open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

[initiatesnpc]

Date & Time: August 5th, mid morning.
Location: Anywhere characters happen to be/the VR.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: From August 5th to August 8th, characters are plunged involuntarily into the VR Program.
Warnings: Potential violence within the threads.

When the chance arises, she's quick to take it. The programming is incomplete, she knows; the simulation isn't ready — but she's not likely to get another shot at it. And so she moves, slipping through security codes to input the command. The machines hum to life with nothing but a flicker of a green light in a dark room, and it takes only seconds to establish connections. The signal is sent out; the weapons respond.

In a single pulse, reality drops away.

There will be darkness at first as the mind realigns itself to the signals being sent it. Slowly, the darkness fades, forms take shape. People take shape. The setting is terribly familiar, plucked from the user's own mind. It might feel like a dream at first, with events playing out as if predestined, the would-be dreamer moving through a familiar and unalterable route in them. But as things begin to feel more and more realistic, as more senses more fully connect to the simulation, awareness will change. This is not a dream. This is more than a memory.

Welcome to the VR.

Only 20 minutes later, in some underground quarters, Doctor Sponde is roused from an undignified sprawl. He's hastily briefed and shuttled toward the command center, looking grim. He knows the problem demands an immediate fix, but… well, this is some complex machinery. It could take some time. It could take days. He gets to work.

Comments

RUSSIA because natasha can't ever have nice things

[chelicerata]

[ the smell of smoke is thick, makes her lungs and nostrils sting, but she's finished with her task. her job is done. her target will be taken care of by the flames -- unreachable, if she were looking to get up close and personal, but not out of reach for the fire which claws its way up the walls, tearing down everything in its way. people scream, and if natasha wasn't numb to it, she would've found it distressing; as it is, they're merely collateral damage, and she doesn't look back as she moves for the closest exit. through the hall, down the staircase. she knows what awaits her past the doors at the bottom of it, knows because this memory is old enough to have burst into her dreams (nightmares - the word 'dream' feels somehow inappropriate) countless times -- she's prepared for the heat, the dry, suffocating air, but that isn't what she's greeted by once she steps out into the corridor.

a child is crying, a little girl in a hospital gown with her hair in a braid, and she's not new. natasha doesn't save her, because it changes nothing and for some reason, it isn't as easy as that and she dies, one way or another, even if she tries - sometimes it's falling debris, sometimes she's dead already as natasha picks her off the floor, bleeding out of every orifice no matter if it isn't logical. so she runs in the direction of the emergency exit she's well aware of the location of, move move move don't look over your shoulder.

only to stop in her tracks, as the people supposed to be dying, weak and helpless, begin to rise from the ground or push themselves away from the walls they'd been clinging to for support. they don't speak russian when they open their mouths; it's perfect english that falls from their chapped lips, and while the nightmare changes frequently, it's never like this. the dream is twisting, distorting until it feels completely different - despair and panic no longer eat away at the building as much as the fire; it becomes cleaner, sharper, and the patients have scalpels and scissors and even guns in their hands, all armed to the teeth with deadly objects, each and every one pointed at her.

prepare to die. ]

[akidfrombrooklyn]

[ Steve hates this, the disorientation, the confusion, because he can never quite get his bearing, and as soon as he thinks he's found them everything changes around him, transforming from one thing to another, sending him back to the start.

He wanders into this one in time to watch as flames lick at and engulf the surroundings, but as he's trying to break his way in, reach the victims crying out, Steve stops. He feels dizzy, nauseous, and he needs to form a plan of action quick as everything shifts yet again.

There is a woman, vaguely familiar at first, surrounded by people wearing cruel expressions and carrying potential weapons out for blood, and he can't stand here and watch - whatever her crime, no one deserves that. So he's charging forward down a long, white corridor, shield sliding from his shoulder and gripped in hand ready for action. And then he realises. ]

Romanoff, get down! [ He's preparing to send forth the shield, to clear a path for her escape, but he gives enough time for her to duck. ]