the game continues after checkmate

[locum_tenens]

WHO: Niska Elster
WHERE: Bunker
WHEN: September 21
OPEN TO: Mark Watney / All
WARNINGS: Potential rudeness, mild violence

---

for mark

Her charge is nearly gone.

Niska had known that setting out on this faith-driven quest was a stupid idea, but somehow she had convinced herself that it was a path that she needed to set herself on. The cabin had been so close, she'd been right there when her systems began to shut down, no longer capable of supporting motor functions. She recalls collapsing on the forest floor, perilously low to losing all power.

She was so close, though. She'd needed only to finish and she could return to Astrid. It was this last thought of the woman she loved that Niska spared her memory for before she shut down to enable herself to save power, to avoid dying.

When she opens her eyes again, there is no cabin in sight and her power levels are still dangerously low. Something must have changed for her to have been brought forward from sleep mode and a speedy glance of the dim room that she's in tells her what's happened. Her clothes are soaked and orange, a man is staring at her, a preservation tube is behind her, and she only has seconds before she's out.

Eyeing the man, it takes her little time to weigh the risks, deciding that her need for survival outweighs her mistrust of strangers. "Charge," is all she says, jaw locked as movement is impossible until she has more power, all function stripped to the bare minimum. It's all she says before she collapses again, water pooling on the ground around Niska's body, a prone figure that isn't breathing and has no warmth.

Dead, really, but only by some people's definition.

open to all

Once she's suitably charged and back in her orange scrubs (a mockery, as if she's an Orange Eyes, docile and suited to taking commands), Niska wastes little time in going to work on the computers. People come in and mill around her, but so long as they pay no mind to Niska, she'll pay no mind to them. Attentive of the systems, she finds coding that looks very simplistic, a function of keeping something running. It has nothing to do with synths and therefore, nothing to do with her.

While she'll return to find out where she is, what's more pressing to her now is who's here with her.

Paging through the systems and typing in code without looking up past the fringe of her hair, she hears movement that isn't so deliberate, as if a pause. Standing there in drying orange scrubs, Niska suspects that she either looks like an Orange Eyes ready to help or perhaps a prisoner. Either way, she dislikes the association and knows she'll have to find other clothing.

Soon. Right now, she needs to seek out Mia and Leo and Max. She needs to see if she can find them, and she has to hope that she won't find Astrid, wanting to prevent her from being dragged into this at all costs.

"You're staring at me," she says, when she hears the movement stop completely. It's an educated guess, of course, she doesn't actually have eyes in the back of her head (no matter what David Elster might have upgraded his synths with, that's not one of them). "What do you want?"

Comments

[3ofswords]

"Well I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there's a bunch of Outdoors between you and fresh clothes. Unless you're into overalls." He doesn't immediately see her pack, but there's finite space to drop it down here.

There's also an infinite amount of unkindness in the world, building concrete walls and glass tubes, putting names on lists and blood in vials--all to no discernible purpose.

"Ride the pod out with me," he offers. "If the part after that is too much to deal with, you can ride it back here. I'll bring you some clothes, something to eat."

[locum_tenens]

"I'm not a child or a farmer," is Niska's distasteful opinion on dungarees, wrinkling her nose. Even Leo had been too old for the things when she had first been made, which has left her with an awful impression.

Better or worse than the orange? The orange has terrible connotations too, but at least for a moment, she can pretend.

"I'm not hungry," is Niska's instant reply, flat. If she wants to pass for human, she'll need to look into a proper food bag situation, but she's not able to right now, having a lack of time. "It's been a bit of a shock," she lies, trying to be more human about it, offer a reason. "I could go for some new clothes, though."

[3ofswords]

"My bad, you just give off a real child farmer vibe." Children of the Corn, maybe, but he's committed enough to his better leaf that he only rolls his eyes on the turn out of the room. "I'll find you an adult industrial revolution ensemble as soon as we're back in civilization."

Such as it is.

"So, I'm Kira, for reference in a future where you care. Do you prefer your actual name, or the one I will make up with zero hesitation?"

[locum_tenens]

"What fun for me," she notes, her words hefty with sarcasm as she prevents herself from rolling her eyes. Her previous concerns had been hunting down a murderer and searching for a mythical synth and now she's bickering about fashion.

How far she's slid backwards.

"Niska," she confirms, because it might be a name assigned to her, but it's the one she uses. It's the one that Astrid had used. "Don't try and make one up," she says evenly. "I don't think you'll like what happens after."