time is running out

[locum_tenens]

WHO: Niska Elster
WHERE: Bunker
WHEN: December 20
OPEN TO: All! Feel free to catch her in the bunker, in the escape, or back in town
WARNINGS: Violence and sexual discussion in the link. Niska's sneak preview runs from 1:01 to 1:16 if you see hers

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While it's not something Niska readily talks about, she often sneaks back to the bunkers in the early hours of the morning when she can be assured that no one else will be there. With no need to sleep and her rigged charging system putting her at full power before four AM typically, it gives her a solid three hours to work with the systems.

It should be much easier to strip away the lines of coding here after her work with conscious synths and helping Mattie with her code, but there are trips and layers and, frankly, damage that she's not sure where the cause is from. Not only that, but compared to David's technology, it's primitive.

These are all excuses. Niska will later rely on them to help with her feelings of inadequacy about what happened.

She'd thought that she'd finally peeled back one of the layers to undo the glitching in the iteration lists so that she could see what's been redacted when her next push of coding suddenly went awry. The code doesn't work the way it's intended, but something clearly has been triggered. She watches the windows cascade as a program begins to function and then, her device sounds a notification.

Watching her wrist warily, Niska knows the timing is far too coincidental to be an accident. When she opens it, there's a new application that counts down. Twenty one days, five hundred and four hours. Until what? She doesn't have time to fixate on it for long when Niska sees the other message. Fifteen video seconds, which, when she opens it, reveals something she's been trying very hard not to reveal to anyone. She shuts it down, her panic not surfacing, but clear in the way her eyes scan the area.

"No," she says, calmly and coolly, but that starts to fade away as her processor works, trying to solve this. "No," she says, because she'd watched the coding deploy. She knows it's not only to her. Bending over the console, she begins to work faster in order to reverse what she's done, but even though she manages it within the hour, she knows it's too late.

People would have received the application, as well as the message. The only worry now is where she can hide. If her message, if her video is out there, then people will know of her secrets. Not the worst of it, thank whatever chance has made it so, but it's bad enough. Packing up her things, she shuts down the bunker's computers and runs, brushing past trees and in her hurry, she loses one of her contacts.

Having to stop, she bends to start working it back into her eye, but it's lost her precious time. The sun is coming up and she's on the outskirts of the village, looking rough and disheveled, her hair a mess, and if she had a proper heart, it would be racing.

Everyone that approaches her is someone to be wary of, now. Anyone could have been sent her message and as she tries to tidy herself up, she knows that she's not acting as she usually would, but her anxiety is clear in how she moves and watches others. This isn't turning all the synths conscious, but it feels very much like something has shifted and it's her fault.

Again.