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sixthiterationlogs2019-03-17 10:41 am
locum_tenens) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2019-03-17 10:41 am
(no subject)
WHO: Niska Elster
WHERE: On the path from bunker to village
WHEN: March 17
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: She may get angry, but no true violence past the animal attack
WHERE: On the path from bunker to village
WHEN: March 17
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: She may get angry, but no true violence past the animal attack
It was always inevitable that this would happen, though Niska had been hoping that she might avoid it. She charged at night, she always wore her contacts, and the only person who knew her secret was someone that she knew that she could trust. Perhaps it had been human of her, but she had allowed herself the delusion that no one would discover her secret.
What Niska hadn't counted on was the giant warthogs that lived near the bunker and that one of these days, her luck would run out -- not that she believed predominantly in luck, but she did believe in odds. An animal attack was far from impossible and with the strange flurry of bio-luminescent activity, she should have been more careful.
She wasn't, that's the trouble.
In her haste to leave the bunker from her last coding trip, Niska had wandered right into the warthog's territory. While she hadn't been stung, clearly it had been riles and in its frenzy, pinned her to a wall, sniffing her before deciding that she hadn't been worth the attack, moving on. Grimacing, she checks on her clothes, her scrubs, but when she lifts her palm back up, it's coated in blue synthetic fluid.
She's bleeding from the scrape to her hips and stomach from where she'd been pinned to the wall, the blue of it soaking through her scrubs -- her very bright scrubs where she won't be able to hide it. She needs to get back to her house, but being the middle of the day, it means that anyone she comes across is going to see her.
If she lingers or takes too long a path, then she'll bleed out, because she has replacement fluid at the house, but she needs to get there. Forming a plan, she instantly begins the march back, hand protecting the bleeding as best as she can.
Yet, no matter how hard she tries, her fingers are still tinged blue. She's still limping. Deep down, Niska knows that her secret won't make it past today, but she does something very human. She hopes.
no subject
It's a good thing that Niska has all the supplies ready — she's extremely well-prepared and it seems she almost could have done this by herself, really, except that it had happened in public. Where she'd been seen. Where it had taken her too long to get back, too long to get woozy and weakened.
Brigitte takes the needle and thread. This part might have seemed familiar — she’s stitched up so many people with battlefield injuries — except that the elasticity is ever so slightly off, the skin of Niska’s stomach strangely human-like and yet. Not. Brig breathes; keeps her head bent over her task; doesn’t meet her friend’s eye, for a while. Until she’s carefully sewn up the wound and then immediately slides backward on her chair, moving further away from the other woman. Her hands are stained blue.
“What are you?”
She blurts out the question. Wasn’t able, at the last, to make it more tactful.
no subject
There is no more time to lie.
She's seen too much.
"I am Niska Elster," she says, because that hasn't changed. "I'm a synthetic being created by David Elster to help assist with his family. I am not human, but that doesn't matter," is her clipped remark, because no matter what, that hasn't changed.
no subject
It isn't to say that she should have seen this coming, because there's absolutely no way she could have. Niska was too good at hiding it, too practiced and careful. But Brigitte's mouth thins, her own expression as visibly shaken where Niska's is cool and implacable. She pins her hands between her knees so they'll stop trembling, her spine stiff and straight.
"You're an omnic," she says numbly, instinctively falling back on the word for them from her own world. Self-corrects a moment later: "A robot."
no subject
"I helped to distribute code to my brothers and sisters and woke them all," Niska shares proudly. "Robots," she echoes, with mild disdain for Brigitte's word, "like me."
no subject
But there's a chill down Brigitte's spine at the rest of Niska's words. Waking them all. Perhaps the omnic crisis started with someone (something) just like this: one spark, lighting the sentience and self-awareness in all the rest, a virus multiplying and multiplying until they all rose up. Thousands and thousands dead, four years of war, her father almost dying--
Her chest feels heavy and tight, the anxiety strangling. She doesn't often panic, but this feels like a looming panic attack.
"I'm-- I'm glad you're okay," she says, because that is still true, even if she can't sort out how she feels about the rest of it. She rises to her feet, a hand at her throat, hovering on the verge of just walking right out.
"Will you be alright, now that it's sewn up? Is there anything else I can do for you?" she asks stiffly, as if she's nothing more than Niska's physician. Medical care. Focusing on the logistics, rather than addressing the elephant in the room or how she feels about it. Brig's not sure she could even explain it herself.
no subject
She lets her eyes roam over Brigitte, aware that this is not the easiest thing for anyone to get accustomed to.
"You can go," she says, calm and sharp, clearly displeased that she's been found out.
aaaand done? ow my heart
She pauses on the synthetic's doorstep, her hand against the doorframe.
"Call if it gets worse," she says, over her shoulder. First, do no harm keeps looping in her head. She's not an actual doctor, hasn't sworn any formal Hippocratic oaths, but something still squirms at the thought of abandoning someone if they're injured, if they need help.
Even if she can't quite look at Niska just yet.
The door opens; she leaves.