Clusterfrag

Mick studies the wall with astrally attuned eyes and is greeted with nothing but a gray plane. Whatever it was that left masking magic around the ship did not pass by here-- or if it did-- did so long ago. They switch back to regular perception and begin to investigate the wall.

The small imperfections and contrasting textures are tell-tale signs for someone who has spent time among gangers. Mick is able to tell a genuine sofa from a stash decoy at a glance and this wall is no different. A simple barrier wall would be made with uniform metal; maybe a rivet or two. No, this wall screams I am just a wall just a little too loudly.

Mick's fingertips ebb over the irregular surface, seeking its secrets. They rap with their knuckles. They kick with their boot. By the time the other runners have come to join them, Mick has found the sweet spot. A number of seams conjoin to form the outline of what Mick is sure is a door. There are no visible hinges, handle, or any other markings to betray that fact, but Mick is certain.

"Never met a door that's kept me out," the ork grumbles, glancing over their shoulder to confirm the readiness of their compatriots. Then, with lightning speed, the adept rears back and pistons their right leg into the apparent structure, the sound of the impact enormous.

"OI, THEY COULD BE TURR-" That’s as far as Mouse gets before Mick launches their weight toward the wall. The little decker scowls at the discrete blocks of garbled code and noise, the layers of corruption serving as a metaphorical tarp blocking her sight. "Fffffffffu-" She bites her lip, snagging the start of an actual verbalized curse into a drawn out hiss. Her eyes press shut, as if to stave off an incoming migraine, even as her fingers trace a few rapidfire shapes in her AR. "FRAG IT. WE’RE DOING THE THING."

(( Whelp, HotF two of the mystery devices via fork? 3 marks at once- and an edge to try again if I goof it up. ))

Mick aims their savage kick square in the middle of the hidden door. The force ripples along the wall, bulging the metal around the seams and the hollow sound that's produced echoes throughout the hold. The door itself crumples inward, having been barred from the inside. While the blow wasn't enough to knock the door down, the resulting hole is large enough for any member of the team.

A swirl of dust motes ride the jet stream of air created by the sudden strike. Mick's eyes adjust quickly to the darkness beyond and drift between familiar objects: cots, intravenous drips, trays laden with surgical equipment, glassware, and an entire slew of machines and gizmos that might as well be made on Mars to the ork. There's no sign of any movement through the opening, though the adept does spy the winking of a red LED near the floor. A bedpan that had been perched on the end of one cot slides off and crashes on the metal floor.

The ork peers through, wary of the chamber beyond, befuddled by the incongruity of whatever the frag it is they're seeing. The clang of the bedpan sends a start through their system, a jolt of electricity that alights their frazzled nerves. "Got some kinda devices here," they attempt, peering back over their shoulder at their comrades, bathed in darkness. "Looks medical." Their gaze returns forward, back into the whistling maw of whatever horrors lie beyond. They step a cautious boot forward and over the threshold of the opening they created.

With no time to spare and grim imaginings of spinning turret barrels, Mouse frantically throws the kitchen sink at the icons looming in her AR view. She throws Mjolnir. She throws Bombchu. Hell, she even sics the Hello Kitty hounds at them. The decker whips out exploit after exploit like a juggler having an epileptic seizure.

By the time Mick's boot is planted on the other side of the metahuman-sized hole in the wall, Mouse has secured two marks on each device. Perspiration beads on her forehead as she frantically downloads firmware and scans the readouts.

The cool scintilla of relief caresses her nervous system as comprehension dawns. Both icons do not in fact belong to state-of-the-art murder bots, but rather medical equipment of some kind. Though the descriptors of the units ran far beyond the gamut of medical understanding that she possesses, Mouse recognizes the manufacturers as prominent medical corps. She finds herself lowering the holdout, which she had subconsciously pointed at the hole-- and fortunately, too, as it had been pointed squarely at Mick's back.

Mouse spares another view at her AR feed and discovers that she now has marks on all the present devices.

Mick eases themselves through the gap, mindful of the jagged edges created by their creative improvisation. They crane their neck to scan the surroundings in a perfect imitation of a stalking jungle cat. Their fists are clenched tight-- an unconscious but by now very common reaction.

They may as well have been transported to a military hospital. The floors are mirror-finish linotex, the walls sheeted with some anti-microbial film, and the pungent bouquet of disinfectant, ammonia and fresh canvas dominates their olfactory sense. There are two rows of beds that stretch at least fifteen meters and the room is jammed with machines and consoles.

A jolt of adrenaline threatens to move Mick from their stillness, but retreats as they recognize the contours of a mirror. Mick catches a glimpse of themselves; or, more specifically: two glowing orbs that are their eyeballs, chock full of photons.

In addition to the machines, there are steel cabinets and storage containers, portable sinks, and even a decontamination shower. There are no signs of any people, but a pair of full clean suits are hung up on pegs in a corner.

At the far end of the strange room is another door, presumably leading to the aft and the power plant and engine room. This one, Mick notes, has a handle.

A chill snakes its way through the decker’s nerves. The cold revelation that she had subconsciously drawn the gun draws a familiar lurch in her stomach, the same she had felt on the first sight of the bodies in Boo's lens. She would have infinitely preferred to have had the spirit of a three headed bug queen in the holdout's sights than her chummer's back. As her trembling hands point the snub nosed barrel toward the ground, the disgust she feels lingers, clings to her ribs, breathes onto her neck a shame that for once, she can't just happily ignore. There's a reason she doesn't do lethal, and it's not entirely her own cowardice.

She forces her attention out out of her spiraling angst, back to the task at hand, and the new devices she's managed to hook. The familiar form of the chubby ascii mouse watches with an expression of shit-eating bemusement, dangling its stumpy legs from the upper corner of her hud. [[You really showed that literal trash who's boss, ne? You saw that drek with no firewall whatsoever, and you pwned it. Real hackerman drek right there.]]

Doing her best to ignore both sources of inner critique, she opens up her palm, trying to expand the visible properties of the newly wrangled firmware. "…YEAH, JUST MEDICAL." She breathes out with a sense of relief, as she cautiously makes her way through the newly opened door. "SECRET, BUT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO WARRANT A DEDICATED POWER SUPPLY."

Brow knit, she glances back toward the others. "WHAT IS IT WITH CREEPY POWERFUL DUDES AND SECRET MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS ANYWAY?"

(( Any clue from the devices what their function is? Or is ot just a bunch more medical jargon? If there's any recorded data to snag, she'll to try to copy that over too. ))

Mouse bites her lip as she dumps the firmware into a program named senpai. The name still brings her grief and she suppresses the urge to groan aloud. It's a relic from her early days as a bright-eyed matrix kiddy, and the name has remained unchanged mostly as a reminder of how far she's come. Assembled from garbage files from a plethora of not-so-Megacorps, it's a kind of index of obscure things. And it just so happens that most of her early haunting grounds happened to be Healthcare adjacent. Instead of risking a matrix broadcast and waiting for results, she'll consult her senpai.

The program's UI-- an upperclass Nipponese boy that wouldn't look out of place on the JPOP billboards-- pushes up his glasses as the data processes. The animation it the result of Mouse's brief and fluctuant foray into the art world. She watches her creation's endless, looping fidgeting, feeling both disgust and endearment in equal measure. When the results come, they flicker across the feed.

Globapharm broad spectrum ultra violet transilluminator imaging device.
Genntech gel electrophoresis separation unit and analysis processor.
MQR Inc. enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay decipher unit.
Hasagawa-Ito high-capacity platelet centrifuge assembly.

Axel scans the room with as much dispassion as he can muster. "On the bright side, at least this room is clean."

He steps into the room, glad for the darkness that masks his shaking hands. Or at least, the jittering reticle of his smartlink tells him that his hands are shaking. Fear has numbed them some time ago.

"THE LACK OF DEAD PEOPLE IS A NICE CHANGE OF PACE. REALLY ELEVATES THE DECOR."

Mouse nods along with Axel's sentiment as she mulls over the findings, trying to extrapolate meaning from the odd assortment of devices. With a swipe of her hand, she tosses the findings into her comrades' feeds. "THE POWER FAIL-SAFE WOULD MAKE SENSE IF THESE MACHINES WERE FOR TREATMENT OR LIFE SUPPORT. BUT THESE LOOK LIKE THEY'RE ALL FOR TESTING." She chews her lip in thought. "OR WHATEVER OTHER REASON YOU'D HAVE TO FLING BLOOD APART."

It's at this point that she notices the little program still staring at her expectantly. With a resigned huff of breath, she sends its equally awkward stop command. [Senpai- arigatou.] It is at this point that the little program does the only other trick she'd coded into it. Its glasses flash in a burst of simulated lens flare, accompanied by a synthetic [Tch...] and a cocky, sardonic smirk that her teenage self had once considered wildly attractive.

She pointedly ignores the little part of her that still does.

Achak enters the room behind Mick. "Something tells me this doesn't come standard on a cargo vessel."

The shaman makes his way over to one of the cots. He runs a palm across the surface, pulling away a plastic sheet in the process. He turns to the others. "Unused."

Mick's expression is as grim as it is dour as their focus rakes over the scene, offering Achack only grumbled "Mm," in response. The ork moves to the rear of the secret medical facility, eager not to bother disturbing whatever ghosts haunt the place, and investigates the only apparent point of egress. Any investigation of the medical equipment they're happy to leave to those with the understanding of tech to better grasp its use, or– as it seems– neglect.

Mick crosses the room, steeped in the aroma of a pristine medical ward. The exit door is identical to the one they busted in, albeit sporting a handle. The bar is drawn back across the door, leaving it unlocked. More Cyrillic is stenciled over the door, which Mouse translates for Mick: Engine Room, Main Power Room, Bilge Operation.

"SO ALL THIS SURGICAL AND TESTING DREK WAS LEFT HERE, JUST WAITING TO BE USED." With each new, cryptic discovery, her expression scrunches a little further in her attempt to crunch these details. They’re being paid to solve a puzzle, to uncover the mystery of the ship, and yet each thread they pull leads to a whole new narrative tangle, seemingly disparate but somehow interconnected- There’s Volkov’s purpose for the freighter, the magical chameleon, the smuggled refugees, their mass deaths (and piled up belongings), the cut power, and now the hidden medical testing facility.

Almost out of habit, she finds herself squinting at the streams of traffic in this fragile mini network, and that enigmatic, unidentified fifth device, trying to divine its purpose in all this. "ALMOST WISH WE’D KEPT FASCIST GRANDPA AS A PRISONER. AT LEAST WE COULD FORCE HIM TO TRANSLATE THIS MAD SCIENCE WE KEEP RUNNING INTO. AS IT STANDS, ЭТО ПИЗДЕЦ." That last complaint tumbles from her mouth, seemingly of its own accord- a byproduct of idle thoughts fed through the churning linguasoft.

She carefully treads through the sterile space, attention drifting across the surgical tools, to the unopened cabinets and storage containers. As she moves, she gently traces a hand down the nearby row of consoles- the kind of electronics that would normally pose a tempting target in any other environment, skimming the surface for any kind of port, more out of habit than expectation.

(( Perception for anything to plug into, or any other kind of tablet/anything useful that might have been stashed in one of the unopened storage containers? Mostly just asking out of due diligence- no need to hold us up if there's legit nothing to find. ))

Mick cocks an eyebrow dashed with scars at the team, their fingers curled around the door handle leading to– among other places– the main power room, and gives it a turn.

Yung watches Mick turn the handle, offering a halfhearted shrug in return. "Gotta imagine, if there's anyone still alive in this place, they're probably behind that door, eh?" He scratches his head in contemplation. "I mean, not necessarily, but if the power was turned off, and the way in here is shut tight..." He says, gesturing to the room. "Unless there's another way into the engine and power rooms, then maybe whoever shut em off is still in there?"

The prospect of dealing with some crazed holdout is not on the top of Yung's priority list, but at this point it might be the only way to get some actual answers instead of just more questions. "Might be prepared for someone who isn't exactly thrilled at the idea of company, if we do find a survivor, let's try not to kill them, yeah?"

Mick opens the door to the aft-below decks slowly and peers through the crack. Beyond is a narrow corridor sandwiched between structural ribs, riddled with pipes and conduit. The stale air is interrupted by the pressure change, causing dust motes to dance in the air. The corridor is empty save for a lone toolbox, laying upended and having spewn out several hand tools. At the far end, the corridor transforms into a T junction, presumably leading to the engine room and power room respectively. They tarry a moment, eyes sweeping the narrow space for dangers.

As soon as Mick has set a single boot inside the corridor, something clangs at the far end. Mick's head snaps as they plumb the darkness for the source of the noise. They only manage to catch a snapshot glimpse of something slipping around the junction towards the starboard side.

Achak kneels next to one of the cots and reaches underneath. When he extracts his hand, he's holding a plastic cylinder. His gaze rises to Mouse, who happens to be the closest. "Hypo cover. Somebody must have injected something."

The Amerind glances over his shoulder as Mick opens the door to the aft section. Gripping his axe, he rises to back up the adept.

The response is unreasoned. Unthinking.

Irrational.

At the sight of movement at the end of the corridor, Mick takes off running, the boots clomping a beat of heavy echoes off the metal walls.

(( Mick will pause at the T junction of the hallway, not just go running wildly in perpetuity. ))

Axel steps through the lab like it's the crime scene that it probably is, hesitant to disturb the evidence, irrational as that might be. The scenes from above and below, the piled belongings, and rooms full of corpses bring to mind an old flatvid he watched as a kid. He can't remember the name, except that it was in black and white. A scene with valuables and shoes being thrown in piles, while their former owners are marched off to rooms to be gassed, flashes to his mind.

That might almost be more merciful than what happened here.

"So between the ghosts and the creepy medical laboratories, these poor bastards were borrowing their own trouble," he muses.

At that moment, there's a sudden burst of motion, and the team's resident fey-touched murder machine—Tinker Bell if her parents were a wasp and a badger—bolts down the hallway without a word. For a moment, Axel moves to follow, but his dread holds his feet firmly in place. He grimaces, and daring to look up again, puts his hands up in the air, two fingers pointing on each hand, and sweeps them forward. "GO, " he grunts. Wind and Whirlwind don't need to be told twice.

No time to overthink. Motion invokes action, forces Mouse to stop fragging stalling already and move. Her eyes briefly lock into Yung’s, his comments already proving remarkably prescient, and gives a singular nod of agreement.

"HERE COMES THE HARD WAY."

With that, she launches herself after Mick and the trailing drones, driven not from any hope of keeping up as much as a sudden, desperate urge not to lose them.

Mick skids to a halt at the terminus of the junction. They ease their back against the cold wall and peek around the corner. The air is thick with iron and brine. The adept can hear Wind and Whirlwind hovering next to them.

Another short hallway stretches out, terminating in a bulkhead door that is ajar. Through the crack, Mick can just make out the curve of some kind of large machine. There's no sign of anyone in their immediate line of sight, but a rag tied to a pipe is still fluttering in the aftermath of movement.

Their hands a pair of nimble claws out before them, Mick slips toward the door, stalking like a ghost amongst its own. They dip low, below the theoretical immediate line of sight of any welcome party member just beyond the entryway.

Mick melds into shadow and slinks into the power room. The borders of the room are undetectable, shrouded in a darkness that even Mick's low-light vision cannot pierce. Ahead is a multi-level platform of staircases and scaffolding. The centerpiece is a massive machine-- the powerplant, Mick guesses. It resembles a giant hourglass but with a sphere in the middle. At least a dozen wrist-thick tubes protrude from the device and snake into shrouded corners. They pick their way past a terminal, squeeze between a few crates and crouch at the base of the power plant.

So many hiding spots. Mick's head swivels as they plumb the void for their quarry, gaze flowing over pipes and tubes and alien machines. An LED winks in the darkness, the miniscule flash tinder for Mick's eyes. Nooks and crannies lost to shadow are briefly revealed in a strobe flash, before the dark blanket encroaches again. A soft breeze buffets the adept's cheek as Wind settles next to them, positioning itself behind a crate to remain undetected.

There's no sign of whatever it is that Mick chased into this place, but the hackles on Mick's neck betray a fact: somewhere in this room, something is watching them. The ship creaks as it rocks, hull groaning under the strain of the storm-fueled tow. Some type of hoist above Mick's head sways with the centrifugal force, inducing the clinking of chain links.

Mick becomes aware of a detectable change in the ambient temperature and carefully eases themselves down. Sure enough, a ghostly brume writhes along the grated floor. It's cool to the touch. Mick risks an inaudible sniff and grimaces at the alkaline tang. Coolant, maybe? The mysterious vapor's gyrations must be caused by the lurching of the vessel. Between it and the infernal darkness that clings to crevices, visibility is shit.

In retrospect, attempting to follow Mick's mad dash into the unknown may have been a poor choice for an inadequately armed decker. Mouse chalks it up to some lizard-brained impulse not to be left behind. Even so, her footfalls trail to a halt as soon as Mick vanishes into the darkness, leaving her with only her dim red light, and the hushed whirr of Wind and Whirlwind. << Anything on thermals? >>

Targetless, her gaze bobs across the surrounding dark. She tries to imagine the theoretical crazed holdout hiding around the corners, even if that forces her to admit that Yung would be better equipped to handle any traumatized survivors. "SO, IS THERE ANYONE ALIVE DOWN HERE? PREFERABLY SOMEONE WHO'S NOT AN INHUMAN MURDER MACHINE?" At this point, she's probably the opposite of the 'scary thing' that goes bump in the night, but she's playing to her strengths, which is appearing explicitly non-threatening. She lets her thoughts feed through her deck's linguasoft, parsing them into the odd Russian, with its manufactured familiarity. "THOUGH TO BE HONEST, I SUSPECT IF YOU WANTED TO KILL US, YOU WOULD HAVE DONE SO ALREADY."

Mouse's digitized voice sounds small in the acoustics of the large room, but it slices through the silence like monowire. While the voice software emulates intonation, the voice is still clearly synthetic and the sudden outburst comes out as eerie. Now that the team's position is betrayed, Achak slips into the room and positions himself in front of Mouse. He does however remain entirely still, straining to hear any possible reply.

Whether the room's other occupant cannot hear or understand Mouse or does and chooses to remain hidden is unclear. What is clear is that the only answer is the clinking of chains and the moaning of the hull.

Achak waves towards Axel to gain his attention. He jabs two fingers at the drones and then points a lone index finger up before twirling it in a circle, followed by an interogatory shrug and head tilt.

Mick glances over their shoulder at Yung and issues him a quick elbow to the ribs, whispering an exhortation, "You don't want me to do this with violence, you better make with the bulldrek."

Axel checks the drones thermals, then slaps himself on the forehead, and just shares the video feeds with the team. He glances up from his task, suddenly noticing how EMPTY the medical war crime room has become. Even with his augmentations, the corners seem to be a little bit darker, and the empty hall behind him looms with threat and untold access points for a vengeful spirit to sneak behind him, growing closer and closer and closer...

At that moment, the unmistakable sounds of Mouse's synthetic voice burbles down the hall. If she's talking, it can't be that bad, right?

<< Frag it! Wait for me! >> He messages, blowing his cheeks out, and ungluing his feet from the floor. The run is awkward, but he's dissociated from his feet sufficiently to not notice.

He arrives behind Achack, deciding to follow the shaman's example and make himself less noticeable. He nods once at the man, and sends the pair of drones on a lazy orbit around the room.

Wind and Whirlwind quickly dart to opposite sides of the room and begin a slow circuit near the ceiling. The feed gradually comes in as a post-modern canvas of muted purples. There's a dash of orange around the core, and some of the various tubes, as well as machines being fed by reserve power.

Near the end of their circuit, as the two drones begin to converge, they pick up a glowing red-orange blob flattened behind a large compressor near the rear of the room. The shape is metahuman in proportion but quite small.

Yung is startled by the sudden chase given by his comrades, but after Mouse scurries headlong into the abyssal corridor he can’t help but do his best to catch up. His pace slows as he enters the power room, collating the various data feeds, both digital and physical into some kind of approach. The prodding from Mick flusters him for a moment as he scrambles for a plan.

He begins with a slow and steady tone, "Aye chumma, ain’t got nothin to worry about. We’re the rescue party." He pauses for a moment, activating the illumination mod on his Synergist Line Long Coat. He wanders to the center of the room, carefully leaning against the central hourglass structure. "Got any food down here? We brought a few extra protein bars and some water."

"The name’s Yung. My associates and I promise not to harm you if you just come on out and talk. Sound good?" He lets the words linger in the air for a moment before starting to softly whistle a relaxing tune.

(( Persuasion? ))

As soon as Yung starts talking, even Mouse can't help but relax a bit, her thoughts and breathing slowing past their more shallow, frantic pace. She's not sure if it's some magical bulldrek, but his voice always seemed to fill the space with an added layer of ease and comfort, like a warm blanket- one that just happened to smell particularly good. (...and have a fantastic ass.)

With Yung doing his thing and whistling a cheerful tune, Mouse takes a closer look at the thermal feed. Squinting, she tries to place a form to the illuminated silhouette in a high-stakes round of 'Who's That Metahuman?' A scrawny dwarf? Or- no, even she knew this was a long shot, but just maybe…

"…JAVAD?"

Yung's words-- delivered with a soothing candor-- echo along the cavernous walls of the power station room. A brief silence follows which is punctuated by the shifting of footsteps. Tentative footsteps. A brief silhouette appears as a figure peers around the side of the compressor. Once Mouse utters the name of the child mentioned on the recovered phone, they step out entirely, then creep forward slowly.

As the stowaway hesitantly moves into the illumination provided by Yung, their features are revealed. Standing at the base of the power plant is a very filthy, very emaciated young boy. His dark skin is smeared in grease and his clothes are torn and stained. A pair of wide, unfocused eyes appraise Yung dubiously.

Javad lingers at the edge of the light, clearly struggling between fear and either desperation or hunger. The state of the boy, coupled with the vacant expression on his face suggests that while physically conscious, he's definitely shellshocked.

It’s like seeing a ghost.

For all Mouse knows, Javad could very well be one. She’d written off Nazim’s family as almost-certainly-dead back when she’d decoded his desperate missive, and done the head-math to establish that they’d run out of food well over a week ago. If anything, she assumed they’d be walking into a ‘Grave of the Fireflies’ situation, and that was before they discovered the two mass graves.

Javad himself maintains an alien familiarity about him. The decker knows nothing about how to handle a traumatized kid who's just witnessed the end of his world- only how to be one. She racks her brain for anything that could have helped her, once upon a time- anything that might dull the shock and fear and hurt, but comes up short.

An immediate gratitude for Yung’s gentle presence sets in, particularly as the elf finds herself staring back at the child. At a loss for words, she simply reaches into her pocket and withdraws Nazim’s commlink. She turns her free hand palm upward, letting her sleeve slide backward to reveal a wide, metallic band. A thin light springs forth from the bracelet, filling out from a tight beam into a familiar image: a flickering still of the two fresh-faced youths, as recovered from the hidden comm. Even still, she remains quiet, leaving space for those more adept at people-ing to do their thing.

She does, however, steal a glance back at Yung, and observes in a hushed tone: "DUNNO IF HE’LL BE DOING MUCH TALKING. OR IF HE EVEN KNOWS ENGLISH." Her brow knits in thought, then piqued curiosity, as she turns back this time to Reiya. "...BUT THAT MAGIC BRAIN-COMMS THING YOU DO- WOULD THAT HELP HERE?"

Yung rifles through his satchel in search of a protein bar and some water. After locating the items he slowly sits down with legs criss-crossing. He unwraps the bar and breaks off a small piece before tossing it on the ground in front of Javad. He then slides the water over to him carefully, offering a smile to the youth. "How bout it omae, speak English?"

While he waits for a reaction Yung loosens the strap affixing the medkit to his back. He slowly sets it on the ground in front of him before opening it up with the red cross facing Javad.