goddamngrenades | OPEN POST

The Freelancers were being separated out, but that didn't really change the fact they favored certain places when they actually got time off. Not that there was a lot of that, but the occasional weekend was something of a relief. Put away the armor and try to remember how to be a normal person

Not that their taste in bars didn't mean splitting up either. Penn preferred more quiet places, somewhere he could relax and just enjoy a beer or three, which was why he'd ended up in the current bar.

It wasn't one of the normal hangouts either, but he hadn't been feeling all that social. A half empty beer sat on the table in front of him and there was a plate of food beside it and when someone joined him?

He'd sort of been expecting it. "Decided to ditch the leaderboard?"

The windows shudder with another heavy rumble of thunder overhead. The demon sighed, vaguely content, her wings tucked around her as she enjoyed the view from the shadows. Though they had yet to extend her reach for roaming beyond the apartment building and its local streets, she'd begun to relax once she'd sensed York's aura.

He had returned to the city after his family visit, arriving back a few hours before, though he had yet to rejoin her in the apartment. She was not concerned. No doubt he would have news for her, or perhaps he'd seek pleasure first; sex was good for regulating mana flow, after all, and he'd certainly left town with plenty to spare.

Though he still owed her dinner (yet another, atop the agreed decades) for being a day late. Though delays instigated by ties of blood could not be helped.

She's done her research. She always does. It's that research that's going to get her in trouble (or has gotten her in trouble, there's the possibility), and it's the research that pushes her onward. Leaving home is hard, but necessary.

Also necessary: changing up her identity. At least...at least for the time being. She'd find lurking on some of the darker sections of the net distasteful if not for the fact that she's already done plenty of perfectly illegal hacking into sensitive databases and files. So. Don't really have a leg to stand on, there.

If she's going to get out of here and stay gone, if she's going to get where she needs to get gone to for the sake of her family, then she'll need some adjustments. She's already got on some baggier clothes, boyish in nature, and her hair's cut in a way that reminds her all too much of her brother. Might as well add a pair of unnecessary glasses--and old pair of Matt's he kept as backup. With a pack of essentials hefted on a shoulder, she waits nervously at a designated meeting location for her 'contact'. Man...what a word. Sounds dangerous. Seedy, even. Maybe if she thinks of herself as a spy, it'll take some of the edge off?

Even though this is what he'd signed up for when he'd ~~been forcibly recruited~~ joined the Project, he's still not entirely sure he likes the idea of having an AI plugged into his brain. He's seen AIs before of course; his home colony had been mostly run by a dumb AI, although not one half as snarky as FILSS. The smart AIs he'd rarely come into contact with, but they'd seemed very different. Almost human. And that unsettles him.

Still, what choice did he have? He's here in this project. He can't back out now.

He attends the implantation as ordered. Wishes they'd knock him out entirely before they do the implantation, but they say that they need to check his reactions to the upgraded neural lattice first.

Then they knock him out. There's blackness for a long time, and then a voice in his head.

No matter how amazing last night was, the three of them tangled together and staving off the rest of the world, the morning draws in hard. Wash can feel it, the ache in his backside, in his muscles, and it feels like they've burnt themselves into him. It takes him time to remember where he is when he wakes; he stares up at the ceiling trying to place it. His first thought is the MoI, that he's back there and he half expects to hear the Counsellor speaking to him. It's a feeling he's often woken up to.

It isn't the Charon base, or the New Republic either. He doesn't know... he needs to be fixed. Needs to be...

He remembers like shards of glass when he feels the warm bodies cradling him, arms wrapped around him. Remembers... oh... York in the Meta armour and escaping and... Fuck his head hurts. It doesn't go away. He feels like he's trying to think through fog, still trying to process that he isn't where he should be and the boss is going to be so fucking pissed.

Breakfast is brought to them and then York vanishes for a while, leaving him and Carolina sitting aimless in the room, jittery with the lack of purpose right now, and the thought that this could have been a terrible mistake.

Wash is on his feet when the door opens and York steps back in. "What are we supposed to do?"

When the project had been disbanded, brought down after evidence of its crimes had been brought to light, it's assets had been taken over by the Oversight Committee and redistributed to more deserving endeavours.

One of those assets has been locked in this room for... for... he doesn't know. The days long since stopped being differentiated. Some days the staff come in and administer injections and runs tests, hook him up to machines. Sometimes it hurts. And sometimes he can't even remember who he is.

Most of the time he's on his own though. Like now. On the single bed staring at the ceiling. Can't sleep. It's too bright. The lights have been on for ages and he can't tell if he's imagining it, or if they've just stopped changing them to reflect a vague sense of night and day.

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Demon AU continued~

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AI York