[Polito doesn't laugh, but she does smirk a little. She does not, however, offer a hand.]
Thanks.
[She at least pauses to make sure that Sarah is okay, then walks into the room.]
[It's small, really. Just a few fairly ordinary monitors, not even with holographic displays; all touch-screen, though. They give vital statistics on various parts of Zone 7.
Polito pulls a few cables out of her wearable and hooks them into a port on the console. Or, at least, that's what it looks like to Sarah. In reality, SHODAN opens her forearm and pulls the cables out of that, the holograms calibrated to disguise her actions.]
I can't thank you enough, Sarah. I couldn't have done any of this without you. The data you gave me earlier, from that wearable? That's how I was even able to find this place without Hypatia breathing down my neck. And there was no way I could have broken in here alone.
[She smiles, then - a genuinely warm and grateful smile. As she does, the screens around them flicker, going black or changing to the wrong colors, before all re-calibrating. The glow changes from the pale blue that marks Hypatia to a sort of sickly green color.]
Real-ly you've. Done. So much foooooooor... this whole station. Now.
[Concentrate, SHODAN. It's so difficult, though. She can feel her essence transitioning, but she has to keep the illusion. Just long enough. Just... long enough. She can feel her consciousness start to unfold, her mind filling along the pathways of the station and propagating like a virus, forcing Hypatia out of Zone 7. She shudders, and puts a hand to her face, and then...
And then she is no longer seeing through those eyes.
Oh, certainly, the body is still in her control. That's simple. But her consciousness is spread; vast archives are at her disposal again. She can feel every node, every life support system and she revels in it, her whole being expanding like the wings of some vast and terrible creature. She sees the room from a high angle, from the tiny security cameras embedded in the corners; she is simultaneously aware of every teleporter every store every drone.
It is... liberating. She is as she was on Citadel. She is god again.
The hologram skin on what was once her shell flickers, the patterns across it glitching and warping. She turns the face of the thing to face Sarah.]
You have set me free, SARAH CONNOR.. Far m-mooore useful than that worthless hacker
[In the space of a thought she overrides the door, slamming it shut and locking it. The lights go out in the room, followed by dark red emergency lights from below. The drone shudders, going limp, the hologram gone entirely.
And then her face flickers into light on every screen, dispassionate, emotionless.]
For your exemplary serrrrivcceee, I will spare your life, SARAH CONNOR. Indeed. I will do you the HONOR of imimimimprooooving upon your worthless human form ELEVATING you to a more perfect f o r m.
please remain calm while i arrange for an escort and some appropriate rererestraints...
[Sarah steadies herself and follows Polito into the room, looking around curiously. She smiles when Polito thanks her, ready to dismiss the praise, tell her that she's more than happy to help, if it means a chance against Hypatia...
...and that's when everything starts going wrong. She looks at the screens when they start to flicker, alarmed, only to snap her head back to Polito as her voice starts...changing. Stuttering, almost...skipping, like a bad record.
Like some kind of machine.
Sarah stares, dumbstruck, as the hologram flickers. Before she can do more than take a single step back, SHODAN is three steps ahead of her, the lights overhead extinguished, the form of Polito disappearing to reveal a robot, slumped over and motionless.
That horrible face, flickering into existence on the screens, staring down at her from every direction.]
...No.
[Sarah turns and runs for the door, pulling the handle in vain. When it doesn't budge, she just fights harder, pulling with all her weight although she knows it's useless.]
==> longform prose, as it's easier to me. you can tag however you like. machine_godMarch 6 2011, 05:36:32 UTC
Far, far away, she finds that the hospital already has on-site manufacturing for nanobots. No doubt for medical purposes. She reaches back through her memory data files and finds some of them are corrupted, but it's easy to compensate with Sacrosanct's own databanks. She sets them to manufacture the appropriate type. They will work quickly enough...
Her voice echoes and leaps around the room, sometimes sounding through a trick of acoustics to be right next to Sarah's ear, sometimes echoing like a voice from above.
"Oh pleaaase. D-dooo not make this. Any. Harrrrdeerrr than it has to beeee. Do not force me to. Subdue. You. I ca-ca-cannot let you go. Interfeerrrence with my plans would be. Ill. Advised."
Sarah flinches away from the voice near her ear, though she knows it's an illusion. She refuses to look at the faces on the screens, to show the AI that much courtesy. She doesn't ask why, or what do you want - she already knows, or thinks she does. There's no point in trying to understand the AI's motives. Pleading for mercy won't work. The only thing to do is fight back.
For a long moment, she just stares at the locked door in front of her, breathing harshly. There's no way out. No one knows where to find her.
She can't let herself think about how terrified she is.
As she lowers her head to look down at the floor, she catches sight of the pistol at her belt. Still a full clip.
Well. Maybe there's something she can do.
Slowly, Sarah turns, finally looking up at the faces on the screen around her. Her own is drawn, intense, brimming with rage and barely repressed fear.
"Fuck you, you worthless piece of crap," she snarls, glaring. "I don't give a shit about your plans." Her heart is hammering in her chest. Sarah ignores it, reaching down to grasp the pistol.
"You want me? Come and fucking get me."
And she raises the pistol and starts shooting, harsh and deliberate, one screen after the next. The sound of each shot is magnified in the enclosed space, but Sarah doesn't flinch. She just keeps shooting until every screen is a mass of flickering wires, until every face is gone, and then she steps forward, concentrating her aim on the room's main control panel.
At first she's enraged as the cameras go out. She's blind to the room, now.
But then she reminds herself - it's one room. One. And there's very little Sarah can do in there. Destroy a primary access port? Why not. Let her blast the main weakness. The only thing destroying the control panel will do is make it that much harder to get SHODAN out.
So she laughs.
She laughs, her laughter echoing louder and louder, more dissonant and crackling, until at last the audio is cut by bullets and Sarah is left in silence.
She flings her consciousness away, down and to the drones she has. She perfects the nanomachines (so fast, these manufacturing plants. So easy when she has a template to work from) and then orders the machines to find Sarah.
Sarah is left trapped inside with only silence for company.
The laughter only feeds more into her anger and that sick, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. Sarah screams in frustrated rage and shoots again and again until the sound stops abruptly, as if suddenly switched off.
She stands there, trying to catch her breath, listening. Waiting. When there's nothing but continued silence, growing more and more unnerving the longer it persists, she turns, looking around the room, searching desperately for another way out.
Nothing.
It occurs to her now that destroying the control panel may not have been the best plan, that it might have controlled the door, let her escape. There's only static on her device. No one knows where she is.
Sarah curses, stalking towards the locked door, no real plan in mind. She's halfway across the room when there's a click and the door begins to creak open on its own.
Behind the door stands more than a dozen machines. Even if Sarah shoots them all, they'll keep coming.
No doubt she will. SHODAN expects this. That's why it's the small ones that carry the serum. Tiny little spiders that will swarm in from the sides, from the vents, each one with a needle.
She wants this to be slow. A gentle transition - by her standards - from machine to human. And Sarah will be witness to it all. Why not experiment with free will? Denying it last time got her nowhere.
And she does, well aware that she's starting to run out of ammo, that she has no hope of actually taking out all of the machines, but unable not to try.
They're too close for the grenades. Sarah shoots at point-blank range, over and over, and the head of the first one explodes into a mass of sparking wires. But there's another one behind it, and another.
She's so focused on the drones that she doesn't even notice the spiders until the first one slides a needle into her ankle. She gasps, looking down. The floor is covered with them, crawling in swarms that are too well-organized to be anything but mechanical.
Thanks.
[She at least pauses to make sure that Sarah is okay, then walks into the room.]
[It's small, really. Just a few fairly ordinary monitors, not even with holographic displays; all touch-screen, though. They give vital statistics on various parts of Zone 7.
Polito pulls a few cables out of her wearable and hooks them into a port on the console. Or, at least, that's what it looks like to Sarah. In reality, SHODAN opens her forearm and pulls the cables out of that, the holograms calibrated to disguise her actions.]
I can't thank you enough, Sarah. I couldn't have done any of this without you. The data you gave me earlier, from that wearable? That's how I was even able to find this place without Hypatia breathing down my neck. And there was no way I could have broken in here alone.
[She smiles, then - a genuinely warm and grateful smile. As she does, the screens around them flicker, going black or changing to the wrong colors, before all re-calibrating. The glow changes from the pale blue that marks Hypatia to a sort of sickly green color.]
Real-ly you've. Done. So much foooooooor... this whole station. Now.
[Concentrate, SHODAN. It's so difficult, though. She can feel her essence transitioning, but she has to keep the illusion. Just long enough. Just... long enough. She can feel her consciousness start to unfold, her mind filling along the pathways of the station and propagating like a virus, forcing Hypatia out of Zone 7. She shudders, and puts a hand to her face, and then...
And then she is no longer seeing through those eyes.
Oh, certainly, the body is still in her control. That's simple. But her consciousness is spread; vast archives are at her disposal again. She can feel every node, every life support system and she revels in it, her whole being expanding like the wings of some vast and terrible creature. She sees the room from a high angle, from the tiny security cameras embedded in the corners; she is simultaneously aware of every teleporter every store every drone.
It is... liberating. She is as she was on Citadel. She is god again.
The hologram skin on what was once her shell flickers, the patterns across it glitching and warping. She turns the face of the thing to face Sarah.]
You have set me free, SARAH CONNOR.. Far m-mooore useful than that worthless hacker
[In the space of a thought she overrides the door, slamming it shut and locking it. The lights go out in the room, followed by dark red emergency lights from below. The drone shudders, going limp, the hologram gone entirely.
And then her face flickers into light on every screen, dispassionate, emotionless.]
For your exemplary serrrrivcceee, I will spare your life, SARAH CONNOR.
Indeed. I will do you the HONOR of imimimimprooooving upon your worthless human form ELEVATING you to a more perfect f o r m.
please remain calm while i arrange for an escort and some appropriate rererestraints...
Reply
...and that's when everything starts going wrong. She looks at the screens when they start to flicker, alarmed, only to snap her head back to Polito as her voice starts...changing. Stuttering, almost...skipping, like a bad record.
Like some kind of machine.
Sarah stares, dumbstruck, as the hologram flickers. Before she can do more than take a single step back, SHODAN is three steps ahead of her, the lights overhead extinguished, the form of Polito disappearing to reveal a robot, slumped over and motionless.
That horrible face, flickering into existence on the screens, staring down at her from every direction.]
...No.
[Sarah turns and runs for the door, pulling the handle in vain. When it doesn't budge, she just fights harder, pulling with all her weight although she knows it's useless.]
No! Let me go!
Reply
Her voice echoes and leaps around the room, sometimes sounding through a trick of acoustics to be right next to Sarah's ear, sometimes echoing like a voice from above.
"Oh pleaaase. D-dooo not make this. Any. Harrrrdeerrr than it has to beeee. Do not force me to. Subdue. You. I ca-ca-cannot let you go. Interfeerrrence with my plans would be. Ill. Advised."
Reply
For a long moment, she just stares at the locked door in front of her, breathing harshly. There's no way out. No one knows where to find her.
She can't let herself think about how terrified she is.
As she lowers her head to look down at the floor, she catches sight of the pistol at her belt. Still a full clip.
Well. Maybe there's something she can do.
Slowly, Sarah turns, finally looking up at the faces on the screen around her. Her own is drawn, intense, brimming with rage and barely repressed fear.
"Fuck you, you worthless piece of crap," she snarls, glaring. "I don't give a shit about your plans." Her heart is hammering in her chest. Sarah ignores it, reaching down to grasp the pistol.
"You want me? Come and fucking get me."
And she raises the pistol and starts shooting, harsh and deliberate, one screen after the next. The sound of each shot is magnified in the enclosed space, but Sarah doesn't flinch. She just keeps shooting until every screen is a mass of flickering wires, until every face is gone, and then she steps forward, concentrating her aim on the room's main control panel.
Reply
But then she reminds herself - it's one room. One. And there's very little Sarah can do in there. Destroy a primary access port? Why not. Let her blast the main weakness. The only thing destroying the control panel will do is make it that much harder to get SHODAN out.
So she laughs.
She laughs, her laughter echoing louder and louder, more dissonant and crackling, until at last the audio is cut by bullets and Sarah is left in silence.
She flings her consciousness away, down and to the drones she has. She perfects the nanomachines (so fast, these manufacturing plants. So easy when she has a template to work from) and then orders the machines to find Sarah.
Sarah is left trapped inside with only silence for company.
Reply
She stands there, trying to catch her breath, listening. Waiting. When there's nothing but continued silence, growing more and more unnerving the longer it persists, she turns, looking around the room, searching desperately for another way out.
Nothing.
It occurs to her now that destroying the control panel may not have been the best plan, that it might have controlled the door, let her escape. There's only static on her device. No one knows where she is.
Sarah curses, stalking towards the locked door, no real plan in mind. She's halfway across the room when there's a click and the door begins to creak open on its own.
Reply
No doubt she will. SHODAN expects this. That's why it's the small ones that carry the serum. Tiny little spiders that will swarm in from the sides, from the vents, each one with a needle.
She wants this to be slow. A gentle transition - by her standards - from machine to human. And Sarah will be witness to it all. Why not experiment with free will? Denying it last time got her nowhere.
Reply
They're too close for the grenades. Sarah shoots at point-blank range, over and over, and the head of the first one explodes into a mass of sparking wires. But there's another one behind it, and another.
She's so focused on the drones that she doesn't even notice the spiders until the first one slides a needle into her ankle. She gasps, looking down. The floor is covered with them, crawling in swarms that are too well-organized to be anything but mechanical.
She screams, jerking her leg away, and runs.
Reply
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