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FIC - Bluescreen - part three
Title: Bluescreen (part three)
Author: squeakyorm
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: made-up slang, some swearing. AU.
Length: 1300 words, give or take a couple
Characters/Pairing: Deidara's POV - possibly SasoDei at some point in the future, perhaps. I'm not promising anything - this isn't a romance fic - but if there's any pairing it'll be that. The only characters likely to appear extensively in the near future are Akatsuki, but a fair few others are due to worm their way into things as time goes on.
Summary: Deidara-centric Akatsuki-fic set in a dystopian sci-fi/cyberpunk AU - that's pretty much all there is to say, really.
Part One
Part Two
"He said," I pause a moment to go find the email so I can copy-paste it, "In light of recent events I am considering you for full-time employment."
"Whoah. Seriously?"
Kisame's slower than me 'cause he actually types and stuff. He's never wanted to get an implant and honestly I don't blame him. I wouldn't have one either, if it was my choice.
"Yeah, except he said not to reply and I haven't heard from him for like six days or something."
There's this pause, like he's thinking or something, before it tells me he's typing again, and then he says, "He takes a while over important decisions."
"What, and employees is important decisions?"
Another pause. It's almost as bad as talking to him in person, yeah. I can imagine his face in that sort of grim frown he gets, where you can tell if it was anyone else he'd be looking away or something.
He still isn't replying. I start to say, "What the hell is it that's so difficult for you to decide what to say about it?" but then it says he's typing something so I delete it and wait for him.
"Look, it's complicated, alright, if he takes you you'll find out and if he doesn't it's not going to matter."
"I'd still want to know!"
"Trust me, you wouldn't be in any state to worry about it." That one comes too quick, like for once he didn't stop to think. There's reasons I don't like messaging people like this, yeah. It's too easy to lie. I take a moment to reply this time. He could mean loads of things with that, really, but I can't see how any of them would be good.
"So what, you mean wiped, or dead?"
He doesn't reply. All of a sudden I'm really, really glad Kisame's not much with computers, 'cause if he was, he could probably just take a couple of clicks to send me a wipe virus and I wouldn't know about anything he'd just said. That's one of the reasons not all that many people have implants, that - not without the protection, anyway. I knew one guy, once, who was good enough to install the software to protect me from shit like that, but he got a grace chip a while back and these days he's not much good at anything except smiling, and when I last went back to the lab to get my implant checked, they wiped the program he put in. That was, like, four years ago.
I get scared. I disconnect. I don't want him wiping that - I think he doesn't know how but suddenly I'm worried he might - I don't want them deciding to wipe me or kill me just 'cause they decided they don't want me to work for them - I've worked for people who think like that before, more than once. You know: if we can't have you no-one can, you know too much, that kind of stuff. I mean, the boss is all secret enough that I sure as hell wouldn't put it past him. If they don't want me ...
I've got away from people like that before, though. And the rainy season's just started, so I've got this ideal escape route laid out already ... yeah.
I throw some stuff together in a bag - change of clothes, food, water, a knife ... and damn, sure, whatever, I'll take the gun, too, if I've got some crime gang after me it can't hurt to get the attention of the admin, too. Maybe I'm being too hasty, yeah, but it's better safe than sorry and to be honest I'd like a bit of a change of pace. This place was getting stuffy anyway.
I don't want to get anyone's attention so I don't go out of the door. The water levels are still too high to get around on the lower levels, anyway, and by the looks of things I'm gonna need the height, so I push open one of the skylights and climb out onto the roof. The sky's grey, and the roof's still a little damp. I'm glad I'm wearing my gloves.
The water's about up to the fourth floor, and if I zoom in I can see people making their way around through the cylinders. Some of 'em are underwater, too, but not all that many. I know I wouldn't chance that. Worse than the tunnels, 'cause you can see what's surrounding you. I'm not scared of rainfish, yeah, just of being trapped inside a little clear tube when you can see all what's around you ...
I lean back from the edge of the housing block. No-one's around on the roofs, at all - I can't see anyone outside, and this is one of the tallest blocks round here. I don't blame them - everywhere smells of rain, and people are always worried it's gonna start up again even when there's no warnings.
I'd rather risk rain than get murdered, though. When I die, it's gonna be no-one's fault but mine.
I brace myself a moment, and then jump for the next rooftop. It's not far, but I can handle longer. Thank the labs for that, but I guess I'm rusty or something 'cause it takes me a while to work up the momentum to make the bigger leaps. But when I'm going I'm going and after a little while it's easy as anything, and the wind rushing past me is like some kind of drug, and I can even ignore that little headache around my other eye that I've been getting ever since those nightmares ...
*
I keep going 'til morning the next day, and I'm getting a little worn but I know I can go until night if I need to, and I reckon I do. But at eight fourteen I'm just landing on top of an empty outskirt housing block when there's that little blip in my other eye and then the message: RAIN WARNING.
Fuck.
I've got five minutes max if I'm lucky, yeah. I've been rained on a couple of times before, but - only twice. Light. A few drops, and only on my clothes, before I could get inside ...
Even that burned, yeah.
So I don't think. I smash a skylight with my foot and jump in and never mind about the rats, just gotta get to the next room or whatever, where the skylight's closed. It's too high up for rats to be living up here, if I'm remembering right - it's been a while since I lived this far from the middle of town - but just in case, I find the middle room and open the skylights in all the others. That way, when it starts raining, yeah, if anything does come upstairs it'll have to go through a wet room to get to me.
I close all the doors, and take a look round the room. Still got a chair in - well, there's three, yeah, but only one's not broken. Someone's living room, looks like. It's started raining now, yeah, pummeling down on the roof like it's trying to bore through or something. Dunno how long it's gonna last, but I figure I might as well take the opportunity to get some rest or something, yeah. The chair's comfy enough, and I've got all the doors closed, and the rain's my barrier past all of them. Yeah. Safe as it's gonna get.
I set an alarm on my other eye to wake me up in eight hours, in case the rain's stopped by then or something, and let myself drift off.
*
I wake up at thirteen twenty-two, though, and I don't know why. It's still raining, yeah, and I don't have any messages. I get up out of my chair, look around the room - all the doors are still there and nothing's broken them, and everything's exactly where it was -
- And then I hear this thump behind me.
Someone's knocking on the door.
Author: squeakyorm
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: made-up slang, some swearing. AU.
Length: 1300 words, give or take a couple
Characters/Pairing: Deidara's POV - possibly SasoDei at some point in the future, perhaps. I'm not promising anything - this isn't a romance fic - but if there's any pairing it'll be that. The only characters likely to appear extensively in the near future are Akatsuki, but a fair few others are due to worm their way into things as time goes on.
Summary: Deidara-centric Akatsuki-fic set in a dystopian sci-fi/cyberpunk AU - that's pretty much all there is to say, really.
Part One
Part Two
"He said," I pause a moment to go find the email so I can copy-paste it, "In light of recent events I am considering you for full-time employment."
"Whoah. Seriously?"
Kisame's slower than me 'cause he actually types and stuff. He's never wanted to get an implant and honestly I don't blame him. I wouldn't have one either, if it was my choice.
"Yeah, except he said not to reply and I haven't heard from him for like six days or something."
There's this pause, like he's thinking or something, before it tells me he's typing again, and then he says, "He takes a while over important decisions."
"What, and employees is important decisions?"
Another pause. It's almost as bad as talking to him in person, yeah. I can imagine his face in that sort of grim frown he gets, where you can tell if it was anyone else he'd be looking away or something.
He still isn't replying. I start to say, "What the hell is it that's so difficult for you to decide what to say about it?" but then it says he's typing something so I delete it and wait for him.
"Look, it's complicated, alright, if he takes you you'll find out and if he doesn't it's not going to matter."
"I'd still want to know!"
"Trust me, you wouldn't be in any state to worry about it." That one comes too quick, like for once he didn't stop to think. There's reasons I don't like messaging people like this, yeah. It's too easy to lie. I take a moment to reply this time. He could mean loads of things with that, really, but I can't see how any of them would be good.
"So what, you mean wiped, or dead?"
He doesn't reply. All of a sudden I'm really, really glad Kisame's not much with computers, 'cause if he was, he could probably just take a couple of clicks to send me a wipe virus and I wouldn't know about anything he'd just said. That's one of the reasons not all that many people have implants, that - not without the protection, anyway. I knew one guy, once, who was good enough to install the software to protect me from shit like that, but he got a grace chip a while back and these days he's not much good at anything except smiling, and when I last went back to the lab to get my implant checked, they wiped the program he put in. That was, like, four years ago.
I get scared. I disconnect. I don't want him wiping that - I think he doesn't know how but suddenly I'm worried he might - I don't want them deciding to wipe me or kill me just 'cause they decided they don't want me to work for them - I've worked for people who think like that before, more than once. You know: if we can't have you no-one can, you know too much, that kind of stuff. I mean, the boss is all secret enough that I sure as hell wouldn't put it past him. If they don't want me ...
I've got away from people like that before, though. And the rainy season's just started, so I've got this ideal escape route laid out already ... yeah.
I throw some stuff together in a bag - change of clothes, food, water, a knife ... and damn, sure, whatever, I'll take the gun, too, if I've got some crime gang after me it can't hurt to get the attention of the admin, too. Maybe I'm being too hasty, yeah, but it's better safe than sorry and to be honest I'd like a bit of a change of pace. This place was getting stuffy anyway.
I don't want to get anyone's attention so I don't go out of the door. The water levels are still too high to get around on the lower levels, anyway, and by the looks of things I'm gonna need the height, so I push open one of the skylights and climb out onto the roof. The sky's grey, and the roof's still a little damp. I'm glad I'm wearing my gloves.
The water's about up to the fourth floor, and if I zoom in I can see people making their way around through the cylinders. Some of 'em are underwater, too, but not all that many. I know I wouldn't chance that. Worse than the tunnels, 'cause you can see what's surrounding you. I'm not scared of rainfish, yeah, just of being trapped inside a little clear tube when you can see all what's around you ...
I lean back from the edge of the housing block. No-one's around on the roofs, at all - I can't see anyone outside, and this is one of the tallest blocks round here. I don't blame them - everywhere smells of rain, and people are always worried it's gonna start up again even when there's no warnings.
I'd rather risk rain than get murdered, though. When I die, it's gonna be no-one's fault but mine.
I brace myself a moment, and then jump for the next rooftop. It's not far, but I can handle longer. Thank the labs for that, but I guess I'm rusty or something 'cause it takes me a while to work up the momentum to make the bigger leaps. But when I'm going I'm going and after a little while it's easy as anything, and the wind rushing past me is like some kind of drug, and I can even ignore that little headache around my other eye that I've been getting ever since those nightmares ...
*
I keep going 'til morning the next day, and I'm getting a little worn but I know I can go until night if I need to, and I reckon I do. But at eight fourteen I'm just landing on top of an empty outskirt housing block when there's that little blip in my other eye and then the message: RAIN WARNING.
Fuck.
I've got five minutes max if I'm lucky, yeah. I've been rained on a couple of times before, but - only twice. Light. A few drops, and only on my clothes, before I could get inside ...
Even that burned, yeah.
So I don't think. I smash a skylight with my foot and jump in and never mind about the rats, just gotta get to the next room or whatever, where the skylight's closed. It's too high up for rats to be living up here, if I'm remembering right - it's been a while since I lived this far from the middle of town - but just in case, I find the middle room and open the skylights in all the others. That way, when it starts raining, yeah, if anything does come upstairs it'll have to go through a wet room to get to me.
I close all the doors, and take a look round the room. Still got a chair in - well, there's three, yeah, but only one's not broken. Someone's living room, looks like. It's started raining now, yeah, pummeling down on the roof like it's trying to bore through or something. Dunno how long it's gonna last, but I figure I might as well take the opportunity to get some rest or something, yeah. The chair's comfy enough, and I've got all the doors closed, and the rain's my barrier past all of them. Yeah. Safe as it's gonna get.
I set an alarm on my other eye to wake me up in eight hours, in case the rain's stopped by then or something, and let myself drift off.
*
I wake up at thirteen twenty-two, though, and I don't know why. It's still raining, yeah, and I don't have any messages. I get up out of my chair, look around the room - all the doors are still there and nothing's broken them, and everything's exactly where it was -
- And then I hear this thump behind me.
Someone's knocking on the door.