thisavrou_log | [Open] Tell the Truth

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[Open] Tell the Truth

Who: Elizabeth DeWitt & YOU
When: May 4th
Where: Her quarters and hallways of the Moira
What: Dawn of the first FastPenta victim...
Warnings: Potential discussion of torture and experimentation

It's been a long month for Elizabeth. Between Rinzler, Peter, Del Pascia, Ivan's mother, Papyrus and Sans-- there hasn't been a single moment to open the box that was delivered to her in the middle of the month. Tired and sporting a pair of dark circles under her eyes, Elizabeth finally settles in to open the box in her quarters. How the captains got a record player and some records into this tiny box in one piece, she'll probably never find out, but the sight makes her smile fondly. This is just what she needed.

She reaches into the box to lift the player out gently-- but it seems to be stuck, something wedged between the box and the player. After a few delicate attempts, Elizabeth growls and starts really pulling. Whatever was keeping the player out finally comes away, and Elizabeth's hand drops between the player and something that pinches.

"OW! Ow--" Elizabeth is stuck with the pinch for a few more seconds as she fights to get her hand out of the box and out from under the record player, but finally she manages it and examines her hand. Nothing, strangely... no blood, nothing. Still, she's certain she felt something.

The player comes out easily now, as do the records, and Elizabeth discovers a strange tube of, apparently, 'FastPenta'. Whatever that is. It looks like a drug though, Elizabeth isn't so naive not to know that much. And apparently it stung her, because there appears to be nothing else in the box that could have done it. Time to go to the medical bay, apparently, strange tube in her hand just in case they needed the drug. She walks a few steps before she starts to feel hazy and dizzy, and the thought that she's been poisoned does cross her mind as she runs a few steps and tries to work her MID. "This is-- this..."

The thought vanishes and she laughs quietly. No, she's okay, she's fine, no need to panic. Or do anything really. She'll just sit down on the floor of the hallway, that seems to her to be a wonderful idea.

((OOC: Elizabeth has run afoul of a FastPenta hypospray, and now she's sitting on the floor of one of the hallways and behaving quite strangely. Your typically cagey first mate is a relatively easy target now...))

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After the most recent attack—after the edits—Rinzler's spent much of the last week in hiding. He emerged from the ventilation system just two days ago, and if he's keeping external expression carefully normal, it's a safe bet the program hasn't let his guard down yet.

Scans pick up the ping of user just around the corner. The signature isn't familiar, but fingers still twitch slightly with the urge to have his disk in hand. He pushes back the reflex (though it stays on standby, just in case), stepping more quickly as he makes to pass by...

...only to still, as he actually turns the corner and sees the new admin... laughing in the middle of the floor? Was she damaged? Glitched? Did he care was probably the better question. There's no vocal interruption to her fit, but Elizabeth only has to track the dissatisfied rumbling to find a black-masked murder-program staring dubiously her way.

Elizabeth rolls on her hip when she hears the noise, apparently completely unconcerned with it but curious as to where it's coming from. When she sees him, instead of looking wary or embarrassed at the position he's found her in, she grins.

"Rinzler...! You've made an appearance, I'm glad. I heard about what happened with you and Peter again--" Elizabeth frowns suddenly and shakes her head. "Horrifying, just terrible. I wanted to say something, but it's too much to tell Peter. Too personal. But you were right to run. That wasn't right."

Rinzler's apathy might still take some working past, but the moment the user turns his way and grins, the type of error is at least resolved. She's definitely glitched. He's half-tempted to start a search for strange plant-creatures in the area. That's what had done it back in the user school, and searching out a system threat would be more useful than beta-sitting this one.

Not to mention less irritating. He bristles just a little at her pretense of sympathy. Of course. It was 'terrible'; he was 'right'—just not so much as to earn his attackers any censure. At least not when they were this user's friends. The black helmet shakes, slightly disgusted, though Rinzler doesn't provide any other output for the moment. She doesn't have to lie. He knows what he is, and he knows what he's for.

"No! No I mean it--" Elizabeth scoots a little towards him, her knee hitting the hypospray and causing it to roll across the floor. She startles at the noise, but figures out quickly enough what it is and picks up the tube again. What was she doing with this again...?

"Comstock tried to leash me. Drove a needle this long--" she holds her fingers about six inches apart (after setting the hypospray down again. "Into my spine to control what I could do. If I could have run, I would've run so far to get away from that. But I thought someone would help me, or stop when they realized what they were doing to me."

She looks down at the hypospray and rolls it around a little with a finger. "They didn't, and no one did."

Rinzler's gaze flicks sideways at the clatter of the tube. He's seen similar devices in the medical wing, though never properly in operation. Was that the source of her errors? Some kind of faulty self-repair? Something to think about.

Certainly it's an easier concept than the words overflowing from the admin's mouth. Rewrite means more than a control or limitation. Being rewritten is still something he doubts this user understands. Not that it would matter if she did. Rinzler isn't a user. The program is a tool and a weapon, something that exists to be remade.

Still, the aversion to control is notable. Especially for one tasked with command. The black mask lingers downward, sound unchanging for long moments. Then he types a word into his MID and projects it for reading.

Why?

"Because they were too afraid," she says, with the confidence of someone who's run this over and over again in her head. "They let their fear guide their hands, and they told themselves it was for the good of all as they planned to leash me, and then kill me.

"It didn't happen to me, but it happened-- in a time and place where I wasn't given a way to escape, it happened. I was brought down and indoctrinated through pain until I was someone else, until I wasn't sure if I would go back to how I was if I took the leash off. When I couldn't escape, they might as well have killed me.

"...but when I was handed that chance, I took it," she says, looking up at Rinzler through her eyelashes, stopping the hypospray from rolling for a second. "And I made sure they regretted their decisions."

It didn't happen, but it happened. A duplicate? Or maybe this one was a recompile, backups saved before the files were corrupted, then restored. That seemed closer to the story that she's telling, but Rinzler's skeptical. Just as likely that she's speaking in hypotheticals alone, pretending at an understanding of something she'd only ever faced in rough projection.

Impossible to say for sure. Users lie, and this user is glitched too far past standard function for any guarantee of clarity. Still, there's something about that I that hurts; a bright, sharp point of certainty amidst the haze. Whatever did or didn't happen, she knows who she is.

Of course she does. She's a user. A beat of stillness, and Rinzler redirects.

How?

This is where, normally, Elizabeth would stop and give some cryptic answer. Something that didn't give away the one secret she's guarded from so many people. She can count the number of people who know her secret on one hand.

"I opened a tear between the operating theater and the plains of Kansas, and I let a tornado in."

FastPenta is going to make that number grow.

There's a beat of stillness. The words themselves are half-familiar at best, and even what Rinzler comprehends is as much through inference as recognition. She opened a link. A Portal, and there's an uncomfortable shift of familiarity as something brushes past the filters in his mind. She allowed a threat into their system, and...

Killed them.

"Yes," she nods as though she hadn't just admitted to killing two people. "Not many people have survived being hit with a tornado. That's not why I picked it though-- I didn't really pick it at all. I just opened up something that would make them stop, and my subconscious picked something that more or less reflected how I felt."

Like ripping everything apart.

Good.

The line is short. Simple. He might not like this user—he doesn't, not at all, and his building suspicions about why she'd really condemned his self-defense aren't helping. But users aren't meant to be repurposed or controlled. They'd tried; they'd made themselves into threats. And she'd deleted them.

Still a hypocrite.

Elizabeth's eyebrows immediately come together in confusion.

"Wait, why? When was I a hypocrite to begin with? When did that happen?"

She is definitely not a hypocrite. Probably. There's so much going on and her views are generally so strong that maybe there's something she's missing here.

"Come on, tell me, I can take it," she says, scooting forward a little bit. "I meant what I said, breakdowns in communication are the sources of problems, you can tell me," she scoots forward more, still on her knees. This is the person who murdered two people with a tornado.

Before coming to this system, Rinzler spent several user-months in a different one. A world where he'd been forced into a user body, stripped of his mask and armor functions, left weak and unarmed against any number of threats. For the most part, this place—and his condition here—is a vast improvement.

But right now? Rinzler badly misses being able to eyeroll.

Disallowed deletion of system threat.
Corruptive. Viral. Hazard to users across ship.
Given excuse: 'murder'. Acting 'outside the system'.

He's not even mentioning the parallels with his own situation. She'd condemned him for fighting back when he'd been hunted—in particular, for inflicting 'multiple casualties' on his attackers without remorse. She'd gloated over her own superiority in not allowing those who'd trapped him to punish him with worse after. It was every bit as grating as the pacifist, and supposedly, for much the same attitude. The perspective that killing was wrong no matter the threat or consequences of not doing so.

But that much, Rinzler at least thinks he comprehends. She's a user, and he's not. Rinzler isn't so stupid as to expect the same allowances for his defense. But for her to refuse to let anyone wipe the virus, despite its current, active threat to the whole system?

Glitched.

Killed threats to save yourself.

Elizabeth sits back on her heels and blinks at him-- it's pretty straightforward, what he's accusing her of, and after a few moments she nods a few times.

"That's true, but there's only one problem with your logic-- it supposes I thought what I did to those surgeons was the right thing to do." She laughs faintly and shakes her head, the scene washing over her again, though in a different light.

"I was angry. I was in pain. Even as I opened the tear, you know who they pleaded with? Booker. Not the person they were hurting, the one who turned off the machine. 'Turn it back on DeWitt, please' they said. They were pleading with the wrong person, but I suppose by then I wasn't a person to them anymore.

"Killing people... has been a solution for me before, but it's never brought me any comfort. If I could do it over again, I'd find another way to stop them. I know better now."

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[Open] Tell the Truth

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