C/W: more sensory torture
[x] Hunt Down the Snatcher
[x] Use the hospital main entrance.
Luyu pauses for a moment, then nods. "You're right. We can't risk having that thing on our backs during a hostage rescue." She unslings the fabricator backpack and slings her plasma rifle in favour of a slim, wide muzzled carbine. "Plasma just splashed everywhere. Some kind of thermal super reflector maybe. Let's try impact this time."
She feeds each of the hovering combat remotes a small magazine of bullets.
"What are those?" Reizay asks.
"They're accelerator rounds. The propellent at the back is inert. The drone's beams accelerates them like a laser rocket." Luyu rises. "We should move in through the main entrance. I'm willing to bet that in a breach situation, which this obviously is, most of the internal defences are down. We go in fast. We find the Snatcher, we kill it and we get Stella back."
The team nod, shaking out into a formation as they go. It's a little rough, Aletta especially obviously isn't used to keeping her place in a formation and has to keep looking at the others, but you can feel the trust between them already.
It's strange. This compatibility. You feel like you should remember something–
Another wave of sensation carries you away into chaos.
*****
You're sitting at a lacquered wooden table, perched on a backless wooden stool. You are yourself but you're not dressed right. Wearing shapeless clothes of a kind you don't recognize. The smell of coffee and sweet pastries overlaid with the sickening kerosene stinkof a hot day in Manhattan.
How do you know that? That memory is definitely foreign. More even than your own memories, it is definitely not something you should remember.
Around you are dozens of old-fashioned humans, their shapes subtly indistinct, like a timelapsed film, a blur of fat bodies and heavy squared suits. Speaking ancient, half recognizable words. Outside the sun beats down, reflecting off the ancient monoliths.
A young woman in a green apron and white blouse sits opposite you. A white logo of a goddess adorns the apron, and a white nametag. She is pretty enough, though her skin is bad and you can see faint lines of facial surgery. How old is this time?.
"My name was Alex." She says. "It was kind of fortunate that way. Alex. You can use Alex more than one way. I want you to know that, and remember. In case I don't make it."
"Why are we here?" You ask.
"Always so calm." She smiles at you, lopsided and angry. "That's what I saw from you the first time we met. The rest were panicking, once you realised that what you had tried to do was not fully in your control. You, you were calm. In charge, even as the world came apart around you. I had to respect that, though you were just another woman's shadow."
You shrug. "None of this is real."
"No, this is real." She leans in voice suddenly intent "This happened. This was me, so long ago. I was someone, once, who barely hung on, barely ate enough, worked to live. I came from here, from this stinking city in the heat. And I am still alive, so many thousands of life times later." Her fists clench on the table. "I can't show you what truly matters to me. You couldn't shoulder it any more than you can manage what this thing is doing to you, in its quest to get to me. But I can show you this. Old memories of a lost time, when I was like you."
Something burns through from behind the image, the fire. Then it snaps off. "Your foolishness has cost us both everything. I have to go deep. Deeper inside the dregs of your mind. Hide among the half deleted noise. You have to survive for us both for a while. Do you want to live?"
"Yes." The reaction is surprisingly visceral. You want it with the strength of something that you know has been denied to you.
She starts to rise and you reach out and grab her arm. "Who was I?" You ask. "Tell me who I was?"
"You're in no position to make demands of me." She sneers, rising into flames "Go to the Almagest Observatory. If you can access the knowledge within, then I shall grant you a boon. Until then, simply endure."
The scene dissolves into screaming strobes and the horrendous smell of the bright lights.
*****
There's an indeterminacy of time. The chaos in your mind gets louder and brighter, and you desperately seek for a stable point but can't find it. You think you're shivering, think you can feel fluids dripping down your face, the sound of it all an insistent nagging whine. A constant stream of rejection and error messages scream for attention from your interface meridians as the security, somehow, keeps whatever it is from directly joining with your nervous system.
You scream bright white, mixing with the red of the other voice. No words now, nor begging.
And then, abruptly, it stops. The flower lifts away from your face and you slump, half conscious.
"Oh Isis–" The woman hanging on the opposite wall prays, "--stand with your daughter in her hour of n-need." The crystal mask is still attached to her face, but she seems like she's coherent. Is this respite?
Her head turns towards you. "Is there someone else here?"
"I'm here." You say. "I'm Stella."
"Stella? You're– you're one of the team they were assembling." She laughs, an ugly, awful sound. "The Diplomat got you too? It was all– All of this was useless?"
"No. Just me. The others are coming. They'll get us out." The bravado isn't even false. Why do you trust them so much?
The woman opens her mouth to say something but the geometry starts growing toward her and she begins to yell. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! They made me do it! They made me do it! I deserve this! I deserve–!"
The sounds become a oily, hot sensation across your skin as the flower descends on your face again.
*****
You manage, somewhere in the gushing flood of information flooding into your mind to find the cameras again, and the team.
Outside of the hospital is a high-ceilinged concourse, a street and a balcony of cafes, dispensaries and small shrines. The dispensaries and communal spaces still flicker with lights, glass and sapphire windows knocked out of their frames. Several bodies and mechanicals are strewn about, mostly in pieces. The hospital entrance is a dark hole, armoured security shutters torn off, to leave a yawning gap into the interbulkhead area behind the street. No windows above, just the open security hatch onto a wrecked lobby.
The team are in cover of one of the cafes across from the hospital, weapons and drones arrangd in a protective ring around Reizey. The girl sits in the middle, cowering down with her slate, working. Despite Luyu's confidence there are defences active. A laser turret winks in the doorway, scanning back and forth as a warning, ready to come to full intensity.
The team are silent, talking, if at all on the squad link. They're barely visible ghosts under signature reduction. You barely them out, but that's good. You can turn all your mind to the task of working through signature reduction with just your eyes. You worry about the Diplomat watching, your attention drawing it, but you can't stand to be cut loose again.
Reizay is working on her slate, and Mirareki looks back at her impatient. "I could just shoot it out." You imagine her saying, and Reizay would respond.
"I've got it."
Reizay stabs her slate one last time and the laser winks out. The team get up and move fast across the street, spreading out into a rough wedge with Mirareki at the front and the Luyu running the combat drone on her right. The other Luyu is on the left, her new rifle aimed into the darkness.
Inside the hospital is smashed up badly. You don't have that many camera views, some from console cameras or desktop slates rather than the mostly ruined security. It's a spartan place, white walls and shiny black floors, now scattered with debris and occasional blood stains. Administrative and research rooms stand open on all sides.
The team moves silently up the corridor, then pauses at the first intersection. Mirareki puts a hand to the floor and her glove retracts. She brushes the marks and considers. It's rough and when you switch to thermals, hot. Your attention destabilises briefly with the thought and you see other trails of the roughness and heat. Disruption in the material caused by the passage of the snatcher.
You pull your attention back to the team before you can go again, then spiral out from there until you find the thing that took you.
There's a space not far ahead where it's painful to look. In a room near the bottom of the shaft it carved. The colours and shapes pour in at you as if you're looking into your own mind. It doesn't seem to know the team is there. They do though, and you see them start to execute their plan.
[ ] (Simple) The team decides to assault it in its lair: The team use their drones to get a sight on the target and saturate the room with fire from Luyu's hyperkinetic drone, while spraying it down with smart grenades.
[ ] (Bait and Switch): Mirareki passes the room while the Luyu's wait in ambush. As soon as she's there, she conducts her plan to hopefully minimise the effect of the things counter measures and then runs, hopefully luring it out into a corridor kill zone.
[ ] (Bait and Switch 2): Aletta passes the room while Mirareki and Luyu wait in ambush. She delivers the active part of the counter measure trick and then runs for it, giving a maximum chance of an ambush, but putting the much squishier priestess and her damaged armour in harms way.
[ ] (Information warfare). Reizay seals the chamber door with it inside and then Luyu hoses the chamber down with hyperkinetics through the wall. This plan is good if works, but also means you have only one really good option for engaging the Snatcher.
