Participants:
| Scene Title | These Violent Delights |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | In an attempt to make amends for previous violence, Asami approaches Nicole Miller… only to find there's something broken in her, too. |
| Date | February 25, 2021 |
Bay Ridge
February 25, 2021
7:54 PM
If there’s one thing Nicole Miller can be counted on for — and there are myriad things she can be counted on for — it’s to keep a schedule. To a fault, sometimes it’s a predictable one.
Since the failure of Isaac Faulkner’s campaign for congress, that schedule has shifted some. It’s in a phase of growing pains. Does this permutation of the schedule work? How about this one? Staff meeting at nine or eleven? And, of course, everything is complicated by the fucking government looking for her former head of IT.
The tension between herself and Isaac is unbearable sometimes. While they have more opportunity to butt heads on matters of the direction of The Group without his political ambitions to keep him busy — to keep them both busy — it’s the excessive amount of time on their hands that might undo them. And they’re both on edge even more so than usual.
It’s caused her to micromanage, more to the detriment of herself than those around her. Nicole likes to be hands on, but she generally surrounds herself with people she trusts to do their jobs, so she can focus on hers. Which is definitely not inspecting shipments in Bay Ridge after sundown, but here she is, clipboard in hand for the third week in a row to handle it herself. Alone, because she doesn’t give a fuck about anyone else’s input right now.
That's the best part about the way she's set herself up, honestly. How else would Asami get word back to Isaac to extend proper apologies to him and a desire to talk again, if not through a message delivered in person?
And what luck was it Nicole was regularly sequestering herself away from other eyes recently?
Thought is given to descending at a distance behind her, announcing herself that way, but Asami hesitates to approach like a stalker out of the shadows— even if that is ultimately what's happening here. Her eyes half-lid from above as she weighs the idea in her mind, and opts to go with it. Hands closing into fists while she hovers above the lighting, she leans forward to float in a looping semi-circle, to descend on an approach clearly in the Linderman leader's line of sight, should she look up.
Asami calls out "Nicole," softly from above to ensure it.
Like a leaf on the wind, Asami descends with her arms by her side, eyes on Nicole and her mind open to movements of thought in hers. Her feet land gently, silently on the concrete, black Converse shifting side to side. Everything she wears is dark tonight— navy jeans nearly nearing black, with a thick black hoodie to help fend off the winter chill that doesn't bother her as much as it used to.
She looks surprisingly well-put-together for someone who has a national manhunt still on for them. Not to mention, for someone who just floated down from the sky to land like some kind of black snowflake back on the ground again. "I don't mean you any harm," she opens with, those hands by her side lifting in a placating, palms out gesture. "I'd just like to talk for a minute."
On one of Asami’s loops, Nicole lifts her head a moment behind, searching for the shadow she saw from the corner of her eye and finding nothing. “Jumping at ghosts as usual,” she chides herself under her breath for her paranoia. Returning her attention to the information printed on the side of the nearest shipping container, she checks it against her manifest, marking it off with a scratch of her excessively fine-tipped pen over the paper.
As she turns to bring her attention to the one across the aisle, there’s that shadow again. Nicole’s head jerks to her left, where Asami’s put herself intentionally in her sightline. The clipboard and pen go clattering to the concrete and she herself hits the side of the container as she instinctively recoils a step.
“Oh my god, I’m losing my mind.” The words tumble out in a blur, the note of distress a higher one than her usual timbre without being shrill. She’s not in danger of screaming, however. Nicole Miller didn’t climb her way to the top of the ladder by being easily intimidated.
Though, admittedly, no one’s approached from quite this angle before. It was one thing to hear about things, and another to see them in action.
“Tetsuzan. Thank god. We’ve been worried about you.” This is normal. Totally fine. Talk through the fear, Nicole. What have you got to lose at this point? “I’ve been worried about you.” It doesn’t matter what the Group’s official take on Asami’s situation is. Nicole knows better than to hide behind the herd in a scene like this.
Lifting her chin, she braces a hand on the corrugated metal and pushes herself to a better upright posture again. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
Asami blinks when she hears Nicole of all people's been worried about her. Her hands start to lower, and she looks confused. "You have?" she airs before realizing she has. Her head shakes once and she finds herself taking a step closer to Nicole, closing the distance between them some so she doesn't have to lift her voice too much for it to carry.
"I'm hoping you can help me," Asami admits. She looks off to the side, across the water rather than back the lights on this side of it. "I'm trying to get a message to Mr. Faulkner. Nothing went the way it was supposed to the last time I saw him, and… I just want to apologize. To talk to him, like I'm talking to you."
She turns to look back to Nicole, dark eyes reflecting a more nervous worry than she seemed to have when she first took to the ground.
“Of course I have,” Nicole says gently, not unlike how she used to calm an upset Isaac when he was younger. “You’re one of mine, Asami.” The shift to the woman’s first name comes with a tilt of the Executive Director’s head, entreating her trust. “I try to look after all my people.” It’s what Daniel would have wanted her to do, she’s sure.
“I can get him on the phone,” Nicole says, starting to reach into her purse. “You can talk to him that way.” She gives her head a quick shake. “He’s still at the office right now. We both know you can’t go there to talk.” Take it or leave it, in other words.
Nicole's entreaty for Asami's trust brings her to look back, eyes doelike. Wide, and full of need for trust, for safety. They meet Nicole's, and—
Well. They meet Nicole's.
Something shifts in her, subtle enough it's hard to percept in the dockside lighting. There's still a need in them, but now it's a need of a slightly different kind. It brings her to shy a step closer to Nicole. She takes in a slow but deep breath, tearing her eyes away to look down— then back up again.
But no. What she saw in Nicole when she looked the first time is there, just as present as before. Distracting, even.
How many days and nights had she covertly slipped out into the streets, looking in to every face, hoping to encounter somebody who held what Nicole does inside her? That little broken, invisible something only just out of place. Waiting to be touched, renewed— made right again.
"Did—"
Asami hesitates before she finishes her question. "How much did he tell you?"
Don’t let her get near you.
Isaac’s warning echoes in her head as Nicole follows the shifts in Asami’s gaze, looking for signs of anything in their surroundings that’s escaped her notice. There’s nothing, it seems. Her hand closes around the object she’s been searching for in her purse.
“Tell me?” There’s a shake of Nicole’s head, a look of confusion. “Tell me what?” She steps forward a step, tilting her head to try and keep the other woman’s gaze. “Asami, what’s wrong?” Her own anger roars back at her.
She better not get near me!
The other woman suddenly slips a step back over the warbling waves of thought she can hear. Asami's feet stumble, a look of shock on her face owing to incongruency in what she sees versus what she sensed. Shock is what keeps her from finding further steps back.
"N-n-n…." Both her hands renew in their lift up, wide eyes growing wider.
"Nicole, please."
They’d had a good rapport going there, hadn’t they? The crease in Nicole’s brow is a genuine thing now, no longer a mask of confusion but the real thing. What caused it to flip so easily? Why is it so hard to see her looking so… frightened? Nicole’s stared into the eyes of many people who were frightened and felt nothing.
None of those people had worked so closely with her for as long as Asami had and consistently been… Well, never once has she been what Nicole might describe as off-putting. Zarek had been easier. Kain had just fucked up one too many times, and all she’d had to do was make the phone call on someone else’s order anyway.
This is different.
“Easy…” This isn’t the raving Tetsuzan she was warned about. Maybe Faulkner did get through to her, the way he’d hoped. “If you want to talk to him, we can talk to him.” Her grip relaxes, then closes again around her phone, which she starts to lift from her purse slowly to hold up as a sign of good faith.
Asami swallows hard, trying to decide what to make of the change in apparent approaches Nicole's gone through. The moment she sees the phone instead of a gun actually appear, a wave of relief so strong it buckles her shoulders hits her. She looks up again to Nicole, meeting her eyes for just a moment…
Tearing them away before she sinks into looking at her too hard.
"What happened before… it wasn't meant to go like that. I was just trying to help him. I've had time to reflect on it, and—" Well, she's here to apologize, isn't she? Asami looks hard off to the side. "Is he all right?"
"Not— physically," she sighs out. Because of course he's fine physically. "But is he all right?" More tired than that, she remembers almost belatedly to add, "You know I've not done any of what I was accused of… right?" She starts to turn back toward Nicole, more keenly listening for the unspoken now.
It's hit her that a phone in her hand could be just as dangerous as a gun.
“I…” Nicole looks down, even though she knows that may be a bad idea. With resignation, she sighs. “He’s rattled. Understandably. But…” The bridge of her nose is pinched with her free hand. “It’s like you fixed us.”
Lifting her head again, there are tears in her eyes and her breath hitches in her throat. “We haven’t been this way since before Linderman died.” Asami can remember the days. How the synergy between Nichols and Faulkner turned sour after inheritances were doled out. The discord on the executive level. It evened out, they found a sort of balance to their power struggle, but it never truly stopped.
“I should hate you for hurting him. I did. I came here hating you. But you gave me my Isaac back.” Nicole shakes her head. “What do I do with that?”
But she was asked a question, and Nicole means to provide an answer. “No, I don’t believe you did what they said. That’s not who you are. Not since you came to us. You… You wouldn’t have put your life and the people you care for in that kind of jeopardy.”
Asami doesn't see the look in Nicole's eyes, but she hears the tenor of her voice. Hears the unexpected shift of emotion into it. She stays where she is, cautious until the last of her questions are answered. Then she swallows.
"Hate me, don't hate me— I fixed him, Mrs. Miller. Fixed what was broken." For better or worse. She goes on hesitantly, "If that— fixed other things, too… maybe that's part of what was broken to begin with. But that sounds convoluted, even to me. I only see what I see."
"And you're right— I didn't spend the last ten years trying to become forgettable again to the US government just to go taking a wild stab at the Pentagon of all things." Asami lets out a broken laugh, still finding the whole thing incredulous. She rolls her lower lip, biting down on it. "Mr. Faulkner said there was evidence I'd fired on the agents who came for me. Doctored tapes, bullet holes— when I never even saw them face to face. I just ran, then jumped, and right when I thought I was going to die, when I made peace with it…"
Her voice softens down from the many-angled edge it had started to take on. "That was when I flew," she admits in a breathless laugh, her eyes going up toward the stars, tears in her own now. "They put— all those lies into effect to cover up that truth. To keep me from helping others like me."
"Like him," Asami appends. Her voice quiets, losing emotion. "Like…"
She trails off.
There’s no way anyone could have known how to fix what was broken between Nicole and Isaac. Nicole certainly didn’t. She thought getting in the boxing ring once a week and letting him knock her flat on her ass every so often would help him get it out of his system.
It didn’t.
She thought supporting his political ambitions, getting him elected to senate and then working to elevate him to congress would prove to him whose side she was truly on.
It didn’t. There isn’t any way for Asami to have known that what it would take is putting the fear of God into Nicole that she would lose him forever. That he could have died and he would be gone. Whatever the intention on her part, Asami had given them what they needed.
Nicole quietly ruminates on that while she listens to the other woman explain the frame job. How she’d jumped and made peace with death, only to find she could soar. What must that feel like? That kind of freedom?
Judging from the posture and the tone of voice, it must feel isolating. Nicole shifts from envious to sympathetic. “Asami…” She tucks the phone back into her purse and steps closer. As she does, she lets the handles of the bag slip down from her elbow to her wrist, until finally she stoops to let it rest on the ground carefully. “Honey, look at me. It’s gonna be okay.”
Again Asami jolts a step back like Nicole's encroaching presence has shocked her. Her hand comes up again. "Don't—"
But Nicole said look, and so she looks.
The expression on her face slacks, blanking before turning painfully, visibly curious. Her concern is still there, just… quieter. Fascination with what she sees in the other woman is a much more present, visible thing.
"Nicole, you're broken too, though," Asami explains softly, strain in her voice.
There’s a single mirthless breath of laughter from Nicole. “Yeah,” she agrees flippantly, “no shit.” She shakes her head with a good-natured roll of her eyes, like this is all just some kind of banter between colleagues. Friends. She’s trying to disarm Asami, help her feel comfortable. Connect. All the little social tricks she’s so good at employing that make her effective at what she does. That make her likeable.
“Tell me what you need, Asami.” Using her name. Centering on her. She’s the focus of this conversation. Nicole’s concern. This is all to help her. “We’ll make this right.” Nicole reaches out a hand slowly, palm up. “Tell me.”
I need to help you.
The thought is involuntary, passing confidently but soundlessly from Asami to Nicole even as the former shies another half-step back, a troubled look coming over her. Her eyes manage to slip from the captivating, broken essence to the proferred hand. It takes such effort not to just grab it, to pull Nicole closer.
But it's Faulkner's words that caution her— keenly snarling and calling her on exactly the type of behavior the compulsion compels her toward: going too far.
"I need you to not get closer," she stresses, sounding pained. "Not unless you want me to fix you. Please."
I need your permission.
She's afraid of what happened with Isaac happening again. Of what happened with…
Disgruntled, she shakes her head. As hard as she tries to remember the way Isaac's derision felt regarding her compulsive desire to fix— as hard as she tries to remember the way she felt after the difficult brushes that came after…
"It's just right there. I can help you. But I don't want to hurt you." Surely she can appreciate that. Asami hopes so, at least.
The telepathic voice causes a note of confusion on a sharp inhale of breath. Nicole, however, doesn’t look afraid of it. She’s enthralled. That envy creeps back in, insidious as a slow poison. “I can stay where I’m at,” she confirms in a calming voice, but she doesn’t withdraw her hand. It’s there when Asami is ready to take it.
The voice slips into her mind again and it’s a horrified fascination that sees her tilting her head to try and get a better look at the other woman. “How are you doing that? I can hear you. But you aren’t… You’re like a comic book character.” Nicole laughs, a frazzled thing.
A broken sound.
“What the fuck?” Incredulity sees her hand slowly lowering back to her side. The little bewildered smile stays in place even after the laughter fades. She should go. But she’s getting through to Asami, isn’t she? Sure, Isaac is the most astute pupil Nicole’s ever had, but he’s not like her. He’s impulsive. Hasty. Rash. Temperamental.
The thing they’ve both forgotten, Faulkner and she, is that her insistence that she always knows better is part of what got them to the point that they were at in the first place.
“How does it work, Asami? Do you have to hurt someone to help them? Like breaking a bone to re-set it?” This isn’t something she plans to pursue, but maybe if she can get her to open up, to talk about it, maybe Nicole can understand what motivated her previous attack.
"No," Asami interjects, startled and insistent. Her head shakes quickly. "No, what happened was an accident." And not one she's proud of, either. Her eyes wander, losing lock on Nicole's hand now that it's fallen. "I-I got carried away and didn't realize he was fighting me."
That'd be the key here, wouldn't it? She harbors the thought quietly, and it begins to fester and take shape: she just needed Nicole to not fight being fixed and everything would turn out fine.
"I…" But then she remembers Gillian's grief, Kaylee's panic and anger. Was there really not pain involved with each person she fixed? Asami's expression falls.
“Sometimes that happens,” Nicole says gently. “Mr. Faulkner had one of those, too. Just an accident. Sometimes people lose control in the heat of the moment.” See? Relatable. Asami isn’t alone. “You didn’t mean to do it.”
Again, Nicole fishes for the other woman’s attention. “Asami,” she reminds with an uplift on the final syllable, encouraging. “Look at me. I’m here. I’m not going to abandon you. I’m not scared of you.” There’s a reassuring smile for her. “Why don’t you try and help me understand how you fix someone?”
But the best way to do that, Nicole, is to show.
Asami visibly struggles with it, shakes her head as she comes a step forward. Like she's closing that distance to help bring her closer to understanding her mindset. It's not untrue.
"I'd like to," she admits, brow furrowing more deeply. She fights a failing fight against something so easy, so beautiful, so…
Fun.
"So please…" The tension in her expression slacks again, all the effort she's put into focusing on holding back slipping to something else instead.
Don't fight, a voice in Nicole's mind whispers to her. Maybe it's her own. It curls beyond just her mind. Don't move.
Asami's eyes begin to shift in hue, earth to chocolate, chocolate to honey, honey to searing, molten gold. She lifts both hands away from her side to place them on either side of Nicole's head with the gentlest of touches.
"I̵͈̥̍̎'̷̺͔̕l̴̹̅͌̃l̶̫̺͓͌́ ̶̪͑̾ͅs̴̠͛͑͆ḧ̸̘̺̻́̓̊ȏ̷͙̟͔͌̎w̸̤͙̓̆͐ ̸̻̞̺̕y̸̬̔̂̚o̶͍̰͝ȕ̷̫̀̎.̵̦̈́́"
It hurts more than Nicole expected. A sudden, electric shock that lances through her head between where Asami’s fingers touch. Her stomach twists into a knot, abdominal muscles clench, her neck tenses and her breath feels like fire in her throat. Nicole screams, an involuntary and confused howl as she feels her legs buckle and give way. She collapses onto the ground, arms limp at her side and Asami follows her down, maintaining that molten-gold eye contact.
But behind Nicole’s eyes Asami sees something.
Someone.
Looking back.
There is a reflection in Nicole’s eyes that isn’t Asami. It’s a child, a young girl that she saw in a fleeting hallucination on the subway once. A little girl dressed in red, golden eyes staring back from behind Nicole’s pupils. But the girl reaches back, up, out, as if trying to reach for Asami and—
“Stop!” Nicole screams, recoiling from Asami and falling onto her back on the ground. There are shallow, bloody marks in her temples from where Asami’s fingernails dug into her flesh. All Nicole can feel right now is a desire to be with her husband, to be protected, and Zachery is nowhere to be found.
Tears well up in Nicole’s eyes. Smudge her mascara, leave it running down her cheeks. She looks across the platform at Asami, but does not truly see her. Trembling, a wave of nausea and disorientation floods over Nicole, her heart leaping up into her throat and a sudden wave of revulsion causing her to vomit on the floor.
Nicole is wracked with a migraine’s ice-pick stabbing behind her right eye. Vertigo sets in next, a swimming sense of wrongness and unbelonging, but at the same time not. When she looks at Asami again she sees both Asami Tetsuzan, and—
Asi Tetsuyama.
Her photo had been up on a persons of interest board at the Fort Jay offices in the Safe Zone following an alleged killing of a member of the Japanese Diet. But when Asi was absolved of those charges, her photo came down and investigations ceased.
Nicole’s head throbs.
Her hands find her stomach. Confusion sinks in.
Asami isn't even aware how she continues to chase for Nicole's gaze, well past the point of needing to, right up until the moment the other woman falls back. Her eyes blink twice rapidly, a single tear falling down her right cheek.
"What…?"
She stumbles a step back from Nicole, looking left and right— disoriented. How did she get here? She knows perfectly well, and yet—
Asi remembers sitting in front of her laptop, eyes beginning to get blurry. Lines of code dance on the dark screen before her, and out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees a bloom of color— a firework driven into the sky by stubborn late-night revelers.
Asami turns, trying to find sight of such a sight on the horizon— and sees only the Manhattan skyline staring back at her, the Twin Towers shining in the night sky. The same as they have been every night, every year since she lived in New York.
… But no, that was wrong. They fell, the first of many acts of terror that would come to define the opening years of the twenty-first century. They weren't supposed to be there anymore.
Asi looks down at her hands, at the blood smudged under her nails and on her fingertips. They begin to shake, her eyes widened. "What the fuck?" she whispers fearfully.
After she’s retched up her guts, Nicole pushes herself weakly away from the puddle of sick to catch her breath and try to make sense of what’s happening in her head, the stabbing pain and the flashes of memory. She whines helplessly, clutching at her stomach. At first, she thinks it must be just because of what happened moments ago. But that was a headache, not stomach pain.
There’s no stomach pain.
Sitting up enough to tug up the hem of her shirt, Nicole means to get a good look at herself, look for evidence of— of something. But there’s nothing. Nothing there at all.
Nothing there.
At all.
Nicole starts screaming, a shrill thing that becomes raw around its edges, becoming something more primal. Confusion and fear turning over to anger. The wave of it crashes down again into a mournful wail.
The sound of Nicole's agony drags Asami from her own confusion, her mind opening to Nicole's in an attempt to understand what's happening. When she realizes that the bizarre recollection she's been assaulted with isn't unique to just her, she freezes for another second with that horror, and finally— what feels like all too late— grabs Nicole by her shoulders, wide-eyed.
"Shh. Shh, Nicole, stop. Stop," she begs, frantic. "You've got— got to calm down."
"You're all right," Asami assures with flighty attempts at reassurance woven into her words. "You can just— remember better now."
But why the fuck did she remember something that wasn't… real? Her own stomach swims with unease over not knowing a good answer for that.
“No, I’m not. No, I’m not,” Nicole insists, the suddenness of the contact and Asami’s hush enough to break through to her and remind her to keep her own voice down now. In the early days of her tenure, it was a hand clamped over her mouth to keep her horror under wraps, until she learned her poker face. Learned to keep her reactions held inside of her, locked away behind her teeth and her eyes, obscured from view.
Slowly, she comes to the moment, but her distress hasn’t diminished. No amount of hiding her emotions inside ever lessened their intensity. “Where are my children?” Nicole asks in a terrified whisper.
"You've never been pregnant," Asami has to remind her. But her eyes drag away from Nicole and toward the skyline that's both right and… wrong. Horribly wrong, the longer she reflects on it. The Manhattan skyline across the river should be nothing but husks of spires, as dark as night itself at this hour. And yet— the lights glimmer on, the city that never sleeps only just beginning its evening.
"… here."
That change of her statement is cautious as Asami turns back to Nicole, dark eyes filled with worry. For a moment, she becomes overwhelmed and her left hand glows, the bones of it flaring white from the inside out. Alarmed, she withdraws her hand quickly from Nicole's shoulder, cradling it to herself. A quick breath is taken in, held, exhaled— encouraging calm in herself.
Only once that's done does she look back up. "When I awaken powers in others, mine causes me to understand it. To make it my own." But that's not right, Asi knows. That's not her ability. "Whatever other… self, other place you remember right now…"
She's not even sure she has words for it. Each discovery she's made has bent her mind to further and further lengths, but this? An entire other life, an entire other reality?
"Nicole, what's my name?" she asks suddenly.
Nicole’s face clouds with confusion. Her head throbs and her vision swims for a moment as she tries to make two images overlay properly, become one. Looking for the schooner as she tries to keep her eyes from crossing. Shaking her head, she doesn’t break contact with the visage of the Japanese woman in front of her. “Asi Tetsuyama.”
Her assumption is that it’s the sort of thing that someone who may be having memory or cognition issues would be asked. Perhaps what year is it and who’s the president will follow. She hasn’t looked out at the city yet. Hasn’t seen everything else that’s wrong. She knows it’s there, but for now, she can pretend it’s all some trick of the light. An overactive imagination. Not something incongruent with this other set of memories.
Asami recoils back from the unfamiliar name, all while that new, foreign, inescapably present part of herself finds that information perfectly normal— calming, even.
Whatever Nicole is remembering is the same as what she is. It wasn't that they remembered two inexplicably alternate and complete lives, but something possibly even intertwined if it involved that different name for her.
She begins to shake her head quickly. "We should go. We shouldn't stay here. If it wasn't safe before, it won't be if someone comes to investigate that scream." Asami flexes her hand once more to ensure every last ability is in place where it should be, envisioning them all line up one over the other. Only then does she offer it out to Nicole.
"Come on."
It’s only when Nicole reaches out to take Asi’s Asami’s hand that she realizes she’s trembling. “I’m so confused.” It’s like when she looks at the other woman, she sees two people. When she thinks about anything, she sees it from two perspectives.
She both wants to see her husband and is worried about what he’ll tell her. How the things she wants to say will affect him. Will he laugh in her face and call her insane?
“Where are we going?” Nicole finally thinks to ask, even though she’s taking that hand and prepared to follow this rabbithole wherever it leads.
"We're taking the scenic route," Asami decides, reaching down to pick up Nicole's bag, shutting it before handing it back to her. Then she wraps an arm around Nicole's waist, the two of them gradually feeling lighter until their soles only scrape the ground. Her grip around the other woman stays sure as she lifts a look up toward the sky, letting a sense of weightlessness take them both.
"Which way is home for you?"
M̶̱͔̲͊̈͘ͅè̷̜͉̯̌̌͠ḁ̸̡̖̽̓̓̿͝n̸̩͍͈̟͐͊̑̄̈́̕͠w̸̢͍̗͉̟̭͗̂̅h̵̨͙̥̳̪͛̄͗i̵̡̪̇́l̶͎͇̝̞̳̎̀̀̑̐͊̿e̶̱̽̃̍
Ę̶̤͚̦̠̥̠̏̂͝͠l̴̰̤̙̞̝̈͌s̷̺̖̙͙̾̈́̐̓͜ẹ̶̟̦̲̞̘̰͒̍̊̒w̸̢̥͎̖̥̄̈́͗̚h̸̙͉͚̘̰͇́ͅe̷̹̗̫͕̾͜r̴̟̠͈̱͐̇͜e̸͔̽̂̓̿͛̄
Dim, soft light spills from cabinet-mounted fluorescent lamps.
The shadows are long in this room, where the walls are pale white and surfaces feel more like the inside of some sort of spacecraft than a building. The dull hum of electronics fills the room, banks of computer hardware stacked against the walls reverberate with noise. Loose cables run like entrails across the floor, snaking up to pill-shaped white pods mounted on a tall central column bristling with status monitors and data injection ports.
Each of these pods has a quarter of its top made of some durable, transparent material that is more matte than glass. Through which, many occupants are viewed in silhouette, dimly lit by the low environmental lights. But a single flashing red light blinks on one of the pods, and through that transparent surface, a woman rests in a deep and dreamless slumber. Her eyes dart back and forth behind her eyelids.
Her eyes open, unseeing; Pupils flash with a pale red light, then flicker and go out.
On a monitor over her pod a warning pops up:
SYSTEM ALERT
ANOMALY DETECTED
TETSUYAMA, ASI