Cyborg Theory - Musings on Humanity in a Cyberpunk World

[EarthScorpion]

Cyborg Theory
A Tale of Men, Machines and Monsters​

"The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust."

Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto"

Under a smog-orange sky, a concrete landscape lies. Neon glows on sky-kissing edifices. Self-contained blocks jut up between the endless sprawl. Everywhere there's noise and advertising and car after car after car, on countless raised freeways. The bombs might have fallen in 1984, but capitalism survived.

Down below it's dark. Natural light is something you pay for in this place, just like clean air. It's all commoditised. If you don't want to pay, you can live by the polluted storm drains, under the smog and look up at the advertising of your betters. At least as long as you buy, you're doing what society needs of you. Pointless pay for pointless jobs maybe, but at least you can spend it.

Up above, at the tops of towers and under the plastic domes, there's clean air and plants and fresh water. The white structures there aren't smeared with exhaust fumes and acid rain. They don't have to worry about the ticking of the rad counters. They have gardens and they have retreats away from the city and they have exit passes which'll let them leave the West American Republic - if they want to. Why would they want anything else but this place?

And what of the people here? Do we speak of the decadent wealthy with their gene augs and their shining teeth and their synthskin? Do we speak of the quiet desperation of the middle classes, safe and secure with their corporate employers - for the moment, at least, because do you know how the job market is? Do we speak of the poor, living in the lower dark bits of tower blocks and in the endless sprawl, in polluted smoggy air, living on handouts and the grey market? Because wealth here is a pyramid, and it's crushing to be at the bottom.

Welcome to Los Angeles. The year is 2051.

...​

The fire rises. Burning bright, it consumes the darkness and devours it whole. There was nothing before the flames, because there was no time for it to happen in. Time is change, and without the fire there could be no change.

A spark arcs between two contacts. There's a snap, and the smell of ozone. Follow the copper wires back, and they lead into the power grid of a megastructure. It is a synthetic nervous system and circulatory system combined. Within this kilometre-tall tower, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of humans scurry and crawl, living within the cells of this architectural monster. Sometimes they hook themselves up to the electricity of the machine-beast, and then the tiny currents in their brains merge with the signals in the metal in their heads and commune with the structure.

But the fire rises, up through the tower from the squalid and polluted basement, born on wings of stolen lightning. And then there is a spark, and it all begins.

Your mind is drifting. Dreaming. You know little else.

Everything hurts.

"Police say they are investigating leads, and hope to bring this case to a satisfactory conclusion" a radio crackles in the background. "Doubts are being raised about the failures of the LAPD by many senior figures, however. SynerNet CEO Gomez Ladislao has spoken out publicly after the body of his daughter was found. She was the sixth victim of the so-called Albedo Kidnapper, who has been targeting family members of the business community. Hope is fading that the other hostages will be recovered alive. We now go live to our Eye in the Sky. Paul?"

You lie there, stabbing pains shooting up and down both of your arms. Your stomach hurts, like the worst cramp ever. And there's something cold and hard at the back of your neck. You gasp.

Then the smell hits you. It's horrible. It's a mix of meat and blood and ozone. It grates at your senses, crawling into your nostrils. You can taste it creep across your tongue, hot and warm and cloying.

Under the noise of the radio, you can hear machinery. There's a steady bleep-bleep-bleep which makes you think of hospitals, and a rumbling which comes and goes which can only be a lift. The acoustics of the room are echoing and hard. There aren't many soft things in here. If any at all.

And there's someone else in here. You can feel them. You can hear them breathe. They're panting, as if they're exhausted - or maybe just fat. They sound big. Bulky. There's another noise, a sort of… of clicking noise. You're not sure what that is.

"Ahhh," says a breathy voice. It's a woman, you're fairly sure of it. She sounds… young. Excitable. Her voice is quite squeaky. You think she might be younger than you. "You're awake! And you're one thing! One thing! Wonderful thing!" She laughs to herself, in a high-pitched giggle. "Wakey-wakey! We might have to move! Now you're all better!"

All better. You… are hurting, you admit that much. But you don't remember… anything. Your head hurts, though. It hurts quite a lot. You reach up and find there are contact electrodes attached to your forehead and temples. They're all… sticky. With iron-ness.

The clicky thing shifts, and it growls, low and rumbling. It makes all the skin on the back of your neck stand on end.

"You better stop pretending," the squeaky-voiced woman says happily. "That's bad. And being lazy isn't a good idea. Not right now."

You open your eyes, and the light is blinding.

...​

CHOOSE A FOCUS (arrange by descending importance)

[ ] Physical - Your strength and speed, motor coordination, and capacity to survive hardship.

[ ] Mental - Your smarts, ability to think on your feet, and determination.

[ ] Social - Your ability to interact with others, and remain calm and clear-headed under stress

CHOOSE A STYLE (arrange by descending importance)

[ ] Direct

[ ] Finesse

[ ] Endurance

CHOOSE A MEGACORP

You have a personal connection to one of these following megacorps. This will determine some further things about your character.

[ ] Raiden Unlimited - Clean. Efficient. Productive. This is the face that Raiden Energies wishes to display to the rest of the world. As a power provider, it runs nuclear installations across the globe, and funds research into fusion and - via its in-house arms manufacturer - energy weapons. It rebranded in 2043, from 'Atomic Energies' after a controversy over the possible release of mutagens in downtown Neo-Tokyo following a reactor meltdown which the company insists was the result of hostile corporate sabotage.

[ ] HawkCorp - A giant of the media industries, HawkCorp has a dominant market share in the West American Republic as well as major holdings in the European Federation and the Republic of Texas. It is heavily invested in advertising, public relations, propaganda and news, and its extravagant CEO has close ties to major state actors - it is widely credited with swaying the last election in the Republic of Texas to the Federalists. Controversially, it engages in massive sponsorship of state education programmes, and sells advertising space in textbooks.

[ ] Mondragon-Miledi-Mollina (MMM) - A Mexican pioneer in the fields of aquaculture and water purification, the vast concrete forms of MMM's purification facilities squat along the coast. The corporation's tendrils extend all the way up the food chain - recent purchases mean that they have added the ailing McDonalds and Burger King franchises to their portfolio. Nationalistic sentiments have raised fears that this megacorp could cut off half the water supply to the West American Republic, and has already thrown its weight around in tax disputes.

[ ] Li Metals - The Green Reformation in Communist China in the 2020s lead to widespread acceptance of capitalist dogma, as well as massive fortunes being made by well-connected families. Li Metals has built itself from a small state-sanctioned enterprise to an end-to-end megacorp rooted in its dominance of the rare earth market. Allegations of impropriety in how it has privatised several small African nations which are now run as fully-owned extraterritorial subsidiaries and its ties to the PLA are laughed off by the megacorp.

[ ] Deva Pharmaceuticals - This Indian megacorp has expanded beyond its original role as a manufacturer of off-licence drugs and catapulted itself into the premier league of biological research companies. Genetic engineering, anti-cybernetic-rejection drugs and anti-irradiation vegetation are all products coming from their pipeline. There are dark allegations about their use of unwilling test subjects in drug testing, as well as rumours that the disgraced Sanctity group was a subsidiary.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Contents

1.
2. - Wakey Wakey Rise And Shine
3. - First steps, the Eye
4. - Drone Slayer!
5. - In Too Deep
6. - Callin' da Police

Rules

There is a d6-based mechanical system operating behind the scenes here, which has been extensively hacked and modified from the baseline. It is a dice-pool d6 system. I will ask for rolls - the target number for such rolls is 5. That is, if you roll a 5 or a 6, it is a success. In most cases, only one success will be required to manage to successfully perform the action, although superlative successes (5+) will often produce better results.

Vote-wise, you should give reasons for your choices. Do not just vote "[X] Name" as a +1 to someone else's votes - I will not count such votes because they make it harder for me. Not only is it much more fun for me to see you talking about your decisions, it also lets me correct any misapprehensions or erroneous assumptions you're making. I'll be using the same vote-weighting as Ravana Quest, Panopticon and Caught Up and Let Go once you've established enough of the character's personality to tilt your choices. [{Number}x] after an option means it counts for that many votes - things that are in-character will be weighted higher, things that are out-of-character will be weighted lower. Please, if you change your vote before the vote is called, post your new vote as a new post and cross out the old one. This informs me that you have changed it, and allows me to see what your old vote was and update my tally accordingly.

Story-wise, the game occurs in a cyberpunk dystopia in the middle of the twenty-first century. It is deliberately somewhat anachronistic in its styling and focus - don't expect too many wireless networks. Stylistically it deliberately riffs off 80s and 90s cyberpunk. Since this is an original setting, there is flexibility for write-ins to "stunt" elements of the background into being, but I retain exclusive veto based off the feel and style of such things.

And I'm certainly not forgetting the '-punk' in 'cyberpunk'. All this technology has not made man any better.

Rules Posts

Dicepools and Inhuman Strength
Augumentations and Charge

 

[EarthScorpion]

2.

The light is blinding, despite the fact that it's not all that bright. Your eyes water and you let out a wordless moan.

You try to sit up, but your body isn't responding. Everything aches, at a bone deep level, and your legs are on fire with pins and needles. They get worse whenever you try to move a muscle. The fire dances along the inside of your veins, and makes you gasp with pain.

So instead you move your eyeballs and try to look around the room, through the tears. You just about feel up to that, although your eyes feel bleary and bleargh and ick. Two of those words may not be proper words, but they describe the feeling of having eyeballs like yours very well.

There's wires running overhead, crudely taped to the room and running along all the bits of wall you can see, up against the bare concrete. The room is cluttered. Medical machinery is propped up against the walls. Medical machinery and more. There's a laser cutter hanging from the ceiling, crudely wired up behind a darkened glass shield, and there are industrial freezers in a line

It's not sterile. It's not hygienic. Rather than having tiles, the floor is concrete and clearly hasn't been cleaned in a while. There's dried blood spattered over by the laser cutter and one of the fridge doors is half open, showing that it's been stuffed full of… of organs. In glass jars. Floating in blue glowing liquid. Some of the organs have wires sticking out of them, linking them to other jars.

Some of the hearts are still beating.

Your view of the spectacle is blocked as someone steps into view, brushing her way through the forest of cables and wires which hang down from the ceiling. She's tall for a woman, and bulky. Not fat, exactly, but simply...massive. She's wearing a filthy faded grey coat which reaches down to her knees and bulges out at her midsection. Two sheathed blades hang from her belt, although calling them 'blades' is generous. They look more like machetes. Or maybe butcher's cleavers. Looking up at her, she towers over you, and would do so even if you weren't lying down.

And she doesn't exactly paint a pretty picture. Half her hair is bright pink, and half of it is brown, split down the parting. The same goes for her eyes - her left eye is blue while her right eye is brown. In fact, all the skin on her face looks like it's synthskin, and it's melted and warped and shiny over her jawline, showing the metal plating underneath. She's missing teeth at the front, with cheap black implants to substitute for them.

Despite all of this, though, there's a look of childish glee in her eyes. She's clasping her hands together and all-but capering in joy. "You're awake!" she says happily. "You're really awake! And you're looking back! And the incisions have closed! Oh, I was so worried about you!" She rubs her hands together. "I had to get the things out of your head before I could get going and I was worried that they did too much damage but I put some new stuff in and it's all working and oh! Oh! What do you remember? Did you see anything?

She spins on her heel, and starts pacing up and down. "No, no, no," she says, seemingly more to herself than to you. "That's not the way to do it. She just had lots of cutting and fixing and sewing to fill up all the holes and put the new muscles in. And all the new organs. Precious, precious, working organs. The best ones! She's probably hurting a lot! Stop talking to her like that!"

You let out a pained moan. You don't feel up to talking at the moment. That seems to get her attention back towards you, though, and she sticks a hand into a pocket and fishes out a hand mirror, before stomping over and pulling you up into a sitting position. With all her bulk there's no surprise she can handle you like a doll. Propping you against the wall, she grips one of your hands with hers. Her hands dwarf yours.

"Do you like it?" she asks, holding the hand mirror in front of you. "I did my best! And my best is much better than what they did for me." One of her blocky fingers traces the burnt area on her jaw.

You look at yourself in the mirror. Two bloodshot, reddened eyes stare back at you from a face the colour of milky coffee. The whites of your eyes are distinctly yellow, and your irises are pale brown. There's blood dribbling from the shallow cuts on your forehead and temple, from where you tore out the electrodes. And there are faint white scars around your mouth - or are they seams? They run from the corners of your mouth following the edge of your jaw, all the way up to your ears. You have no idea how you got them. And just as you think that, they twinge with remembered pain.

Is that you? Is that what you look like?

Gritting your teeth, you manage to force your arm to bend and stiffly, painfully, you trace the seam-scars. The motion moves your bare arms into sight, and you can see similar marks running both arms, from wrist to elbow. You're wearing a stained t-shirt and the white is painted brown-crimson in a line which runs down the centre of your chest, between your breasts. It aches there, in the same way as your arms and the corners of your mouth hurt. And your legs too, you realise, looking down at the torn ill-fitting skirt and the similarly seam-scarred marks there.

"Waaaa?" you manage. Your mouth isn't working right. It's really more of a wordless hoot. You open your mouth and try to speak. It's hard. You can think clearly, but your mouth simply won't obey you. "W-w-w-w-w," you try, and gulp down air. No. No. Why can't you talk?! Why? "H-h-h-hooo."

The woman just stares down at you with a sympathetic expression, which somehow makes it worse. "There, there," she says, almost maternally. "Who? Is that what you're trying to say?"

Sudden, surging irrational anger pulses through you at this. It's her fault in some way! You know it is! But you don't even know how it's her fault or who she is or...or anything! But it is her fault and now she's patronising you! The world blurs and wavers, your eyes filling with tears, as you try to work your way around the words. "Wh-who are y-you?" you manage finally after some effort. "Wh-what h-happened?"

The stammer hurts deep inside. Your mouth doesn't want to shape the words properly. You know what you want to say, but it won't come out clearly. But at least you can speak. Even if you're… you're clearly hurt. You can't remember anything. The seam-scars - they're surgical markers. You've had surgery. You must be on painkillers or something, because even though you're hurting, you're numb and your body isn't obeying you. You… you think you know something about medicine. Maybe? You don't know what you know, but… you think you might have seen similar things in… in patients? In case studies? You're not sure.

"I'm Electra!" the massive woman says, bobbing her head up and down. "Don't you remember? Well, you probably don't remember. No, you won't remember. I wanted you to remember, though. I thought… no. Well, never mind! This isn't the first time I've done this! Isn't that right, Mau?"

Something rumble-growls in the background, and you almost fall off the hard table-thing at the noise. Something moves in the corner of your eye and you stare at it. It looks like a dog. Sort of like a dog. No, not very much like a dog. It's got four legs, yes. It has a long head full of teeth, yes. But it's blackened metal and burnt-looking flesh. It doesn't look like it was born. It looks like it was forged and welded together. The wickedly sharp teeth in its blackened jaw glow red-hot and its eyes smoulder like cinders and the too-long claws on its hand-like feet leave blackened marks on the concrete when it clicks and clatters around.

It growls at you, a low, rumbling noise which sounds like a furnace, and perks up. Slowly it begins to advance on you, and your heart begins to pulse so hard in your chest it feels like each pulse is an electric shock.

"Down! Down, girl!" the bulky woman snaps, a tone of absolute command in her voice. "Bad Mau! Bad!"

Grumbling and complaining, the dog-thing settles down, but doesn't take its ember-eyes off you. You gasp for breath, and try to move your arms and legs despite the pain.

Just then, a siren starts sounding and the woman - Electra - looks around. "Fuck," she growls, staring at a board of lights on the wall. "They've found us. I thought… no!" She smashes her fist into the wall to the left of you, and the concrete cracks and splinters. "No! No, no, no!" she exclaims, each word accompanied with another blow.

You just sit there quietly.

She lets a deep breath out. "Very bad men are after us," she tells you, as if you're a child. "They'll kill us both if they find us. Me and you. Maybe not you now, but eventually. That's what they do." She helps you upright, and you balance on wavery, unsteady legs. "That's what they're paid to do.

"So we're going to run for it. If we get to the lift shafts, we can make our way down to the underlayers, and if we do it fast enough we can do it before they get a cordon up. So I want you to just focus on gettin' those arms and legs workin'. Okay, right?" she asks.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

[ ] Question her - Oh no. You don't know anything. You're not letting her get away with this.
-> [ ] Write in questions

[ ] Follow Her - She says it's a rush and if you can do it quickly, you might get out. You don't have a choice.

[ ] Make A Run For It - Look, she's weird. And scary. And you don't know anything, so you're not trusting her! Or your name isn't… oh, wait a minute.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

[ ] It might be Kiyoko (x1.0)
[ ] Possibly… Caroline (x1.0)
[ ] Carmen? Maybe? (x1.0)
[ ] Cuifen… ehhh. (x0.8)
[ ] Kiara. That might be it. (x1.2)
[ ] It's not any of those ones. You think. Probably. (x1.1)
[ ] You… don't know. (x1.2)

 

[EarthScorpion]

3.

You pull yourself off the table and stagger. Your legs are numb and you totter, until Electra catches you. You're right, she really is a lot taller than you. You barely reach up to her shoulder.

"M-my legs hurt," you stutter, clinging to her.

Electra nods seriously, her hair flopping in front of her face. "That's normal," she says earnestly. "I had to replace a lot of the musculature, and of course your old knees were just ruined. Completely ruined. Shattered. Smashed in to stop you running. I managed to save most of your shins, but even at the top they're being held together by a mix of bone ceramic cement and the metal braces." She grins. "I made such a neat job of it, you wouldn't believe! With the cybernetics to replace the knee joint and to anchor the fractured join, you'll barely notice!"

You wince in a flash of pain. Yes. That would make it hurt. You… you think you might know a bit about medicine. That's the kind of injury which requires cyberisation to allow the victim to walk and… you shudder, twisting convulsively in a spasm. Electra holds you upright.

"Head. Hurts," you say thickly. Your tongue feels numb and painful, along with your throat. You think it's the anesthesia. It feels like there's a lump of dead meat in your mouth and when you try to push it away, you remember that it's your tongue. It feels too big.

"I know, I know," Electra says. "But we need to move. Now."

"Yes," you say dryly, letting her support you. "Move. Trying. M-my best."

"I know, I know, and you're making a really good job of it! Just move your feet. One after another." Electra turns, looking behind her as you half-stagger and are half dragged along. "Mau! Come! Obey!"

The metal dog-thing thunder-rumbles deep in its chest, and trails after the pair of you. You try your level best as a staggering aching person who doesn't even know their own name to keep Electra between you and that… that thing.

Outside the… the surgery, you guess, things are if anything more messy. The bare concrete walls are covered in wear and markings, and in places the blackened outer layers have fallen away, to expose embedded burned-out wires and steel beams. There looks like there's been a fire here. Maybe that's why everything looks half built - it's being renovated.

But then where is everyone? You don't know. Has something happened? You ask yourself this again and again, as Electra sings an out-of-tune song to herself. Has there been… some kind of evacuation? Where even are you? What happened to you?

You don't remember anything. Even your name. You wrack your brain, and say the first thing which sounds vaguely name-like.

Caroline," you whisper to yourself. It doesn't sound right in your mouth. Your toungue easily shapes it out, but it doesn't feel familiar. You try other names, saying whatever comes to mind. "K-Kiara. K-Kiyoko." You wet your lips. "C-C-Carmen. C-C-Cuifen."

Of all these, Caroline sounds the best, the most likely, but… even it sounds wrong. You don't stammer when you say it, but…

You clench your fists. Oh, this is ridiculous. You're… fairly sure your name starts with a hard-c sound. It might be Caroline or Kiara or Carmen or Kiyoko or… maybe Cuifen, although that doesn't have the same hard-c sound so that's probably less likely. So you might as well work from that knowledge and that's who you'll be for now until you find the right answer. Kay. Or maybe Kai? No, Kay is more honest. Wait, no. Kay is a boy's name, you think.

Hmm.

Kae, then. Which happens to sound the same, so it won't matter unless you're writing it down.

… can you write? You can probably write if you can make comments about spelling in your head, right?

You glance at the wall next to you. There's a stencil painted on, and you read:

FIRE ESCAPE KEEP CLEAR ​

Right. So you can certainly read. Which means you can almost certainly write, at least once your fingers stop feeling so stiff and uncoordinated. Typing isn't hard, anyway. It might take longer to handle a pen, but who uses those things nowadays anyway?

The sound of scuttling things in the walls draws your attention back to reality and your aches and pains. So much for that moment of distraction. Electra, frowning, raises a hand. You stop, largely because you don't have any choice. Because she's basically carrying you. Your legs are working a bit better, but she's walking much faster than you can manage. She's basically running. Also, she has much longer legs than you. It's not your fault she's faster, and you like to think you're making a pretty good job of it considering the state you're in.

She's just standing there, head cocked.

You wet your lips. "Wh-what's happening?" you ask.

"They say that soldiers have landed at one of the docking bays," she says, irritably flicking her head. The sunny smile comes back. "Well, they'll find a surprise soon enough."

Almost immediately afterwards, a boom shakes the ground and concrete dust drifts down from the ceiling. Electra laughs happily. "Happy birthday to you," she sings to herself. "Happy birthday to you! Nah ha nah nah, we're nearly there, nah ha ha." She seems to have lost track of what she was saying, but she doesn't seem to mind as she keeps on humming.

The corridors here are widening up, and there's more metal and tiling on the unpainted walls. It's getting colder, too, and the air doesn't smell clean. And then you turn the corridor, and the wind hits you like a wave. There isn't an exterior wall at all here. The air here stinks of fumes, and makes you cough. It's also blowing quite hard. There was plastic sheeting over the gaping hole in the building, but that's been cut through in lots of places. The wide-open burned out concourse has polluted water pooling on the floor, and leaving the once-white walls grimy and filthy.

You cough. "F-fire," you manage.

"Yep! There was a fire! A really big one." Electra seems to have misunderstood. You're talking about the smoke in the air. "Everything shorted out! They weren't ready at all so all the super-rich people had to run away!"

There's another boom, but it sounds different. Further away. Peering out with watery eyes through the slits in the plastic, you can see that the black thunderclouds. They hang heavy and thick over the city. There are holes in the roof, and looking up you can see that they're directly overhead. The tall buildings which dot the landscape reach up into them. As you watch, there's a flash-boom, and lightning earths itself on one of the giant towers. The megatowers.

Mau rumbles, pacing up and down.

"What is it, girl?" Electra asks, cocking her head. "Prey? Do you want to eat?" She runs her free hand through the pink side of her hair. "You," she says, easing you down. "Rub your legs, get them working. We might need to run. Just wait here and I'll be right back. Mau smells bad men, so me and her are going to make them go away. 'Kay?"

Kay. Kae. Yes, that's your name. You nod, wincing. "Yes," you say quietly. You don't want to sit out in the fumes, but - you shiver as you look at the dog thing. You don't want to spend any time near it if you can avoid it.

Happily, Electra gives you a hug. "You're being so brave," she says, delight in her voice. Then she leaves, taking her dog-thing with her.

You do as she says at first, rubbing your legs. It hurts, but the sensation does shift a little. You're wearing - you swallow - cheap trainers on your feet, but the soles are stained in something red-brown that smells like metal. It's blood. You walked through blood, and not recently.

It's not that you're afraid or disgusted. You feel numb. But… but you're vaguely aware that blood shouldn't be covering you, like this.

Your examination moves upwards as you rub, your legs and arms feeling much better as you move them. They hurt, but you can waggle your fingers and toes and even walk to the nearest pillar and back on your own. There are the seam-like scars running along both the fronts and backs of your legs. They feel like ridges under your skin when you run your fingertips over them. The same ridges run all the way around your knee , and then continue up your thighs, moving under your clothing. There are similar marks on your arms - though only the underside - and you lift up your bloodstained t-shift and see that you have another mark running down the centre of your chest all the way down to the top of your shorts, which splits at your sternum into two scars leading to your shoulders. And you can feel another ridge down your back.

Surgical scars. Yes. You know what they are. That's what… what a modern, good-quality surgical suite can do. Advanced… advanced polymorphic synthflesh injected into an open wound leaves these ridges of synthflesh, and then a plastic surgeon can make them blend with the original skin. You know how that works. You don't know how you know that works, but you do know it.

"P-p-p," you spit, trying to shape the words. You can feel the seething bitter anger inside you, building. You can think these things! But your mouth doesn't say what you can think. It doesn't do what you want it to do, and… and… "P-poly. Morphic. S-s-synfless," you try. "F. L. Esh. Flesh."

Perhaps it's welcome a little bit, as a distraction. The anger, that is. Because the surgical scars are all over you. Arms, legs, face, chest, and back.

You look up with a dawning sense of horror as thunder cracks outside. What the fuck happened to you?

And then you see the thing rise into sight through the slits in the plastic.

It looks like a giant mechanical eye the size of a small child. A giant mechanical black eye, glowing faintly red from the optical sensor mounted up front, suspected from four flaring thrusters. It's a darker shape against the dark sky, save for that red glow. Underneath there's some kind of gun, which relentlessly scans from left to right. Your breath hitches in your throat and you try not to make a sound as it whines and whirs, maneuvering in through the cut plastic. It hasn't seen you yet, but it will if you don't move right now.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

[ ] Hide - What the hell is that thing! It's… it's got a gun! You're just going to get out of sight and hope it doesn't spot you!

[ ] Fight - It's… it's quite small. Maybe if you just keep out of sight, you might be able to ambush it. And then smash it. If you do it right and get the drop on it, it might not even see it.

[ ] Flee - You have had it up to here with today. Between the creepy weird lady and the creepy robot eye… no. You're just going to run away. From both of them. You don't know where you're going, but you also don't know who you are or where you are, so it's not like that's making your knowledge any worse off.

[ ] Call For Help - If you call for help… uh, maybe Electra will come back. But then again, maybe the eye is here to help you. You might as well try one of them.
-> [ ] Electra
-> [ ] The eye

[ ] Surrender - Look, yes, it might be a mechanical eye, but you don't trust Electra one bit. Maybe if you surrender, you can get away from her. They wouldn't shoot someone who's trying to surrender, right? R-right?

 

[EarthScorpion]

Looks like [X] Fight wins.

So, now is time for some more rules information.

*******************************************************************************

Calculating Your Dicepool

Put simply, a dicepool is equal to Trait + Talent + Training + Equipment Bonus.

You've already met your Traits. There are three of them: Social, Physical and Mental. Ordinary humans have a + bonus and a - malus for each of their traits, representing an aspect of the Trait that they're good at and one they're weak at. Augmentations can get you additional bonuses which can be rated at ++ or better and even do things like lower your target number to 4 - like Kae's "++Inhuman Strength". Crippling injuries and inferior augmentations can give you additional maluses. These too can be rated at -- or worse, and the nastiest can do things like make 1s subtract from successes. A bulky, inferior cyberarm might provide --Left Arm for Physical, which is pretty bad. Still better than having no arm, though.

Traits bonuses and maluses do not stack - you use the highest applicable bonus and malus. Increasingly severe injuries should be represented by worse maluses, not additional ones.

Talents are your bread-and-butter capacity to do things. They are rated up to +++. Someone with +++Science is a veritable polymath, at home with biology as physics, while someone with +Firearms can handle rifles, pistols and shotguns alike at a basic level of proficiency.

Training, by contrast, is cross-skill professional training which applies within a field. For example, a hacker might have Digital Social Engineering as a Training, which provides a bonus to a narrow professional field. For example, someone with ++ Cyberdoc training will get the ++ bonus when installing and maintaining cybernetics (with a mix of Medicine and Engineering), treating patients with them (Medicine), knowing the limits of models of cybernetic they encounter in the field. and so on. Training is capped at +++, although applicable fields may be mixed and matched (to a maximum +++ bonus regardless of source). Someone with ++Street Samurai and +Olympic Fencing has a +++ bonus from Training as long as they act within those two fields, as well as a rather interesting backstory. Most people will tend to be getting more dice from Training than Talents within their field of proficiency.

Finally, Equipment Bonuses are bonuses (or maluses) given by your equipment or lack thereof. For example, a good pair of running shoes might be worth a + equipment bonus in a foot chase, while trying to repair a broken down car in the rain (--) with no tools (---) might sum to give an overall penalty of -5. Equipment bonuses cap at +/- 5, and in most cases no one tool will give more than +/- 3. Of course, those best quality tools may well require Talents or Training to make best use of - a full microsurgery suite isn't going to help and may well hinder if you don't actually know how to use it.

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Inhuman Strength

As Kae is about to discover, she is in fact considerably stronger than any baseline unaugmented human being. This is represented with the Inhuman Strength bonus to her Physical trait. This is special in two ways. Firstly, it's rated at ++, so she receives two extra dice when "Inhuman Strength" applies.

However, it's also in italics. This provides an additional benefit. When Inhuman Strength applies, the target number is four , not five. This means that when rolling a d6, she succeeds on a 4+, not a 5+. This means each dice is on average going to contribute half a success, not a third of a success. This can make quite a difference.

This may be quite obvious. Especially if she does things like kick down a door and send it flying off its hinges.

*******************************************************************************

And with that said, time to ask for the rolls. Kae has realised that she has certain things she's good at, which have been derived from the choices you've already made. Among other things, she's realised she has ++ in the Wetworks Operative kind of Training. That's a skill usually found among... well, people who do messy things for megacorps or governments. The kind of things which require Viscera Cleanup Unlimited to provide their services. There are other things she's good at, but she hasn't found them yet.

So, as a result, someone roll me Mental + Wetworks Operative, at -1 due to your Reaction malus, for your attempt to ambush the drone by keeping out of its sightlines and anticipating where it will look.

That's a 5d6, TN 5 roll.

 

[EarthScorpion]

4.

Heart pounding in your chest, you all-but throw yourself to the ground, down below a low concrete wall. There's shiny bare metal exposed by the fire behind you, and you can sort of track the movement of its red eye by its blurred reflection.

The drone feels to you like it's hungry. You're behind the wall and it's stalking you and if it sees you, it'll hurt you. The hissing of its engines makes you think of some kind of giant snake-thing. On your hands and knees, you crawl away from it, and then edge around a support pillar, carefully rising to your feet and making sure the pillar's between you and the drone.

The engines hiss and it whines as it comes closer and closer. You edge around the pillar in response to the noise, keeping your clumsy arms and legs tucked in close.

It pauses. It whines. There's the sound of a lens focussing.

And then it moves away. You let yourself exhale only when you start to see spots. Your back against the pillar, you take a deep breath. Your fingers clench and unclench rhythmically. You… you think you can do this. You remember… no, you don't remember. But your body remembers doing this kind of thing before. It's… hah, it's muscle memory. Almost unasked for, your fingers reach down to your waist, to try to draw… something. Some kind of weapon. But of course you don't have one.

Well, drones are flimsy. They have to be light to be able to fly like that. And your blood is pounding in your ears. You risk a glance. It's not facing you.

One. Two. You take a deep breath. Three.

You charge. It's not an elegant charge. It's a bull-like rush, focussed towards one goal and that goal is getting in close to the machine and pulling it down to the ground. You throw yourself at it in an enveloping hug, and latch on tight. Your mind might not remember doing this before, but something in your clumsy, uncoordinated muscle memory is at home with doing things like this.

The drone doesn't hear you coming - or if it does it doesn't respond in time. It certainly fights once you latch on. Its engines whir faster, and you have to watch for the spinning rotor blades and the hot thrusters. It very nearly pulls you off your feet, and you get dragged along as it tries to get free.

You don't let go, though. With your arms wrapped around it, it can't turn or rotate, and its gun can't turn around to face you. It whines, engines whining as the microthrusters try to angle so it can escape. It's all in vain and you tighten your grip, squeezing tighter and tighter.

[Obstruction detected,] it says mechanically. [Tampering with police properties is a criminal offence.]

You just lock your arms tighter and let out a wordless snarl. You don't need words right now, though.

There's a cracking noise and the lens over its eye shatters. It keeps on repeating those words, even as the spherical hull gives in. You let your legs fold under you and fall on top of it, trapping it under your weight. Servos complain and machinery buzzes as you lever the crack wider open, and then reach in and tear out the insides.

The thrusters die and it stops wriggling. You don't stop until there's circuit boards littering the floor.

You're… not even breathing that hard. Wide-eyed, you stare at your hands, opening and closing them. You can see the muscles moving under your skin. The same muscles which just crushed a drone like a can of cola. Your blood vessels are standing out like cords against your skin and that looks really unhealthy, but even as you watch they relax.

The words. Yes. You wet your lips. You have to get into the habit of talking. "D-did I know I c-could do that?" you ask yourself. "I'm n-not sure."

You close your eyes, and massage your temples. What do you know? You know… you know things about medicine. You apparently know how to fight. And… there are other memories, too, out of reach. Things you don't have context for.

"Hi!" That bright, cheery voice can only be Electra. There's dark patches on her filthy coat, and some new holes in it, but she doesn't seem to be hurt. Her dog-thing stalks in behind her. "Oh! What happened here?"

You straighten up, from where you were half bent over. You're not a very tall woman - certainly not compared to Electra, who's built like a tank. If you're this strong, how strong must she be? You narrow your eyes, and clear your throat. "There w-was a spy drone," you say, your tongue feeling slightly numb in your mouth. Maybe it's the proximity of Mau. It scares you, dreadfully so. "I didn't want it to see me. I broke it."

"Oh, great find!" Electa says gleefully, as she nudges her way through the broken machine with her heavy boots. "Did you do that?"

You nod. It's easier than talking.

"That's great! I'm so proud of you!" she says, flashing a grin at you. She kneels, and casually tears the weapon off the bottom. She rolls her left sleeve to the elbow, revealing a bulky, muscled arm wrapped in tattered synthskin, and then grits her teeth and… and forces the machine gun into her arm.

That's the only way you have to describe what she does. She just holds it against her arm and then flesh and cabling breaks through the tatters in the synthskin to attach itself to the technology. Plastic tubing starts pumping faintly glowing yellow fluid into the access ports, while raw flesh fuses with the metal and then scabs over, locking it in place.

She catches the expression on your face. "Great, isn't it?" she says cheerfully. She waggles her fingers, and the barrel spins up. She sights down it at the wreckage of the drone. "Thank you," she tells it seriously. "And thank you," she adds to you. "It'll be really helpful! They've surrounded the skybridge and if they're sending probes in here, I think that means they'll have sealed off the lower levels." She pauses, pacing up and down. When she goes to pet Mau, it snaps at her, nicking her hand with its sharp metal teeth.

She kicks it in the face, and it yelps in pain. "No!" Electra snaps. "Bad Mau!" She turns back to you, and she's sunniness and cheerfulness again. "We're going to need a distraction," she says, talking you by the hand. She uses the arm which doesn't have a gun fused with it, and pulls you through two corridors, to a lift shaft.

It's sealed off with black and yellow tape, but she levers the door open with her bare hands, exposing a red-lit vent shaft.

"Wh-what now?" you ask.

"I'm thinking we'll need a distraction. And a means of escape. There are a whole lot of megacorps who are a teeny weeny bit totally absolutely furious with me - and you too," Electra explains. "I broke this elevator a few weeks ago and they haven't repaired it, so we can use it as a way up and down. It only goes down to Floor 100, not all the way, but that's still enough to get away from the spire, right?"

"Fl-floor Hundred is a... " you frown. "It's… a… p-park level?" you hazard.

"Yep! But that'll be sealed off. No, we need to go somewhere else before we even think of trying to break it," she says, swinging out and onto a ladder which leads up and down the red-lit shaft. "Come on! I have a plan!"

ELECTRA HEADS TO:

[ ] Floor 152 - DOCKING BAY (Plan: Kill The Police And Steal An Aircraft)

[ ] Floor 139 - MALL LEVEL (Plan: Hide In The Crowds And Take Hostages)

[ ] Floor 122 - REACTOR LEVEL (Plan: Destroy The Reactor And Cause A Distraction)

[ ] Floor X - WRITE IN (Plan: Electra Will Devise One Based On The Written-In Floor. It Will Be Not Unlike Her Other Plans.)

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT CURRENT EVENTS, ELECTRA, AND OTHER SUCH THINGS?

[ ] Write in

 

[EarthScorpion]

5.

"It's simple," Electra explains. It's dimly lit in here, with the light coming from dull yellowish bulbs every floor or so. Some of them have blown, leaving long stretches of darkness. Metallic noise echoes up and down the hollow space, as the megablock adjusts and moves in the winds outside. She's casually swinging down the lift shaft while you're having to maneuver your clumsy body into motion. Sick nauseated anger churns and boils in your stomach at the contrast between the two of you, and you're not entirely sure why. "We blow this joint, and then they'll be busy having to deal with all the dead people and the fires and the radiation and everything like that!"

You don't know how you feel about Electra. No, wait. You know you're scared of her. She hasn't been anything less than nice to you, but… she scares you. She deeply, truly scares you. You can't predict what she's about to do, and that terrifies you. Maybe it's just because you don't remember anything that you find her erratic and unpredictable.

No. You have a gut feeling that normal people don't act like she does. Normal people aren't cheerful like her when talking about bad things. Normal people don't plan to kill lots of people. There's something sick in her head.

You don't know who to trust, though. The drone you crushed was scary and it had a gun. Electra is scary - and now she has a gun. And she's probably faster than you. If you're going to run away from her, you can't do it when she's nearby. But at the moment, that… that fucking Mau thing is crawling down the shaft with you, its red-hot claws sinking into the metal of the walls like a knife into butter. You're sure that thing scares you, because it's fucking terrifying. When you're near it, your heartbeat speeds up and you want it gone! But it's with you now. And from the scarring that already exists on the walls, you can only conclude that it's done this before.

Or that there are more things like it out there. Well, isn't that a cheerful thought? In fact, it's such a cheerful thought that you concentrate on climbing specifically so you don't have any more cheerful thoughts like it.

Your arms aren't hurting at all by the time Electra stops, and that's something which doesn't feel quite right. There's no door here, but she has to be stopping for a reason, right?

"Mau," she says.

Shortly afterwards, there's a door. Well, a hole in a wall leading to a corridor, which is sort of the definition of a door. Or at least a doorway.

Electra squeezes in through the hole rimmed with molten metal, and then helps you through. She pauses by the door ahead of you, and grins up at you innocently. "The main security office where they control the security bots is just up ahead. Heh, want to see something sweet?" She doesn't wait for a response. "Sure you do! Watch this!"

The pit drops out of your stomach, and you suddenly can taste an oppressive air of greasy, electric tension in the air. There's a glow coming from within Electra's body, a yellow glow from under her skin accompanied by fat blue strands of electricity rolling over her skin and arcing between her head and her torso. The pressure builds and builds, and you feel all your hair stand on end.

And then she pulses and all the lights go out. The pitch blackness would be total, if it wasn't for the red glow from Mau and the afterglow which dances purple in front of your eyes. The air stinks of ozone, and you have a deep ache in your muscles which wasn't there before. Red emergency lighting flickers on, though even that's not working close to where Elecra had done her flash-thing.

"Help me with the door," she says, striding up to the door getting her fingers into the half-open gap and pulling. You join her and between the two of you, you manage to slide the powered-down mechanisms along their tracks.

You're swept along in her wake. What can you do? You can't run. Mau'd get you. It's trailing behind, like… like it expects you to run. Electra would get you. And...

"Hey! You! Stop right there! Who are you?"

It's a man, wearing a ballistic vest marked SECURITY and a helmet and carrying an assault rifle. His limbs look plastic-y - you think he's a cyborg.

"I'm a dangerous maniac," Electra says agreeably. "I got lost. I surrender."

The man blinks, his hands wobbling. "Stay where you are!"

"I understand," she says, nodding. "But you know." She shrugs. "You got sent out on your own to confront me. Doesn't that sound a bit unfair to you? Probably makes you angry when you think about. Really, really angry."

His hands are shaking a lot now. That worries you quite a bit because you're at the nominal dangerous end of his gun.

"You should probably go fix that!" Electra says happily, who doesn't seem to be concerned at all.

With a hiss of rage, the guard spins on his heel, his teeth bared and the corners of his lips turned up. You don't think he's smiling, though. Not one bit.

"Come on!" Electra tells you happily. "He'll open the door to the security office for us!" She breaks into a run to catch up with him, and you follow behind, stumbling. You don't know what's happening, but you're sure it's something bad.

You hear a man's voice up ahead, and a woman. Different ones from the man you're following.

"You bastard!" a man shouts. Then there's a loud burst of gunfire, and a second one. What just happened? Did… did the man Electra talked to shoot someone? There he is, ahead of you, and he looks furious and now he's turning on you and...

And then Electra is there, and shining metal is extending and the world painted red by the emergency lighting is even more red.

You blink, feeling numb. Her hands didn't leave the pockets of her coat. No, the front of her coat burst open and two… metallic arm-tentacle-things burst out. Each are holding - or maybe tipped by - a razor-edged machete.

She cut him to pieces. Disarmed him. And you suddenly understand far, far too well where some of the stains on her coat come from.

Electra turns back to you. She's humming to herself, in counterpoint to the dripping sound. The dripping sound which comes from her knives. And from the ceiling. And the walls.

"Wasn't he dull!" she says brightly, giving a loud whistle. You hear the clatter of Mau behind you. "Did you see the expression on his face? I bet that was the most fun he ever had in his life!"

You are speechless. Literally. You're too scared to talk. You just s-saw someone die in front of you. You don't think you ever saw that before. And your tongue feels like so much cold meat and everything smells of copper and Electra is standing there, dripping blood, with a look of concern on her face.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

You shake your head. Or maybe you just twitch in fear. You're not entirely sure yourself. But she seems to take it as a shaking head, and she takes your arm with her hand and leads you over the eviscerated body, into the shot-up security office. There's a dead woman here. Her brain is all over the wall. The man is more intact, in that he only took multiple bullets to the chest.

"Just wait here," she tells you. "I'll get this over and done with and we can go! And I'll leave Mau to keep you safe! Everything'll be just peachy!"

"H-h-h-hurt," you stammer. You don't know what you're saying or even why you're saying it. She seems to interpret it as concern, though.

Electra laughs. "That's so nice of you!" she says, giving you a hug that leaves you wet and sticky with cooling blood. "But don't worry about me! I was there when the bombs fell! A little bit of radioactivity from a nuclear power plant won't be a problem at all! I can handle it! A long time ago, someone very important told me that I was here to bring new lights into the world!" She pauses. "You might get a little bit sick, but you're tough! It won't kill you! Not for very long, even if it kills you! So that's okay!"

She glares at Mau. "Girl! Keep her safe, or I'll nail you to four walls at once!" she says with a face like thunder, before smiling at you. Her plastic face flickers between expressions without any intermediary steps, you realise. Cheerily, she heads off, the metal of her killing tendrils scraping along the walls. You swallow. Hard.

Stupid Electra. Stupid body. Stupid… stupid everything. You don't know what's going on and you hate that, because among other things you're sure that something really bad is about to happen.

She's left you alone in this security office, with Mau and… and the bodies of the guards. All of them. The one she killed herself and the ones she made the other person murder. Just by talking to them. The guards are quite heavily auged, too. You can see the exposed implants in the one who… who was cut apart. Did… did she hack his cyberbrain and make him do that? Did she do something like that to you? Is that why you can't remember anything?

You almost throw up, your stomach rebelling from the morbid thoughts and the morbid scene before you, but you manage to hold onto… uh, whatever's in there. Probably not much. You're getting sort of hungry. Or rather, you were getting hungry. The dead bodies have put you off the thought of food.

Mau growls, the rumbling noise reminding you that while you might have been put off the idea of food, it hasn't.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

[ ] Sit there like a good girl and do nothing like a useless lump until Electra comes back. (x0.5)

[ ] Sure, most of the power might be off, but the emergency light is still on. Maybe there's an emergency phone here? And Mau's a stupid machine, so it probably won't suspect what you're doing. (x1.1)
-> [ ] Call the police. 911, right?
-> [ ] Maybe there's someone else in the facility you can warn about her.
-> [ ] Write-in

[ ] The guards had weapons. And the one who didn't get turned into mincemeat had armour. Maybe that might even the odds against Mau. (x1.2)
-> [ ] And then run away
-> [ ] And then try to stop Electra (- x0.3)

[ ] Write-in plan

 

[EarthScorpion]

Augmentations

Kae has a number of augmentations at the moment (that she's aware of, or can easily become aware of in the course of her actions):

++Inhuman Strength - As previously mentioned, she has a ++Inhuman Strength bonus in her Physical Trait.

Extensive Body Enhancement - Kae's fairly sure that she's been pretty extensively modified. She feels pain, but it… doesn't seem to stop her. It mostly just makes her angry. She doesn't think she needs much sleep, and she's got this gut feeling - aha - that she can digest pretty much anything organic.

Anti-Materiel Strike - By expending 1 Charge and overclocking her muscles, Kae can punch or kick hard enough to ignore (Physical) dots of Durability of inanimate objects and cybernetics when trying to break them. This requires 1 turn to charge up normally, but she can sacrifice her Defence to use this augmentation reflexively. Warning: overcharged muscles can inflict minor self-damage if used on targets she can't wreck - when you're hitting this hard, something has to give.

Field Repair Mode - Kae's Augmentations self-repair her body when supplied with electricity from external sources such as wall sockets and junction boxes. As well as, say, stun batons. One level of electrical damage restores one Bruised health. Two levels of electrical damage restore one Wounded health. Three levels of electrical damage restore one Maimed level. As an added bonus, this makes her immune to damage from almost all electrical sources.

Field Recharge Mode - As the Field Repair Mode, but she can instead choose to convert two levels of electrical damage into one point of Charge.

Electrojolt - Kae can power devices which require electricity. Normal objects can be fuelled by residual bleed-off from her systems as long as she remains in contact with them. She can spend 1 Charge to power them for a scene, and does not have to remain in contact if she does so. She may also channel 2 Charge from her reserves into assisting a generator or large-scale battery, and fuel everything connected to the generator for a scene.

Integrated Taser System - When touching an enemy, Kae may spend 1 Charge and reflexively roll (Physical + 1), inflicting 1 level of Bruised damage per success. This system is optimised to burn out cybernetics and fries self-repair systems, and so cannot be used to fuel Field Repair Mode.

Charge

Augmentations require power to run. This is broadly measured by Charge - as they operate, they consume Charge, and when they run out they need to be recharged.

Kae has a maximum Charge pool of 10 at the moment. She has the capacity, later on, to increase the size. This is a not-atypical value for someone with extensive modifications - a cybereye might only have a Charge pool of 2-3. At the moment, she can only spend 1 Charge an action regardless of the source.

She can expend Charge to activate her Augmentations. These costs are detailed in the Augmentation in question.

In addition, she can spend 1 Charge to boost one of her Traits by 1 dot for 1 action. Whether by overstressing her body, overclocking her mind, or otherwise she can perform beyond her normal limits.

 

[EarthScorpion]

6.

Carefully, cautiously, you ease the phone up. Your skin prickles and static electricity crawls over the handset, but you can hear a dialing tone. You… you can sort of feel that you're making the phone work. You didn't know you could do that.

You slowly lower your hand to the keypad, and type in the numbers. 9. 1. You take a deep breath, and watch Mau intensely. 1. That's the number you need to dial. You know it. You might not know how you know it, but you do.

Taking a deep breath, you taste copper and iron in the air. Then you sink down and prop the phone up against your ear.

There's a woman down the other end of the line. She says something, but it's almost lost under the sound of Mau growling. It's pacing back and forwards at the door, shooting periodic glowing-eyed glares back at you. You don't need to read its mind to know that it's thinking about how you'd taste.

"H-hello?" you whisper into the line. Strangely, you… you feel more confident talking to someone like this. Someone down the other end of a line. Maybe it's just because this is the first person you can ever remembering talking to who isn't Electra, and thus you're much, much less scared.

… actually, it's probably that. People on phones can't kill you. You hope.

"H-help," you whisper, acutely aware that Mau might take what you're doing badly. "I'm… I'm in the… the s-security office on Floor 122. That's… uh, One. T-two. Two. The… the r-reactor level." You take a deep breath and press on. "There's… th-there's a w-woman. Her n-name's Electra. She's cr-crazy. She killed the s-security people. They're dead. In… in front of me. She's pl-planning to d-do something bad to the r-reactor."

You swallow. "Sh-she's big… very big and she has robot tentacles and she's a cyborg and… and she made one of the g-guards kill the others and th-then she just killed him and y-y-y-you need to stop her."

There's a moment of silence. Then "Okay, listen to me, ma'am." The woman on the other end of the phone sounds confident. Like she knows what she's doing. Or maybe you're projecting. But you really want her to know what she's doing, because if she knows what she's doing, then the fact that you have no idea what's going on won't be a problem. If she knows what she's doing, then everything might work out. "What's your name?"

Oh. One of those hard questions. "I… I'm not sure," you whisper. "It… it m-might be Kae. Or it starts with K. I… I don't know. I w-woke up and Electra was there and I d-don't remember much else. Sh-she said she d-did surgery on me." You swallow. "You have to stop her," you hiss insistently. "She… she's killing p-people and she m-m-made the p-power st-stop working and… and… and…" You trail off, your mouth hardly obeying you anymore.

"Ma'am. Kae," the lady says. "I believe you. Everything's going to be all right. Do you understand. You did the right thing calling us and you're being very brave. I need you to stay calm."

You know she's right. You need to stay calm. Even if it's hard. You need to stay calm or else you'll lose control of your speech and you won't be able to say anything. "C-calm," you stammer.

"Yes," she says. "Stay calm. That's important. Can you do that for me?"

You're not sure. "I'll… I'll try," you manage.

"Now, are you alone?" she asks.

"N-no," you whisper. Mae is pacing around, but either doesn't understand or doesn't care that you're talking to someone. "She… she left a dog-thing with me. It's a cyborg. It… it," you duck down. "It's dangerous," you whisper.

"Good. You're being very brave," she says warmly. "Now, I'm about to transfer you to someone else who wants to talk to you. He's a policeman. He needs to know some things, so we can work at getting you to safety and stopping the bad lady."

Yes. That's good. That's what you want. More than anything. Getting out of here. Stopping Electra.

"Ma'am, please. Listen to me." It's a new person, a man. "My name is Paul Sanchez, and I'm with the LAPD. We just have a few questions for you. If you think you can speak safety, I'd like you to answer them. But don't put yourself in danger. Do you think you can do that?"

You reflexively bob your head. "Yes," you say softly.

"Good. Now, tell me. Where did she take you? How did you get to Level 122?"

Slowly, hesitantly, trying not to draw Mau's attention, you stammer your way through how you climbed down the lift shaft and she cut through the door and made all the power stop working. He asks further questions, and you answer them as best you can. Fortunately he doesn't ask about the drone you sort of crushed a tiny bit, because you suspect that… um, it might have been better to turn yourself in to it. Which wasn't fair! You didn't know that at the time! Along with a lot of things! Urgh, why is everyone so harsh to amnesiacs?

Your stomach churns with anger at how you've been treated and how… how unfair the world is!

"Now," he says. "You say you're in the security office? I'm looking at the plans. Can you see which one it is? There should be something on… on the floor marked S1 or S2 or something."

You look. "S2," you say.

"Now," he says, "you say she left a cyborg dog to watch over you. Do you think you can get away from it? If you can get closer to the landing pad, we'll be able to get you out of here." There's a pause. "There are people out there who are missing you, and you need medical help from what you've said," he says carefully. "But don't take risks if you can avoid it. If you can't get away safely, wait where you are and I'll send a team to pick you up."

You don't know. You might be able to make a run for it. Or kill Mau. There's a churning in your gut. You really do hate that thing. But maybe you should just wait here. Mau is pretty dangerous.

WHAT NOW?

[ ] You've done everything you can with Mau here. You just have to wait now.

[ ] Kill Mau, Vol I
-> [ ] How?

[ ] Make a run for it. Maybe Mau won't chase you?

[ ] Write-in