Jorgmund Emergency Announcement

[piper90npcs]

[In the middle of the night, when even the night watch shifts should be pacing through the dorm area, there’s a peal of noise from the communicators impossible to ignore or sleep through. It’s clearly an alarm of some sort, like tornado alerts back on Earth. It goes on for solid three minutes, long enough for everyone to move on from being woken by it to loathing it, before a message shows up on the communicators-

-and the doorways out of each of the dorms are sealed with a semi-translucent forcefield.

On the communicator screen, Richard Washburn shows up and straightens his tie.]

Hello, employees. Believe me, I’m not any happier about this midnight interruption than you are, but we’re currently in a state of – mild – emergency. I don’t want anyone to get overly excited, but until the situation is resolved, you will remain in your dorms. Depending on how long this takes, all activities scheduled for tomorrow morning have been suspended.

The reason for this is that we have an intruder in your living quarters. We have this footage from a few weeks ago.

[A new image shows up on the communicator: a security camera video of a Santa Claus with a line of the highest executive-level parents and their small children waiting to tell him their wishlist. A little girl in pigtails and a sparkly t-shirt of a Christmas tree hops up onto his lap.

“Ho, ho, ho!” Santa says, and he boops her nose. “Aren’t you a peach? Tell me, little one. What would you like for Christmas?”

“I want a big plastic spider!” the girl says excitedly.

“A creepy little child, aren’t you? Well, that’s just swell, because that’s my favorite flavor,” Santa says, and then – blurry on the security camera footage – transforms into a mass of black goo, latching onto the little girl’s face and suctioning to stay on. The child’s mother screams and yanks her daughter away, and the footage shows pure pandemonium as some parents lunge forward to help the mother with her daughter while other parents snatch their own children and start running. In all the chaos, the black goo vanishes.

Washburn flicks the footage away and reappears on the screen.]

Thankfully, there were no fatalities in this incident, and after we couldn’t find any evidence of the attacker, we assumed that it was a freak incident of the Stuff. However, there was recently another unsuccessful attack on a teenager by this same creature posing as one of the tutors on the Rig, and then again on another thankfully unharmed child disguised as another child, and then on another child under the guise of a children’s television show host named “Mr. Rogers”, and tonight-

[He takes a deep breath, annoyed, as if this is somehow the Hires’ faults.]

-tonight we found a security breach to your floor, and we have good reason to believe that the shapeshifter is posing as one of you.

We know this: we know it poses as figures appealing to children, so for obvious reasons, you won’t be allowed anywhere near any Jorgmund staff whatsoever until this is resolved. We know that its ability to disguise itself is relatively seamless. And we know that it preys on minors.

If you can determine who among you isn’t at all appealing to children, we can consider releasing you from your dorm and discussing next steps to search out whoever’s been replaced.

If this starts taking long enough that it jeopardizes the Jorgmund’s mission, we may start taking more drastic measures to ensure that we aren’t harboring any imposters.

I’ll keep you updated if you keep me updated.

Comments

[hallelujahjunction]

Son of a bitch. [Dan was still awake, because his circadian rhythm gravitates towards nocturnal, but he somehow still looks like he just rolled out of bed.] I've dealt with those motherfuckers before. We got a babadon't on our hands.

Washburn's right - they're seamless shapeshifters, and they absorb people's memories and personalities almost totally. Almost totally. They're angry spirits that eat souls. And I got no idea how we'll kill it aside from setting it on fire, which we obviously don't want to just start doing willy-nilly to anyone we suspect.

[onequartershark]

And what does it do with the person it's imitating?

Are we looking for a body too?

[hallelujahjunction]

It impersonates, it don't possess. We might be looking for a body but we can cross our fingers for a live person.

[onequartershark]

[ Well. Better odds than nothing. ]

Consider them crossed.

[71lines]

Are they more afraid of fire than normal people?

[hallelujahjunction]

I wish. It's just the only way I know to kill them.

[zerofield]

So, everyone saying that x person knows deeply personal things about them and will know if it's not really them - that probably won't be any help here?

[hallelujahjunction]

It might or might not, it depends on what memories it got. They're smart, and I want to say they get about ninety percent of a person's memories. My understanding is that the further back the memory, the harder for it to access.

I'm not an expert, I've tangled with maybe two of them.

[zerofield]

So perhaps I should say we can't rely on that, then.

[ownperson]

Well, North and me share memories going back to the literal ████in’ womb. Seems like a point for us.

[googledox]

[Brainy groans.]

Telepathy. Sprock.

[He thinks.]

Can it imitate meta powers? Can it create new things, beyond what memories might allow? Such as schematics?

[hallelujahjunction]

Shit, that I don't know. [Dan taps his middle finger against his lower lip, thinking.] I don't know if I can imitate powers. Might be worth a shot to have everyone try and use their powers and if anyone don't got the juice, we got ourselves a winner. Can't hurt.

How do you mean by create new things?

[locked to new hires]

[trialbyliar]

Wow, so even an illiterate stripper is handy once in a while! But his theory checks out.

[Kokichi sounds way too cheery given the situation, surprisingly absolutely no one.

He doesn't seem to be in the dorms, though. It's unclear where he is, exactly – the room is pretty dark – but if anyone's particularly observant, there's a soft secondary lighting on his face, like the glow of monitors besides just the one in the comm device. Maybe that's why he was careful to keep this message locked away from Jorgmund staff.]

So hey, if anyone gets cleared to leave, let me know! I'd rather talk to people that definitely aren't the imposter, y'know?

[hallelujahjunction]

Reckon it was Walt Whitman who said 'I contain multitudes'.

But that brings up a real important point. How many folks are locked out of the dorms?

[passifloraincarnata]

Can they enter mirrors, too?

[hallelujahjunction]

Not that I know of.

[parannoyed]

Two questions.

One, can it create anything that isn't opaque? Like a hologram? And two, can it imitate complex technology?

All of the Freelancers have neural implants that allow us to carry an AI and project a hologram. If a functional neural implant and a hologram aren't things it can imitate, that may be a way to clear a few of us.

If that's not something it can imitate, Theta might be willing to transfer around to each Freelancer, to prove their neural implant and hologram function are working. Before going back to North.

[A pause.]

I'd say we could use Delta to prove that with South but a) he seems to be locked into that storage unit, and b) she doesn't need to be an evil shapeshifter to try to stab you in the back.

[His tone is more "catty and annoyed" than dire serious, though.]

[hallelujahjunction]

As far as I know it can only change its body and mimic clothing, but like I said, I'm not an expert. For all I know, it can mimic powers and technology.

[All the implant stuff is going a little over Dan's head, because he's even more allergic to science and technology than he is to performing magic.]

Can't see how it's not worth a try, though. Might could be that anything out of the ordinary that someone can't do - magic, powers, technology - is a cue that they're suspicious.

[ownperson]

Oh my ████in’ god ████ you, Washington. ████. You. You little █████.

[ She flips him the bird. The filter blurs it out, badly. ]

Anyway he’s right about Delta. He’s locked in, can’t use him. And Theta might not wanna hop to me even if he agrees to that.

[runes_brand]

Rune and I are clear.

[Brand sounds pretty fucking confident considering how little time has passed.]

And setting [BEEP] on fire is one of our specialties.

[hallelujahjunction]

If you have a way you're confirming that, we'd love to be able to use it to clear others here.

[fromfryingpantofire]

Perfect. Just what we needed.

[Sam is shifting into hunting mode again. It's a common enough switch from easy going guy to information gathering, but it's probably the first time anybody has ever seen the switch over the comms. He's always been one or the other.]

Well, it could be better. And it could be worse. If it was one of the shapeshifters from my world, we could at least guarantee that the person they were impersonating is still alive. But it would still be a lot grosser, and we'd probably have found at least one shed skin before now.

[hallelujahjunction]

And I reckon it's easier to get fire than pure silver, so at least we got that going for us. [There's a little bit of an echo effect on the network, since Dan and Sam are in the same room.]

I figure it's a safe bet that everyone in this bedroom ain't child-friendly enough to be a suspect.

[infailtration]

Do you think it could mimic our powers too?

[hallelujahjunction]

Can't couldn't rule it out.