ic contact;

[psycholawgy]

You've reached Athena Cykes. I'm currently unavailable, but leave a message and I'll get back to you pronto. Danke! (voice/call → text → video → action)

Comments

[psycholawgy]

[ the good thing about athena is that when she's not being overly emotional, she knows exactly how to word things properly to get what she wants. ]

I could always just ask him smaller questions first, like why he saved us in the jungle. If his answer's good enough, I can move on with asking about the thing you saw.

[zerotohiro]

That's not a bad idea. Maybe ask him what else is hidden in that tower because it seems like there's way more than they want us to know about. Think about it. The Bridge was locked in there, and now this alien thing? Aren't you curious what else there is?

[psycholawgy]

The next time you go, I better come with! I can't believe somebody like me [ athena, who even are you??? ] is getting left out of the fun!

[zerotohiro]

I don't know if I'd call this fun. And this one was sort of a last-minute mission. Would you even know what to do inside that tower?

[psycholawgy]

[ who do you think she is? some kind of pleb?

(the answer is no, btw.) ]

Well, there IS one thing I want to find out. [ a beat. ] Ever heard of the QUEEN file?

[zerotohiro]

[Well this just became a lot more interesting.]

First time I'm hearing about it. What's the QUEEN file supposed to be?

[psycholawgy]

That's the thing...

[ she shrugs, pouting. ]

Okay, so, a few months ago, some friends and I went to kidnap a CERES employee. Our goal was to interrogate him and find out what exactly the QUEEN file was. We got caught before we could find out, and [ there's some hesitance in her, shown by the way she pursed her lips when she pauses. ] then we got arrested then tortured after that.

But it's definitely connected to the CERES' business of selling energy.

[zerotohiro]

[This is the first time he's hearing about this directly from a source and it makes him uncomfortable to think about it. He knows better than to ask her how they tortured her or to ask if she's okay months after the fact, but it's unsettling.

His interest piques though at the mention of selling energy.] And...where's the energy coming from? Do we know?

[Because he sure does have a hunch based on some of the stuff they saw in the tower.]

[psycholawgy]

[ she closes her eyes, rubbing her temple a bit before answering. ]

The energy comes from us.

[zerotohiro]

[Shit. That was really not the answer he was hoping for despite having a hunch.]

...when Tadashi and I were in the tower we found a whole bunch of generators in this room a lot of floors up. And when we got there it said something about a disparity in the energy levels. I was just really hoping they didn't mean us. But how? How're they getting the energy from us?

[psycholawgy]

That's what I'd like to know. And that's why getting our hands on the QUEEN file is extremely important.

But when I asked a hacker to check into it, she said that it's already been deleted from the CERES files.

[zerotohiro]

Just because it was deleted from the CERES files doesn't mean they didn't move it somewhere else. We've just gotta figure out where that somewhere else is and I think that's probably our next goal. We find where the back-up files are, we'll find a whole lot of other stuff, too.

Where's that hacker now?

[psycholawgy]

She's in the Nexus Code.

[zerotohiro]

There's a lot of people in that code we need to rescue. It's another project I'm working on, how to break into it. How're we going to do that?

[psycholawgy]

That's a tough one. Even I don't know how to get to the Nexus Code.

But it should be like the recycle bins in computers, right?

[zerotohiro]

Yup. I think so, anyway. That means it's probably more obvious than we think. A bunch of people were drawn into it a few months ago weren't they?

[psycholawgy]

I was there! We all started disappearing, too. It was so scary.

[zerotohiro]

But you don't remember how everybody got there or where it might have been? Nothing? [A beat.] But I bet it was pretty freaky considering it's where all of the data goes after they don't need it anymore.

[psycholawgy]

It just became dark... that's all I can remember before we found ourselves there.

[ she switches widget's computer feature on, again, and scrolls through some photos. she was pretty traumatised by the whole thing, but when she had gathered her bearings and started investigating, she managed to take some photos.

what she'll click on and make hiro see if a photo of a bunch of dropped characters hanging in mid-air, seemingly dead. it's not a very pretty sight. ]

[zerotohiro]

[Oh good. That's not disturbing at all and he's just staring...and his eyes widen suddenly as he seems to recognize someone he wasn't sure he'd seen before.]

Athena, can you zoom in on this one? [Long blond hair? That's gotta be a coincidence, right?]

[psycholawgy]

[ doing what she's told!! ]

Do you know her?

[zerotohiro]

[With that zoomed up view he's taking the device from Athena's hand to get an even closer look before there's a frustrated little noise. When...how? Why didn't they know this sooner?]

...yeah. She's part of my team back home. Her name's Honey Lemon and I...Tadashi never said she was here. [Which means it must have been between the first and current time they were here.] Our friend Wasabi's inside there, too, but I didn't know anyone else was.

[psycholawgy]

[ hiro can either try to take widget off her neck, or just flip the hologram to face his way!! whichever! but the necklace switches off the moment it's off athena. ]

You know Honey Lemon? She's so cool!

[ she can't say anything about wasabi, though. she doesn't know him! ]

[zerotohiro]

[And this is why you don't tag when you're trying to leave because yes, it sure was Widget they were looking at and not the CereVice. Anyway! The point is he's now staring at the blank necklace and his eyebrows are furrowed together.]

She's from our world and she went to school with me and Tadashi. When was she here? Do you remember? How long was she here?

[psycholawgy]

I don't recall that she was here for long. Probably two weeks at most?

[ mosley would likely call her another footnote. :( ]