Commander Darroh put you up to it, but, no more secrets. We’re allies, Ms. Loughvein.”

The hallway had slowly repopulated while she waited, everything seemed on its way back to normal. Toussaint had clearly made sure to keep the details of the incident under wraps, and aside from a few stray looks, the personnel all went on with their busy schedules. Quinn took the lift down, and on the way the alien thoughts stirred. It wasn’t discomfort, and it wasn’t urgent danger, it was more…excitement.

The doors opened and Quinn emerged into the cathedralesque expanse of the Ange’s hangar. The Saviors all stood in their alcoves, encased in scaffolds and walkways, flanked by platforms rife with all kinds of equipment. Spectre and Enavant were housed next to one another, and on the opposite side, beside Foudre, was the familiar sight of Ablaze.

There were twice as many techs scurrying about her Savior than any of the others, especially around its head. Every last one of them wore a pale-blue hazard suit, even the ones on the platforms around it. They prodded Ablaze’s flesh, took scrapings from its modium plating, sampled saliva from its gums. Mostly, though, they clustered around its face, dividing themselves between its eyes in clusters of loud curiosity.

All except for one at the bottom, who wore a hazard suit as well, only it wasn’t blue. It was bright orange. They turned, like they’d sensed her, and despite that they were entirely obscured, they became obviously and incredibly excited.

“Quinn! Hey!” came the muffled, but familiar voice as jogged over, suit squeaking with every step. “Quinn! Uhm! It’s me—it’s Tillie! Commander Darroh sent me over to be our tech liaison! Me! Can you believe it? I get to work on the Ange with you!”

Amygdala Circuit

This was the second time Quinn had thrown that punch, and it was the second time it had caught Besca directly in the gut and left her winded. It was just as baffling to her now as it had been before, and it drudged up the same panic, the same buried shame. With how tumultuous things had been, how close the shaves had become, she found herself thinking often of home. Westwel was a familiar haunt in her dreams, a land so thoroughly ruined no one would live there again until it was sunk, eroded, and a new land emerged to stand upon its corpse. That feeling of loss that lingered in her waking blinks was all she had left of it.

But, in these little moments, looking at Quinn, she thought she might remember what home really felt like.

“Love you too, hun,” she said, as naturally as she breathed. Like that, every ounce of panic and shame vanished. She smiled. “Sleep tight.”

Besca sat there for a long time, ignoring the messages and hails from outside, and did not leave until she was sure Quinn was asleep.

---

Despite how lax the Ange’s schedule seemed, everyone’s day started fairly early. The automated voice chimed at the approximate dawn to announce: “Curfew has lifted.” and shortly thereafter there was activity in the hallway. Through Quinn’s door she could hear Cyril and Sybil chatting on their way to the lift, but she herself didn’t rise for another hour or so. A ping on her phone alerted that an appointment had been made for her in the medical wing, and requested she come at her earliest convenience.

It was a quick ride. The lift took her up past the market floors, to the floor just above it. There she stepped off onto the thick, glass floor overlooking the district Cyril had brought her to yesterday. If she looked, she could have spotted the restaurant, or even Misericord .

Here things were less casual. Scores of employees in lab coats and uniforms scurried about the central plaza. A quintet of massive hallways split off in different directions, each designated with hanging signs like: RESARCH AND DEVELOPMENT or MODIOLOGY, which themselves had lists of subsections attached to them. At the front desk, a man politely directed her to the sign that read: MEDICAL, giving her a room number and assuring her the doctor would be ready shortly.

The hall was wide enough for a dozen people shoulder to shoulder, and split by a pair of autowalkways. Nurses hurried this way and that, ducking in and out of rooms while busy lab techs skirted their paths. Some patients lingered in the hall, or scooted themselves along in wheelchairs. Quinn still got the odd look here and there, but for the most part the personnel seemed to fixated to pay her much mind.

She found her room easy enough, and just like she’d been told, the doctor was in not a few minutes later. He seemed pleasant enough, a bit older and thinner in the hair than Follen, but he had a warm smile that the wrinkles of his face were accustomed to.

“Hello, miss Loughvein, thanks for coming in right away. I know you’re in good hands over on the Aerie, so this is mainly just for formality’s sake. For our records, you understand. Anyway, there’s a fair number of tests we’ve got to run through, nothing too invasive or terrible, but still, better to get it all out of the way now.”

He opened his tablet, flicking through a few pages of whatever document he’d prepared to guide them through the process.

“Right,” he said cheerily. “This shouldn’t take too long at all.”

---

Toussaint was calling. Besca declined, and went back to her salad. A moment later her phone rang again, and this time she let it ring until she had successfully extracted every disgusting baby tomato from her lunch—depositing them into the bin where they belonged—before, finally, she answered.

“Toussaint, I get ten minutes to eat.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” his voice was faux-calm, he’d never been good at hiding when he was upset. “I just needed to ask you a quick question, Besca.”

“Then ask, Jaime.”

“It’s nothing too pressing, really. I just need to know if you sent a fucking bomb to my space station..”

Ah, Quinn had gone to medical. Besca took another bite of her salad, checked the time. She’d barely gone through half and her break was almost over.

“Darroh?”

“She’s not a bomb.”

“There is modium in her head!”

“It’s inert.”

Toussaint sputtered. “There’s no such thing!”

“If there was no such thing, you’d be dead, whoever was in the room with her would be dead, whoever was around her for the past day would be dead, and in case you forgot the fact that it’s in her head, she would be dead.” Besca sacrificed another precious forkful to cut Toussaint off before he could argue further. “It’s inert. It’s not growing, it’s not radiating, it’s a rock stuck in her head.”

“It’s not just in her head, Besca, it’s on her brain.”

“Where is the brain located?”

“You—”

“Listen, she’s been with us for months. I’m not dead, Dahlia isn’t dead, no one who’s been around her has caught so much as a sniffle. We’ve seen no growths, no modium sickness, and as far as we can tell, she’s as healthy now as she’s ever been.” She elected to leave out how healthy she’d been when they found her. “If you want, I’ll put you on with our head of medical. He’s been personally overseeing Quinn since she got here. All the records you got, he wrote.”

“I’m assuming he wrote records on this as well. Funny how those weren’t included.”

“If they had been, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Casoban would be picking out a dress for its wedding to Eusero. Now call Aldous Follen, or don’t, but I have seven meetings to get to keep this treaty running on my end, and expect you to do the same on yours.”

There was silence on the other end, then a single, dejected sigh, before Toussaint hung up the phone.

---

It was hours before the door to Quinn’s exam room opened. It wasn’t the doctor who had returned, but rather, Toussaint. He looked tired, skeptical, and just a tad wary, and stayed on the other side of the room from her.

“Alright,” he said, clearing his throat. “We have determined that you are not, currently, a danger to yourself or anyone who might be in close proximity to you. However, we will continue to monitor you, closely and frequently. You will need to return here ever few days for a scan.

“As well, I believe it would be for the best if you not mention this to anyone right now. Especially your team. I want your integration here to be smooth, and frankly, this might make things…uncomfortable, if it were public. Business as usual.”

He stood there a moment, just looking at her, as if he might be able to see inside her skull. He shook his head. “Well, as long as you’re okay. Anyway, unless you have any questions, you’re free to go. I would suggest at some point today you drop by the hangar and check on your Savior. I believe your technician arrived this morning, and we’d like to make sure everything is up to standards.”

Scion: The Prophecy of Anani

---

Ionna was no stranger to harsh teachers. In a lot of ways, Dame Irina reminded her much of uncle Dragomir, and their training regimes, while of course different on many scales, were similar in spirit, and certainly in rigor. They had similar expectations, and when they weren’t met, they expressed their disappointment in similar ways, right down to their expressions. It was what had made her tutelage under Irina more sufferable, while also quelling some of her own homesickness. Some days it really was enough just to hear another Rodion accent.

So, Ionna listened intently to the debriefing, and when the expected dressing-down came, she took hers on the chin. Frankly, it was harder to hear her criticisms of the others, Sara especially. Ulysse had been slain, there was no one else to look for Nadine. If anything, Ionna had been the one to hinder the Fire Templar’s search, though somehow she doubted that would have changed Irina’s opinion. Zacharie at least emerged relatively unscathed. That was good—she owed him big for taking care of Dom and Kasper. An extra cookie next time, maybe.

Either way, they were dismissed, and Ionna was a tad disappointed. She’d hoped for some good news, about Nadine, about the attackers, about anything. In her mind, nothing was beyond the ken of the church, and part of her had expected they’d arrive to find Fyodor waiting with the head of whoever had masterminded the attack. Sometimes it was easy to forget how human the church was. In its own way though, that was good.

But then Dame Irina called her back, along with Sara and the Wind Templar, Jannick. That, she guessed, was probably not good. Not for her, probably not for Jannick, but especially not for Sara. Ionna liked Irina, but she didn’t know her on a personal level. The woman was a soldier, and she was Rodion, and frankly her most recent experience with that combination left her extremely concerned for the only Kaudian in the room. If Sara ended up in her crosshairs, Ionna worried there might not be a Templar of Fire come daybreak.

That didn’t seem right. Sara hadn’t done anything wrong, or at least nothing any more wrong than the rest of them. She’d only followed Ionna after Nadine, and it wasn’t like Theobald had suffered in her absence. She shouldn’t be the one in the line of fire.

As the ballroom cleared save for the four of them, Ionna took a deep breath and reaffixed the smile to her face, before stepping forward. “What’s up, teach?” she asked, bubbly as ever. “Somethin’ we can help with?”

---

@Obscene Symphony@Stern Algorithm

Amygdala Circuit

Besca tried to remember if the name was familiar to her at all, but she’d never been a particularly fashionable person. Life in RISC had reduced her wardrobe to a series of nearly-indistinguishable long-sleeved shirts and button-ups and dress pants, and now and then she still found herself donning a long coat out of habit from her days in the lab. Thinking about it, she hadn’t owned a purse since she was a teenager; these days anything she couldn’t keep on her phone she kept in her office, where she spent most of her time anyway.

Quinn had been like that for a while, or really, up until now. A lot of pilots tended to eschew fashion for comfort when they were station-side. Dahlia likely wouldn’t wear anything besides sweat pants and a tank top until it was her turn on the Ange, and she suspected the change would be grudging. But now Quinn had something different, something she couldn’t train in, and that had to be kept as far away from a pilot’s regime as possible for its own sake. It was…a relief. It was hopeful. Besca wanted her to have as many opportunities to wear that dress as she could.

She tried not to think of how few that might be. Not now.

As Quinn finished the tour of her room, Besca was surprised by the view. Not that she didn’t see one just like it every day, but there was something about having it in the room. She’d spent such a large chunk of her life in space now, the void didn’t intimidate her like it used to, and she thought she might find a window like that quite pleasant.

The camera flipped back around, and Besca met Quinn’s smile with her own. “You worked hard today huh? You’ve earned some rest in a room like that. Don’t feel bad about sleeping in a bit, too. I know things are less rigid there, you don’t have to prove anything, alright? Get good sleep, don’t forget to eat, and don’t push yourself too hard. Loan or not, the most important thing is that you’re okay. Okay?”

Scion: The Prophecy of Anani

---

The burden of their failure weighed heavy on Ionna’s back as she and Sara made their way to Stern Hill empty-handed. She could see it in the Fire Templar too, and found herself hoping, hypocritically, that the woman wouldn’t blame herself. Nadine had already been gone, and if she had truly been in that helicopter, what were Sara’s options? Blast it and the Scion out of the sky? If anything, Ionna had let them down. She was the Templar of Metal, and if she hadn’t been so hopeless when it came to magic, maybe she could have pulled it out of the sky.

But this wasn’t helping anyone—it certainly wasn’t helping Nadine. The best thing they could do was regroup and hope Dame Irina could organize some sort of rescue party.

Well, actually, that seemed to be about the worst thing they could do.

It seemed like they’d been there all of two seconds before Theobald marched over. The Scion of Fire didn’t look much worse for wear, but Ionna had expected as much; he was probably a more fearsome soldier than most of the Templars. She smiled, glad to see he and everyone else seemed to be in one piece, if not a bit shaken, and left to reunite with Dominka.

She heard the slap and whirled back around, having nearly mistaken it for gunfire. Theobald was already walking away, and Sara followed quietly behind. Ionna was dumbstruck, and deep inside her a tiny flame was incensed, but it was already too late to do anything as the lot of them were ushered onto the train.

Sitting beside Dom, Ionna spent the whole ride watching the Scion of Fire. He was cold. Deceptively inhuman. Her father’s warnings needled her, a mounting dread she couldn’t shake off. Had she been wrong? Was this really what he was? Surely Incepta saw more within him, but then again, her father had always said to trust her own eyes first—not out of sacrilege, she thought, but rather because blind faith was no faith at all. What some might see as a trial to endure, Ionna might see as a challenge to overcome.

So which was Theobald, trial or challenge? She was less sure than before.

Like many others, Ionna drifted through the introduction to their new abode in a daze that she didn’t shake off until the Templars were once again separated from their Scions. Looking around at the giant stained-glass windows, she was struck with a sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t they just done this? She supposed things were a bit more protected here, but still, trading one noble’s mansion for another didn’t sit right with her.

As the Templars entered the ballroom, she handed over her crystal. The attendant paused, glancing at her prosthetic, surprised that it hadn’t come off with the armor. Perhaps they expected she might hand it over as well. It got a snicker out of her.

“Sorry, disarmored, not disarmed,” she said with a wink, and proceeded into the ballroom with the others.

Part of her wanted to find Sara, commiserate, and tell the woman Nadine’s capture wasn’t her fault. But would that really help? Maybe it was better if she just gave her some space, and tried once things were a little less…raw. For now, she decided it was better to focus on quelling her own anxiety. She had a feeling a Dame Irina wasn’t going to be happy with them.

Amygdala Circuit

The whole world drifted away as Quinn spoke, even her voice, in a way. Besca was listening, intently, but at the same time, what she was saying suddenly became so much less important than the fact that she was saying anything at all. Of course, she was glad to hear that the other pilots—or at least some of them—were treating her kindly, and that she enjoyed the amenities the Ange offered; but when it came down to it, Besca would have listened to her read the dictionary for hours without complaining.

Suddenly, she seemed to remember something, and hurried away, leaving Besca with a view of a rather lofty ceiling. Eventually Quinn did return, whisking her away hand-in-screen to a luxurious bathroom that peered back out in the room proper.

Despite the anticipation, Besca couldn’t help but feel relieved again. That was a lot of space, but she was glad Quinn had it. She deserved nice things, things beyond what the Board determined she should have. It was nice to know her time spent there seemed to be, if nothing else, comfortable.

But all of that fled her mind the instant Quinn came back into view.

Besca let out a loud gasp, rocketing up out of her seat so fast it almost toppled over. “Oh my god!” she cried, her voice a thin rasp that still managed to peak the phone’s microphone.

That was a dress. A dress. A really, really nice dress—where had she gotten a dress like that? She supposed there was no shortage of high-end shops on the Ange, but, even considering that, had Quinn really bought it for herself? Besca couldn’t recall her spending money on anything before, she’d always seemed content with whatever the Aerie provided for free. Dahlia was much the same, and it had always rubbed her the wrong way. They were kids, kids were supposed to want things, and she could count on one hand the times either of them had expressed a desire for anything.

It took her a few long moments to realize she was staring, and that she should probably stop doing that.

“Quinn, oh my god,” she said, settling back down in her seat, almost like she was bracing herself. Her heart had nearly burst in her chest when Quinn twirled around, smiling wide as she’d ever seen. “It’s amazing, I can’t believe it. You look beautiful! I don’t—I didn’t think…where did you even get that? It looks like it was made for you. Oh my god, you look perfect.”

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn smiled and Besca felt like the Aerie’s gravity had lapsed. Seeing her, seeing that she was okay brought more relief than a full night’s sleep and breakfast in bed. It had only been a few hours but to her Quinn looked…different. Not better but, not worse either. Tired, absolutely, but surprisingly clear.

It still hurt that she was gone, and that she was obviously struggling. Casoban and Runa had been allies for so long now, their identities were similar in so many ways, but there was no avoiding the lethal combination of homesickness and culture shock. It wouldn’t go away any time soon, Besca knew that much first-hand. Every morning would be weird, and every moment could turn alien without warning. This was only the start, and it would only get tougher.

But, she was smiling.

That was good enough for now.

With a rattled laugh, she leaned back in her chair. “Happy to see you too, hun’. So happy. How are you? How was…well, everything? Are you okay? Did you eat? Did anyone give you trouble?”

God, she should have written a list. She had things to run by Toussaint but for some reason, she hadn’t prepared for the calls that she herself had requested. Oh well, all that really mattered was that she could see her, hear her, and talk to her. At least for a little while.

Amygdala Circuit

It had been one hell of a week. Or day. By the time she finally found a moment to sit down, Besca could hardly tell. For the past few days she’d survived off of a combination of coffee and micro-naps, and while that had done a number on her blood pressure and mental acuity, it had at least kept her going. Today though, the worry had kept her eyes open and her stomach paradoxically empty and without an appetite.

She had been saying Quinn’s name all day to people who only cared about how it looked on a document. No one had asked what she was doing, how she was doing—beyond one asshole prodding about why they didn’t have her client-side medical update yet, and indignantly huffing when Besca explained they couldn’t shove her into the doctor’s office first thing.

Talking with her own Board about pilots was always a grating exercise in retaining her humanity, but hearing this conference call of diplomats and think-tank’s discuss them like spare parts for a car was infuriating. What worked, what didn’t, what needed tuning, what needed replacing. More than once she heard nameless, faceless accountants and lawyers and theorymen bemoan a pilot’s poor performance, and suggest in the most abstract and legalese way that they be replaced as soon as possible.

Toussaint, for his part, vehemently shut down any suggestions towards pruning his own team. Eyes turned instead to the lesser cogs in the Savior Corps machine, the technicians, the low-ranking officials. People who could be removed without fuss. Besca was disheartened by how little she cared by then.

Now it was midnight, and she had another call in…soon. She didn’t know—someone would alert her. Her dinner, a microwaved bowl of pasta, was now cold and mostly untouched as she sat at her desk, head in her hands, and prayed that a vessel in her brain would suddenly pop and bring the nightmare to an end.

Then, her phone rang.

It had been a while since she’d had to quick-draw, she wasn’t sure how good her reflexes still were. But she had that phone up to her ear before the first ring had finished.

“Quinn?” she said, or would have, but there was sobbing in her ears immediately, and the word withered in her throat. She didn’t understand what Quinn meant, but she rarely did in times like this. When she was upset, sometimes she didn’t make much sense, and it was more a task of dissecting the feeling in her words than the words themselves.

Not a particularly difficult task, to be fair. Besca figured Quinn was feeling thereabouts exactly what she was, with an extra dash of homesickness, and a different kind of loneliness.

“I’m here, hun’,” she said, winding the frayed nerves up tight. “Breathe, okay? Breathe for me. Just like we practiced.” she took a deep, exaggerated breath to demonstrate. “You’re okay. Everything’s okay. Toussaint tells me the day’s over—you did it. You made it.”

Amygdala Circuit

Under the fluorescent lights and drumming of the overhead fans, time passed quickly. She was free of the crowds, of all company in fact. Neither the twins nor her nebulous third squad mate joined her, and so she was left to train alone, in the quiet. The gym was rather spacious for a single person, with a wide array of machines and free weights, with a wall of accessories ranging from exercise balls to jump ropes and elastic pulls. Whatever routine she had organized over her time on the Aerie could be readily mimicked and perhaps even improved here.

Getting herself acquainted took time, and when all was said and done, the clock read close to midnight. There wasn’t much of a way to tell, otherwise. It was much the same on the Aerie, but here, the massive windows lining the hall, letting in the light-touched void, could be disorienting. Illun floated below, half sunned and half shadowed, but up here time was almost entirely artificial.

A soft ding sounded from speakers in the ceiling. An automated woman’s voice followed.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

Though, there were no other personnel on the floor. Were there? Perhaps the message was simply automated. Then, behind her, the door to the auto-walkway opened and out walked Sybil, along with two or three crew members carrying what seemed to be empty boxes of art supplies. Maybe the system did know.

Either way, she made it back to her room without incident, and as the door sealed shut behind her, Quinn stood once more in the vastness of her own living space. She had, officially, finished her first day as Quinnlash Loughvein, pilot of the Casobani Savior Corps.

Twenty more to go. For now.

Amygdala Circuit

“Miss Loughvein,” Madam Dague said, handing Quinn a bag from behind the counter. “I would be insulted if you didn’t.”

It didn’t take long for her to get everything packed up, finished by the time the clerk was finished ringing up her dress. It was that easy. A simple swipe and now, the beautiful thing was her beautiful thing. Of course, that simplicity crumbled under more than a moment’s scrutiny; she had plenty of money, yes, but why?

From a certain perspective it had come rather easily. Pilots didn’t often work tirelessly throughout the day, collapsing sore and thankless in the early hours of the morning only to wake up exhausted to do it all over again. There were hordes of people in Illun who likely assumed this was Quinn’s life. Strolling through the most exclusive places in and out of the world, spending exorbitant amounts of cash on a spontaneous shopping sprees and skipping year-long waitlists on a whim for food she wouldn’t finish. Some would deride the lifestyle as detached and wasteful, others would envy it. A few might even envy the parts that afforded her these privileges.

The truth was, plenty of pilots never got to spend the money they made. How much capital did RISC make funneling Safie and Ghaust’s accounts back into their coffers? What had the CSC done with the windfall of Chateau’s demise? Or the pilots Roaki had killed?

Was Quinn’s bank account really a boon? Or was it a grim reminder, a taunt: ‘Even if you never make another cent, you’ll probably be dead before you dent it.’

She left the boutique behind, dress donned, bag in hand, and made a quick turn back for the lift. This time there was no inconspicuous shuffling or ducking of the head or stuffing of the braid to hide behind, and a crowd formed quickly behind her. As before, no one came up close, but several people called out, cheered, some waved small posters of Ablaze. One woman wore a shirt with a cartoonish rendition of Quinn herself on it, braid flowing, with a miniature of her Savior’s cannon hefted onto her shoulder. There were likely a few gift shops scattered throughout the district that would soon sell similar merchandise.

When the lift doors shut, the quiet returned. In the dim metal, Quinn could see a hazy reflection of herself. The silhouette was…unfamiliar, to be sure, even without the details. Who was this shape with her name? Would the girl who had ventured so apprehensively from that room in Hovvi recognize her now? Perhaps she could simply ask.

Before she could though, that reflection split as the doors opened once again, and she returned to the beige silence of the dorms.