exsiliumlogs | open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

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.

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She stared at him, unsure of how to react in this situation. Hit him, maybe? Yell? Be more assertive? This was getting her nowhere, and Martin was really beginning to freak her out. Something had happened to him before he had gotten here, that much was obvious.

"Get me out? Are you even listening to me?" Chloe tugged back, digging her heels in so that he couldn't just keep dragging her around. "There's nothing to fix, unless you're going to let me go back in there and send the spirits back to wherever I summoned them from."

Besides, she didn't know where they would go or how they would get out. There were alarms on the doors, and if this wasn't even real -- and she was really beginning to have her suspicions on that -- then she needed him to calm down and tell her how he had gotten here. Then they could figure out how to get back. And if one of the nurses came down the stairs or...

Derek. She nervously looked up the stairs. Derek was going to show up to rescue her, or at least that was what had happened last time.

Martin felt his skin heat up with a pulse of agitation. Why was she being so difficult? She wasn't that way in the jungle or...all that snow. Why was this any different? He just wanted to help...

He yanked one last time, his own, sweaty hands betraying him and freeing her with the effort. He had swung around to glare at her just in time to hear summoned, and halt once more, his expression wracked with a frustrating confusion and alarm.

Summoned? What business did a human have with summoning things? That was...Well, back home, that was Darkov territory.

This wasn't home.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he insisted, grimacing. "That doesn't. Make sense. Those dead things down there..." They were hurting you.

Chloe rubbed at her wrist absently once she was free, taking a step back as she pressed her lips together in a thin line. Why did she say that? She could have just pretended that they were there for another reason, but even just thinking about that made her feel disgusting. Why did she feel this need to appear normal? There was nothing normal about her life.

"It's not like I meant to do it!" The words just tumbled out of her mouth. "I didn't even know I could do that then. I wasn't even sure if ghosts were real at this point." It was a lot more than she intended to say, but there they were. "Those dead things are angry. You would be too if suddenly you were shoved back into your rotting corpse."

She didn't know what else to say, but she was sure that her ranting sounded like the words of a crazy person. Fitting, actually, considering where they were.

The last bit was startling enough, but wrapped up in all the rest of it...Martin's face scrunched up, as if peering harder at her would somehow make all the nonsense peel away and expose what she really mean. She didn't have anything to do with those...things. Not her. He was sure, but...

But his nose was still full of the stench of death, even with her so close. Nagging voices within could easily accuse her of being the cause, if not one of them. After all that had just happened, was it really so far-fetched?

"You made them," he said, pressing it on her like the crazy accusation it was. It had to be enough to admit she was lying — had to be. His body gave a quick, self-contained little shudder, feeling rotten to the core again. "You?"

"I didn't mean to!" Her chest felt tight, like she was going to cry, and she took another step back. "I-it's not my fault. I pulled too hard when I was just supposed to summon their spirits, and it's not like anyone explained to me what was happening at the time. They told me I was crazy." And she believed them, but it was Simon and Derek and Rae who helped her to understand that it wasn't true.

Or well, Simon and Rae helped. Derek just slammed her face into the truth repeatedly.

She went quiet, running her dirty fingers through her disheveled hair. "I'm... not sorry for who or what I am, okay? But I'm sorry that you had to find out like this. And that you're... not taking it well. Which, you know, kind of sucks. I'm not any different that I was a second ago."

If he stopped to think about it, it...explained a little. Little, tingling feelings under his skin at certain times around her. Thinking about it, he could probably attribute all the strange feelings he had about her to that and be false; not everything he felt was the creeps. Right then, though, he couldn't sort it all out, not with all the things going on, things that had been going on...

He slowly turned his head, scanning the nothing passing across his vision, trying to hold his breath for more than a second. More unaccountable powers. More things with no explanation or sense in the Darkov state of mind other than the glaring default. Yet Chloe was no monster, even with that conclusion being the only one he'd have. He refused it; she was too kind and...

"Alright," he managed, all but talking through his teeth. His stomach had roiled again, filling his mouth with a foul taste, but not the one he knew to be right. Nothing is right. Red-rimmed eyes were turned to stare back at her, bleak. "Then. Tell me what to do." Because I don't know. I was home. I want to go back.

She frowned then, waiting for him to say something. Anything. Well, maybe not anything. People could be wrong, could be evil, but she knew she wasn't one of them. Even if she wasn't exactly innocent by any means, but she wasn't out to hurt people.

And then he did speak, and a relieved smile flickered over her face, letting out a breath she had been holding. "Okay. I... I have to go back in there before they come out here." Her words were a lot braver than she felt, because the idea of heading back into the darkness was enough to make her sick, but she couldn't... She just couldn't let those poor souls suffer the indignity of being trapped. Or let them attack other people, should they escape.

Not by yourself, he thought, feeling much more apprehensive than he looked. Slowing down and trying to understand was more exhausting than pulling out the stops and trying to barrel through each crisis blindly to their conclusions. Too much open time to think, and he didn't like what he thought.

"Then let's go," he said, shifting in place before moving, stepping around her and back toward the door.

open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

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fuuuuck elle, i am so sorry for this late ass tag, sob

I'VE DONE WORSE TBH