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[X] Arrest her quickly and openly, and stun her if necessary.

<<Luyu, you ready?>>

<<Always.>>

<<It's Mirabelle.>>

<<Aw. That sucks. I was hoping it'd be the annoying shortstack.>>

<<Just get ready. I'm coming out.>>

Reizay steps into the main room and you trail after her. The Luyus have ambled over and one of them has kabedoned Mirabelle to a wall. The scientist laughs, then sees you and something in her eyes turns off.

Her arm snaps up, fast and precise, for Luyu's neck, but the Valkyrie is even quicker. Her chin comes down and her knee comes up, slamming the passenger wearing Mirabelle's skin in the stomach. The infiltrator doubles up, and Luyu pins her as a second Luyu steps in and slaps her with a stun stick. Her body jerks once then goes still.

"Not too reinforced." Luyu says. "That's the problem with infiltration models."

"So it was her?" Selko says. "Shit. She seemed so nice."

"It wasn't Mirabelle." You say. "There's something riding her."

"Wait." Liya jumps up, hat brim rippling. "I was right? I was right!"

"You were right," nods Reizay. "One hundred percent on point!"

"I knew it!" She struts over to Mirabelle, sticks hands on hips and leans right over her face. Her hat scuttles to the back of her head to stay balanced. "That's what you get for hogging all my machine time! I know you seduced the head of lab into giving you extra!"

"Did you base your decision on anything?" asks Mirareki. "Was she behaving oddly?"

"A very complex and mostly autonomous process," says Liya, waving a hand. "This kind of refined intuition is a sign of the talent you need to work for the Chrysanthemum. And now that we've established that I'll be happy to take the lead-"

"I think that's unlikely," you say. Luyu hoists the body and carries it off to medical with Atet. You let go of your link to the cameras and once again open your own eyes, as the pair of them hoist her into a surgical table and the doctor remoulds the apparatus to restrain the patient. Silvery nanofibre extrudes to wrap around her limbs, her torso. You push down the idea that it looks kind of hot. Alex pushes it back up again.

<<Stop that.>> The way they've wound around her chest like a silver river among hills. The ranks of indentations on her skin. The way it's curled around her neck like a collar from some Riverine sleaze.

<<She tried to kill you, you know. And it's not like your gaze can hurt her.>>

<<It wasn't her.>>

<<Not a distinction she made, about you and me.>>

<<You're doing this for yourself. This is beneath you.>>

<<Maybe, but maybe not now.>>

This isn't like her. And it's not like Alex couldn't fantasise in her own mind. She's doing this to you. What was it like for her cowering all the way down in the ratholes of your mind while her death stalked your sensorium? Or is it maybe that your brain with its embodiment is a much better canvas, or context, for monkey sentiments?

And of course she knows everything you just thought.

Atet interrupts you with results, and Alex lets you get back to your work. "It's a distributed implant, I think," Atet says. "Micro and nanoscale components, some disguised as Chrysanthemum organelles. There's no sign of a macro device on any of the scans, including the usual methods of defecting low observability implants. I'm going to give her a shot of our own to get a better look."

She draws milky fluid into a needle and injects the unconscious scientist with it. Or not so unconscious. Mirabelle's body has opened its eyes and is looking at you curiously.

"She's awake," you announce, and then to her: "Are you sapient?"

"What a horrible thing to say." The infiltrator pulls Mirabelle's face into a smile. Atet keeps on with her work. "As much as you are. Faded shadow of a better woman. Or are you even real? We're not sure if you're actually a person, or just a simulation, cooked up out of a vacated brain to do the work of running it." She looks at Luyu and Atet, "You know, she has her own passenger right? Someone a lot worse than me."

Luyu shrugs. "Stella's solid. I'd tell if she was just a puppet."

"How would you tell?" The body strains against the restraints. "How would even she tell? That's a top tier posthuman that's riding her. It could easily simulate responses like that."

"You can try this crap on the Firewatcher, not me." Luyu shrugs. "They might buy this kind of stuff. I've seen the logs off Stella's resurrection system, and also, I've seen her blush whenever the posthuman talks to her. I can't imagine Ever Dancing Flame simulating herself a sub. It'd be too undignified."

You wince inwardly. Luyu is so blunt sometimes. Talking about you this way just in front of you.

"Dignity?" 'Mirabelle' cackles. "She's a posthuman! And one of the oldest. You can't become one of those without making a machine of your soul, turning the inside of your skull into just another canvas, killing the darlings in your own head. She's no more concerned for dignity than a novelist is concerned for the dignity of her characters, and she could have weaved 'Stella' up from the slurry left behind in her her brain."

Luyu's smile widens. "You think you're speaking to someone else if you think I care. Do you think this is the first time I've worked for a posthuman? I've lived a long time, and I've done a lot of different things. Working for the Fire of Disorder might be a good time, and besides." She looks at you. "Stella and her Rider have done nothing but play me fair, While you just leave death and destruction everywhere you go. I don't need to hear your fairy tales when you're standing right in front of me."

"Death and destruction? You kill people, and not even for money. But that's fine. You're not so bad." She turns from Luyu, by the fractions she can, and locks eyes with you, and everyone inside you.

The comm buzzes. It's Celebrian, frenetic. <<Signal seal the suspect right now! She's emitting some kind of LPI signal!>>

"Dandelion is going to kill you."

"Damn it!" Atet triggers a switch and the infiltrator convulses. It's a hard means of de-cohering her and you're glad Mirabelle isn't awake to experience it. "That should take it out, at least for now." says Atet, clipped and tense. "Mirabelle will be back up in about an hour. I'll get her in a signal cage."

"Pretty mouthy thing for an infiltrator unit." Luyu reflects. "Don't worry Boss. I do trust you to be human. After all, everything in there is running in a human brain." she pokes your medical bag. "That's way more important than anything else."

"Stop that." Atet reproves her, without looking up.

<<Do you think anything heard us?>> You ask Celebrian.

<<I'm pretty sure they did.. Sensors show an ECHO CHAMBER Ekranoplan heading our way on the surface.>>

<<Give me a tactical plot.>> It's almost certainly not just the aircraft. The big mission sub must have launched after you by now, and they might have an attack craft out as well. If it were you you'd have vectored in something like a sub frigate to work with the Ekranoplan above the water. These are the things you can think about now, a blessed relief. You sink into the situation.

You are being approached by at least one, probably two, and possibly three hostiles. You aren't defenceless in a straight fight but the odds will be very much against you. You need to change the situation. The enemy knows your position as of a few seconds ago but you have a lot of space to run in and the sea is full of treasures. You quickly itemise your options.

The oceans of Nereid are extremely busy, not just full of life but increasingly active alien machinery. The most major piece you've ever seen is lies about sixty kilometres away, a huge biotech structure which is sucking in great amounts of sea water and emitting it again filled with a cloudy substance that sensors say is some kind of engineered plankton. The machine's noise, thermal and magnetic signature make it a good hiding spot. However it's pretty far out. Getting there could give away your position on the way and open you up to a long range strike by the Ekranoplan or a supercavitating torpedo from the distant sub.

Closer is a large forest of coral, a massive rainbow of spires and occasional vents. It seems full of life, some of it massive, including mega fauna that rival the sub in size. It would be easier to get to but be a worse hiding spot. Also you might, potentially, be attacked by a sea monster.

As an alternative to hiding in terrain, you could also try to supercavitate away, abandoning stealth to run away from the zone where the signal was received, then drop into a drift pattern, completely silent to sensors in the ocean. It would be too dangerous to adopt such a passive drift pattern in either the reef or near the machine, but it might let you hide even better, if you trust the submarine's stealth and the infiltrator has done nothing else to compromise you.

Alternatively, you could take a more aggressive approach, and laying a trail of decoys and try to ambush the Ekranoplan. If the submarine is close however, this will set you up for a very disadvantageous combat with them.

What to do?
[ ] Run for the algae factory
[ ] Run for the coral reef
[ ] Sprint away then drift
[ ] Lay an ambush for the Ekranoplan despite the risk of the submarine.