saladlove | Rise in Revolution (Chapter Eleven)

tanadin posting in

Seven's dialogue is really fucking difficult and I have to keep calling him in to get it right. So if it seems really, really different from the rest of the story, it's because he's a weird dude. That's really all there is to say on the matter. (YOU'RE A NERD, SEVEN)

Chapter list: https://tanadin.dreamwidth.org/650.html
World map: http://tanadin.deviantart.com/art/Kaldriel-RiR-map-594639189

Chapter Eleven

Compromised

Kyir’s house, Sector IAL. January 13, 2272. Time instance 842N.

Kyir opened the door to his house and turned immediately into his workshop, flicking on the lights and setting his toolbox down on the table. The others were a bit behind him, and Seven was the first inside, Emma not far behind.

As they stepped into the hallway, the wall that concealed the entrance to the Black Market opened up and Jimmy strolled out, clearly not paying too much attention. As she turned to them, she stiffened immediately, eyes widening as far as they could go when she took in the sight of Seven.

She turned and bolted back down the tunnel, screaming that they had been compromised.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Tanadin grumbled.

Members of the Black Market came up from below, weapons out. They immediately readied them at the sight of Seven.

“What.” Seven blinked at them in confusion.

“I think we’re in luck.” Fan mumbled. “It’s a stupid one.”

“For the love of...move over!” Tanadin gently pushed past Emma to stand in front. “Seven, this is most of the Black Market. Most of the Black Market, Seven.”

“What is he doing here?” Devan demanded.

“I’m not happy about it either.” Zahnra muttered, pushing past them to stand by Devan.

“Kyir cut his connection to the Mainframe. He’s on our side now.” Emma told them.

Seven blinked again. “Hi.”

Tac frowned. “I could have sworn it’s Tuesday and that I’m sober, but apparently not.”

“You’re sober.” Shawn assured. “Unless I’m drunk too.”

“Seven, get your metal ass in here!” Kyir barked from the workshop. “I have some tests I want to perform.”

“Okay. What do you want to do?” Emma watched Seven turn away from the others and walk into the workshop, clearly relieved to be in a situation that he understood a bit better. She felt bad for the guy- he had been thrust straight into a situation that he didn’t understand, memories wiped or fuzzy, and no social skills to speak of.

This seemed like it would be a bit of a challenge.

~~~

As Tanadin and Emma explained the situation to those in the Black Market, sitting in the chairs by the bookshelves, Cap watched the ghosts.

That spirit from before had shown herself once more since that time by the lake, and now she had returned again, floating a little ways away, uncertain.

“You’re okay.” Cap whispered. The ghost drifted closer, not paying any attention to the silent Mentor and Atar. “Who are you?”

The spirit didn’t respond. She crossed her arms and looked away, watching the members of the Black Market speak. Cap sighed quietly, figuring that she wouldn’t get answers out of the ghost for quite some time.

That was fine. She was welcome to stick around, and stick around she did. She stayed through the entire explanation and showed no signs of leaving.

Cap silently wondered where she had come from, and who, or what, she was haunting as the others asked questions. Why is she here? Now that Cap thought about it, the ghost had showed up for the first time on the day that Emma had arrived. Is she following her?

She couldn’t really be certain, and reluctantly turned her attention back to Tanadin as her tone of voice changed.

“Now. I don’t want to hear anything about anyone treating Seven badly, okay? I know he’s a cyborg and was once connected to the Mainframe, but he’s been freed. That’s behind him now. He’s lost and confused and needs time to adjust, and he does not need open hostility. Got it?” Her eyes drifted across their faces, lingering on Zahnra’s.

“Got it.” Several people chorused.

“Good. Meeting dismissed.”

~~~

Sadie smiled slightly to herself as she knocked on the door to Kyir’s workshop.

“What? Who is it?” Kyir called, sounding frustrated.

“It’s Saaadiiieee.”

“Oh, for the love of...what do you want?”

“I want to meet our new team member! I just love new people.”

“No. Fuck off. You can meet him when I’m done.”

Sadie pouted, putting a hand on the doorknob. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Don’t you dare open that fucking door.”

“What are you doing in there?”

“Tests.”

“What kind of tests?”

“Tests.” Kyir repeated.

“Kyir, if you don’t explain, I’m going to assume you guys are fucking in there.” Tanadin called as she walked by.

“What? No! I never fuck on the first date.”

“Um.” The second voice was unfamiliar to Sadie, and she assumed it belonged to Seven.

“C’mon, just a quick peek.” Sadie opened the door and stepped inside.

“Get out!” Kyir snarled, throwing a screwdriver at her. She caught it easily and looked over the newest member of the team before smiling.

“Hello! I’m Sadie.” She held out her hand to shake.

“Hi.” Seven blinked at her. “I’m Seven.” He looked at her outstretched hand curiously. “What are you doing?”

Sadie shrugged and drew her hand back, not answering. “You look like fun. We should hang out sometime.” A slight purr accented her words.

“Sadie.” Tanadin’s voice was severe. Sadie looked up at where she was leaning on the doorframe.

“Awww, you’re no fun. You never let me play with the newbies.”

“You scare them away! I don’t want a repeat of the microwave incident.”

“Microwave incident?” Seven asked.

Kyir frowned. “Microwave incident? When was this? What happened?”

Tanadin coughed awkwardly and didn’t look at him. “That’s not important.”

“Tanadin, was this why you had me make a new microwave?” Kyir demanded.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.” She dodged a screw that Kyir threw at her.

“Out! Everyone out of the goddamn workshop! Except for you, Seven. You stay.”

“Okay.”

Sadie sighed and reluctantly left, shutting the door behind her.

~~~

“Y’know, we could probably figure a lot of this out just by you asking me things.” Seven glanced away from the door as it shut to look at Kyir. “Even though all my personal memories are fuzzy, I do still have my technical-slash-practical knowledge - for example, I still know how to do this.”

‘This’ ended up being activating all of his weaponry. A curved blade extended out of his outer left forearm from where the bone would be and telescoped outwards so that the blade reached past his hand. The knuckles of the four fingers of his hand folded back, causing his fingers to lie flat against the back of his hand. The barrel of a gun extended slightly from the now-flat surface left by where his fingers had been.

“See?” Seven moved his arm around a bit to let Kyir see it from multiple angles.

Kyir swore and jumped back. “Watch it! I don’t want you destroying any machinery!” He glared.

Seven frowned at him. “I hadn’t sent any power to railgun, it wasn’t going to fire.”

Kyir tilted his head, stepping forward again. “It’s a railgun?”

“I thought you knew that. I mean, I don’t have any space to store the cartridges- nor anywhere to eject them from- never stop to refill on them, and have plenty of power to spare, so it makes sense. Besides, you can just tell it’s a railgun because there’s only the sonic boom from the bullet and nothing from a propellant, and there’s no muzzle flash when I fire.”

Kyir glared at him. “I don’t spend all my time stalking you. I’ve only seen you shoot the thing once and I wasn’t exactly looking for a muzzle flash- I was making sure you didn’t shoot Clash.”

“I tried to shoot… who?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Kyir motioned for Seven to put his weapons away before pulling up a chair next to him. “Explain how your threat detection works.”

“Basically, there’s a program that’s running that process all of the ‘sensor’-esque - as in, about the world around me - data that I collect, and processes it to scan for threats and predict how things are going to move. Any areas that this sees as dangerous show up as red - like, the three dimensional space in my vision show as red, and I just stay out of the red areas. For example, if you were swinging a sword or firing a bullet, I would see the arc of the sword or the trajectory of the bullet - explosives show the same way, the area of the explosion shows up as red.”

“How does the kartzal work, then? I have a basic idea that it fucks up your system, but I don’t really get how. It usually reads as a false positive on scanners, but that wouldn’t stun you if that’s all it did.”

“Because you’d fired so many of them, and they were moving fast enough, the magnification of their threat made them seem stupidly dangerous - my entire vision had gone red.” Kyir threw a small piece of kartzal. Seven easily caught it and continued speaking. “Because of that, the system didn’t see any option that didn’t result in being hit with stupidly high amounts of damage- and, because it saw no option that appeared to have any effect in time, because according to the data there was none, it didn’t send any commands- which, by the way, is why I didn’t activate my shield.”

“So why didn’t you flip out right there?” Kyir crossed his arms.

“I saw the kartzal before you threw it and I was easily able to track it with my human eye- while my sensors might not be working in response to it, the threat assessment software isn’t stupid- they’re able to weigh conflicting pieces information against each other, and knows that a rock can’t- and according to the human eye, hasn’t- quintupled in size in the split second when it leaves your hand, and as such overrides the sensor’s reports about the size-slash-danger of the object, and just shows the path of a normal rock.” Seven said, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “If I didn’t know it was coming, couldn’t follow it with just my human eye, or it was coming from behind me, however…”

“...you wouldn’t have the human eye to compare against, so you’d have to trust your sensors and end up flipping your shit.” Kyir finished. “That explains a lot. Hmm. This is a lot more complicated that I had thought. Really interesting though. Do all Mainframe units have this?”

“Well, kinda, as knowing where things are is, and where things are going, is an important part of a combat- or for that matter movement- AI. Only the ones built for combat have the full version though, but not all to the same degree- it’s a pretty computationally taxing protocol, and the sensors needed for it are pretty hefty too. The two and three thousands have it to a degree- the two thousands don’t have the whole thing because it’s hard, and a degree over budget, to get a full-sized system on them- it takes too much processing power- and the three thousands are too big and slow to really benefit from a more finely tuned system. Us seven thousands are the primary users of the full version of the system, and the five thousands also have it. I’d assume the nine thousands have the full package too, as they have the best of everything, and the four thousands… the four thousands are just weird. Some have it, some don’t.”

“What the high flipping fuck is a nine thousand unit.” Kyir’s voice was flat, as if it was a statement and not a question. “That sounds like hell in a handbasket.”

“They’re guardian units normally reserved for protecting the mainframe itself- though one is dispatched to each control center. They’re significantly stronger than any other type of cyborg, but like, an order of magnitude.” Seven said, and then continued to a degree uncertainty. “So, yes. Hell in a handbasket.”

“Fantastic. I want twelve. Anything else, mister sunshine?”

“About the nine thousands?” Seven asked, confused.

“About anything. You-”

“Kyir, it’s roughly eleven at night go to bed.” Tanadin told him, poking her head in.

“Get out of my workshop!” Kyir looked around for something to throw, only finding a pair of scissors and deciding he wasn’t quite annoyed enough to throw those.

“Let the poor guy sleep! I assume cyborgs sleep?”

“Uhh….” Seven said, unsure. “I don’t... think so?”

“You don’t know?” Kyir frowned at him. “Seriously?”

“Well, I mean, I can’t remember ever sleeping, but then I can’t remember most things, so….”

“Fantastic.” Kyir shrugged at him and probably rolled his eyes, but it was impossible to tell through his shades.

“Whatever.” Tanadin stepped inside the workshop. “You should sleep, at the very least. You haven’t gotten decent sleep since before Seven showed up.” She glared accusingly at him.

Kyir shrugged. “Boo hoo. Where are you planning on keeping him?”

“The Market, obviously.” Tanadin grabbed Seven’s human arm and gently tugged on it to make him stand. “Come on, let’s get you down there.”

“Uh...okay.” Seven got to his feet and followed her out of the room. Tanadin knocked on the wall and spoke the passphrase- albeit sarcastically, as she had walked out of there only a couple of minutes ago- and motioned for Seven to continue to follow her after M had opened the door.

About halfway down the tunnel, however, Seven stopped. He held his head in one of his hands. “On second thought… I’ll just stay here.” He turned around and walked back up the tunnel into Kyir’s house.

“What? Why?” Tanadin followed him, frowning.

“Headache.”

“Well, shit. Where are we keeping you, then?”

“I...don’t know? I mean, I didn’t mind the workshop.”

“Kyir would flay us both alive if I sent you in there without his supervision. Hell no.”

“He could just go home with you.” Fan told them as she came out of the Market, grinning.

“Well, that works.” Seven looked between them, oblivious.

“What? No!” Tanadin glared at Fan. “Absolutely not. I have exactly one bed.”

“You can share.”

“No! I would never hear the end of it from you and I do not know him well enough to be near him while asleep, thank you!”

Fan giggled before walking past them and out the door, leaving Tanadin frustrated and Seven confused.

“What.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Tanadin muttered. “Just crash on Kyir’s couch or something. I’m going home.” She paused. “Alone.” With that, Tanadin turned and followed Fan out.

Seven blinked a few times before moving over to the stairs and calling up them. “Hey, Kyir, we can continue testing!”

“Yay!”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

scara

So many times I have nearly choked on my cereal while reading this :D

Love the back and forth between Sadie and Kyir before she's gone into the workshop and can imagine the confused look on Seven's face as it's happening. Also before Kyir even said "Except for you, Seven. You stay." I had already imagined Seven getting up to leave with everyone else.

Also loved the ending, that now Tanadin had left they could ignore her instructions and continue testing.

Thinking that there's too much kartzal under Kyir's house for Seven's sensors to deal despite his human eye showing things as normal hence the headaches.

From:

tanadin

He DEFINITELY started to stand up. :P

AND NO SERIOUSLY PROJECT: MONSTROUS PEOPLE /ACTUALLY DO THIS/ THEY IGNORE ME ONCE I LEAVE AND /SEVEN NEVER GOES TO SLEEP WHEN I TELL HIM TO/

aaaaAAAAAHHH YOU ARE A SMART POTATO

also the fuck timezone are you in that you're eating cereal at 4:07 am my time? XD

From:

scara

Know the feeling of your other half not listening when you tell them to go to sleep.

Thanks. Always thought I was more of a smart cookie than a potato :)

Though any time is a good time for cereal I posted at 9 or 10 am UK time :D

From:

tanadin

*glares at lovely editor*

^^

OH YEAH YOU'RE IN THE UK I FORGOT ABOUT THAT

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