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Ruby squinted, trying (and failing) to process all of the information that came from Mir and Lance. Doubles with real skin, real everything except for organs and brains and nervous systems. The thought of her extra running around with the same skin and muscles – gross. It was quite the betrayal, to be sure, but the Corpos had never been super trustworthy to begin with.
This was definitely their way.
Anakin Stormrunner
brought up several good points, highlighting just how the Corpos might stand to benefit greatly from all of this. And Lance responded with more, proving that the Corpos thought of just about everything to cover their arses. It made the corner of her eye twitch.
There seemed to be a palpable hum, something Ruby felt deep within her chest. And she even jumped slightly when Gray Venasir
shouted to command their attention. He wasn't alone, she was getting a headache, too. But as she watched him, saw the glint of conviction in his eyes – she knew that she felt the same. Ruby trusted few, but she did trust Gray.
“We take the fight to them,” Ruby echoed him, meaning the DireX board members. “I'm right here with you.”
Ruby was thankful that he'd stepped up, and she gave the man a small, but meaningful glance – and turned her dark eyes about the 'room.' Doc Painless
was in, too, which marked him as 'good' in her books.
Daiya didn't feel very inspired after sitting down. A few words from Ruby helped, but they were soon dispelled by more discussion of the machine doubles. The girl pressed a hand into her forehead, fingers massaging her brow as Darkwire fell all over itself to play the fools the Corpos wanted them to be. She knew, more than most here it seemed, just how easy it was to get distracted. And then get hurt.
Why wouldn't anyone listen?
She was listening, more than she would have liked, to a litany of discussion on the capabilities of the replicants. It was something Daiya was certain that her nerdier contacts would have loved, yet for her the verbal dissection of machines did nothing. It was worse than boredom, she could deal with boredom in the real world. Here, the girl didn't have her holojournal in here to doodle on, or really anything to fiddle with idly. All she could do was listen.
Like to just what extent the Corpos knew about her life. Her thoughts, her feelings, her memories, her abilities. Her double had tried to weaponize that against her, at the time Daiya had been far more worried about the implications of it on her relationship with Tawrrowaldr. It had been easy to dismiss it as just another lie that came out of the doppelgänger's mouth after that. Still, the girl found herself feeling chills in a room that had no real temperature at all.
It wasn't like she was a complete blank space to the Corpos before, though. Daiya knew intrinsically that she was being tracked everywhere she went, there was little need for paranoia when that was the real truth. The Corpos practically knew the girl's whole history from surveillance feeds and data mining on Denon alone. That still didn't compare with being inside her own head. Daiya shivered at the notion, and it was worse knowing that her double hadn't been lying to her about that part.
The girl shook her head, a physical motion in a totally virtual place. It helped clear a space for her thoughts, but she didn't need much to convince herself. After all, what was she going to do about what the Corpos had? They had it, they had used it, and Daiya couldn't change that. She might stop them from using it again, but the Corpos would just try something else. That was their way.
No, Daiya was ready to do something of a different sort. She nearly climbed to her feet again, before hearing Gray's booming voice almost echoing inside the space. He didn't really need to shout, he certainly had her attention.
Then came the calls to action, but they weren't quite right. Gray understood the right things, got to the right conclusions, and was aimed at the right targets. But he was doing it the wrong way, wasn't he?
For a while, Daiya couldn't figure it out exactly. She liked Gray, even trusted him, but would she follow him?
Well, yes, but should she?
Was she the only being who had been listening?
The teen spared a glance at Shenn, whom she had always trusted for his opinion. It had been surprising for her to find old bartender attending this meeting, and it was surprising now to see him struggling with something behind his wrinkle-creased face. Daiya wondered if he felt the same way as she did, and she wished he would tell her what he was thinking.
As others began chiming in with their own thoughts and pledges to follow Gray, the girl felt like she couldn't wait anymore. They weren't going to listen, but she at least had a need to be heard.
"I'm done just following other people," Daiya announced to the group. She didn't stand this time, but the girl at least kept herself from crossing her arms like a petulant child. She was a young woman, no longer a little girl, and some part of the young shadowrunner knew she had to act like it to be respected. "If I keep following, it means I gotta to keep waiting for people to follow. Frankie said we didn't need leaders, we just need doers. So I'm gonna do."
The teen looked around, hoping that the others understood what she was saying. In the end, it didn't matter, so long as they stopped just talking about it. "If anyone else wants to help me, then great. But I'm going to hit the Corpos where they live, starting with Manfloon. I can't stand to see that cyborg elf man squandering any more of Belazura or everywhere else he touches, he has to be brought down! It's his head I want first, not the others."
"So I'm not with Gray, I'm for myself," Daiya clarified, more for her own benefit than anyone else's. "But I'm betting what I want is the same as what a lot of us want. So I'll work with anyone who wants that, and I'll help anyone who wants the same thing as me, but I'm not going to vote for you or call you a leader. 'Cause we need doers, not just leaders."
Anger and frustration flowed from one end of the crowd to the other, fear and paranoia, grand standing and shouting, speeches and speeches. All the while the boy Bounty Hunter simmered in his thoughts. His face looked on in confusion and displeasure as Daiya
seemed to disregard the clear and considerable threat of the Doppelgängers... especially considering she watched him kill one that was only moments away from infiltrating this meeting. It was abominable enough they had their minds, the fact it was possible for them to possibly infiltrate this very meeting discussing for the first time what direction the network would take was unfathomable. He did, however, begrudgingly give her the point that there was more going on. That was always the case.
Paranoia filled him again, and he started to tune out the other voices of the room, and really focus on the here and now. His eyes scanned across the faces, unsure of what he was looking for but knew he was looking for something. The pounding in his ears drowned out the monotonous arguments, the blood flowing through him, digitized but no less real than his mind made it out to be. The presence of the knife in his hand felt heavy, and he gripped it tighter and closer to his body.
There was a person... flickering. Off-color, like a hologram. There was something wrong here, he could feel it. Then, Lance elaborated how they were going to identify the fakes, and the eyes of this person - this thing - widened in what he could only surmise to be horror. A fake. Cassus' mind raced, and soon the rest of the crowd seemed to fall away. He approached the figure, stalking with dagger in hand as the voices muffled around him, approaching senselessness.
With a yell the boy cut through the air with his dagger, the figure gasping without sound as it turned to him... but the blade pass through them, like a ghost. The only indication that Cassus had actually struck the figure was an electrical tingling across his arm, and the fact the only thing left behind was this undefined cloud of static in front of him. Did I kill it? He wondered as the adrenaline waned, and he realized not fewer than a dozen eyes were on him, and it seemed none of them realized what had happened. They were just startled by his outburst and were now looking at its source for a reason why. A measure of expectancy overfilled him, an awareness that he had gotten their attention whether he intended to or not. Thus, he had to use it. If he didn't... then he would be alone again.
"Despite what some of you have said, these monsters unleashed upon us cannot - will not - be ignored. They are a symptom of a greater disease, yes, but if we don't fight them - kill every last one of them - then we'll be worse than dead, we'll be one of them. Go after who you want, but if I'm not holding the head of Larz Blackheart in my hands, I won't be satisfied, and neither should any of you." The boy paused a moment, looking to Daiya and Gray gauging their reactions.
"Do what you want, as long as we're killing the same people." With that, the tattooed tear appeared on Cassus' face, before he vanished from the virtual congregation. At the last possible second, Daiya would swear she saw his eyes on hers before ultimately disconnecting.
She lay her head limply, feeling as though she had won in as far as she was capable in this situation. There was nothing she could provide, and had already given up enough to let her know she really was this pathetic thing Xan had strapped to an office chair. Then, her head lifted on its own, and there was warmth. Her eye opened, the one that wasn't smooshed into magenta, and the only thing she could muster was a surprised trill.
"I pity you." she spoke with a completely different voice. Much calmer and more gentle. "In another life we might have been friends." she continued as she kept Kadora's face pressed into her chest. Kadora'Tra felt her heart fluttering as she tried to pull away but found herself resisting that instinct, seemingly content to be exactly where she was placed. She closed her eye.
"You might not have had anything, Kadora, but at least you had your identity. Now you are losing that as well. I could kill you now and nobody will notice that you are gone. That's what makes me special. I wanted everyone to know this face. And you all fell for it. Your leviathans will only know as much as I want them to know. This puts me in a unique situation. I can solve your little identity crisis for you."
She didn't know how to deal with all of these mixed signals. She only knew cruelty, or indifference. It made her hate how much she craved positive attention from anyone that gave it to her, no matter how little or backhanded it was. It was why she survived as a Cadet, accepting the most basic affirmation of her existence as enough validation to continue living. The reminder that she was also completely expendable, and by implication, "un-special" compared to Xan Deesa
cut her deeply. The scowl she had earlier returned as the older woman dismounted from her lap and stood up.
"Call it a little favour. 'Cause let's be honest, you'll have problems if you went after your copies. For now, though, I'm gonna have to pay a little visit to CorpSec's database and this is the closest I've been to your mainframe."
Malice and kindness all wrapped up into a neat neon-magenta package. Some words were honey, some actions were poison. What she carried was definitely poison, and Kadora'Tra felt her eyes dilating to take in as much light as possible at the sight of the Thermal Detonator. A kind of panic took over her, a slight intake of breath, and the initial tugging of her struggling against her restraints. She barred her teeth, a bit uselessly, remembering what a Detonator had done to Lonnie...
"Just one last thing, Kitkat. I hope you got five vouchers saved up for yourself."
Kadora'Tra roared and her claws extended on her hands and feet, her legs kicking and clawing against the floor, leaving marks in it without her even trying to. Her eyes misted a bit as anger overtook her. She almost didn't even notice the vibroblade whistle through the air, cutting a part of her restraints and leaving a gash in her wrist. Her claws and strength did the rest of the work, and once she was free of her restraints, she took into account the thermal detonator counting down. Roaring in frustration, she threw the office chair into the wall, shattering it, before leaping out of her window.
It was a long fall, but she was agile enough to make solid hand and footholds into the building, as the explosion rocked above her, before she would have to worry about splattering on the pavement below. Wind blew through her hair and fur as the shockwave echoed throughout the barracks, sirens now blaring.
The Farghul girl had nothing to say, and nowhere to nap.
There it was. The punk moot was over. As the participants winked out, one after another, the ranks of shadowrunners present dwindled, until all that was left beside her was a single other occupant. The rest of the virtual environment was empty, save for the neon-themed dinner hall that someone had conjured up. The cyborg woman gave the place an approving eye, not as much impressed by the choice as she was by what it represented. Darkwire was growing and learning to fend for themselves, even without her watchful tutelage. They were far from the ragtag group she had attracted from the start, wide-eyed, hungry, and ready to scramble for any scraps the Corpos tossed them. Now they were ready to stand on their own two feet, and maybe even give the Corpos a black eye while they were at it.
The woman once called Frankie chuckled at that thought. It sounded hollow in the illusionary place, from her illusionary voice, and that thought unnerved her more than the idea of doppelgängers, or taking on the Corpos, or even of death. Hells, for all she knew, she might be dead, but for the efforts of one man. Thing. Whatever Lance of Dreams was now. She gave the 'borg a side-eyed glance, tossing her eyes and crossing her arms before she turned back to him.
"So, just you and me now, eh 'spare parts'?" Frankie asked the one who claimed he was the reason she was still breathing. Her brusque demeanor held no hint of her uncertainty, insofar as she could keep it that way. She wasn't the type to ask what she didn't already know the answer to, or to trust someone to be honest about it anyway.
“It appears so.” Lance of Dreams responded, a voice as neutral as ever.
“Your legacy has become a rowdy bunch, hasn’t it? Does it please you that they have come so far?” Lance of Dreams extended a hand towards Frankie, referring to her status as the Founder of Darkwire.
"Rowdy? Dunno about that, I like 'em. They've got spunk. And heart, real heart." Frankie's words were earnest, maybe a little hopeful. She shook her head as memory ate away at it. "Those 'runners in my day, they were just there to have something to eat or a place to sleep until the Corpos shot 'em for something. Likes taking a speeder that wasn't theirs, even if it was just to get their sister to the clinic after she'd been shot and was bleeding out. Chit like that, ya know, bleak and fethed up. Jobs were just jobs, don't think too hard on 'em. In for the creds, out 'cause you got dead. It ain't a way to live, Lance, but what this planet offers ain't real living. And these kids, they're not just all 'bout the day to day no more. They wanna change it, and honest to stars, when they were all talking and planning, I think I almost shed a tear."
Frankie took a moment to blink, and broke the emotional ice with a guffaw. "Look who the kark I'm talking to. Can you even shed tears?"
For a moment, Frankie nearly thought she saw an upturn in the cyborg's mouth.
“While I am here, same as you.” The synthetic voice implied the obvious fact that Frankie didn’t have a real choice of being ‘here’.
"'While you are here'?" Frankie tried to copy the unfeeling tone and mechanized cadence of Lance as she regurgitated his words. "So this is what now, my prison?"
“Not exactly, but to you it may be close enough, perhaps. It doesn’t have to remain that way, for you, however.”
Lance of Dreams waved a hand in the air, and a virtual reconstruction of a space station appeared before them both. Its internal pathways and general shape gave Frankie an uncomfortable and unsettling familiarity, like a memory better left repressed.
“No, stop it, I told you a thousand fething times already...” Frankie turned away in disgust. She started walking, passing the booths and chairs that had once been filled with others. Others...who had real bodies, and real lives to go back to. There was no place she could walk away from here, not when there was no 'here.' The mimicry of a woman spun on her heels, charging back to Lance to stick a finger in his chest. "So I'm supposed to put on some karking holo-slideshow when you leave? While Darkwire heads to destroy what's left of the doppelgänger chitstorm and while they try to straight-up take down a DireX? I'm supposed to just sit that out and stay here to bake cookies in case some shadowrunner needs a breather or some chit like that? You sure they didn't replace your brain with a hamster on a wheel instead?"
Lance of Dreams took the storm in stride, his neutral face unshattered with a look of expectancy. He had come to be able to predict his virtual companion’s general mood and disposition, even if his tact was less than adequate in most cases.
“At some point, they will be going there,” He gestured once more to the holographic image, “To shut down the facilities. I imagine, given our history there,” He allowed a moment for Frankie to huff in disgust over his use of ‘our’, “You would want to see it happen. With your own eyes.” He gave out a rare inflection in his voice, to allow her to better grasp his implication.
“You are more capable now than you have ever been as an individual. You can be where they are, see what they are doing, from every angle. The network that has been created today will be a shield around Darkwire… you can be that shield.”
"Don't banthachit me, Lance, I hate the hype machine," Frankie's words berated, yet the mechanical man had piqued her interest. Lance's methods were sometimes crude, often brilliant, and always unexpected, but she had to begrudgingly admit he made progress each time. "Just give it to me straight, what the feth are you talking about?"
“The role you play in this coming war is larger than a ‘cookie baker’, as you’ve put it. You will have a direct connection to every Shadowrunner, and the ability to interface with virtually everything they come into contact with. While you may not have a body to bring fire upon your original captors, you might single handedly enable their victory. But it all depends on you, and their faith in the mission.”
Frankie just sighed and shook her head. If her implants worked in here, Lance would be in a much different state, cyborg or not. "Basic, motherfether, do you speak it?"
The virtual woman didn't wait for an answer, especially one she was never going to get from Lance. She stepped back with a face full of ire, raising her hand from him and pulling it, finger by finger into a closed fist. She shook the virtual bits of air that caught themselves inside it, wishing only that it was Lance's neck instead. They both knew that would never come to pass.
Her fist dissolved, and so did Frankie's temper. "Fine," she said, pulling her arms back to fold against her chest, "I'll keep the karking faith. I got nothing else to do but be this 'shield' thing, 'specially given how long I waited in this cyberhell limbo for someone to show up. You get me to where my people are, and I promise you I'll do whatever it takes to get 'em that win."
"Maybe you replaced your heart, Lance, but I'm hedging my bets on this one."
And then Lance was gone, and only Frankie was left.
All alone in the virtual night...but not for long.
The next time a shadowrunner touched their tattoo, or whenever Lance got around to his promise, Frankie would be there to help. Until then, she would keep the faith in Darkwire. Just as she always had. Just as she always would.
After a semi-successful raid of Starlight’s facility and the recovery of multiple doppelgänger corpses, Darkwire congregated for the first time utilizing their Tattoo. The topics of discussion ranged from the designers of these machines and their mechanisms, to the atrocities of the Corporate Profit Machine milling planets like Belazura into Vouchers. Ultimately, the meeting came to a close with several members claiming an agenda to attack the Corporate Authorities directly, unconcerned about profit and focused solely on gaining retribution. As the various Shadowrunners disconnected from the virtual space, eventually only its designer, Lance of Dreams, and the virtual recreation of Frankie were left. And after issuing her a promise of her role in the future, he, too, disconnected.
Anakin Stormrunner
brought up several good points, highlighting just how the Corpos might stand to benefit greatly from all of this. And Lance responded with more, proving that the Corpos thought of just about everything to cover their arses. It made the corner of her eye twitch. 
Gray Venasir
shouted to command their attention. He wasn't alone, she was getting a headache, too. But as she watched him, saw the glint of conviction in his eyes – she knew that she felt the same. Ruby trusted few, but she did trust Gray. 
Doc Painless
was in, too, which marked him as 'good' in her books. 
Daiya
,
Cassus Akovin
,
Mir Nehrahn
,
Lance of Dreams
,
Cartri Keswoll
,
Phalsi Drynchen
,
Yula Perl
