Rose stares down at her lap. She's scared and trying to hide it, and she isn't sure if these NWO spooks can see through her BLO. That's what she believes. She has deep-rooted fears of someone messing with her brain again which she doesn't like to show to anyone. So one of her tells is that she looks away, rather than show fear. That's why Rose does it, because she's Henriette Langley.
She's believing something that isn't true. Or at least, she wouldn't have said it was true before she believed it. But now she believes it and it's self-evidently true.
Ignoring her reflection and the way it's waving a copy of 1984 at her - because Henriette's reflection doesn't do that sort of thing - she looks up. There's a tiny tightening of the muscles in her throat, a microtell that someone with a full bioscan might have picked up even with the BLO suppressing the nervous swallow. "What do you want to know, Operative?" she says in a confident, optimised tone. She doesn't believe the hardware in her would let unwanted emotions show, so none are shown. She would like to help them - but she can't. She knows a lot less than they want. Director Belltower doesn't tell her much.
Henriette Langley wouldn't say that 'Henriette' is her mental twin. She'd say that there's a lot of Rose in her, and that changing her name and bits of her past to cover up facts doesn't make her someone else. But 'Henriette' would probably get confused and angry if told that, because she's self-evidently the real Henriette! Stupid... stupid made-up 'real' Henriettes!
'Henriette' goes through her own beliefs with the cynicism of the artist. Some things she doesn't change. Some things she leaves in place as sacrificial information that will hurt her friends if it gets out, but not as much as the truly painful things. She hates the Computer, and if they notice that some of that same hate about the Computer slips through when she talks about the MUSCOVITEs - well, Henriette Langley thinks the MUSCOVITEs are controlled by a void-maddened Computer. That's not surprising, when it comes from the girl who was all but kicked out of Iteration X for attacking a Comptroller for mentioning the Computer in front of her. She can't hide everything from a dedicated NWO scanning team - but she hopes she can hide enough. After all, she's a hot-headed Iterator pilot who relies on her BLO to avoid wearing her heart on her sleeve and Kessler told her once that the NWO tends to underestimate tinheads. He sounded like he was speaking from personal experience there.
But the funny thing is, she's done something like this before. Not at her own volition, but she still has.
The difference is, this time she's doing it to protect Donald and not to kill him. And this time she's choosing to believe something else, not having it forced upon her. And to 'Henriette', that makes all the difference in the world. Because she chooses to believe that is the case.
[Rose - Mind (Do You Like The New Me) - Rose remembers the feeling of her own mind changing when the Anathema activated those codes on her. The codes are gone, but the memories remain. And now she controls her own mind. She can think she's Henriette. If she wants to. She remembers wanting to kill Donald - wanting to help the Tyrants but not being able to help them because Director Belltower keeps a lot of secrets is easy in comparison. She can believe that she doesn't know things she doesn't want to tell them, and she can believe what she's saying is true. She'll do it, because she's acting to protect her friends and it's better this burden falls on her than the real Henriette. She can take it. Enhanced by Manipulation + Style, if enhancement is allowed - and acting to further her Masochist Virtue.]
...
So, the question is what level of difficulty-increaser to give Rose. We have a very nasty balance here, because the Tyrants have enough Prime between them [1] to probably take off a good few successes if they notice it, but they also have a good chance of noticing it so we'd probably need to give it several points of diff increase to get away with it - but each diff increase is a success we could be using. So. Hmm. I'm not sure at the moment, don't have the post-Christmas meal brainpower to spare to do the maths, lol.
(Yes, writing takes less brainpower.)
Hmm. Also, this might not be the best rote for the role. Don't jump behind it without questioning. I need second opinions - maybe there's a better way to cover up than Rose rewriting herself.
[1] Although, amusingly enough, not as much Prime as our party has between them. If we had a prisoner like this, we could spam so much dispelling and countermagic and antimagic at them.
