i think i thought i saw you try [closed]

[alan_1]

Who: Alan Bradley and Nihlus
When: Some time during the last week of December
Where: Outskirts of camp
What: Nihlus still hasn’t told Alan why he attacked Rinzler, and Alan is 999% Done.
Warnings: Discussion of violence, possible amputation mention.




[It’s almost a relief when Alan gets pulled for a shift of night watch again. He hasn’t been sleeping well, for one. Tedium had given way to anxiety after his conversation with Rinzler. Now, reaching the Midway Hub it isn’t simply a waiting game; it’s something to be prepared for, something he has to fix before time runs out. He’ll have to find some way to convince Rinzler not to go back with Clu -- that, or find a way to force either of their hands. Watch duty at least gives him some time alone with his thoughts without the risk of distraction.

Like last time, he sends Bit off on his own route to report back later. Unlike last time, he also goes walking himself. He doesn’t go far, just to the outskirts of camp, away from the late-night stragglers still dotted amidst the tents. He isn’t expecting to encounter anyone else -- which makes it all the more of a surprise when he catches sight of distinctive red lights in the darkness.

It’s not Rinzler, though that’s hardly a relief. Last time Alan had seen Nihlus, he’d waited for the turian to approach of his own volition. He had thought Nihlus would want the chance to explain himself, to provide some answer for what he’d done. Instead, Nihlus had turned and walked away without so much as an acknowledgment that Alan was even there.

Alan won’t let that happen again. Nihlus’s actions were already unthinkable before Alan was fully aware of the consequences, and now that he is, he knows he can’t simply wait for Nihlus to talk about what he’d done on his own terms. He needs to answer now. Alan walks over, making sure Nihlus sees him approaching so he doesn't have an excuse to slip away this time.]

I was wondering when we’d get the chance to talk. [He says, expression carefully neutral. He'd never made a very good CEO at ENCOM, but at least years spent with the board at his neck taught him how to put barbs in even the most civil of greetings.] You didn’t seem up to it last time.

Comments

[beautifulspaceraptor]

[ Nihlus hasn't been sleeping at all. He'd managed thirty minutes five days ago, maybe fifteen another five days before that. Minutes-long spans in between.

He keeps wandering long circles around the encampment patterns growing more and more erratic as the weeks passed. Avoiding people, avoiding sleep, running from nightmares, on and on and on. Sometimes he misses the encampment moving on and trails afterwards.

Sometimes he comes back covered in blood after a messy fight with some of the local wildlife.

That's how Alan finds him, unfortunately.

The Spectre slows to a stop at the sound of the man's voice, the approaching footstep, red-smeared helmet swiveling slowly around. There's no immediate response. Keeps being no response for a good few seconds, but eventually... ]

... Alan.

[ It's a lot more distant than intended and there's a rasp to the edge of Nihlus's voice, a combination of general, hollow tiredness and a lack of use. ]

[alan_1]

[Alan has enough sense of self-preservation that when he recognizes the blood soaking the turian’s armor, he gets the very strong feeling that he should start backing away. He’s also angry enough that he doesn’t. Despite what Nihlus had done, there’s still a stubborn part of Alan that believes he’s not too far gone to provide answers, even if he may be close.

And if Alan is wrong? He couldn’t outrun Nihlus anyway.]

Whose blood is that? [Whose, not what. That alone should say plenty about Alan’s current opinion of the turian.]

[beautifulspaceraptor]

[ The question makes Nihlus laugh suddenly, high-wired and vibrating with near-delirious exhaustion.

It wasn't appropriate. He can see the wariness in Alan's posture and the fact that the question was brought up at all was indicative of what the human currently thought of him.

There's a delay, though, between the logic finally making its way out to the appropriate subsections of his brain and his body actually obeying. When he does stop laughing, it's abrupt, the resulting vacuum replaced by a sudden awkward bout of silence. ]

It... wasn't a person.

[ ... Goddess, he really doesn't want to do this right now. He doesn't want to do anything right now. He just wanted disappear again, somehow, just let the Ingresses around here spit him back out into his original timeline, back into death and oblivion. If he wandered long enough in these wastelands, maybe the grey and rocks will swallow him up.

This isn't about you, a little voice sneers somewhere in the back of his brain, through the tangles of barb-wire and rot.

Nihlus draws in a slow, shaking breath, reaching up to wipe the dried streak of blood that was obscuring most of his vision. When Alan remained a reddish blur behind a powdery smear of blood, the Turian gives up and just takes his helmet off. ]

Is it about Rinzler? [ he asks softly, tucking the piece of armor between elbow and side. ]

[alan_1]

[It takes effort not to flinch at that laugh. Alan hasn’t heard any reports of Nihlus being violent towards any of their other crewmates since the ship crashed, but he certainly seems unhinged now. Perhaps he had never really recovered from whatever drove him to attack Rinzler in the first place.

The turian's answer doesn’t do much to assuage Alan’s worries. ’What do you consider a person?’ he almost asks out of spite, but thinks better of it. He’s here for answers, not to start an argument with someone who seems to barely have a hold on his own mind as is.

...And that promptly goes out the window when Nihlus opens his mouth again and asks that particular question. Alan stares at him for a long moment, the incredulity in his gaze matched only by his indignation.]

What else would I be here to talk about?

[beautifulspaceraptor]

[ Honestly, Nihlus was hoping for nice and pleasant conversations about the weather.

Considering the weather never really changed here and the answer was wildly inappropriate however, he doesn't express the wish out loud. It's a pretty massive level of restraint considering how thoroughly nonexistent the barrier between brain and mouth was at the moment.

Mostly, he just stares at Alan, disheveled, looking vaguely like an animal that was about to start chewing its own leg off to escape. ]

What.

[ He stops and breathes, slowly, in, out, eyes shut. The sudden, overwhelming prickle of panicked irritation leaves a line of static crawling up his neck and he quietly wills it to subside. ]

What did you want to know?

[alan_1]

[Alan returns the turian’s stare, noting the empty look in the other’s eyes. It doesn’t match what Alan remembers of Nihlus from before, someone watchful and shrewd, always thinking one step ahead. Then again, nothing of Nihlus has been recognizable to him since Clu first told him the name of Rinzler’s attacker.

Alan regards the turian silently for a moment, anger somewhat lessened by the promise of an answer.]

Why would be a good start.

[beautifulspaceraptor]

I didn't check my mail.

[ ... That's not an explanation. Not at all.

Sure, he cut off Rinzler's legs and attacked Shepard because he forgot to check his mail! Haha! Whoopsie!

His hand is clenched so hard the fingers have gone numb, gloves the only thing stopping his claws from skewering through his palm. Goddess, he doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to remember, he doesn't want to talk about it, it feels like drowning and he's been drowning since he woke up- ]

I'd received the Monolith about two weeks before, but I didn't... check my mail. By the time I did, I was already under.

[ Does that make more sense? Stopping himself, Nihlus bares his teeth, forces himself to focus, to review. He needs to make sense. ]

The artifact that turned J into the thing you saw in Shepard's and Rinzler's report. The Arca Monolith. She was the only one that turned because she touched it, but it... Indoctrinates everyone who came near enough.

[alan_1]

[If the non-answer were meant to placate Alan, it has the opposite effect. He stares back angrily at Nihlus, looking for all the world like he wishes he could hit him. Alan doesn’t know why he expected to get any answers. Nihlus's responses make it clear enough he doesn’t care, and perhaps he never did. Why he had ever pretended to in the first place, Alan doesn't know, nor does he care to.

He’s about to walk away. If Nihlus wants to stay out here and seek his death among the rest of the monsters, Alan won’t stop him. He turns, with every intention of returning to camp, watch be damned – and then Nihlus continues.

Alan shouldn’t listen. He should just leave. But the words hold him there, strange and cryptic. Monolith. Artifact. Indoctrinates. It could be madness, or simply lies. But Alan had seen what it had done to J. From what he’d heard in the report, she had been nearly mindless when they killed her.

What Nihlus had done to Rinzler had been far more calculated.]

What do you mean “indoctrinate?”

[beautifulspaceraptor]

The artifacts are weapons made to turn people on their own. Sometimes it's making them into husks. Sometimes it's something worse. Something more subtle.

[ What had happened to Saren? What happened to Saren? He remembers the new distance, the new arm, the new coldness in those eyes, something was wrong, something went wrong, something IS wrong, he should have-

Should have-

It's too loud-

Nihlus draws in a sharp breath, the smell of dried blood sitting the back of his throat. He's clamped his hand over his mouth at some point, nausea swelling cold and heavy under his diaphragm.

He didn't want to talk about this. He didn't want to remember. He clamps his teeth down until the sharp points threatened to snap. ]

It's just noise. At first. This... awful, awful noise.

[alan_1]

[Alan listens – and watches. He sees Nihlus clamp a hand over his mouth, as if merely describing the process is unbearable to him. Alan doesn’t know how reliable any of Nihlus’s words are given his mental state, but… at the very least, he doesn’t seem to be lying.]

You’re saying this artifact… it was controlling you?

[His tone is still guarded – ready for another evasion, another non-answer. But he’s no longer trying to leave, either.]

[beautifulspaceraptor]

[ This time the silence stretches on and on. It almost does look like another evasion, it almost does look like Nihlus is about to leave again.

But he doesn't and when he starts talking again, his voice is quieter, more distant. ]

... It's aware and intelligent. Probably AI like the Reapers themselves. If the Indoctrination process goes too far, the victim's neural systems get fried and they stop being useful. The Reapers know that. It knows that.

[ There's a quiet, slow breath here, Nihlus mentally leafing through the reports he'd read. ]

The tech they use to establish mind control includes very precise stimulation of certain parts of the victim's central nervous system through sound waves. It takes several days to establish the control. To 'tune' into the victim essentially. Initial symptoms include severe headaches, paranoia, hallucinations. Eventually you come to view the artifacts and the Reapers in a religious light. Loving them. Fearing them. Both.

[alan_1]

[Alan follows Nihlus’s explanation as best he can, piecing together a still-incomplete narrative. So Nihlus had been controlled by some kind of malevolent AI? It sounds almost too horrific to believe, and yet his descriptions sound too intricate to be entirely invented. Alan seems to turn his story over in his mind for a few moments.]

So this artifact made you want to serve these “Reapers,” [He says carefully, brow furrowing on the unfamiliar term. It answers a few questions, but raises more. “AI” suggests someone made them. It also suggests a purpose.]

What did they gain by having you attack Rinzler?

[beautifulspaceraptor]

Do you really think Rinzler would have sat back and let the artifact convert the rest of the organic crew into Husks, Alan?

[ Virus. That was what Rinzler had called the Husk J had turned into. He'd killed it. Those wounds had been inflicted by his disks. Nihlus remembers that exact assessment running through his head the moment he'd flicked his MID open to watch that video. ]

The artifact couldn't affect him. It wasn't... made for that. But he was dangerous, so I... I...

[ It's still him. It's still him. It wasn't the strange out-of-body disconnection he'd expected Indoctrination to be.

He'd been the one pushing Overload into Rinzler's dock, he'd been the one cutting the program's legs off, he'd been the one trying to kill Shepard, to stop her from destroying the Monolith.

It was him, it was all him- it'd felt so clear, so perfectly logical, the singing note filling every single vein and artery in his body with beautiful, endless light-

Nihlus makes a low, broken noise, body curling crookedly inwards, helmet dropping to the ground with a hollow thud. ]

I'm sorry.