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

[zerg_rush]

I'm a telepath. [She says, pinching the bridge of her nose.] Just run your killer clown suspects past me and I'll tell you who's faking it.

[Kerrigan's probably too pretty and too not obviously a ball of psychological trauma to be released.]

[hallelujahjunction]

Might could work, might could not. On my world magicians who try telepathy and astral projection with them, it don't work well because they camouflage their thoughts.

[parannoyed]

Also not everyone's going to be comfortable with a telepath digging into their head, even if they have nothing to hide.

[He does have something but even if he didn't, he'd be against having someone dig around in his head.]

If we can figure out less invasive ways to clear people, let's do that.

[zerg_rush]

[Kerrigan just rolls her eyes.]

[parannoyed]

Some of us have good reason to not want someone else in their heads.

I'm not doing that again.

And you'd be at risk of getting the equivalent of a shotgun blast of someone else's pain directly to the brain. All the more intrusive and invasive because it's not mine.

[zerg_rush]

I don't want to be sifting through anyone's deep dark secrets [she says that sarcastically, because she doesn't care about the kind of boring, petty stuff most people are ashamed of] any more than you want me doing it, but I'm used to the pain.

[She shrugs. Being a telepathic assassin kind of sucks.]

And "I don't want anyone to know what a ████ I was to my ex" doesn't hold atmosphere when lives are at stake.

[parannoyed]

[He might as well be out with it after Price dragging all their dirty history over the comms.]

I was implanted with the fragment of an AI that was exclusively its splintered-off memories of being horrifically tortured. I felt it going insane and trying to kill itself over and over in my brain before it was removed.

But because of how broken it was, I retained those memories and spent some time in a comfy, little padded room trying to pry apart which memories were mine and which were his.

[He was very nice to most of his exes, thank you very much.]

I don't care if lives are at stake. If people suspect me, I'd rather stay locked up in a little room for the entire time I'm on the rig than let someone else into my head again.

[zerg_rush]

[Honestly? Kerrigan tuned out most of Price's sob story.

However, she does soften, because she's not a total dick, just bad at people.]

████. Not a lot of people give me a run for my money when it comes to trauma.

[That was a "damn." She's nowhere near as bad as South.]

[parannoyed]

I'm sorry if I have.

I won't say that I wouldn't put my worst enemies through what I went through - because I absolutely would, since they were the ones that did it to me.

But most people...my hope is that they never even come close.

[Now that he's not bristling with as much defensive energy, his expression is actually kind. This place has been softening him up lately.]

What was it for you? For me, it was special ops.

[zerg_rush]

Same.

[Pause.]

Just so you know, I can't avoid picking up your surface thoughts when you're in range. It's like overhearing a conversation.

[parannoyed]

Thanks for the warning.

That's not as much of a problem as someone actually being in there.

[A little worrisome due to his secrets, but he's more confident about directing his thoughts elsewhere than when someone is actively digging. Compartmentalization, for the win.]

Sometime when things are less chaotic, we should talk. I'd be down for a sparring session.

[Does he have secrets? Yes. Does he still want to connect with someone if they went through a similar thing? Also yes.]

[Does a part of him not mind the risk of said secrets from being uncovered? Also also yes.]

[zerg_rush]

[Kerrigan isn't lying about spec ops being the reason her life sucks, but it's definitely a misleading statement. Nobody wants to have a casual public chat about child soldiering, though.]

Sure. No power armor, though.

[She's joking, but also not, because South did float the idea.]

[hallelujahjunction]

I got to agree with you here, Wash. It's bad enough that sometimes we get our memories splashed all over each other. Even outside our current situation, I take issue with telepathy being used coercively.

[parannoyed]

Especially when some of our solutions might be as simple as alibis.

[zerg_rush]

[Kerrigan huffs out an irritated sigh.]

I'm weaker here than I am at home. I might not be able to get deep enough, especially since it's not human.