alphalogs | Daycycle Day 23 [ FEB 29-MAR 5]

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Daycycle Day 23 [ FEB 29-MAR 5]

DAYCYCLE 23
[ FEB 29 - MAR 5 ]

MORNING

This morning even the most vehement of those Special haters seem to be preoccupied at the briefing. The whispers aren’t about the new arrivals but the opportunity to go to the surface. The Briefing Officer doesn’t waste any time in announcing those that were chosen. Out of the twelve Troubleshooters selected three specials, Tony Stark, Ray Palmer and Barry Allen, are named as part of the expedition. Some Troubleshooters seem disappointed while others look extremely relieved at not being named as part of the group. The expedition will set out at noon with a projected return time of 48 hours.

Troubleshooter Team: D. Grayson and R. Lynch
This particular mission is considered a high-clearance level despite being assigned to RED troubleshooters. Dick and Ronan will be selected for the mission and immediately led out of the Commissary in order to be told in private. They are to travel to Bingham’s Arms Emporium located on the outskirts of the Armed Forces sector. There they are to render the supervisor, Victor Bingham, unconscious and take him to one of the scrub bots located at Internal Security headquarters. They will be required to wear masks provided when obtaining the traitor in order to protect their identity from retaliation.

All other Troubleshooters: You are to report to your Service Firm positions for the day, until called on for Troubleshooter duty.

Intel: The word glitch has begun appearing on confession booths in the Technical Services sector.

AFTERNOON

At approximately 1400 a small explosion will occur in the R&D sector, causing it to be evacuated for the rest of the day. It is unknown what caused the explosion, but rumor has it that anyone introduced to the invisible gas in the area will begin to go into convulsions before losing consciousness. That will not stop some people from getting masks and searching the abandoned warehouses for products that will gain money on the black market.

EVENING

At 2000 the Genuine Credit Opportunity Club will hold a special presentation in the Commissary for those interested in earning astonishing amounts of credits for minimal work. THIS IS NOT A TRIANGLE SCHEME. Sleeping gas will be expelled at 2100.

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You are welcome to play out missions from any point (beginning, middle, end) but are not required to. You will, however, need to provide information on the debriefing post below once you've determined with the other players involved how the mission played out. You can indicate if the mission is complete (finished), pending investigation (still being discussed occly), or in progress (currently being threaded out.) You are encouraged to approach other characters for assistance with missions whenever possible, as almost every sector has a playable character. They may be able to provide you with valuable information from their roles within Alpha Complex or assistance in tracking down a traitor. You'll soon find out that the more avenues you have through the bureaucratic nightmare that Alpha Complex is, the better.

Reward and punishment will be determined by the outcome of your missions, though they may depend entirely on the current processing power of The Computer at the time and classified information not available to you. In other words, everything is never as it seems, so be prepared for anything.

Please debrief The Computer and your Briefing Officer on your mission using the form below.

When she wakes up, Allison is confused. She knows she is supposed to get up, eat a RediMeal, and report to her position as a Weapon Effectiveness Assessor in the Armed Forces. Unless she gets assigned a Troubleshooter mission. Why does today feel different? There's a nagging feeling that she's forgetting something, something important, but she's unable to put a finger on what it is and it's driving her a little crazy.

Maybe she'll feel better after she eats. She heads to the Red Level common area, hoping to find someone who can explain this uneasiness she feels. If the wrong person picks up on her feelings, she could be found guilty of treason. She certainly doesn't want that to happen.

'Focus, Allison,' she tells herself. Get dressed, get food, and go to work. Things will make sense if you follow your routine.

Lydia suspected all along that the glitch wasn't a glitch at all; that it was memories from life before Alpha Complex. Her beliefs were shaken a little when Ray died and came back, just like the clones they were all taught to believe they were, but now she's sure again. Whatever is going on with Ray is going on with Ray and Ray alone. She's real. She's been kidnapped. She isn't like him, she isn't a clone. She can't be. And she feels that way, because of Allison.

Allison remembers her just like she remembers Allison and it isn't like when Ronan had no idea who she was; Allison isn't just some other person who looks like her dead best friend. Allison Argent is real and she's Lydia's and she's alive, and the fact that they share the same pieces of glitch means that they're not glitches at all. They share memories because they lived important moments of their lives together. She hated to finally leave her friend but it was damn near 21:00 and Lydia doesn't want to find out what happens to people who fall get hit with the sleep gas when they aren't in their own quarters. So she goes and she's crying when she gets back, but she doesn't really care if Dick sees or Matt hears or if anyone notices it at all. It's not because she's sad. It isn't entirely because she's happy, either. There's relief in those tears, because she has her best friend back and there are no Oni or nogitsunes here to take her away again. There's fear in those tears, because she's afraid that if she wakes up and goes to tomorrow's morning briefing, Allison won't be there at all and she'll have to endure that loss all over again. But she isn't sad. That's one thing that Lydia isn't feeling, finally, in this place with it's hate groups and shitty accommodations and worse food.

Sniffing and wiping her eyes with the palms of her hands as she walks back into her room, she feels a pang of guilt for feeling relief that it's Matt there instead of Dick. Matt can hear her, but she can write that off. The important thing is that he's blind and he can't see all of those emotions swimming in her eyes or the fact that tears are still welling in them and threatening to fall because she's still, even all these hours later, so overwhelmed by the possibility of being able to keep Allison just a little bit longer and thinking maybe, just maybe if she begs Tony and Ray, they can find a way to sort of "bottle" the medical technology in this place so that she can give it to Allison to take with her...and then maybe she won't die from that attack. Maybe everything will be okay, that way, and definitely things would be so much better if Lydia didn't have to try to wade through them alone — and, besides Stiles, most days since Allison's death, alone is a feeling she knows better than most.

"It's just me," she announces, because it's probably rude not to give the man a head's up when she's entering the room, since he can't see it and he can just hear someone coming in. She can't imagine that sort of disability now. Not after what she's been through in this place so far. She's reminded of the night the power went out and she'd sneaked into the forensics lab and she remembers the crippling fear she felt when she heard Ray entering but couldn't see that it was Ray to know that it was someone safe and not another person from the hate group. "Do you need anything before the sleeping gas? I'm up..." she offers.

As usual, Lydia gets up in the morning and dresses in the God awful red jumpsuit to start her day. Normally, she'd see if Dick — or now, Matt — wanted to walk with her to the morning briefing, but she's running a little late. She doesn't even really have time to pull her hair up, so she just goes, ponytail holder around her wrist to throw her hair up while she's in the meeting.

Just like she always does, Lydia moves into the common area and scans the crowd in search of Barry and Ray. Easily, they're her best friends here, and without question, they're the two people she trusts the most. Steve and Tony come in a close second, if she has to rank, with Root close behind. Everyone else, really, is kind of superfluous to Lydia so far. She acknowledges that they're there, has spoken to a handful of them, but hasn't made any real connections.

Her eyes catch sight of a familiar face and Lydia stops dead in her tracks, her breath catching, throbbing in her throat.

It's just like Ronan, she tells herself, but even that doesn't really calm her down any. He looks like Jackson, but he isn't. She looks like Allison, but she isn't; she can't be. Shake it off, just go find Ray, you'll be fine.

With that silent pep talk, Lydia runs a hand through her long, red hair and then pinches the bridge of her nose, continuing to scan the crowd for her friends. They'll distract her. If nothing else, Ray's overwhelming and often inexplicable level of general cheerfulness should do the trick. So she keeps walking, past the girl with a strained effort not to look at her more closely — Ronan had a tragic hair accident and some tattoos to differentiate him; maybe she has piercings or a birthmark, or something — and she finally stops a few yards later, turning and looking back toward the door, thinking maybe she's missed them both or maybe Ray and Barry are even later today than she is.

Allison senses that someone is staring at her. Is that the source of her uneasiness? Has someone been watching her? Did she do something wrong to be put under surveillance? Her mind races, thinking back over the past few days, unable to think of anything she may have done that would have roused suspicions about her loyalty. She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath to steady her nerves. Whoever is watching her will soon realize that she's not a threat and she won't be in danger.

A flash of red catches in the corner of her eye makes her frown. Everyone in this room is wearing a red jumpsuit, so she's not sure why her brain registers it as something important. She turns to examine it closer and lets out an involuntary gasp.

Lydia.

There are hundreds of moments flooding her mind, memories of a life that is not in Alpha Complex. Without realizing it, she finds herself walking towards the girl, stopping in front of her and opening and closing her mouth. She has no idea what to say.

At the movement in the corner of her eye, Lydia looks up and it feels a little like her heart stops for a second, her stomach dropping heavily, and her chest tightening. Why do they always come to me first? she finds herself thinking and she takes a shaky breath, looking back up at the taller girl wearing her dead best friend's face.

"What?" she finally asks, frowning, trying to keep her expression from looking too much like she feels slapped in the face.

"Lydia?"

The word comes out hesitantly, her voice wavering ever so slightly, as if she's not sure what she's saying is right. Part of her knows, deep down, that there is something wrong. She just isn't sure what it is.

This is crazy. She shakes her head and is ready to apologize for bothering the other young woman. She needs to get to work.

Hearing her own name coming out of the woman's mouth sends shockwaves of pleasant nostalgia and pain; good memories just as well as the bad through Lydia and, for a moment, she just stares back up at her, blinking, with her lips parted in surprise. Everyone knows her face from that stupid video of the Anti-Specials group beating her nearly to death, but most people still don't know her name, because it wasn't said on the video and most of them don't approach her. She keeps to herself and to Ray and Barry mostly, these days. That humiliation has been enough to build a protective shell around her and Lydia isn't the same self-assured, confident woman she was before that attack.

The response comes out watery and cracked, broken from lack of use because the last time she's said Allison's name out loud, she was screaming it when she felt her die. And the last time she heard it out loud was weeks ago, when she'd been talking to Ray, the first time they'd met.

"You know, I don't know why but even though I knew your name was Lydia, I wanted to call you Allison. Isn't that weird? I mean, I don't know any Allisons but it just seemed to... stick to you."

"Allison...?"

Edited 2016-02-29 22:26 (UTC)

She freezes when she hears her name. Maybe she's not crazy. But how does that make sense? The memories she has of Lydia don't reconcile with her training and yet her name on the other girl's lip sounds right in a way that nothing else has.

Fighting an overwhelming urge to hug Lydia, Allison nods slowly. "I am really confused right now," she admits, careful to keep her voice low so that no one will overhear her confession. Questioning anything is a direct line to being accused of treason and getting sent down to infrared level. Or worse.

A sound resembling a dry sob escapes Lydia when the other woman freezes as if trying to figure out why she knows her. Those bastards really managed to reprogram her friend. Lydia fought it until she pretended she wasn't fighting anymore just to get out of the multiple days of orientation, but she never really believed it. She still doesn't. This only confirms her belief.

Lydia gets to her feet and throws her arms around Allison, burying her face against the other girl's shoulder and clinging to her like she's terrified that if she lets go, Allison will be gone all over again. "We can't talk about it here," she whispers urgently in Allison's ear. "On your PDC. We'll talk there. Ray showed me how to encrypt a private message, it's okay, Allison. It's gonna be okay, you're okay," she goes on, not even realizing that she's crying and laughing all at once by the time she finishes saying. She'll send Allison a message on the network, encrypted especially to her and they can talk in more detail.

She pulls back a little bit, just a little bit, so that she can look Allison in the face and her painfully wide smile looks out of place among the tears rolling down her cheeks as she huffs out another sound stuck between a laugh and a sob. "I thought I'd never see you again, oh my God, I missed you so much!"

The hug feels even more right than Lydia saying her name and Allison clings back, her mind spinning as she tries to process Lydia's words. Why can't they talk here? What does Lydia want to talk about that could get them in trouble? It doesn't matter. She wants, no needs to talk to Lydia. Just being in her presence gives Allison a sense of peace.

"You don't need to miss me," she says. "I'm here now."

She frowns a bit. There was a time that she wasn't there. Memories of sharp pain and anguished cries come back. Is that a memory of one of her clones dying? That can't be it or else Lydia wouldn't be so emotional at seeing her.

It isn't really until Allison doesn't just hug her back, but clings just like Lydia is that Lydia really feels like it's Allison. She smiles tearfully and nods, though, at Allison's reassurance, placing her hands on her friends shoulders as she pulls back from their hug and running them slowly down her arms, the way she always used to when she was trying to calm Allison down or help her to focus.

"Yeah, yeah...you're here now and that's what matters," Lydia agrees, "you're right."

Allison smiles back. It's a reflex, not something she's even conscious of doing, but Lydia has that effect on her, especially when she runs her hands down her arms in a familiar gesture of comfort. There are so many questions she wants to ask, but she instinctively knows that she can't ask them here. That must be what Lydia was referring to when she said that she would send her a message later.

"We're here. Together." They were always stronger together and she has no reason to think that will be any different now.

There's a sort of relief that Lydia can't even begin to understand, never mind explain, that comes with knowing she'll have Allison by her side again. She's grown so much during her friendship with Allison, and in the wake of Allison's death, that she's almost a completely different person. Her priorities are different, she doesn't hide the fact that she's smart, anymore, because she doesn't need to and why all of that came from Allison, she doesn't know, but it did.

Lydia takes Allison's hands in her own and squeezes them. "I love you," she says softly and genuinely but with a firmness that she needs more for herself. She didn't get to say it one last time before Allison died and she thinks, now, maybe she hadn't really said it enough when Allison was alive. Now she's getting a second chance and she wants Allison to know for sure that Lydia sees her as a best friend, sure — the best friend she's ever had and probably ever will have — but also as a sister.

A small smile tugs at the corners of her mouth then and she lets go of Allison's hands and gives her another hug because she can't not when she's finally standing right there in front of her again.

The confusion Allison felt earlier is melting away now that she's with Lydia. There are still a lot of things that don't make sense, but somehow, those things don't matter as much right now. She and Lydia have been through a lot together and they will get through this too. There's a resolve in Allison that is familiar and grows stronger at Lydia's words.

"I love you, too," she whispers back, hugging the other girl tight again. They are probably attracting unwanted attention with their emotional display and Allison knows she should pull back and go about her day.

Matt wishes he had his phone here to record notes. someway to capture his thoughts and try to make some sense of all the information he's gathering about this place. As it is, he's only got his memory and while it's good, it's completely human and not at all eidetic. He's got no way to take notes in braille either. Really he'd love to have some of his technology from home. Of course, there's a lot that he'd like to have from home. As it is, he tries to go over the information every evening, compile it, sort through it and determine what's important. It feels like he goes to bed with a headache more often than not.

He hears someone approaching the room then the door opening. He takes a deep breath almost out of habit, but to his (highly developed) human senses, everyone smells pretty much the same. The only difference here is that Matt can smell the slightest tang of salt. His brow furrows as he sits up. He knows from her footsteps that it's Lydia before she speaks. He smiles gratefully at her announcement. He remembers vividly that fear from before he learned how to use his powers and from the first day here. He hadn't known anyone and had had to rely on Ray, whom he'd just met, to tell him who was there and whether they were amicable or not. He struggles for a moment, wondering if he ought to let her have her space, but he's fairly certain from her voice that she's emotional, but he can't tell what emotion the way he could with his powers. After a moment, he shakes his head. "No, thank you. I appreciate it though."

He hesitates again. "Are you alright?" He doesn't know Lydia very well, but they are sharing a room and she seems to be nice enough.

Lydia gives him a small smile and moves to her bed, sitting down on the edge of it and, as she does every night takes her hair down to cascade over her shoulders and massages her fingertips deeply against her scalp to loosen that twinge of pain at the top center of her head where her hair's been tied up for the whole day. "No problem," she replies when he says he doesn't need anything. "If that changes before they release the sleep aid..." she offers, trailing off before actually finishing the sentence, because she's sure he gets the jist.

When he asks whether she's all right, Lydia looks over at him, eyes moving over him as if looking for something, even if she doesn't know what. Reflexively she wonders whether he's a werewolf and can smell the chemosignals she's giving off, but that's stupid, she thinks, because even if he is, he still won't smell them, probably. Not if he'd lost his sense of smell the way she's lost the voices in her head.

Clearing her throat as she finally looks away when she realizes that she's been staring while trying to figure it out, she nods, a weak smile that falls just short of her eyes tugging at the corners of her mouth. Belatedly, she actually vocally responds because nodding her head at him is dumb, she's not even thinking straight tonight. "I'm fine, it's just been...a day," she confesses in a surface-level fashion.

Matt looks a good deal less confused and panicked today than he did yesterday. He's still not comfortable here and he still feels like he's half deaf, blind and numb but he's figuring out that he does still have his senses and he can determine a certain amount about a room or a person with them even if he can't hear their heart beating or know what they ate for dinner the night before (that last one seems pretty pointless here).

He doesn't have any credits to buy anything at the commissary, but he has showed up to get his nutritious breakfast. He'll take a seat at one of the tables on the edge of the room and listen to everything that's going on around him as he picks at his food. He won't mind company, not at all.

After breakfast, it's straight to the legal services office and try to figure out exactly what it is he's supposed to be doing there (he doesn't have a clue). If things are quiet there, he's likely to make a trip to the library. He's not hopeful that there are braille books, but he's got to at least make certain. On his way to both places, he walks careful, cane tapping in front of him, hand against one wall. He's not going slow because he's wary; he's going slow because he's trying to absorb as much as possible about the layout of this place.

At lunch, it's back to the dining hall, not because he likes the food but because it's the best place to see everyone and hear what's going on. His afternoon is a repeat of his morning before he hits the dining hall one last time. He'll attend the Credit Club meeting out of curiosity then possibly leave early before retiring to his room to try and work out what (if anything) he's learned that day.

Lydia's loathe to let go a second time, but when it starts to sound like the morning briefing is about to begin, she finally does, but she sits back down and motions for Allison to take the chair next to her. She probably won't be able to see her at lunch, just because Lydia eats her lunch quickly and gets back to work so that she never has to stay after hours to finish, but she'll definitely see her for dinner; she'll make sure she mentions it when she sends Allison a message on the PDC. Lydia makes a mental note to do that as soon as they're let out of the briefing and while Lydia's on her way to the forensics lab to meet Barry and get to work.

One of Lydia's hands moves to take Allison's again and she gives it a squeeze, some part of her just needing to know that Allison's still there.

The interrogation had been intense. Adam has never been interrogated like that in his life. Granted, he's never so blatantly broken the rules either. In a strange twist of luck, Adam has tricks when things get too intense for him. There's a place in his mind that he can go and hide away to take the brunt of most anything in any situation. He's perfected that place and goes there as they try to get him to turn on Ronan. He doesn't turn on Ronan. He doesn't answer they questions except to admit his own curiosity and try to persuade the interrogators that he'd drug Ronan along with him without Ronan knowing what they were getting into. That's as far as he goes while he's in that little space in his mind where nothing can get to him.

He's medicated differently while he's held overnight and something in him turns absolutely complacent. His nerves are soothed and he sleeps the night through. Breaking into the cloning facility seems like a distant nightmare. He shouldn't have done it. But he did. Why did he do it? He can't remember right now. He dreams of the interrogation, only this time the one asking the questions is Robert Parrish. Adam knows all too well how it will feel when those fists collide with his face, and eventually they do.

Adam wakes with a start and is set free. He goes numbly to the room he shares with Ronan Lynch and Ray Palmer. He can barely remember what happened, why he had been held and what the people had been asking him about. He's in trouble for something. Is Ronan in trouble too? Is Ray? Does he care? Yes. Yes, he should care. He makes himself care.

He steps into the room and looks blankly around. "Ronan? Ray?"

"Where the hell were you?" Ray doesn't really do anger so much as fear and worry cranked to 11. He's at least successful at looming in this instance, large frame towering as he stands away from his own bed.

It wasn't so much the disappearing in the night that Ray worried about -- he can't be so hypocritical as to expect that no one else would take advantage of post-curfew privacy. It was that when he returned from his own escapades, it had been to an entirely empty room.

He'd though it had struck again: the Curse of the Palmer. He almost immediately deflates a little: "Are you OK?"

Ronan had been interrogated like this before. He's sat in an interrogation room at the Henrietta while the police fired questions at him. He crosses his arms over his chest, tilts his chin up and doesn't give them anything except fuck and you. He even tells them his name is Ronan Fucking Lynch. Honestly, he's accustomed to that being enough to get him out of the deepest of trouble and if that doesn't do it, he can always count on Gansey, except that he can't. Not here and his father's name and money doesn't mean anything here. Neither does his reputation as the scariest thing in Henrietta. The only other thing he says to the people interrogating him is "Where's Adam? You can let him go any fucking time because any dickdouche with a brain knows that he's the trouble maker, not Adam." Of course, it doesn't seem to do any good (imagine that) and he's shuffled into a cell to be held overnight.

Sleep isn't something that Ronan expects (though he should in this place because he's slept every night he's been here), but it comes for him and for the first time since arriving in this place he dreams; he dreams of night terrors and being ripped apart. He dreams of watching the night terrors rip into Gansey, Adam, Blue and Noah. He wakes with a muffled scream feeling like he didn't get any sleep at all. He's not in the least surprised when he's released (though he ought to be, oughtn't he?). He's completely surprised to find that despite getting into trouble and being detained, he's got a mission. The mission takes most of the day and it's evening before he returns to the room he shares with Adam and Ray.

When he does return, he's got a bottle of unidentified alcohol with him. The top is off and he's already had a couple of slugs of it. There's something dangerous and sharp-edged about Ronan tonight. In some ways, he's more Ronan than he's been since arriving. He's got a fuzzy memory of the interrogation, his crime and all of the events before waking up this morning. He doesn't realize that his sense of smell is dulled a bit and oh yeah, his skin has an orange tint to it.

A sharp grin cuts across Ronan's face when he sees Adam in the room. He should be feeling relief (and in some ways he is) but instead, he's feeling pleased to see Adam there and possessive somehow. He unzips his jumpsuit, shrugs it off and lets it hang around his waist. "You're okay," he says almost as if he's confused about why Adam wouldn't be okay. He takes another swig out of the bottle and holds it out to Adam as he approaches him.

When she returns to the dining hall for lunch, Allison notices a blind man sitting alone with what passes for food around here. Her conversation with Lydia has caused memories of real food to surface, of delicious things that are nothing like the RediMeals they are forced to eat here. It makes it harder to choke down her lunch, but she knows she needs the nutrition.

After a moment of hesitation, she decides to approach the young man. She isn't planning to trust anyone other than Lydia, but she figures it can't hurt to at least get to know some of the other Specials.

She clears her throat to announce her presence. "Do you mind if I sit here?"

Matt can hear her moving around, but he can't see that world on fire that he's so accustomed to seeing and he can't tell what she's doing. He assumes getting ready for bed since it is close to lights out. He nods a little at her offer. "Thank you. Do they always put a sleep aid in the air?"

No, he can't smell the chemosignals. He's just accustomed to listening to little inflictions and differences in voices and while his senses aren't anything like what they were, they're still highly developed for a human so he can smell something different about her.

He didn't know she was staring so there's no harm done. He only knows that it takes her a moment to answer. She really doesn't need to worry. He assumes she's not accustomed to being around the blind. He nods a little. "It seems like there might be a lot of those here." He's only been here two days though so...

There's far too much noise for Matt to separate anything as subtle as someone approaching him. He supposes he'll eventually learn to isolate sounds even with his diminished senses the way he had with his super ones.

He does hear her when she clears her throat. He's busy picking at food that he's not crazy about eating, but that he knows is necessary. He looks up, brows raising and lips curving in a genuine, if small, smile. "Please, be my guest." He gestures to what he assumes is a free seat. "I'm Matt."

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Daycycle Day 23 [ FEB 29-MAR 5]

DAYCYCLE 23

[ FEB 29 - MAR 5 ]

Daycycle 23: Debriefing

Allison Argent | OTA (morning)

Lydia & Matt (open to Dick?) | Evening

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For Ronan and/or Ray

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For Adam

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