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Tame Fisher	New Guinea (Closed)	Lead	[-]
Posts: 1218 (08/26/08 13:45:40) Sold My Soul To Yuku. Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Tags : None "When are you going to stop babysitting me, Quigley?" she said to no one in particular. Through the simmering haze of focused red sunlight within the steel and ceramic mazes of the Southern Highlands UTF establishment, Moira Engelhart gazed upon the thorned shape of the Neros Gundam. She squinted to get a better view, leaning forward until three heavily armed Terran Federation guards strode to bar her way. Another crew of guards stood watch around the Neros itself; just inside the reach of the filtered sunlight lie the controls to a meter-thick blast door ready to clang down on a moment's notice, shutting her off from the project entirely. With her small wiry frame, free grin, and tussled black hair, Moira didn't think she could possibly pose any threat, but the three guards quickly did away with that notion by converging the killing ends of their carbines on her chest. Playing with the safety, one of the guards looked her in the eyes and gave her a first warning: "This is a restricted area." "Hey, relax." she answered, raising her hands in a mix of good humor tinged with annoyance and a need for conflict. She mocked them with her feigned fear, and she knew it. "Leave immediately, or we will shoot." the middle guard warned, making it clear this would be his final caution. Moira wasn't the least bit amused. "Listen, if I wanted to steal the thing, I would never have flown it here in the first place." "No, of course not." came a voice from down the cavernous hall behind her. In a matter of seconds, the body caught up with the booming royal tongue, revealing Lord Mortimer Quigley as its source. A strong, proud man, he walked with an upright sense of self-importance matched only by his sheer size in comparison to the smaller locals. He was a giant, raised growing Tanoaks in Oregon, and gained Lordship in a small colony based in West Papua through some sort of tribal ordeal he was never really fond of recanting. Six-foot-eight, he stood, wrapped in furs, with velvet of the deepest crimson swooping over his shoulders in a cape that hovered just above his heels in a vibrant shimmer. He wore no crown, but he was sure to imply his regality at every opportunity. "Forgive my personnel if they're a little rough around the edges, Miss Engelhart; I appreciate your personal retrieval of the Gundam unit, and certainly agree you've every right to observe your own project's development. Stand down, men." And so they did. Moira merely answered their compliance with a sharp harumph!, pushing past the stunted riflemen to her recently-transferred workload. She most certainly did not-- and would not --thank the Lord for allowing her to work in peace. "So is this your idea of a joke? Supervising the Neros' development? What development? This thing has been at 100% completion since the rollout date. When are you going to let me get back to my real work?" "As soon as you receive a presidential pardon. Until then, my dear Moira, your parole is conditional, and I'm afraid you are my responsibility. Please understand---" "So I'm your personal slave, is what you're saying, basically." "--well, now, I'd like to think of you as a...a soft asset." "What in blazes is that supposed to mean?" "Your nano-camera concept is gaining headway upstairs." "You already told me that four times." "Well, it bears repeating. We may have funding for a working prototype by the end of the year. How's the project going with the security upgrades on our infantry weapons?" "I'm working on a DNA sensor that analyzes skin cells from the trigger mechanism. If anyone but the registered operative attempts to shoot, it engages an interrupter circuit." "That's brilliant." "No, Mortimer, it's make-work. We both know what I should really be working on." And there it was. The rhythm of the conversation dropped into dead silence, and for one fleeting moment everyone present knew of what she spoke. The guards tensed in tandem with Moira's lips as she fought the urge to say it allowed-- Quigley's eyes twitched as he felt a crazed heat rise up his temples, its inevitable aim to bring a trickle of nervous sweat back across his brow. The middle guard, hardened as he was, licked his lips with a hunger years old-- Engelhart's work was known to the shadows, and practiced by devils who sought to poison souls such as Corporal Swink. There were no words...just letters. Two of them swam in their minds like hungry fish up a stream, meeting just for an instant and taking all of them down into the dark recesses of human desperation. D......G...... "You know that's out of the question." "How many lives have we saved with the incomplete strains?" "That's not the issue--" "It is the issue, and the D-- the formula that cured the Solar Workers and gave you your life back were only the first generation. With continued research, it could cure disease, move mankind into the next phase of evolution as a species--- as a single, equal race." "Evolution is a natural process. The..what we've made here is something else. The power can destroy you. It gnaws away at the core of your humanity, alienates you from yourself, from everyone else. Do you have any idea what it took to make me feel human again?" "I..." Mortimer Quigley lost seven brothers, two sisters, and fifty-seven friends in the Solar Worker Riot of SE 60. A medical center was burnt to the ground by armed militia men looking for supplies to replenish their...reserves. They found nothing, and took the lives of those seeking shelter in the building instead. "Mister Falcon has been briefed on the Mobile Trace tests, Miss Engelhart. He will be available for calibration within the hour." "..thank you." was all she could muster as he began to turn away, perhaps returning to the isolation of his private observatory. He often enjoyed the solace it provided, and was known to disappear for days at a time, just to gaze at the sky. She almost admired his ability to get lost in it. Now, though, she felt an inkling of shame, and perhaps even guilt driving her to say one last thing before he departed. "I hope you realize, Quigley," Moira said in as warm a tone as she could manage, "that I'm just a stubborn bastard and didn't mean anything personal in our arguments over the last few days. Mortimer smiled, and went as far as to even chuckle once the shame drenching her words sunk in. "I understand, Moira. I also know that I am as arrogant as you are stubborn...I will accept your oblique apology if you will accept mine." His last words reached her only in echo, as the kingly commander of the research substation vanished back into the iron maze. Raising her voice in obvious outrage, she roared at the empty hall before going to work. "That wasn't a damn apology!" Last Edited By: Tame Fisher 08/26/08 14:45:40. Edited 1 time.
Tame Fisher		#1	[-]
Posts: 1218 (09/17/08 09:27:31) Sold My Soul To Yuku. Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Forty-five minutes later, she sat in the examination room as Falcon was wheeled in, strapped by his hands and feet to a vertical stretcher. Through the crude, self-done stitches, bandages, and gauze, she could make out only the faintest hint of a man-- the intended pilot of the Neros, who, after multiple stops to everywhere from Seattle to Amsterdam, serendipitously saved the new Terran President's life in New York, and was granted a few days' worth of down time twelve hours before his first scheduled arrival in Papua. Rumor had it he was partially responsible for a series of terrorist attacks in the sides, and might have even kidnapped a Sect officer-- all, of course, while technically 'on leave'. It must have been karma, then, when on his return to Earth, a chance encounter with a Lunar scout team forced him into hasty re-entry combat against a Clan-designed variable Gundam. Though he'd managed to drive it off, his time outside of the suit had taken its toll on Falcon's skills, and he was barely able to manage a safe ocean landing with the damaged Neros. Now, it was her job to determine whether or not Geoffrey was fit to fly again. "You look terrible." she began, detaching his chart from the velco link beside his head. "You look worse. They still have you fixing car engines out here?" he snapped back, struggling to adjust his eyes to the bright lights of the doctor's office after a week of colonial tunnel vision. Far different from the clean-shaven, well-kept officer she met the last time, Geoff sported the very same bloodied, nanotracer stained jumpsuit he'd arrived in. Also new to him was a long, hook-shaped scar along the side of his head, starting just above his left temple and stretching all the way back to his neck scruff. He'd apparently sewn the wound shut using his onboard First Aid kit, but some of his bloody hair had gotten mixed up in the stitches and seemed to be opening the gash again. "Fixing you up, more like, not that you're any different, you old war horse. Says here you've got a grade three concussion from that bump you took. They treated you for internal bleeding in the sick bay, but I'm going to have to follow up to make sure you haven't punctured a lung or something. How's this feeling?" she asked, lightly touching a spade-shaped wound on the left side of his chest, still damp from rapid blood loss. "Well, I won't need heart surgery. They said it caught my shoulder, but not much else. That tracer gunk didn't help, either." "Ah, right. I'd heard you had a malfunction." "Malfunction? The trace suit liquified and nearly drowned me. Thing acted almost like it was alive." "Well, we both know that isn't the case, don't we?" she answered, matter-of-factly. "Besides, I know you didn't get all these injuries from the fight up there, so don't even try to pin it on the suit dissolving. How was Side 3, Geoff?" "I don't know what you're talking about." he muttered as nonchalantly as he could muster with his face literally opening up as his stitches began to painfully undo themselves. She flashed a crooked, I-know-what-you-did grin at her patient, putting the chart aside for a moment to make sure the door was locked. "No? You don't remember Mr. Hu, or Larry Matick? How about this: 'I'm John Kharakter. Nice to meet you, Mister Rittenbach.' That ring a bell?" He was, needless to say, very shocked. As far as he knew, not even his associates had been fully aware of his actions in space-- the Federation pilot from the 2nd Autonomous knew only of his bombing scheme, and it was most unlikely that he was even familiar with Rittenbach or his dealings with Kharakter. How, then, had she found out? "How?" "I've been watching you. Recording you, even." "Impossible. You couldn't have planted any bugs on me. I checked out at Ecton before I left. I was clean in New York." "You thought you were clean. I saw that business in New York, too-- not your most outstanding moment, but you got the job done. Anyway, of course there was no way I could get one of those clunky micro-cameras on you, especially with your paranoid, compulsive cleaning issues." "So how did you do it?" he asked, ignoring the criticism. "Well, obviously, I went smaller. What's smaller than micro-cameras, you ask? Easy: nano-cameras." she replied, reaching into her pocket to retrieve what looked like a tin of foundation make-up. Opening the tin, she blew a bit of the dust into the air between her and the restrained pilot. The fairy dust shimmered under the white florescent light, like real magic--- the kind that scared kids instead of entertaining them, because it was the kind that the government used to track and kill their parents in the dead of night. "You've got to be kidding me." "Not even close, pal. I call ASE: the All-Seeing Eye. Each particle of dust contains an RGB light sensor, and transmits one pixel of visual information back to the source, either directly or through a network. The information from all the pixels is then compiled and used to create a three-dimensional projection of the target area. Beyond that, it's just a matter of finding the right software to read your lips and find out what's been going on. I shipped some to Ecton and had them mix it into your forensic tools. You've been powdering yourself up with these babies since you left." "Who the Hell put you up to this?" "I needed to test them myself. Quigley thinks I haven't developed a working system yet, but he doesn't know I diverted half the research budget to building these things. I based them off the basic Beta Glipheptin nano-vaccine carbon structure, replacing its antibody-building subroutine with a color recognition system." "So you can't tell anyone what you know about me." "Hm?" "If you tell them what you know, you'll have to tell them how you know. And there goes your little project; Quigley'll never let you near the nano-lab again." "Yes, I suppose you've got me there, lover boy." she chuckled, gently kissing his bruised right cheek. "I'll go put in a request for some painkillers, then we'll see about healing those scars up, hm?" Leaving him alone in the examination room, Moira's mind drifted back to the Neros Gundam as she neared her office. The nanomachine-based tracer suit had failed utterly, nearly killing its owner because of a programming error. She'd have to rewrite the entire production system, most likely...unless, of course, Falcon elected to transfer units. Entering her office, it hit her-- with the Neros retired, she could harness the nanite-production system of the Mobile Trace platform to develop the Delta strain. Indeed, the very thought of it sent a pleasant chill down her spine, something she hadn't felt since that first time with Geoffrey. Integrating the delivery method into the suit...using the suit to access the bloodstream.. She turned on her local console and typed up a prescription for pseudomorphine, 200mg, and noticed a few messages in her mailbox. The first couple were from Quigley's management team, asking about the blueprints for the ASE prototype design and cost overviews...but the last was from Suzaku. Dearest Sakura, her most trusted colleague and friend; it had been so long since they'd last met face to face. She recalled their last, embittered discussion via mail regarding the development of the Delta, and, curious to see learn what had become of the Doctor's subjects, she clicked on the message and began to decode it. My Dear Moira... Last Edited By: Tame Fisher 09/17/08 09:33:07. Edited 2 times.
Tame Fisher		#2	[-]
Posts: 1218 (09/22/08 20:14:50) Sold My Soul To Yuku. Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	"Your bloodwork's a little...odd, Geoff." She returned within the hour, carrying the results of Falcon's exams loaded on a digital medi-chart. She was visibly concerned with the numbers, and the color in her cheeks she was maybe even worried. "...care to elaborate?" "No. Not yet."
Tame Fisher		#3	[-]
Posts: 1218 (10/06/08 12:52:39) Sold My Soul To Yuku. Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	"Here," she began, activating a monitor on the far wall of the examination room. Interfacing with the device through her medi-chart, she brought up a video from her personal archives. "Take a look at this." Falcon watched as the flickering screen gave way to an image of a man-- a corpse, laid out on a metal slab for an autopsy. Three men walked into the frame-- one on John Doe's left, two on his right --and began addressing the camera. No sound. "What is this? What are they saying?" "This was filmed ten days ago, in Prague. The body of Vito Pavlov, a known drug smuggler and small-time revolutionary, was recovered there after a week-long pursuit of the terrorist cell supporting his secessionist cause. He was at the center of Belarus' resistance movement, and believed to be second-in-command of a European drug cartel specializing in something called--" "Snakebite?" "...yes. How did...well, what they're explaining is that preliminary tests found traces of the substance on his skin and hair. They believed he'd been mainlining it for at least a year." "What is it?" "I'm getting to that. Watch this part." The one doc to his left began the Y-shaped incision, slicing through his breastplate to release the trapped gasses and expose the tainted organs to the camera. The second doc on the right retracted the skin flaps, pinning them down with clamps as the third gestured towards the heart. "Here's where it gets strange. The Snakebite compound is known for causing odd pigmentation in the areas of the skin that come in direct contact with the substance; the third doctor here notices something on the heart, here.." she pointed to the center of a thick, dark mass in Pavlov's chest, which the third doc proceeded to probe with some kind of fiber-optic device. The second doc suggested something, and the first gave his muted opinion, prompting the doc number two to retrieve another tool-- an ultra-violet light. "The point of contact typically takes on a dark purple tone, sometimes black to the point where it resembles necrosis, though it's anything but. The doctors noticed the coloration on the Vito's heart, and, noting the unusual enlargement of the organ, sought to investigate the aberration through the use of a UV scanner." The device flickered on, illuminating the heart in a golden glow that screamed 'GUILTY' to Moira Engelhart...but that wasn't all. The lungs lit up, and the liver, and the stomach...his insides appeared to be lined in golden tissues under the black light, revealing some dark secret only a few minds in the world could fully appreciate. Falcon hadn't a clue what it meant, but the sudden shift in her tone when she spoke again clued him in on the severity of the discovery. "You see that? His entire body is producing the pigment." "So what does that mean? Did he overdose or something?" "No, it's impossible; the only way for something like Snakebite to contaminate every inch of a specimen would be..." "What? Someone cut him open and poured it in?" "No. It could only happen if the body began producing it naturally." There it was. He felt something in his stomach turn, and immediately knew where this was going. He thought back to Side 3, that freighter where he nearly bled to death. "..so it's in his blood?" He remembered the plasma substitute he stole from the med lab, and the shoot out with Rittenbach...his wounds were almost healed, now.. "Yes, that's right. And I think it's in yours, too, Geoffrey." Of course it was. "I think you may be contaminated."

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