[The video crackles into life, showing a dark section of what appears to be engineering. There's a young woman, haggard with exhaustion in her features, sweat and engine oil streaking on her face, leaning into the camera intently, naked hope in her expression.]

Tomas? Tommy?

[Silence, for a long moment. She's waiting for an answer, and the hope slowly fades out of her eyes the longer she doesn't receive one. Eventually, resigned, she shifts, the camera blurring before it settles again, showing her sitting, leant back against a railing on one of engineering's walkways.]

I made it to engineering, Tomas. I don't remember how, but... [She trails off, confused, and then simply seems to forget about that train of thought.] I know I should have visited you here more often, maybe I'd have more idea of what to do. Breaking everything I come across should do it, shouldn't it? It feels so wrong, smashing up everything you worked on.

But I think I'm close. It doesn't sound-- [She breaks off, a smile breaking through, fond, sad.] That sound you used to talk about, that happy sound? It doesn't sound happy anymore. I just need to find the drive.

[She looks upward, mouth pressing thin, as if she's attempting to hold back tears. After a moment, she seems to find her resolve again, nodding to herself.]

I just need to end this.

[The camera shifts and blurs again, and then clicks off.]

[[MOD NOTES: Feel free to tag! Charlotte believed this to be a single closed transmission, but she will respond. Any characters with the know-how to trace this feed will find it originating in engineering, from a comms device apparently not registered to any crew numbers. Engineering is still too hot for player characters to enter! This post directly feeds into February's modplot, and more explanation will come in the upcoming plot post. In the meantime, if you have any questions regarding this post, feel free to contact us directly.]]

[She's bright, cheerful, and it's all forced. Well, maybe not all of it. Alexis is, by nature, a somewhat easy-going, optimistic type. It takes more than a crazy space-ship to get her completely down.]

Been awhile since I did one of these. I feel a bit twitchy and closed off but I mean... the last time I addressed all of you people at large, I ended up making at least fourteen stacks of pancakes. It's a bit labor intensive for a video blog. [Yes, she's joking.]

Anyway, welcome newbs, a week later and all. I hope you're all settling in and you can probably assume that the creepiness you see isn't just you. That said, I really want to break something in here, so please do me a favor and talk me out of it, yes? I don't need seven years bad luck on top of this.

[William had been a terrible liar years ago, when he had needed very badly to be a good one. He had answered honestly and as completely as he had known how, stated his intentions like parrots state about crackers. Eventually, it had put him in jail.

He thinks about this, pretty carefully, somewhat inescapably, as he travels through Tranquility to learn the terrain, review her records, and watch those who people her. There is such thing as overshare, and the worse the politics are, the more fatal that seems likely to be.

The fact that the Tranquility seems crewed by just a handful of abductees with therefore ostensibly similar interests is not tremendously reassuring in this way, when one reads the backlog of screaming on the network. What to say? He thinks about this cautiously as he takes himself through the flying buttresses as a wind-up bird, sleeps concealed under the bed as a spare pillow, discovers in the process of near-dehydration that the temperature fluctuations hit him approximately seven times harder when he shrinks, smokes cigarettes and burglarizes booze in a lounge decorated by a conspicuous series of smashed mirrors?? Even before he reads about the pirates, he gathers this place fucks people up. He was uninspired by murder and insanity on his homeworld, and it is no more attractive here.

It takes him approximately seventy-two hours to decide what to say, and even then it turns out just his thumbs, a text string flowering across the screen.] Hello. 你好.

This is Private William Tsang, Blackstone unit. I've got medical training and relevant psionics-- enhanced physiological recuperation, contact required for other. Also a carton of cigarettes which I cannot condone the use of. If somebody could point me at medical staff, I'd love to help out on this lovely haul to fuck knows where. Thanks.