going fishing [ open ]

[descens]

who ; Lev, the Underworld and YOU (remember to tag in!)
what ; Lev has invited a couple of Sacrosanct's residents to meet in confidence with him. He may be getting more than he expected.
where ; Asphodel - Underworld shadow market, equatorial tunnel section
when ; after his transmission
warning(s) ; TBD. Please see event notes.

Comments

PERIMETER [ soldiers ]

[singularitymods]

[ There is more than one exit, but all of them, save the one you went through, is heavily guarded. Patrols also seem to come and go on a detailed rotation.

Although anyone you might meet at the shadow market is battle-hardened and weary, these men and women give new definition to the term. Not a single one is without scars, some with large and obvious cybernetic augmentation. It's clear they've seen more, and killed more, than most of the rest of the camp combined. ]

OPERATIONS [ lev and advisors ]

[singularitymods]

[ Maybe you got lost trying to navigate the market, or maybe you had some trouble at the gate? Either way, Lev's waiting for you. Even if you might not have been expected.

Flanking him are a half-dozen or so advisors, all rough and terse men. Standing apart from them, however, practically blending into the shadows of the tent, is... Well, someone else. ]

Took you long enough.

Re: OPERATIONS [ lev and advisors ]

[standaloneshell]

It isn't that the market or the vehicle bay doesn't interest her, or rather (more likely) the control center, it's that the message sent was sent by one man in particular.

And he was intriguing.

It took a lot of foresight to leave the holes he'd left- to know where to place them so that a human being or an outsider could find them, while Hypatia herself remained in the dark. A skill born of intimate knowledge and hard-won adversarial experience. It was in the nature of a hacker to peek, but Motoko wanted to see more. She looked him over without moving her eyes, noting every detail with mechanical precision- she would remember, later. His stance was professional, automatic, he knew how to blend in.

"You'll have to forgive me," She replied, affecting a bored ease that could not have been further from the truth. Business as usual, "It's not many that'd use such an exotic reference."

[descens]

He took in the sight of her very quickly, struck with how surreal she seemed. An uncanny valley moment, indeed. But he'd be one to talk.

There was such a thing as too beautiful, though. Hypatia trafficked in that sort of thing, and it brought a lot of the cyborgs among the insurgency to look askance at this woman, pristine off-the-shelf perfect and no doubt one hell of a modified civilian model, though he'd have no way of truly understanding what the tech was like where she came from.

But it was the eyes that got him. Eyes to watch out for.

One of the cell leaders began to speak, but he waved them aside. Stepping forward to obscure her view of the main operations table set in the middle of the room, he inclined his head to her, arms folded. They could both play this game quite easily, if they so wanted.

"I don't believe we've met properly, 'Motoko Aramaki.' But I have had a little time to look over some of your work. So." He leaned back against the table. "What drives your curiosity in this place?"

[standaloneshell]

If you could choose to look however you wanted, and had no idea what you used to look like, why wouldn't you choose to be beautiful? Perfect she might seem, but the Major was, externally, fairly stock. She'd had multiple instances of seeing women wearing nearly the same model, before; dopplegangers, serial selves, and it never got less unsettling.

"You have to ask?" she tilted her head a little forward, a deliberate indicator of irony. Flung without so much as the courtesy of a kidnapping into the situation...who wouldn't investigate? Who wouldn't demand answers? She wasn't yet certain this wasn't a hack.

"It's in the nature of hackers to peek," Motoko quoted, practically. There was a pause, "I'm not unused to a certain amount of oversight, but I can't claim any endearment to the current regime."

To be overpowered by a person, however lucky or brilliant was one thing. To have a machine intelligence riding her every move was quite another.