Update LXII: Predators
JB LXII: Predators
"See," the Jameliabot says cooly, "this is a rather better form of transport." She is driving, and is wearing a wig. Well, more of a wig, because HITMark V hair wasn't really real. The generic dull red car blends in with the other cars on the road as they drive into west London from their arrival at Heathrow.
Donald is altogether less content with this mode of transport, because he's trying to work on a laptop in the back of a fairly small Volvo and the car doesn't even have a minibar. And rather than a holosuite, he has a webcam and headphones.
"So, Ricardo," he says, "where are you?"
"We're just on the final approach," the man on the screen says, "and I'm already in contact with the UK government. I've already confirmed that the watchlist entry for her dates back to that... ah, incident in the UK Embassy in Moscow, and whoever put it in there has used the controversy with the," he coughs, "amorous embassy staff to solidify it. Once we're on the ground, we'll start trying to pin down how her name got on there, to see what we have to work on to get it removed."
"See if you can get it passed off as mistaken identity," Donald says. "She is pretty generic-looking, and there's probably a bunch of private-school educated fucks running these lists who legitimately couldn't tell one Arabic woman apart from another one."
"I wouldn't be too surprised," Ricardo Vega says smoothly. "I'm going to have to turn this off because we're just landing, but I'll be back on in half an hour."
"Got it," Donald says. "I'll be more than grateful for whatever you can get done." Those magic words. Donald doesn't like the word 'bribe'. It's not a bribe, anyway. It's just... employee incentivization. He ends the call. "The support team is getting to work," he says.
"Yes, I heard," says the Jameliabot. "Now, with regards to gathering information from the hospital, I should not be too high visibility. I am wanted by the police, and it would be a bad idea to have me shot at because that would be a breach of secrecy rules if my endoskeleton is revealed. Rosencrantz. Do you feel you can impersonate a journalist? I'll stay here and advise you, while Donald makes use of his contacts. With access to the sensory feed from your eyes, he should be able to run some form of past extrapolation to make use of whatever you see to rearcast whatever I did. I will take that into consideration and provide my judged opinion as to where I will be."
Rosencrantz nods cheerfully. "I've done it before," he says. "I'm just a pretty... sorry, handsome face asking questions. I'll certainly be able to get access to the grounds, and... well, I can change clothes quickly so if I have to 'borrow' some hospital clothes that'll work."
"Good. You probably won't be able to get too close to the blast site, but..."
"Oh, my eyes have an enhance function," Rosencrantz says. "I'll be able to see from the outside. I also have full spectrum vision, so I can get x-ray scans from a distance!"
"Ah." The Jameliabot frowns. "My mind is notably substandard. I should have thought of that. I will have to make a note to myself that this form of self-simulacrum is not an optimal way of getting tasks done. Such a shame. I had hoped that it would allow me to get more work done by delegating simple tasks to duplicates."
Once again, Donald has seen into the way his boss thinks, and it is a strange and alien mode of thought. Not least because she probably wouldn't even ask for more salary for this.
Rosencrantz leaves the car a slight ways away and walks to the hospital. The floor Jamelia was supposed to be on is full of forensics investigators trying to piece together where their "most wanted terrorist" has gone, but he doesn't need to get that close, and if he needed to-well, there were a lot of potential faces to infiltrate as. "Ash Rosencrantz." He waves a press pass at people. It isn't a real ID, but it'll pass basic scrutiny. And if someone is looking for Technocratic IDs being queried-well, that someone is probably whoever tried to kill Director Belltower. Why else, Rosencrantz asks himself, would they want her dead?
For many, many reasons. Thorn says. She's dressed in a woman's suit instead of a men's one, with a skirt instead of dress pants, but the colors and style are near-identical. They could be siblings. Which would make her the wicked sister, Rosencrantz thinks. You're a pawn in a game which has lasted millenia, if not more. Thorn finishes. And there are many, many people who can hold grudges through reincarnations and through history.
"Maybe, but I don't think this is it. Those people would be living in the past," Rosencrantz whispers, so quietly he's sure nobody can hear it. "They'd have taken a different course of action than using unEnlightened personnel to kill her. It'd be dishonorable, remember?" He finishes, remembering the days of the Order of Reason and how the corrupt Reality Deviants of that time called them dishonorable for using that exact tactic.
You've accepted that there are things that your 'science' can't quite explain-you've accepted that Reina Lior existed and she was a 'Reality Deviant' by your standards. Why are you still here, Rose? Thorn asks. She seems genuinely, legitimately curious. You know that the only reason you still exist is because you have value to the corrupt old men of the Technocratic Union, and the moment you don't-
"I'm still here because your 'traditionalist' friends would have me killed as an abomination to nature or the divine or the cycle or whatever they want, or dissect me for fun, or would throw me away as useless the moment I was inconvenient, whereas here-here I at least have something."
They're not all like what your propaganda says.
"Which means a lot of them are." Rosencrantz whispers triumphantly, and Thorn fades out in defeat. Rosencrantz considers, though, that Thorn has gotten something right. Has the Technocracy lost its way, sometime in the past? And what can be done about it? Director Belltower and Serafina seem to be the best hope it has for finding its old ideals-but maybe-maybe even brighter than before. The construct puts the thoughts on the back burner, and starts to scan the hospital with augmented eyes.
A missing IV tube.
"I must have taken it as a weapon. That would have taken time." the voice of the beta-level responds. "So I knew of the attack before it happened. Can you recover the data from the diagnostic machines?"
Yes, Rosencrantz thinks. He can. He dumps the data to Donald's laptop.
"All right." Donald says. "I've bought a high-end SIGINT package from the Enforcers and I'm putting it through its paces-looks like there was a low level of EMI at that point. Someone called her. I've hired a few Russian hackers to decrypt any records the service provider has- and all right. Playing it for all of you, now."
"Listen. You are currently on a terrorist watch list. The British government now thinks that you are a very high-value terrorist. You have five minutes until a commando team raids the hospital and kills you, because they don't want to put you on trial. If I were you, I'd be looking for a way out."
"Who are you and how can I trust you? Who's to say you're not working with that team?"
"Out the window, there will be a black van with no lights on. In thirty seconds, five men will get out of that van. Four of them will be armed with SMGs, the last one is a leader and only has a pistol. You are on the fourth floor, East side, of the hospital. If I wanted you dead, my dear child, I would have done it already."
"You didn't answer my second question."
"I'm like you. A ghost who doesn't have a name anymore. I, however, have plenty of answers to make up for my lack of a name."
"So why can't you tell me these answers right now and save me the trouble?"
"Answers that I cannot give to you directly-you wouldn't believe them if I told you, or maybe I should say the you-that-was and the you-that-will-be will not, even if the you-that-is will. But if I show you where to find this knowledge, perhaps then you will be somewhat more likely to believe."
"Wait, if you don't have a name now, what was your name?"
"A pity things turned out this way, you would have made an excellent disciple. You'll find out in the future later, so there's no harm telling you now. As late as 15 years ago, they called me the Old Man. They called me Senex."
"Senex. Why are these men hunting me?"
"They're misguided tools, used as pawns by something infinitely their greater. They believe that you are a threat to their security. They are much like the ones in Moscow. You will remember who these players are, in time. Right now, you have been rendered a blank slate so you can better learn. To win, you must learn to grasp the past, as well as the future."
"Shit." Donald says. "Shit. Shit. Shit. The fucking Old Man is acting here. And he's just seduced our fucking boss."
"Who is this Old Man?" Rosencrantz asks.
"Senex. The Old Man. He was a Euthanatos Archmast- a high-value Reality Deviant who spent most of his time around Pluto. Nobody could figure out what his game was." Donald says.
"This mission just became time-critical." Jamelia finishes. "We need to recover, and potentially need to disable, myself, and fast. Furthermore, if he's telling parts of the truth, we can assume that the mission this beta-level has no records of is rather important." the HITMark makes a call from the car. "Henriette."
"Director Belltower? Are you bac- oh," she sighs as she realizes it's the beta-level. "What can I do for you?"
"The last thing I remember on this beta-level is sending you to Moscow alongside me, Serafina, and Kessler. I know Kessler doesn't have an ADEI and Serafina is apparently busy dealing with keeping the Construct going while I'm incommunicado. I need you to update me immediately from your ADEI about Moscow."
"It's a bit personal." Donald can hear Henriette blush. "Can I have some time to edit it or-"
"A Reality Deviant HVT is influencing my real self. This mission just became even more time-critical." Jamelia knows that if she had her Genius, if she could think as well as Jamelia-Prime, she'd have said something more sensitive, something intended to reassure her about dumping intimate memories on someone who might be a stranger. But she doesn't have them anymore, so- so she uses the blunt truth. "I apologize for my bluntness, but I'm only a beta-level and we are running out of time."
Henriette is silent for a good half a minute. "Sending it. Please don't talk about this to anyone else."
"I will not."
Memories flood Jamelia, but not her own. Memories of- memories from Henriette, memories of Moscow. A partial picture of what was going on. The Technocracy suffering from rot within, fear and apprehension as she drives a LX-5 (no, not her, Henriette, Jamelia thinks) through the streets of Moscow with a Series P on the roof attempting to accomplish its mission. Talking to herself about Autochthonia. Yui Ayanami's message-the worst part is that the emotional content isn't scrubbed, Jamelia thinks. It's not a NWO hypercram but an unedited block of memories from a young woman. She thinks her way through menus, disables her own tear ducts.
And there are the other ones. The ones that aren't relevant to her, but she can't stop thinking about. About love, both familial and romantic. Who were her parents? She had never known her father. He was a sailor, Jamelia's mother said. One day, he was lost at sea. Her mother died young, left her to fend for herself. And then-love. It had been almost as long. The life of an Operative was never conducive to long-term relationships, but she lacked even the torrid hyperaccelerated romances her colleagues talked about, a few weeks of passion and then disappearing, a new life, a new identity, and often with a heartbroken young man or woman left a significant amount richer. Maybe something about the HITMark and being a beta level is making her fatalistic, but she wonders if she's really that different from the Series P that Serafina killed.
No. That can wait. The mission is more important. The mission is always more important.
"I see." Jamelia finishes. "Our true enemy is responsible-or maybe not. Perhaps they simply took advantage of the situation." Perhaps. She's used to the certainty of gut instinct. She can't figure out which one is more likely-did the rogue Computer engineer this? Did it influence the situation? But then, the Rogue Council is rabidly anti-Technocracy... except they're also noted as being fractious and manipulable. Jamelia Belltower's beta level feels uncertainty. And Jamelia learns a little bit more about herself. She hates uncertainty.
"With two, or possibly three, powerful foes active in London, our timer is short. We're going to need to draw both the killers, and the
"It'll take them a few hours to find out who and . My guess, though?" Donald says. "My guess is someone got paid a lot of money, or maybe a little more than money, to do this." He sounds confident. Jamelia hates that she can't discern if that's just a mask. "Nephandi and hostile EDEs do it all the time-you give a patsy a few parlor tricks like immortality or that body they always wanted, and in turn they give you something else. You find a few people who aren't doing so hot in their jobs-you offer them ways to succeed, no, wait, exceed. Suddenly they get promoted to positions of power-and now you have powerful people who owe you favors, or even better, will do whatever you ask them via their own free will, because they know that you're going to keep lavishing gifts onto them as long as they're potentially helpful-and you can do something like this."
If you think like a Syndicate CEO, this is exactly what you'd do, Donald doesn't say. Because Christos's statements, all the way back from nearly-was it really less than a month ago?-echo in his head. The Rogue Council are spirits created from the Traditions' leaders, play-acting caricatures of those men and women in life. What would that make these hypothetical Syndicate-spirits?
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Construct I-50-B31 is monitoring London through a clever network of ocular parasites. Well, 'parasites', it considers. They're more like symbiotes, since they improve vision and reduce eyestrain-all the better to make sure its spotters stay on the job. Jamelia Belltower, it knows, is a frustrating rogue agent, for all that she's a baseline. She's defeated multiple attempts to have her killed off by the New World Order and Iteration X-so it's fallen onto her, and maybe the Syndicate, to get her killed. The Syndicate. So useless.
If they had waited for it-well, 'her' right now, now-it wouldn't have had to spend all this time because it'd have been there in the first place, but the Syndicate never liked to share. I-50-B31 takes a wild stab and guesses that someone told them how badly Jamelia was impacting their profit margins and they decided to have her axed in their ham-handed ways, trying to be all "subtle" and "unfortunate coincidence". Well, how did that turn out? I-50 thinks smugly.
So here I-50's been waiting for lucky breaks, and lo and behold, there was a person of roughly the same height and build as rogue agent Belltower spotted in a red vehicle, driving towards the hospital. Normal humans couldn't have detained her without paralyzing London-but enhanced fast-Bayesian pattern matching and other strange biotech that I-50 knows it should understand but doesn't quite fully comprehend-because she's out of connection with the Administration and can't download the bioengineering skills-let the posthuman process degraded data in a way which computers couldn't do and humans had almost as many issues doing.
She's trying too hard to look like she's not trying to look like she's obviously not a spy or terrorist, I-50 concludes. I-50 thinks its suit is too tight-it's a men's suit intended for a relatively short man, rather than a tall woman. It could have done the approach in its disguise, but fighting with DNA masking up was rarely a good idea. It could retailor the clothing but that'd be an unnecessary use of resources and risk of Rejection. Maybe next time it looks for a disguise it'll find someone taller.
I-50-B31 considers. There were others with Belltower. One baseline, and another not quite. It wonders if they'll listen to reason, but the Void Engineers didn't, so it doesn't hold out much hope. But there's a first time for everything, and won't those NWO agents and Syndicate executives be incredibly surprised when their subtle plans don't go work out at all and its plans do.
It's interrupted by the few bits that aren't biologically-sourced in its body being pinged. A few ID chips and free floating blood nanos that allow people with valid clearances to inquire about its augmentation structure. It sends back an automatic response ping that identifies it as a V2-Victor Upgrade. Nothing out of the ordinary-it's London, after all, and the rogue Technocrats are operating in the same way they did before they went rogue, probably because they're not led by a gestalt intelligence of absurd power and only barely qualify as sapient beings. V2-Upgrades are commonplace, doing grunt work on behalf of more valuable agents. Yes, nothing wrong with one heading in this direction.
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Donald has a bad feeling about what's going on, as Rosencrantz does her- no, his thing in the hospital, scanning it for clues. Donald is almost certain that bad feeling is unrelated to his chance of suffering from some sort of incurable early-onset testicular cancer approaching 100%. So Donald logs into Iridium-sure, that's technically some sort of super-secret US government spy satellite network but one of his firms designed the real-time imaging systems and do you really think they wouldn't leave backdoors-and he uses one of the functions that the NRO doesn't know anything about. Primal Utility Scanning. A look at the invisible network of true value that connects the world.
There's a faint pulse there that catches his eye. A faint pulse could be a Reality Deviant with a few minor blessings, someone who lucked into a relic with a little bit of power (the Syndicate had a lot of feelers in antiquities auctions for very good reasons), someone who had just cast a spell or activated a Procedure, or someone with very heavy augmentation who was trying to be stealthy. What worries him, and makes him think it's the last, is the fact that the pulse is moving towards them.
He activates another function for an implant ping, and the response identifies the approaching unknown as Vanessa geneline-but something about that rubs him wrong. He sends a brief message to a friend in the Progenitors, his normal source of chemical recreation, and she responds in a few minutes.
"That's an infiltrator construct, probably combat-rated, pretending to be a Vanessa." the message says. There's a long-winded explanation of how she knows. Donald tries to read it, and his eyes glaze over a sentence in.
"Boss. Trouble. Combat construct coming our way."
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Jamelia shakes her head, trying to clear the headache. There's a bit of her which wants to prove this Senex, this Old Man wrong. She can show him if she goes and gets evidence to prove to him who she is. She's just a... an amnesiac spy. Who apparently murdered faith healers and was tortured by religious fanatics and is apparently on the run and is on terrorist watchlists and has the SAS trying to kill her. Yes, that is somewhat of a problem. And also makes going back to HQ a really bad idea. They're trying to burn her - is that the right way of putting it? She isn't sure - so walking into their arms is a really bad idea.
There's more. She could see herself infiltrating HQ again, looking for evidence. She could see all the ways she could have potentially ended up alerting all of London's paramilitary units to her location, or just outright getting killed. That's something normal humans don't do, right? It seemed just like planning, visualizing the floorplan and her options-but it was just so real, as if she had done it before. Or maybe it was just her going even crazier.
She grinds her teeth together. Her only ally is a cryptic old man who claims not to have a name talking to her over the phone. She can't trust him. But he has an advantage over her for the moment and he isn't actively trying to kill her, so she'll play along for now.
Her stomach growls.
How long has it been since she last ate? She legitimately doesn't remember. She can't remember ever eating, but that doesn't actually account for much considering how little remembers.
First things first. Acquire transport. Acquire more than pocket change. Acquire food. Acquire painkillers. And there's a bit of her which feels that she'd be a lot better off if she had a knife.
It's probably the bit of her which shoots faith healers in the face, she considers glumly. Why would she feel that was a good thing to do?
"You've been undermining legitimate medical authorities with your 'herbal treatments'. You've been acting in a way which undermines actual science and medicine for primitivist beliefs that only work when you're there to use your psychic powers to make it work. What happens when you're not here?" she'd said. She remembered it.
So, what? The British government had kill-teams hunting down psychics? She could believe it. Or... hah. Maybe just psychics who refused to work for it. She could believe that, too. She had memories of some... some man from a long time ago. That sounded a lot like some kind of psychic power to her. Past lives and future sight were a psychic thing, right?
Her thoughts lead her to that golden bracelet; the one the Old Man said he'd made. She knew how it worked. She had a gut feeling. Yes, the 'psychic British assassin' hypothesis would explain that inexplicable hypothesis she had about what this could do.
To that end, she waits for another night bus, and rides it until she finds a nightclub. It is getting late... or, rather, it is getting early, and so the place is emptying. There are still a fair few people inside, though, so she slips in. She's sober and awake - everyone else inside is drunk and tired. The golden bracelet is a reassuring weight as she follows the... the feelings of this-is-how-things-are from it, focussing her mind on looking for money and transport. And lo and behold, there's a slightly chubby young man sitting at a table with several empty drinks on it. There are other people at the table with him, but she feels he's the one. Jamelia affects a slightly drunken wobble, and starts chatting him up. He's drunk and not watching her hands. The right moment, the right time, and his bulging wallet with an attached set of keys is in her hand and is rapidly transferred to her back pocket.
Then she only has to suddenly pale, and dash off to the ladies' toilets, and she can go. There's an empty cubicle, and she checks out her acquisition. There's over a hundred pounds in cash in here and she takes all of that and the loose change. Pursing her lips, she takes one of the credit cards too, just in case she turns out to have some psychic power which can be used to guess PINs. There's a bundle of keys attached to the wallet, and she takes the one for the BMW. She doesn't need his house keys, and it'd be cruel to take that too. She'll drop the wallet on the dancefloor, and he can reclaim it.
Fifteen minutes later, Jamelia is carefully maneuvering the BMW out of the car park. It's starting to rain, and she turns on the windscreen wipers. She'll get out of central London, away from all the cameras, and then she'll find somewhere to get food, get coffee, get painkillers and try to think some more about who she is and about the maze she's found herself in.
"Labyrinths are something the seeker after knowledge must face, Cemal," the old man - Lionel, that was it - says. "They are a metaphor for life. One must find one's way through the darkness, to get to the centre wherein lies the truth." Master Lionel sighs. "Of course, the Order has realised the metaphor. We do love our labyrinths. We hide them in holy places, in cities and the wilderness alike. To the unenlightened, they are but stone, where the seeker stumbles around to find some minor prize in the centre. But the enlightened seeker who knows the right route... well. There they might find the truth. There are places in some of our hidden labyrinths where the world itself is folded up, so the seeker might find themselves in some hidden library or - though it may amaze you - in Rome when they started in Paris."
"You do not approve, master?" Cemal says.
"I do not, no," the old man says, shaking his head. "Given my druthers, I would leave the truth out for all to see, I would rather we had wells, not labyrinths, where all could come and drink their fill. But alas, that is not possible. Better that we make a better world where it might be, eh?"
Jamelia shakes away the fleeting fantasy-memory. She can't remember who she is. Why is she remembering something about someone who she's not?
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In the end, she finds a Tesco Metro which is open 24-7. The rain is picking up, and she dashes from her 'borrowed' car into the supermarket. She's taking a risk by doing this, she knows. There's no way she can escape the cameras at the entrance. She'll just have to rely on her hood and keep her head lowered. She picks up a wire basket at the entrance, and drifts down the aisles. She's just another shopper with strange waking hours who's realised that 5am is the best time to grab some things. Maybe she's having to shop before she heads to work. It's not the job of anyone in the shop at the time to wonder about such things, right?
What does she need? What does she need? She needs painkillers. She grabs two boxes of Ibuprofen and throws them into her basket. Then she goes looking for more conventional food. A pack of bagels - she can eat them on the run easily. She pauses, and picks the chives and onions flavoured ones. Sachets of instant coffee, which she can make with any hot water she finds at a service station or something. A sixpack of Red Bull joins it and a 2L bottle of Coca Cola. She needs the energy. Nutribars, chocolate, other things high energy and easy to eat. She adds in some fruit on a whim. She feels like Royal Gala apples. She adds more odds and ends which are long life. She wants several days of food in the back of the car. If necessary, she can ditch it in a wooded area out of satellite coverage and live out of it for a bit.
Jamelia frowns. Out of satellite coverage? Why did she think that. Doesn't she mean 'helicopter coverage'? No, she realises, she is genuinely worried about satellites spying on her.
Bloody British Intelligence, if they can spy on her with satellites. Or ask the Americans to do it for them, possibly.
They don't sell knives here, but they do have some kitchen scissors. They'll have to do. She throws them into her filling up basket. They're joined by some hairclips which she suspects she knows can be used as lockpicks. Frowning, she picks out an umbrella. It is raining, after all.
The light in here is too bright. Or maybe that's her headache. Jamelia wants to get out of here. She can't be seen getting too much. She's paying cash so they won't be able to track her by the card, but she'll want to try to break the PIN on that, she thinks to herself as she waits for the single cashier who's serving a bulky, somewhat dirty man who's wrapped up in an overcoat and smells faintly of wet dog. He's buying meat. She wants them to hurry up. She has to move. She's been in here too long already.
Bleep goes the scanner as each of the packs of meat is scanned. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.
Jamelia's attention is distracted by the sight of a police car outside. It drives by, passing in the night, and moves on. She lets out a relieved breath, and then mentally curses at her laxity. She needs food. She can find somewhere else which does hot coffee, and she can spend a while trying to think about who she is, and try to put everything she can together before she leaves London.
She spends the drive popping painkillers like candy to deal with her worsening headache and looking over her shoulder. Sitting at a table and nursing a black coffee, she thinks, and tries to consider everything she's learned.
She has... psychic powers, maybe? She can see the future and strange past unlives that make no sense, talking about an "Order of Reason" and the "Craftmasons". Some sort of- she hates to use the word, but it seems like it fits-ancient conspiracy? That fights 'magi'. So she's a psychic agent of some government, or maybe the Illuminati, who fights other psychics. She remembers a man- wearing a gas mask? A man who claimed to be psychic. Claimed that stress and pain awakened psychic powers.
There's other fragments of memory, or maybe metaphor. A word. A single, fearsome word. "Control." A moebius strip. A place with cheery pastel walls that nevertheless she found sinister-she knows, somehow, that she's been there, and that the place was not anywhere on Earth. An alabaster tower, extending past the clouds, monolithic and seemingly infinite. A crimson angel made out of blazing metal, fighting demons seemingly made of marble. A world made of machines, sealed far away from Earth, dissolving into a swarm of robotic locusts. A man, a kindly man with a round face and a snow-white beard. A man whose countenance would have reassured her, but somehow she knows is the enemy.
And- and something else. A memory without the cloak of metaphor. A clear memory, like reading off of a file.
"Jamelia Brandt-volunteered for experimental cognitive augmentation therapy..."
"...conditioning will enhance coordination, endurance, and intellectual ability..."
"...psychosurgery preparation at LPF4-E..."
"...integration with minimal side effects..."
LPF4. London, Psychosurgery Facility 4 (Enhancement), as opposed to Psychosurgery (Corrective) or Psychosurgery (Processing). A nondescript and now dilapidated building. Abandoned after... Ragnarok? Equipment stripped, a minimal caretaker crew. Considered low risk, because the files it held talked about people who didn't exist. It was just another bit of covert history. Another piece of the past, another piece of the puzzle. She knows where it is. Or where it was-now it's another abandoned facility guarded by people who fail to understand its importance.
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So, borrowing shaky internet from neighbors made it hard to reliably update, but I'll be in Shenzhen until the 10th and that means pretty much no more updates until then. So enjoy your cliffhanger! Also, enjoy your chance to open-endedly define who Jamelia was. Because of this slightly problematic delay, I'll be giving you a bit more detail in this vote and at least some freedom to do things your way. "Challenges" are things that might show up to stymie that.
Be The Real Jamelia:
[ ] (2.0x) Visit LPF4. It's where you were born again, you're sure of it. Every fiber of your being is telling you that. Acknowledging who you were/are would normally cost you a Willpower point to suppress your Vice-but your Vice is now something else entirely.
Be Jamelia Bellbot:
[ ] (1.2x) Evade the incoming unknown.
What Your Interns Have Learned:
From subpoenaing a fuck of a lot of documents and poring over them for hours and hours, they can tell you that a lot of various counter-terror and intelligence gathering agents have been approving having Jamelia (or an alias of hers) on the list of horrible terrorist bad people. It looks like it's gone through normal channels but the intelligence data is relatively dubious. Not dubious enough that a court would put a stop to it, but it's shady as hell.
They can't get access to any evaluations, but those might shed some light on what's going on.
If you get Henriette to hack GCHQ/MI5/MI6 you can pretty much guess that yes, they were in fact fairly middling or below-average performers until suddenly, their job performance shot up up up. Most of them about a year ago.
-Yes, there is a joke about the British government being subverted by inhuman and sociopathic forces who believe in laissez-faire economics here.
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"See," the Jameliabot says cooly, "this is a rather better form of transport." She is driving, and is wearing a wig. Well, more of a wig, because HITMark V hair wasn't really real. The generic dull red car blends in with the other cars on the road as they drive into west London from their arrival at Heathrow.
Donald is altogether less content with this mode of transport, because he's trying to work on a laptop in the back of a fairly small Volvo and the car doesn't even have a minibar. And rather than a holosuite, he has a webcam and headphones.
"So, Ricardo," he says, "where are you?"
"We're just on the final approach," the man on the screen says, "and I'm already in contact with the UK government. I've already confirmed that the watchlist entry for her dates back to that... ah, incident in the UK Embassy in Moscow, and whoever put it in there has used the controversy with the," he coughs, "amorous embassy staff to solidify it. Once we're on the ground, we'll start trying to pin down how her name got on there, to see what we have to work on to get it removed."
"See if you can get it passed off as mistaken identity," Donald says. "She is pretty generic-looking, and there's probably a bunch of private-school educated fucks running these lists who legitimately couldn't tell one Arabic woman apart from another one."
"I wouldn't be too surprised," Ricardo Vega says smoothly. "I'm going to have to turn this off because we're just landing, but I'll be back on in half an hour."
"Got it," Donald says. "I'll be more than grateful for whatever you can get done." Those magic words. Donald doesn't like the word 'bribe'. It's not a bribe, anyway. It's just... employee incentivization. He ends the call. "The support team is getting to work," he says.
"Yes, I heard," says the Jameliabot. "Now, with regards to gathering information from the hospital, I should not be too high visibility. I am wanted by the police, and it would be a bad idea to have me shot at because that would be a breach of secrecy rules if my endoskeleton is revealed. Rosencrantz. Do you feel you can impersonate a journalist? I'll stay here and advise you, while Donald makes use of his contacts. With access to the sensory feed from your eyes, he should be able to run some form of past extrapolation to make use of whatever you see to rearcast whatever I did. I will take that into consideration and provide my judged opinion as to where I will be."
Rosencrantz nods cheerfully. "I've done it before," he says. "I'm just a pretty... sorry, handsome face asking questions. I'll certainly be able to get access to the grounds, and... well, I can change clothes quickly so if I have to 'borrow' some hospital clothes that'll work."
"Good. You probably won't be able to get too close to the blast site, but..."
"Oh, my eyes have an enhance function," Rosencrantz says. "I'll be able to see from the outside. I also have full spectrum vision, so I can get x-ray scans from a distance!"
"Ah." The Jameliabot frowns. "My mind is notably substandard. I should have thought of that. I will have to make a note to myself that this form of self-simulacrum is not an optimal way of getting tasks done. Such a shame. I had hoped that it would allow me to get more work done by delegating simple tasks to duplicates."
Once again, Donald has seen into the way his boss thinks, and it is a strange and alien mode of thought. Not least because she probably wouldn't even ask for more salary for this.
Rosencrantz leaves the car a slight ways away and walks to the hospital. The floor Jamelia was supposed to be on is full of forensics investigators trying to piece together where their "most wanted terrorist" has gone, but he doesn't need to get that close, and if he needed to-well, there were a lot of potential faces to infiltrate as. "Ash Rosencrantz." He waves a press pass at people. It isn't a real ID, but it'll pass basic scrutiny. And if someone is looking for Technocratic IDs being queried-well, that someone is probably whoever tried to kill Director Belltower. Why else, Rosencrantz asks himself, would they want her dead?
For many, many reasons. Thorn says. She's dressed in a woman's suit instead of a men's one, with a skirt instead of dress pants, but the colors and style are near-identical. They could be siblings. Which would make her the wicked sister, Rosencrantz thinks. You're a pawn in a game which has lasted millenia, if not more. Thorn finishes. And there are many, many people who can hold grudges through reincarnations and through history.
"Maybe, but I don't think this is it. Those people would be living in the past," Rosencrantz whispers, so quietly he's sure nobody can hear it. "They'd have taken a different course of action than using unEnlightened personnel to kill her. It'd be dishonorable, remember?" He finishes, remembering the days of the Order of Reason and how the corrupt Reality Deviants of that time called them dishonorable for using that exact tactic.
You've accepted that there are things that your 'science' can't quite explain-you've accepted that Reina Lior existed and she was a 'Reality Deviant' by your standards. Why are you still here, Rose? Thorn asks. She seems genuinely, legitimately curious. You know that the only reason you still exist is because you have value to the corrupt old men of the Technocratic Union, and the moment you don't-
"I'm still here because your 'traditionalist' friends would have me killed as an abomination to nature or the divine or the cycle or whatever they want, or dissect me for fun, or would throw me away as useless the moment I was inconvenient, whereas here-here I at least have something."
They're not all like what your propaganda says.
"Which means a lot of them are." Rosencrantz whispers triumphantly, and Thorn fades out in defeat. Rosencrantz considers, though, that Thorn has gotten something right. Has the Technocracy lost its way, sometime in the past? And what can be done about it? Director Belltower and Serafina seem to be the best hope it has for finding its old ideals-but maybe-maybe even brighter than before. The construct puts the thoughts on the back burner, and starts to scan the hospital with augmented eyes.
A missing IV tube.
"I must have taken it as a weapon. That would have taken time." the voice of the beta-level responds. "So I knew of the attack before it happened. Can you recover the data from the diagnostic machines?"
Yes, Rosencrantz thinks. He can. He dumps the data to Donald's laptop.
"All right." Donald says. "I've bought a high-end SIGINT package from the Enforcers and I'm putting it through its paces-looks like there was a low level of EMI at that point. Someone called her. I've hired a few Russian hackers to decrypt any records the service provider has- and all right. Playing it for all of you, now."
"Listen. You are currently on a terrorist watch list. The British government now thinks that you are a very high-value terrorist. You have five minutes until a commando team raids the hospital and kills you, because they don't want to put you on trial. If I were you, I'd be looking for a way out."
"Who are you and how can I trust you? Who's to say you're not working with that team?"
"Out the window, there will be a black van with no lights on. In thirty seconds, five men will get out of that van. Four of them will be armed with SMGs, the last one is a leader and only has a pistol. You are on the fourth floor, East side, of the hospital. If I wanted you dead, my dear child, I would have done it already."
"You didn't answer my second question."
"I'm like you. A ghost who doesn't have a name anymore. I, however, have plenty of answers to make up for my lack of a name."
"So why can't you tell me these answers right now and save me the trouble?"
"Answers that I cannot give to you directly-you wouldn't believe them if I told you, or maybe I should say the you-that-was and the you-that-will-be will not, even if the you-that-is will. But if I show you where to find this knowledge, perhaps then you will be somewhat more likely to believe."
"Wait, if you don't have a name now, what was your name?"
"A pity things turned out this way, you would have made an excellent disciple. You'll find out in the future later, so there's no harm telling you now. As late as 15 years ago, they called me the Old Man. They called me Senex."
"Senex. Why are these men hunting me?"
"They're misguided tools, used as pawns by something infinitely their greater. They believe that you are a threat to their security. They are much like the ones in Moscow. You will remember who these players are, in time. Right now, you have been rendered a blank slate so you can better learn. To win, you must learn to grasp the past, as well as the future."
"Shit." Donald says. "Shit. Shit. Shit. The fucking Old Man is acting here. And he's just seduced our fucking boss."
"Who is this Old Man?" Rosencrantz asks.
"Senex. The Old Man. He was a Euthanatos Archmast- a high-value Reality Deviant who spent most of his time around Pluto. Nobody could figure out what his game was." Donald says.
"This mission just became time-critical." Jamelia finishes. "We need to recover, and potentially need to disable, myself, and fast. Furthermore, if he's telling parts of the truth, we can assume that the mission this beta-level has no records of is rather important." the HITMark makes a call from the car. "Henriette."
"Director Belltower? Are you bac- oh," she sighs as she realizes it's the beta-level. "What can I do for you?"
"The last thing I remember on this beta-level is sending you to Moscow alongside me, Serafina, and Kessler. I know Kessler doesn't have an ADEI and Serafina is apparently busy dealing with keeping the Construct going while I'm incommunicado. I need you to update me immediately from your ADEI about Moscow."
"It's a bit personal." Donald can hear Henriette blush. "Can I have some time to edit it or-"
"A Reality Deviant HVT is influencing my real self. This mission just became even more time-critical." Jamelia knows that if she had her Genius, if she could think as well as Jamelia-Prime, she'd have said something more sensitive, something intended to reassure her about dumping intimate memories on someone who might be a stranger. But she doesn't have them anymore, so- so she uses the blunt truth. "I apologize for my bluntness, but I'm only a beta-level and we are running out of time."
Henriette is silent for a good half a minute. "Sending it. Please don't talk about this to anyone else."
"I will not."
Memories flood Jamelia, but not her own. Memories of- memories from Henriette, memories of Moscow. A partial picture of what was going on. The Technocracy suffering from rot within, fear and apprehension as she drives a LX-5 (no, not her, Henriette, Jamelia thinks) through the streets of Moscow with a Series P on the roof attempting to accomplish its mission. Talking to herself about Autochthonia. Yui Ayanami's message-the worst part is that the emotional content isn't scrubbed, Jamelia thinks. It's not a NWO hypercram but an unedited block of memories from a young woman. She thinks her way through menus, disables her own tear ducts.
And there are the other ones. The ones that aren't relevant to her, but she can't stop thinking about. About love, both familial and romantic. Who were her parents? She had never known her father. He was a sailor, Jamelia's mother said. One day, he was lost at sea. Her mother died young, left her to fend for herself. And then-love. It had been almost as long. The life of an Operative was never conducive to long-term relationships, but she lacked even the torrid hyperaccelerated romances her colleagues talked about, a few weeks of passion and then disappearing, a new life, a new identity, and often with a heartbroken young man or woman left a significant amount richer. Maybe something about the HITMark and being a beta level is making her fatalistic, but she wonders if she's really that different from the Series P that Serafina killed.
No. That can wait. The mission is more important. The mission is always more important.
"I see." Jamelia finishes. "Our true enemy is responsible-or maybe not. Perhaps they simply took advantage of the situation." Perhaps. She's used to the certainty of gut instinct. She can't figure out which one is more likely-did the rogue Computer engineer this? Did it influence the situation? But then, the Rogue Council is rabidly anti-Technocracy... except they're also noted as being fractious and manipulable. Jamelia Belltower's beta level feels uncertainty. And Jamelia learns a little bit more about herself. She hates uncertainty.
"With two, or possibly three, powerful foes active in London, our timer is short. We're going to need to draw both the killers, and the
"It'll take them a few hours to find out who and . My guess, though?" Donald says. "My guess is someone got paid a lot of money, or maybe a little more than money, to do this." He sounds confident. Jamelia hates that she can't discern if that's just a mask. "Nephandi and hostile EDEs do it all the time-you give a patsy a few parlor tricks like immortality or that body they always wanted, and in turn they give you something else. You find a few people who aren't doing so hot in their jobs-you offer them ways to succeed, no, wait, exceed. Suddenly they get promoted to positions of power-and now you have powerful people who owe you favors, or even better, will do whatever you ask them via their own free will, because they know that you're going to keep lavishing gifts onto them as long as they're potentially helpful-and you can do something like this."
If you think like a Syndicate CEO, this is exactly what you'd do, Donald doesn't say. Because Christos's statements, all the way back from nearly-was it really less than a month ago?-echo in his head. The Rogue Council are spirits created from the Traditions' leaders, play-acting caricatures of those men and women in life. What would that make these hypothetical Syndicate-spirits?
****************************************************************************
Construct I-50-B31 is monitoring London through a clever network of ocular parasites. Well, 'parasites', it considers. They're more like symbiotes, since they improve vision and reduce eyestrain-all the better to make sure its spotters stay on the job. Jamelia Belltower, it knows, is a frustrating rogue agent, for all that she's a baseline. She's defeated multiple attempts to have her killed off by the New World Order and Iteration X-so it's fallen onto her, and maybe the Syndicate, to get her killed. The Syndicate. So useless.
If they had waited for it-well, 'her' right now, now-it wouldn't have had to spend all this time because it'd have been there in the first place, but the Syndicate never liked to share. I-50-B31 takes a wild stab and guesses that someone told them how badly Jamelia was impacting their profit margins and they decided to have her axed in their ham-handed ways, trying to be all "subtle" and "unfortunate coincidence". Well, how did that turn out? I-50 thinks smugly.
So here I-50's been waiting for lucky breaks, and lo and behold, there was a person of roughly the same height and build as rogue agent Belltower spotted in a red vehicle, driving towards the hospital. Normal humans couldn't have detained her without paralyzing London-but enhanced fast-Bayesian pattern matching and other strange biotech that I-50 knows it should understand but doesn't quite fully comprehend-because she's out of connection with the Administration and can't download the bioengineering skills-let the posthuman process degraded data in a way which computers couldn't do and humans had almost as many issues doing.
She's trying too hard to look like she's not trying to look like she's obviously not a spy or terrorist, I-50 concludes. I-50 thinks its suit is too tight-it's a men's suit intended for a relatively short man, rather than a tall woman. It could have done the approach in its disguise, but fighting with DNA masking up was rarely a good idea. It could retailor the clothing but that'd be an unnecessary use of resources and risk of Rejection. Maybe next time it looks for a disguise it'll find someone taller.
I-50-B31 considers. There were others with Belltower. One baseline, and another not quite. It wonders if they'll listen to reason, but the Void Engineers didn't, so it doesn't hold out much hope. But there's a first time for everything, and won't those NWO agents and Syndicate executives be incredibly surprised when their subtle plans don't go work out at all and its plans do.
It's interrupted by the few bits that aren't biologically-sourced in its body being pinged. A few ID chips and free floating blood nanos that allow people with valid clearances to inquire about its augmentation structure. It sends back an automatic response ping that identifies it as a V2-Victor Upgrade. Nothing out of the ordinary-it's London, after all, and the rogue Technocrats are operating in the same way they did before they went rogue, probably because they're not led by a gestalt intelligence of absurd power and only barely qualify as sapient beings. V2-Upgrades are commonplace, doing grunt work on behalf of more valuable agents. Yes, nothing wrong with one heading in this direction.
****************************************************************************
Donald has a bad feeling about what's going on, as Rosencrantz does her- no, his thing in the hospital, scanning it for clues. Donald is almost certain that bad feeling is unrelated to his chance of suffering from some sort of incurable early-onset testicular cancer approaching 100%. So Donald logs into Iridium-sure, that's technically some sort of super-secret US government spy satellite network but one of his firms designed the real-time imaging systems and do you really think they wouldn't leave backdoors-and he uses one of the functions that the NRO doesn't know anything about. Primal Utility Scanning. A look at the invisible network of true value that connects the world.
There's a faint pulse there that catches his eye. A faint pulse could be a Reality Deviant with a few minor blessings, someone who lucked into a relic with a little bit of power (the Syndicate had a lot of feelers in antiquities auctions for very good reasons), someone who had just cast a spell or activated a Procedure, or someone with very heavy augmentation who was trying to be stealthy. What worries him, and makes him think it's the last, is the fact that the pulse is moving towards them.
He activates another function for an implant ping, and the response identifies the approaching unknown as Vanessa geneline-but something about that rubs him wrong. He sends a brief message to a friend in the Progenitors, his normal source of chemical recreation, and she responds in a few minutes.
"That's an infiltrator construct, probably combat-rated, pretending to be a Vanessa." the message says. There's a long-winded explanation of how she knows. Donald tries to read it, and his eyes glaze over a sentence in.
"Boss. Trouble. Combat construct coming our way."
****************************************************************************
Jamelia shakes her head, trying to clear the headache. There's a bit of her which wants to prove this Senex, this Old Man wrong. She can show him if she goes and gets evidence to prove to him who she is. She's just a... an amnesiac spy. Who apparently murdered faith healers and was tortured by religious fanatics and is apparently on the run and is on terrorist watchlists and has the SAS trying to kill her. Yes, that is somewhat of a problem. And also makes going back to HQ a really bad idea. They're trying to burn her - is that the right way of putting it? She isn't sure - so walking into their arms is a really bad idea.
There's more. She could see herself infiltrating HQ again, looking for evidence. She could see all the ways she could have potentially ended up alerting all of London's paramilitary units to her location, or just outright getting killed. That's something normal humans don't do, right? It seemed just like planning, visualizing the floorplan and her options-but it was just so real, as if she had done it before. Or maybe it was just her going even crazier.
She grinds her teeth together. Her only ally is a cryptic old man who claims not to have a name talking to her over the phone. She can't trust him. But he has an advantage over her for the moment and he isn't actively trying to kill her, so she'll play along for now.
Her stomach growls.
How long has it been since she last ate? She legitimately doesn't remember. She can't remember ever eating, but that doesn't actually account for much considering how little remembers.
First things first. Acquire transport. Acquire more than pocket change. Acquire food. Acquire painkillers. And there's a bit of her which feels that she'd be a lot better off if she had a knife.
It's probably the bit of her which shoots faith healers in the face, she considers glumly. Why would she feel that was a good thing to do?
"You've been undermining legitimate medical authorities with your 'herbal treatments'. You've been acting in a way which undermines actual science and medicine for primitivist beliefs that only work when you're there to use your psychic powers to make it work. What happens when you're not here?" she'd said. She remembered it.
So, what? The British government had kill-teams hunting down psychics? She could believe it. Or... hah. Maybe just psychics who refused to work for it. She could believe that, too. She had memories of some... some man from a long time ago. That sounded a lot like some kind of psychic power to her. Past lives and future sight were a psychic thing, right?
Her thoughts lead her to that golden bracelet; the one the Old Man said he'd made. She knew how it worked. She had a gut feeling. Yes, the 'psychic British assassin' hypothesis would explain that inexplicable hypothesis she had about what this could do.
To that end, she waits for another night bus, and rides it until she finds a nightclub. It is getting late... or, rather, it is getting early, and so the place is emptying. There are still a fair few people inside, though, so she slips in. She's sober and awake - everyone else inside is drunk and tired. The golden bracelet is a reassuring weight as she follows the... the feelings of this-is-how-things-are from it, focussing her mind on looking for money and transport. And lo and behold, there's a slightly chubby young man sitting at a table with several empty drinks on it. There are other people at the table with him, but she feels he's the one. Jamelia affects a slightly drunken wobble, and starts chatting him up. He's drunk and not watching her hands. The right moment, the right time, and his bulging wallet with an attached set of keys is in her hand and is rapidly transferred to her back pocket.
Then she only has to suddenly pale, and dash off to the ladies' toilets, and she can go. There's an empty cubicle, and she checks out her acquisition. There's over a hundred pounds in cash in here and she takes all of that and the loose change. Pursing her lips, she takes one of the credit cards too, just in case she turns out to have some psychic power which can be used to guess PINs. There's a bundle of keys attached to the wallet, and she takes the one for the BMW. She doesn't need his house keys, and it'd be cruel to take that too. She'll drop the wallet on the dancefloor, and he can reclaim it.
Fifteen minutes later, Jamelia is carefully maneuvering the BMW out of the car park. It's starting to rain, and she turns on the windscreen wipers. She'll get out of central London, away from all the cameras, and then she'll find somewhere to get food, get coffee, get painkillers and try to think some more about who she is and about the maze she's found herself in.
"Labyrinths are something the seeker after knowledge must face, Cemal," the old man - Lionel, that was it - says. "They are a metaphor for life. One must find one's way through the darkness, to get to the centre wherein lies the truth." Master Lionel sighs. "Of course, the Order has realised the metaphor. We do love our labyrinths. We hide them in holy places, in cities and the wilderness alike. To the unenlightened, they are but stone, where the seeker stumbles around to find some minor prize in the centre. But the enlightened seeker who knows the right route... well. There they might find the truth. There are places in some of our hidden labyrinths where the world itself is folded up, so the seeker might find themselves in some hidden library or - though it may amaze you - in Rome when they started in Paris."
"You do not approve, master?" Cemal says.
"I do not, no," the old man says, shaking his head. "Given my druthers, I would leave the truth out for all to see, I would rather we had wells, not labyrinths, where all could come and drink their fill. But alas, that is not possible. Better that we make a better world where it might be, eh?"
Jamelia shakes away the fleeting fantasy-memory. She can't remember who she is. Why is she remembering something about someone who she's not?
****************************************************************************
In the end, she finds a Tesco Metro which is open 24-7. The rain is picking up, and she dashes from her 'borrowed' car into the supermarket. She's taking a risk by doing this, she knows. There's no way she can escape the cameras at the entrance. She'll just have to rely on her hood and keep her head lowered. She picks up a wire basket at the entrance, and drifts down the aisles. She's just another shopper with strange waking hours who's realised that 5am is the best time to grab some things. Maybe she's having to shop before she heads to work. It's not the job of anyone in the shop at the time to wonder about such things, right?
What does she need? What does she need? She needs painkillers. She grabs two boxes of Ibuprofen and throws them into her basket. Then she goes looking for more conventional food. A pack of bagels - she can eat them on the run easily. She pauses, and picks the chives and onions flavoured ones. Sachets of instant coffee, which she can make with any hot water she finds at a service station or something. A sixpack of Red Bull joins it and a 2L bottle of Coca Cola. She needs the energy. Nutribars, chocolate, other things high energy and easy to eat. She adds in some fruit on a whim. She feels like Royal Gala apples. She adds more odds and ends which are long life. She wants several days of food in the back of the car. If necessary, she can ditch it in a wooded area out of satellite coverage and live out of it for a bit.
Jamelia frowns. Out of satellite coverage? Why did she think that. Doesn't she mean 'helicopter coverage'? No, she realises, she is genuinely worried about satellites spying on her.
Bloody British Intelligence, if they can spy on her with satellites. Or ask the Americans to do it for them, possibly.
They don't sell knives here, but they do have some kitchen scissors. They'll have to do. She throws them into her filling up basket. They're joined by some hairclips which she suspects she knows can be used as lockpicks. Frowning, she picks out an umbrella. It is raining, after all.
The light in here is too bright. Or maybe that's her headache. Jamelia wants to get out of here. She can't be seen getting too much. She's paying cash so they won't be able to track her by the card, but she'll want to try to break the PIN on that, she thinks to herself as she waits for the single cashier who's serving a bulky, somewhat dirty man who's wrapped up in an overcoat and smells faintly of wet dog. He's buying meat. She wants them to hurry up. She has to move. She's been in here too long already.
Bleep goes the scanner as each of the packs of meat is scanned. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.
Jamelia's attention is distracted by the sight of a police car outside. It drives by, passing in the night, and moves on. She lets out a relieved breath, and then mentally curses at her laxity. She needs food. She can find somewhere else which does hot coffee, and she can spend a while trying to think about who she is, and try to put everything she can together before she leaves London.
She spends the drive popping painkillers like candy to deal with her worsening headache and looking over her shoulder. Sitting at a table and nursing a black coffee, she thinks, and tries to consider everything she's learned.
She has... psychic powers, maybe? She can see the future and strange past unlives that make no sense, talking about an "Order of Reason" and the "Craftmasons". Some sort of- she hates to use the word, but it seems like it fits-ancient conspiracy? That fights 'magi'. So she's a psychic agent of some government, or maybe the Illuminati, who fights other psychics. She remembers a man- wearing a gas mask? A man who claimed to be psychic. Claimed that stress and pain awakened psychic powers.
There's other fragments of memory, or maybe metaphor. A word. A single, fearsome word. "Control." A moebius strip. A place with cheery pastel walls that nevertheless she found sinister-she knows, somehow, that she's been there, and that the place was not anywhere on Earth. An alabaster tower, extending past the clouds, monolithic and seemingly infinite. A crimson angel made out of blazing metal, fighting demons seemingly made of marble. A world made of machines, sealed far away from Earth, dissolving into a swarm of robotic locusts. A man, a kindly man with a round face and a snow-white beard. A man whose countenance would have reassured her, but somehow she knows is the enemy.
And- and something else. A memory without the cloak of metaphor. A clear memory, like reading off of a file.
"Jamelia Brandt-volunteered for experimental cognitive augmentation therapy..."
"...conditioning will enhance coordination, endurance, and intellectual ability..."
"...psychosurgery preparation at LPF4-E..."
"...integration with minimal side effects..."
LPF4. London, Psychosurgery Facility 4 (Enhancement), as opposed to Psychosurgery (Corrective) or Psychosurgery (Processing). A nondescript and now dilapidated building. Abandoned after... Ragnarok? Equipment stripped, a minimal caretaker crew. Considered low risk, because the files it held talked about people who didn't exist. It was just another bit of covert history. Another piece of the past, another piece of the puzzle. She knows where it is. Or where it was-now it's another abandoned facility guarded by people who fail to understand its importance.
___________________________________________________________________________
So, borrowing shaky internet from neighbors made it hard to reliably update, but I'll be in Shenzhen until the 10th and that means pretty much no more updates until then. So enjoy your cliffhanger! Also, enjoy your chance to open-endedly define who Jamelia was. Because of this slightly problematic delay, I'll be giving you a bit more detail in this vote and at least some freedom to do things your way. "Challenges" are things that might show up to stymie that.
Be The Real Jamelia:
[ ] (2.0x) Visit LPF4. It's where you were born again, you're sure of it. Every fiber of your being is telling you that. Acknowledging who you were/are would normally cost you a Willpower point to suppress your Vice-but your Vice is now something else entirely.
Challenges: Sleeper guards, Security HITMarks (the low-end Mark Vs), nearby squatters, 1980s-era automated security
This is a chance to define who Jamelia was before INVISIBLE BEAR within reason, and possibly read the sordid details about how HELMETSHRIKE fell apart.
[ ] (1.25x) Go to the old mansion in the countryside.Challenges: Not being spotted, transportation, chase scenes, your Caretaker vice when someone really needs help
It's chock full of Order of Reason trinkets and history, held by an elderly caretaker descended from someone who Jamelia might have known in a past or current life. Cemal? Reina? Maybe even Blanc's son or daughter. They are of course, quite oblivious about the treasure trove-but it's a chance to learn about the Order.
[ ] (1.5x) Senex needs to give you more information.Challenges: Senex, amnesia, the persistent and stealthy Resident effect which has Jamelia's face and a reward of up to several million pounds (motivating people via money, it's a Correspondence/Entropy/Mind effect that makes sure armed police will be around to bog her down the moment someone does spot her-note that Jamelia has no idea this is currently active).
If you want to find out about the Other Side-this is your chance.
[ ] Write-inBe Jamelia Bellbot:
[ ] (1.2x) Evade the incoming unknown.
The low-risk, low-reward option. May lead to a car chase dependent on whether or not you like car chases. You are totally allowed to knock "Isobel" off the road into a flaming wreck, because it (she) will survive it and hold no hard feelings.
[ ] (0.8x) You wanted to find out who's here to Hey, you get to play with the Transhumans now! They're basically the Borg, except a bit sexier. I-50-B31 is, in fact, fully equipped to wreck a HITMark or two but will retreat the moment it realizes that she's dealing with a fake Jamelia. This will probably involve Rose(ncrantz) also being more than a little wrecked.
Challenges: Explaining why Jamelia Bellbot and Rose(ncrantz) should not go to a hospital despite eyewitnesses seeing them being stabbed/shot a half-dozen times each, I-50-B31, Rose(ncrantz)'s inability to understand innuendo
Things that can also show up: Transhuman ideology, Threat Null's existence in general, I-50-B31 being moe, innuendo
[ ] Write-inWhat Your Interns Have Learned:
From subpoenaing a fuck of a lot of documents and poring over them for hours and hours, they can tell you that a lot of various counter-terror and intelligence gathering agents have been approving having Jamelia (or an alias of hers) on the list of horrible terrorist bad people. It looks like it's gone through normal channels but the intelligence data is relatively dubious. Not dubious enough that a court would put a stop to it, but it's shady as hell.
They can't get access to any evaluations, but those might shed some light on what's going on.
If you get Henriette to hack GCHQ/MI5/MI6 you can pretty much guess that yes, they were in fact fairly middling or below-average performers until suddenly, their job performance shot up up up. Most of them about a year ago.
-Yes, there is a joke about the British government being subverted by inhuman and sociopathic forces who believe in laissez-faire economics here.
___________________________________________________________________________
Willpower: 9/9
Prime Energy: 5/5
Health Levels: -0/-0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-4/Incapacitated/Dying
Current Injuries: Splitting Headache (0 Bashing levels)
Current Effects: None
Special Abilities:
Freeflow: +1 automatic success to jumping rolls, ignores fall damage, can run straight up vertical surfaces
Paradox: 0
Soak: 2B/1L/0A (Stolen clothing, 0B/0L/0A)
Dodge DV: 11/11
Enlightenment: 3
Spheres: Correspondence 1, Entropy 1, Time 2, Forces 1, Mind 1(f)
Prime Energy: 5/5
Health Levels: -0/-0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-4/Incapacitated/Dying
Current Injuries: Splitting Headache (0 Bashing levels)
Current Effects: None
Special Abilities:
Freeflow: +1 automatic success to jumping rolls, ignores fall damage, can run straight up vertical surfaces
Paradox: 0
Soak: 2B/1L/0A (Stolen clothing, 0B/0L/0A)
Dodge DV: 11/11
Enlightenment: 3
Spheres: Correspondence 1, Entropy 1, Time 2, Forces 1, Mind 1(f)
Willpower: 9/9
Prime Energy: N/A
Health Levels: -0 x 6/-1 x 4/-2 x 4/-4 x 2/Incapacitated/Dying
System Integrity Monitor: No Damage
Special Abilities:
IX-22 Chain Gun [RETRACTED], [AMMUNITION: 20mm PRIMIUM x 50/20mm HVAP x 100/20mm HEAB x 50]
Monofilament Primium Talons [RETRACTED]
Stealth Shielding [ACTIVE], +2 difficulty for Life/Matter scans to detect HITMark
Paradox: 5 (5 permanent)
Soak: 10B/10L/4A, +3B/3L/3A against magical attack (Stylish black suit, 0B/0L/0A)
Dodge DV: 8/8
Enlightenment: None
Spheres: None
Prime Energy: N/A
Health Levels: -0 x 6/-1 x 4/-2 x 4/-4 x 2/Incapacitated/Dying
System Integrity Monitor: No Damage
Special Abilities:
IX-22 Chain Gun [RETRACTED], [AMMUNITION: 20mm PRIMIUM x 50/20mm HVAP x 100/20mm HEAB x 50]
Monofilament Primium Talons [RETRACTED]
Stealth Shielding [ACTIVE], +2 difficulty for Life/Matter scans to detect HITMark
Paradox: 5 (5 permanent)
Soak: 10B/10L/4A, +3B/3L/3A against magical attack (Stylish black suit, 0B/0L/0A)
Dodge DV: 8/8
Enlightenment: None
Spheres: None
Willpower: 8/8
Prime Energy: 3/3
Health Levels: -0x 4/-1 x 4/-2 x 4/-4 x 3/Incapacitated/Dying. Regenerates 1 Bashing/Lethal HL a round no matter what. Heals Aggravated damage at normal speed.
Current Damage: None
Vampire Heart: 10/10 Blood Points-Spend 1 Blood Point to gain an automatic success on Strength rolls, get an extra action for the turn, or heal 2 Bashing/1 Lethal health level instantly.
Undead Strength: 1 Aggravated HL to activate, adds up to its rating in automatic successes to Strength rolls for feats of strength and damage.
Predator's Pheromones: 6/6 Prime Energy. Activate to add +3 automatic successes on social rolls based off of sexuality, majesty, or simply dominating someone else's will.
Current Effects:
Rosencrantz (and Guildernstern) is (are) Alive (Life 3 disguise)
DV: 14/14
Prime Energy: 3/3
Health Levels: -0x 4/-1 x 4/-2 x 4/-4 x 3/Incapacitated/Dying. Regenerates 1 Bashing/Lethal HL a round no matter what. Heals Aggravated damage at normal speed.
Current Damage: None
Vampire Heart: 10/10 Blood Points-Spend 1 Blood Point to gain an automatic success on Strength rolls, get an extra action for the turn, or heal 2 Bashing/1 Lethal health level instantly.
Undead Strength: 1 Aggravated HL to activate, adds up to its rating in automatic successes to Strength rolls for feats of strength and damage.
Predator's Pheromones: 6/6 Prime Energy. Activate to add +3 automatic successes on social rolls based off of sexuality, majesty, or simply dominating someone else's will.
Current Effects:
Rosencrantz (and Guildernstern) is (are) Alive (Life 3 disguise)
DV: 14/14
Willpower: 6/6
Prime Energy: 12/4 (may only spend up to 4/turn)
Health Levels: -0/-0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-4/Incapacitated/Dying
Current Damage: None
Current Effects:
Marked for Death (+Serafina Anger)
Current Paradox: None
Prime Energy: 12/4 (may only spend up to 4/turn)
Health Levels: -0/-0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-4/Incapacitated/Dying
Current Damage: None
Current Effects:
Marked for Death (+Serafina Anger)
Current Paradox: None
