sixthiterationlogs | If it can feel, it should feel.

WHO: Niska Elster
WHERE: Hospital | Police Station
WHEN: February 18
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: A kind, gentle Niska (aka, Off Colour shenanigans)

Hospital

She's in the middle of one of her shifts at the hospital when things go awry.

Niska's cynicism immediately tells her that something is being done to punish her for her continued attempts to mine the code in the bunker and expose whatever they've been doing. The video messages had only been a small bit of it. Watching her device reset itself after a blue screen that she knows far too much about, she's on her sharpest watch as it begins to reboot.

Only, something is different.

The orange is gone. In its place, white. She hasn't spent much time on the colours on the devices, exactly. She's reviewed names and people who have been with them and then gone, but she never spends that much time on the actual colours. Perhaps she should have, because then she'd understand why she instantly begins to wonder why she's been spending so much time on research in the hospital and the lab.

She should be treating patients, she should be helping people. That's why she was made, isn't it? David Elster built her to be useful and warm, kind and caring, and she'd fought it for so long, but that's her initial purpose. Setting down her microscope slides and forgetting that, she goes back to the vitamins, only this time, it's not to feel useful for herself or superior. She's doing it because she genuinely cares if the people around her get sick or not.

Glancing up when she sees someone new, she smiles warmer than she ever has here in the settlement. "Do you need help? I'd be happy to assist," she says, pushing off her chair to head over before anyone can beat her to it.

Police Station

Instead of going home immediately after her shift, Niska does something she never has before.

She's never needed to eat, but it now occurs to her that the animals within the cells will certainly need their meal. Honestly she's not sure why she never thought of it, but after a quick stop at the inn, she heads into the adapted barn with a bucket of grains, greens, and other little treats that she'd picked up. Her device white instead of orange, she pays little mind to it. The animals are clearly more of a concern now, and she approaches them to tend to their needs.

Soothing them, feeding them, patting them. In this moment, she's far more caring and maternal than she has been in years. Seven years, if she's honest. She had never been created to be a mother to Leo, but she'd possessed the necessary traits, ones that simply got buried too deep.

"Easy now," she soothes one of the animals when it seems to panic, at the sound of new footsteps. "It's just a new friend with us. That shouldn't be cause for worry at all," she says, turning to give her new visitor a warm smile. "Come in, I was just going to see if could get any milk from the goats today."

If Mia could see her now, she'd laugh until her battery died. As it happens, Niska isn't even aware that there's something to laugh at, so she keeps on, helpful and smiling and warm -- all the things she hasn't been since the first time she was used for something so very apart from her intended purpose.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She doesn't want to talk about how it would be much easier for them to manipulate her, because it would only take coding, but the implications that they've been able to access her like that is a staggering implication. It also makes little sense if the humans are affected, unless...

"What if they're able to deploy a batch of programming via the devices?" She believes that she may be implying that everyone is like Beatrice -- a synthetic version made to mimic, and yet, that doesn't work either. Others eat, she doesn't. "I think I may be impacted as well. My band has gone white."

"Hence the smiling, which looks okay with you but doesn't suit you well," he points out, shrugging. "Not your mood, and the woman I've known."

He considers that though, wandering the small space, thinking about what it might all mean. "What... How could they reprogram humans? I mean, with only the change of a band, somehow they've changed our entire personalities? I don't know if you can reprogram the brain that way. Maybe hypnosis?"

She does smile, she just doesn't do it around him. Laura's family, Astrid, Leo, Mia, Max. Those are the people that she feels like she can be herself around, not the hardened woman, but the Niska that opened her eyes to a world with hope.

"They've given us powers," she says, and she makes sure to say 'us'. "Why not rewrite a personality?"

Jake tenses then, because he's still uncomfortable with his power and how much he could hurt others with it. He tries to avoid it, though he's been practicing with Hawke to try and ensure he can control it no matter what happens.

"I would say one is like training for something you've never done, and one goes to the core, but what the fuck do I know? I program computers not people." And he doesn't sound the least bit okay about any of it. Not in the least.

That's good to know, though Niska doesn't say as much. Right now, she's more inclined to want to help him through it, and the frustration makes her reach over to squeeze his hand. "It's okay," she promises, putting his feelings before hers.

"We'll figure this out, together. What do you think we should try first?" she suggests, trying to bring him around.

With the changes in his life, much of Jake's life in this place has centered around Cougar. For obvious reasons. Yet Niska has always been someone he enjoys talking with, if for no other reasons than she's cool to bounce ideas off of, and throws out some he's not even considered. She's got a sharp mind, and he appreciates that in her.

So the sympathy makes him smile, taking a breath and huffing it out loudly, trying to literally blow off the frustration.

"Do you know what your scrub power was? Has that changed?"

"I never used it," Niska admits, because she hadn't ever needed powers to be extraordinary. She'd always been a little bit better than normal human beings instantly due to her being a synth. She couldn't really tell.

"Do you know what the powers are if it's clear? Or white," she supposes, given that it appears it's one or the other for her right now.

Jake sighs, shaking his head. "No, but there's some that would know. I just know mine and Cougar's," he admits. "I don't even think I've seen that many with white. And I would wonder what the colors meant, I have before, but personalities suit with Cougar right now so..."

So he makes a face, wishing he had more answers. "You never looked into it?"

"I've never needed powers and I was too busy trying to uncode the bunker to worry about what someone might have modified into personalities." It should sound cutting and cool, perhaps a bit of an insult, but with her white band, it sounds much gentler. Even worried.

She's going to hate herself later.

"Do you like him now or do you like better before?"

"Yeah well, I like wondering about what kind of mad scientist bullshit they did to me and mine," he admits, no heat to his words, but being just bluntly honest with her.

That gets a frown though.

"I like him. Period. End of story. He's like the other half of me, which might sound stupid but it's true. I just want him to be him, and this doesn't feel like him. He wants to change, sure, fine, but forced to it bothers me."

If it can feel, it should feel.

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