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C/W: sensory overload, brief suicidal ideation

-[X] Grab back hold of Aletta
-[X] Use the whip sword to try to stop yourself from sliding
-[X] Send telemetry about what's happening to you up to those above so they can help

You reach out and grab Aletta's outstretched hand. You're sliding through chaos, a discordant, twisted soundscape of heavy lights and the smell of bright colours.

"St—a? Stella! Can y–- hear us?" Luyu's voice is distorted. You're not sure if it's the transmission or the sensory whirlwind beating down on you.

"I hear you!" You call up. "Prepare for upload!" You hit the telemetry link and start sending data then slam your sword into where you think the wall must be. It cuts down, leaving a long trial of sparks as it cuts through a-diamond and metal. Your thoughts are almost choked by the fear overflowing from your other self. You jerk to a stop, stretched out in a straining rope of force running through the thing to your leg to your arm to the sword to the wall. Everything is suspended for a moment as the kaleidoscope turns.

Aletta looks down at you, completely calm. "I'm sorry," she says. "There's nothing I can do. We'll get to you."

She's only wearing a tac-suit, not a boarding shell.

She jumps, swelling her suit into impact mode as she clears the vortex. As the vortex implodes, and your overlay fills with error codes as illegible things prise inside the funnels and weapons and shell. The sword breaks.

Strange shapes whip out of the chaos below and pull you into darkness.



Someone is screaming. It's not you.

"Please! For fuck's sake! Just stop or kill me, please just kill me! - I'm not, I can't, I…"

It's not even your other self. She's buried herself deep, as deep as she can.

You get a glimpse as it prises the long-dead mask from your face. A wrecked lab space. Shattered beds and scientific equipment. A medical gravitometer that's been partly dissected. Bodies, maybe.. A forest of fractals has overgrown everything, in every colour in the dark and more besides. The screamer is hanging across from you, now quiet, breathing haggard, held limp and spreadeagle in the roots. A crystal fold over her eyes drinks from a dozen capillaries, tracing back to the thing hanging overhead. Involuted geometry, proceeding around itself.

You hear the last of your armour hit the ground. The thing above you grows a stem, and a bud, and a flower that unfurls to an illegible inside that dips down toward your head.


A welter of images, screaming in from every part of the ship, pouring in to flood your mind, fill your skull, exhaust every experiential thread–

You have to stop it. You have to–

Concentrate. You know how to do this. Concentrate on one point. Find one stable place. Breath. Breath. You watch through electronic eyes, through cameras, you find your friends.

Mirareki and Luyu rappel down the shaft, with one Luyu holding onto Reizay, the other aiming her rifle down the shaft. Their funnels hang around them, wired mode for electronic defense.

"Priestess?" Luyu calls out.

"I'm here."

Camera switch. A better view. Aletta stands cooly in a crevice, her tac-suit in tatters from absorbing the high speed collision. Otherwise though she seems undamaged.

"Do you still have a fix on her telemetry?" Luyu asks.

"Yes." Aletta says. "It diverges from the shaft several decks below. There shaft continues beyond that but I think it's a blind. It's doing something to the signal, bouncing her all over the place but I was close enough to maintain some idea of where she is."

"Alright." Luyu says. "So, we go after her."

Mirareki nods, her poker face expression visible even through the ship camera. The other Luyu puts a firm hand on her shoulder. "Before that though, I think it's time to fess up. What do you know?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You're pretty good, but both the trio over there and I can see it. What do you know about what's happening to Stella?"

Mirareki shakes her off, then takes a deep breath. "She's possessed. There's a posthuman inside her."


Everything is jumbled. You can feel a molecular battle being waged between the thing and the combat nanotech in your bloodstream.

You stupid animals. imals. You couldn't even contain it. it. t.

The other is somehow desperate. Flame flaring and guttering in the flood.

She discarded you, you know? ? ? Such self loathing. I am the only reason that any of you remains. remains. I am kinder than your own self.

You can taste the colours, hear the pain, see the other woman's screams. Sense the whole world.

Find a point. Find a centre. Look again.


"Possessed?" Reizay protests. "That's ghost story stuff. That can't happen for real!"

"It can." Mirareki looks down the shaft. "Obviously you can't run a whole posthuman on a human brain, but you can run a partial instantiation, or have an avatar minding a compression of the rest of the manifold, or you can meddle with the hardware to increase your scope if you have surgical access or control of the biosynthesis system during a resurrection. It's bad for the host but there's a lot of options."

"So if this is a thing all supernature journalists know about, how come it's not more widely known to the public? I think a documentary of someone getting possessed would have done numbers." says Luyu. The other her keeps the shaft covered.

Mirareki frowns, then takes a deep breath. "I'm not just a journalist. I'm in Firewatch."

"Oh really?" Luyu laughs. "I should have fucking known."

"Firewatch?" Aletta asks.

"They're an X-risk mystery cult." Luyu says.

"We exist," says Mirareki firmly, "to find threats to the Garden and create countermeasures, or, if we can't then at least warn people."

Luyu opens her mouth to retort again but then makes a visible effort to restrain herself. "Even if she is possessed. We still need to get her back."

"I don't disagree." Mirareki says. "I'll keep being honest though, I have no idea what that thing is. I've not seen it in any threat update… so I guess I get to make the update this time. Reizay, do you have that telemetry anymore localised?"

It's a little shocking how easily they all agree to rescue you. Someone they hardly know. Someone who doesn't even recognize herself. You feel faintly disappointed in yourself for finding it surprising.

Reizay nods. "I think I've got where she is, or at least where her armour is. She's three decks down in an area that the ship lists as a private hospital."

"A private hospital?" Luyu sneers. "The fuck is that River shit? Is it next to a fucking stock exchange?" Mirareki looks almost equally disgusted. Even Aletta looks a little sceptical.

"I don't know. I didn't name it. The computer is full of all kinds of cult garbage." Reizay says. "To be fair, I think it's some kind of research site. It's not listed as admitting patients at all– well, it doesn't matter."

She brings up a 3D. "It's built in between the bulkheads here. It looks like there's a few ways we could get in. There's a main entrance here which seems to have the majority of defences if they're still active, but is the easiest route. Second, we could go directly down the shaft, and follow the creatures route. That's likely going to have any surprised for it though. Finally there's a set of ship's utility lines under it, which I think I can open up."

"There's also the question of what we prioritise." Mirareki says. "Do we want to try to get Stella first, or do we try to eliminate the creature before we get her? I think we can use the data she sent us to neutralise those wierd countermeasures its putting out– at least partially. And it would remove an obstacle in the road."

"If she lasts that long." Luyu says. Mirareki turns on her and the big woman shrugs. "You could be right, but we would be leaving her."

"We could also get surprised by that thing and end up back in the tanks."

Which entrance does the team decide to use?
[ ] Move through the main entrance: Quick route, risk of automated defences
[ ] Follow the creature: Quickest route, risk of ambush by the creature
[ ] Use the utility tunnel: slow route, low risk of ambushes

What is the team's first objective?
[ ] Destroy the snatcher
[ ] Move immediately to rescue Stella