ataraxion | TWENTY FIVE: VIDEO

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TWENTY FIVE: VIDEO

[It's familiar, a video from her number opening on the SEC offices. Her appearance is immediately notably different though: hair shorn to a buzz over her scalp, skin incredibly pale, black of her tattoos stark, and she looks like she's been losing sleep and weight for a while. None of that's surprising, considering how things have been going, and it's doubtful what she has to say will be either.]

Those of you that don't know already, I'm Tyke, head of security. I'd give you the regular spiel, but this isn't the time. The shit with the doors is getting worse. As far as we can tell it's getting all of them, lifts, departments, and it's hitting comms too.

[Which might make it a matter of luck if enough people even see this, but she has to try.]

If you're moving around the ship, you need to be prepared. Stay in groups. Carry rations and water with you. Contact the network if you get trapped - don't try individual numbers, some messages are getting redirected or not getting through.

[There's a pause, almost like she might be done, but she looks undecided, a frown pinching her brow. After a moment she takes a breath, something even grimmer in her expression as she continues.]

But we need to be more prepared than that. I'm advising everyone get down to medbay, if you're not working on this. We're approximately a week out on the jump. [A beat. She doesn't really want to spell out how bad this could be.] You need to know what happens if we're locked out of medical when it comes, there are recordings.

[Not a nice place to end a message, and it's noticeably abrupt, the way she reaches to cut the feed.]

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Already doing. I - don't seem to be hit as hard as some. If there's shifts that've been hit particularly bad by how bad people are, I'll do my best to cover them.

[ Rich is not looking particularly well, but other than having lost some weight, it really doesn't seem to be as bad for him as for many. Between what the Nova Force does for him, and who-knows-what it is that keeps some people from going bad enough to need mutations, he really is in - well, for the time being, good shape. He'll take it, and offer what he's got up. People need it, and him, now. ]

[She shakes her head slightly, though she appreciates the offer.]

Keeping shifts up isn't the priority right now.

[ Rich shrugs. ]

Not for the same reasons, no. But if I can help or get help to people who're stuck...

You find people that need help, you help them. That's what we're all doing.

[She never holds people to shifts during emergency situations, and she isn't going to start now.]

... yeah, pretty much.

[ He does have better sense than to point out that people who knew the patterns of Sec patrols and were preserving their strength might be relying on the familiarity. Overall, it doesn't matter. What's important is that she knows he's in good enough condition to help, and if somebody turns to her with a request, she can direct Rich in the right direction. ]

Hope things don't get much worse, before somebody figures out what's going on.

[ It's not cheerful enough to be ironic, but Rich does know that chances are that... the optimism will hardly be grounded in what's coming. ]

[ Kate doesn't look much better, even though she has her hair. Drawn and pale, she keeps her head propped against the wall like it might be tough to hold it up otherwise. ]

Hey. Good advice about carrying supplies. I'm trying to get a group together to find the source of the stasis fluid, and I was hoping you could recommend some people from your department. If you know anyone who isn't totally ruined by this right now, it'd be useful to have more people. Especially with departmental access when we run into locked areas.

Most able-bodied we've got are working on rescuing people.

[But she isn't going to actually protest the idea of a stasis fluid hunt, even if she thinks it might be a wild goose chase. Things have changed around the ship before. Maybe they'll get lucky.]

Richard's still good. Emma, I think. Fenris, Edgeworth, maybe.

[She frowns, shakes her head slightly, not clear if she just doesn't know or is having difficulty remembering, but something frustrated either way.]

You can't get any of them and you find something, call me, I'll come down.

[ Kate nods. ] That's priority. Takes more energy than searching, too. Keep an eye out while you guys are roaming around, just in case? I'll get who I can from the rest of the passengers and leave you guys to it until we find something. [ If ever. She's not really quite as optimistic as she sounds, but it's worth a shot and focusing on the doubts isn't going to sign anyone up. ]

Anyway. I like the hair, by the way. [ It's not a tease, her smile's too crookedly genuine. ] Seriously, you're rocking the GI Jane thing.

[She nods at the first part. It's a compromise, and a reasonable one. Any verbal acknowledgement of that is tripped by the comment on her hair, though, and she lifts a hand as if bidden by the reminder, running her palm over the short buzz.]

It was falling out. [Shaving it had been practical.] I don't know who that is.

[ Fenris turns up in the offices not long after she cuts the feed, still more inconvenienced by his comms device than by a walk. ]

Do you know if any of the passengers who can— [ Teleport, Apparate, whatever; he's seen it but he doesn't know the words for it, and when he pauses to try to decide how to describe it he ends up sidetracked by her exhaustion and pallor. It's different in person. She's taller than he is, but right now she seems smaller.

He frowns and tries to ease into the subject sideways: ]

What happened to your hair?

[ 'Ease'. ]

[She probably looks worse in person. Without the limited frame of a camera, there's no way to hide the way she's leaning into the conference table, stubbornly staying on her feet despite the feeling of exhaustion in her limbs. She's one of the only ones here, the rest of the team either out helping people or in medical themselves - it's not a show of strength for any audience, though when Fenris speaks she seems to catch herself out of some kind of lull, shoulders straightening as she looks up from reading (staring blankly) at something on her comms.]

Shaved it off. [She says after a moment, slow on catching up with the abrupt way he'd changed subject.] It was falling out.

[She frowns. Her hair isn't important, just like none of her other symptoms are. There's work to be done.]

Passengers who can do what?

[ Fenris is capable of taking a hint, when he wants to, and right now he does try: his eyebrows stay knit together and his eyes roam from her shorn head to her thinning arms, but he doesn't feel well himself, and he'd snarl at anyone who tried to fuss over him. So he makes it a few distracted words into an answer to her question: ]

Disappear and reappear elsewhere, I don't...

[ He shakes his head—he doesn't know what they're called, and he's changed his mind about taking that hint. She's clearly beyond not feeling well. ]

You need to go to the medbay.

I need to be here. Working.

[She says immediately, voice firm as if she's had this argument before. She hasn't, no one else in the team managing more than concerned looks before she'd forced a different topic. But she's had it with herself, assessing her health, the state of security, weighing them up. It would always come down to security first.]

Teleportation-type ability. [She clarifies, already trying to think of how many people she knows with that kind of power.] The ship messes with that sometimes, we can check.

If anyone is trapped-- [ then it would be useful, obviously, to have someone along who could ignore the doors. If any of them aren't also sick. (This is why they need a power registry. This, and letting Fenris decide who to scowl at in the hallways.)

He shuts his mouth and grinds his back teeth together while his respect for her dedication--and personal dislike of being fussed over, himself--tries its damndest to balance out what he's looking at. It doesn't work. He huffs through his nose, too quiet to be a snort but with about the same level of frustration. ]

You can work from the medbay. [ He waves his comms device. Blighted useless thing, for the most part, but: ] What else are these good for?

[He's not dropping the topic, despite her forcing it aside. For a moment she just frowns at him, like she's not sure exactly how annoyed she is by it, how she wants to deal. Distraction isn't working, and she's not naturally inclined to it anyway: straight on feels better.]

I'm fine. [It's almost defiant. If she says it enough, it must be true.] If I'm in medbay and something happens...

[Comms weren't enough, not really. She shakes her head, but immediately regrets it, hand splayed bracing on the table top as she stubbornly waits for the wave of nausea to pass.]

You'll be more useful awake there than passed out here. [ He's watching her without moving to provide any support, or to touch her at all; he treats others the way he'd like to be treated, sometimes. When he likes them. No unexpected touching. No soft handling. ] Don't be foolish.

[She huffs something close to a laugh, dry, her smile only slight and gone again in a second.]

You think they're gonna let me stay awake down there?

[The implication that they'll knock her out might not be quite accurate, but she already knows they'll try to pump her up to the eyeballs on painkillers. It wouldn't be the first time she was barely lucid on a medbay bed - she remembers how useless and weak she'd felt. She doesn't want to repeat it.]

[ Huffing at his boss might not be the smartest thing, but it's what Fenris does, anyway—huffs and crosses his arms and does his best to look more stubborn than she is. That isn't difficult for him to do with most people, but they're probably pretty evenly matched. ]

You'll also be more useful passed out there than passed out here. No one will have to come collect you.

[All the huff and crossed arms really gets is a glare back, but it's lost some of the sharpness it might have had in the unfocussed quality to her eyes.]

They won't have to. How many times do I have to tell you: I'm fine.

[She isn't going to pass out, she thinks, at least. The nausea hasn't eased off, and there's a thick cold sensation rolling down her back, but she isn't going to pass out. She just needs a minute.]

I'll believe it when the doctors— [ he was quick to adopt that word, with its distance from healers ] —agree.

[ Or he'll sit here and wait for her to vomit or for her legs to give out, even if she'll still be saying she's fine all the while. He knows her sort. ]

[Not looking so great herself: pale, dark circles around her eyes, but alert. That's better than some.]

I can work on getting some water and rations stashed away in Medbay and SEC. If people know where to pick up something already, you know, ready, they might actually do it. I can make Medbay a priority?

Good idea. [She nods.] Focus on medbay - not too many of us around SEC right now.

[Either out helping or sick themselves. A sorry state for the department to be in, but they're not the only ones.]

I'm -

[ she was gonna try to do this via voice, but in one raw-throated word she changed her own mind. raven exhales sharply, then switches to text. ]

i'm a mechanic. damn good one
if you can find the problem i think i've got a shot at fixing it

might even be able to find it

[ but god, even as she sends it, she realizes how much she just plain doesn't have it in her to be any kind of 'humanity's only hope' right now. this is worse than the plague the grounders sent in on murphy. at least then she could arm a goddamn bomb.

so after about 30 seconds, here comes another text. ]

only been here a month
just point me wherever you need me and i'll do what i can

[ deferring, at the very least, takes less energy than trying to do this shit on her own. ]

You want engineering. That is my department.

[ "my" now. it feels odd to type, but arya pushes past it. for whatever seven-damned reason, the ship chose her for a colored tattoo. mayhaps the ship opted to follow the inheritance laws where it ignores all others. ( were she a fool, she might believe that. ) more likely, it considered this funny.

arya is hard-pressed to find the humor now. especially with someone implying an ( her ) entire department useless. ]

We have damn good mechanics from any number of places.
What we need are people who can work.

[ she clenches her fists before she types for raven to fuck right off ( unwise ) and sends it as is.

first impressions with arya: they're never good. ]

[ most people might get testy that arya jumped to conclusions (after all, who called who useless? nobody so far). raven, on the other hand, has found someone who speaks her language. ]

well congrats, you found one

[ is there a problem? ]

A boast is not proof.
You will want the orange lift.
Pray you are not trapped.

i said you found someone who can work. seems more baseline than boasting

[ you can just about hear how dry it is, even through text. c'mon now, miss head-of-engineering. ]

i'm coming to help solve this shit, not to prove myself to you
if you're gonna make it a pissing contest, i'll throw my weight in somewhere a little less insecure

Then do.

[ is there a log i should send her to? i already flung her into the SCI department log but i figure this is different ]

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TWENTY FIVE: VIDEO

video;

video;

video; ACK sorry for the late.

video; no worries!

video; :D

video;

video;

video;

video;

action all up in the SEC offices;

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video

video

voice, then text.

text.

text.

text.

text.

disconnect.

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