Runaway Tales Pt. 2 (no, that's literally its name)
Author: Amata le Fay
Title: Runaway Tales - Part II - Chameleon Circuit
Story: Coded Politics (RP)
Flavor(s): Summer Challenge Trope Bunnies 3 (tricked-out time)
Toppings/Extras: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 839
Notes: “There are a grand total of three people who've managed to escape the Borgia hacker ranks and not get caught for years.” These are each of their stories. // Part I here. Concrit very much welcome.
II. Chameleon Circuit
She was the only one to escape the very clutches of Roderigo Borgia twice, though once she had been an infant, so that didn't quite count. Stephen Sondheim, later known as Farran Gray, had carried the day-old Lìadan Oswin through the woods to freedom. Every time she felt like screaming at Uncle Farran, she calmed herself down, realizing how much she owed him for taking her away from that horrid place, for sparing her the terrible fate that would befall a bastard Borgia child.
Farran dealt with his problems by working them like a piece of code or the melody of a new song. Oswin dealt with hers by impersonating other people or watching Doctor Who. It wasn't entirely healthy, this coping mechanism of hers. She eventually started thinking of herself as a Chameleon Circuit, the apparatus which gave the Doctor's TARDIS the ability to change its appearance. Based on its surroundings, it would pick the most innocuous object to impersonate and transform into that-except the Chameleon Circuit never worked properly. The TARDIS always took the shape of a police box from 1963.
Oswin's identity was the police box from 1963. She could technically become anything she wanted, she just got stuck with herself most of the time.
Of course, this made her perfect for life as an undercover agent. It was only a matter of time before she got hired by the government to infiltrate the Borgia hacking operation.
Uncle Farran had been up in arms the moment he'd heard of it. “We don't need extra information about what the Borgias do, I lived that, Lìa!”
“But you refuse to tell those details to the people that matter!” Oswin said.
“The government is powerless against the Borgias,” said Farran. “Roderigo has them wrapped around his little finger. It has to be a trap. Lìadan Oswin Sondheim, you are not going on this mission.”
“Don't worry, Uncle Farran,” she said with a smirk. “It won't be Lìadan Oswin Sondheim who's going.”
Days later, Clara Oswin Oswald interviewed for a tech support job at Borgia Enterprises. She knew that Roderigo would figure out she was his daughter-she even kept the middle name the same, for goodness' sake-but pretended that she had no idea about her origins. This would give her so-called father a false upper hand against her so he wouldn't go looking for another weakness he could exploit. An A-grade manipulation of a master manipulator. Watching the entire run of the Seventh Doctor in one go had become useful after all.
“Your name's the same as that of a Doctor Who character,” Roderigo had immediately noted.
“My adoptive parents were big fans,” Oswin had said with a shrug. “I've been working on a TARDIS hologram that's actually bigger on the inside, do you want to see?” And she showed him a simple but elegant hack that showed competence, but not genius.
It all went exactly as planned, and Oswin walked out of the office with an entry-level job. It was her mission now to observe everything: each security code, each carefully-crafted statement by Roderigo, each dissatisfied look or roll of the eyes a hacker would give before plastering a smile on his face. And with each light hand on the shoulder and encouraging remark from Roderigo, she knew she was getting closer and closer to the man at the heart of Borgia Enterprises.
Three months after the initial infiltration, Farran sent her a heavily encrypted message, though Oswin wouldn't have been surprised if Roderigo had intercepted it and started cracking the code. As she husked off layer after layer of ciphers, the words only revealed themselves to be just as dire as she had thought. Sweeney Todd to Chameleon Circuit: R knows why you're here. Leave and for God's sake don't leave a trail, because if you do, he will find you.
Another message came from Luc, Oswin's half-sister and secret co-conspirator fighting against their father. Gray-Eyed Owl to Chameleon Circuit: There's a girl, Avis, in R's office who we and he know is a psychic, a real one. Do not let R touch her. Get her out of the building and as far away as possible before he acts.
Oswin followed both messages' instructions.
Now, Lìadan Oswin Sondheim Borgia was in the middle of a car chase, having dropped off the uncanny psychic girl at a safe location while evading the sinister black cars racing after her at top speed. The “timey-wimey machine” she'd attached to her dashboard went ding. She grinned. Her greatest hack yet was ready to be made.
She veered sharply off-course, car spiraling toward a cliff. Oswin slammed down on a lever and an identical but lifeless copy of herself appeared in the passenger seat. The real Oswin pressed a few buttons on her keyboard. She watched the black cars refuse to follow to their deaths and smirked. “Run, you 'clever' boys, and remember.”
And as she teleported herself a safe distance away, the car with its fake driver plunged into the icy blue.