week 4

[airlockedmods]

[Four weeks in the Starfield Penitentiary and seven people have lost their lives to Blaze Dudely's cruel game. At some point the robots cleaned up the mess left behind and by Sunday the involved rooms (including the fridge) are all clean and free of blood. In fact there's no sign left of any of the deaths that have happened on the ship so far by at least the next day. The only physical signs that people are gone are the empty beds.

On Sunday morning, you may find that you're recovering a a few other things as well - both strange dreams and some new items.

In addition, there's a new set of doors at the end of the corridor, in the space between the infirmary and the exercise yard. Looks like you've got a new wing to explore.]



Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

(( ooc: Don't forget to turn in your AC for Week 3, submit your memory regains, and put in your benefactor threads! ))

Comments

[chides]

[ mako nods. ]

Apparently the person who did all of that to him is among us. Who it is, I don't know.

[ he's not gonna get that out of them, that's for sure. ]

Other than that, according to Price? He's had no previous affiliation with Blaze before, but he elaborated a bit on the other program he had to run. The mercenaries who ran those would kill anyone who wasn't of use to them themselves, so that's already pretty different from Blaze.

[empathiser]

Yeah. He's... alluded to that before. He calls them "it". [Given what he'd said at the trial, he can understand why Blaze is dehumanising whoever it is his grudge is with.]

But does that mean that starting these programs and having them taken over by mercenaries is part of the design of whoever Price is working with? [If they'd got someone other than Blaze, does that mean most of them would already be dead?]

[chides]

I guess so. It sort of feels like a setup, doesn't it? Kind of like Price knew this was going to happen all along.

[ mako can believe that he'd never spoken to blaze before, but to not have known someone was going to crash his ship?

no way. ]

[empathiser]

A setup sounds about right. But if Blaze is doing things differently, and Price didn't know anything about him... does that mean that Blaze is the one that was never meant to be here in the first place?

[There's a pause.]

I feel like we've not seen a lot of Price after that first week. Maybe he's still trying to regroup himself and get whatever had originally been planned back on track.

[chides]

I've been thinking the same thing. There's a lot more going behind the scenes with those two, whether it's together or individually--did you see how Blaze was coughing up a storm after the execution?

[ that just. didn't seem like a normal cough, ya feel ]

He's got a weakness. I'd just like to know what that is.

[empathiser]

If it's together, then Price is a better actor than I want to give him credit for. [But... yeah. Blaze hadn't seemed to be all that great after everything had wrapped up.] He might be on a time limit. We're being goaded into doing what he wants, and he isn't pulling his punches.

The lack of food, threatening homes; he's going right for obvious mental and physical weak spots in the hope we'll take the bait.

[chides]

And it's been working.

[ not on mako--though this week's motive will definitely change that. ]

We're not united enough as a group to stand against him. Some people are arguing left and right in the courtroom, others just don't seem to want to cooperate... [ a sigh. ] We'll just have to do this the hard way. For now.

[empathiser]

[will'll drink to that once the motive's up and he just wants to drink himself asleep.]

We don't have any reason to trust each other. Cellmates are probably going to be closer, or at least more used to each other, but nothing about any of us screams "trust". [There's a pause.]

Except maybe Mozu, or Max.

Especially when you remember they've extensively listed crimes we've been accused of on publicly accessible profiles. It's difficult to fully trust someone when you've got their dirty laundry accessible at the press of a touchscreen.

[chides]

...Yeah. Or Pyrrha.

[ literally they've done nothing wrong?? ever?? or so he thinks. ]

But you're right; nobody has any reason to trust one another with our crimes out in the open, but we're going to have to start eventually if we want to make it out of here alive.

[empathiser]

Or Pyrrha.

[so he thinks.]

That's easier said than done. We can trust that the majority want to stay alive and solve the trials, but telling someone they need to be more trusting isn't going to get you anywhere.

[chides]

Of course. I'm not gonna just march up to everyone and say, "Hey, we need to start trusting each other" because that's not gonna work. Especially knowing who we're dealing with.

[ lookin at you akande ]

Maybe trust is too strong of a word--I mean that we should start working together. Outside of trials and all that. We really need some kind of plan.

[empathiser]

Meetings or something? To discuss what we know, any patterns we're seeing? Even if you're just stood around a corpse in forensics as long as you're discussing what you know, it helps the investigation.

[Hell, standing around a corpse talking about what had happened was how a lot of case related revelations had come to light in the first place back in Quantico.]

You don't have to trust someone to share ideas with them.

[chides]

That's what we were doing before--maybe it's time we have one again.

[ he runs his fingers through his hair. ] I'd rather not be the one to call it again.

[empathiser]

Why?

It's been a couple of weeks now. Everyone's bound to have something new they want to talk about.

[chides]

I'm not--

[ after that dream... ]

really in the right state of mind.

[empathiser]

... Right.

[There's another pause, and Will sits down on the bed.]

Do you think anyone here's remembering nice things, or are we all just experiencing a parade of unpleasantness?

[chides]

I don't know.

[ he follows will, sitting on the edge of his own bed. ]

Everyone I've talked to so far's been having pretty bad dreams. But last week, mines wasn't so bad.

[empathiser]

[Okay don't rub it in Mako.]

Really?

Last week's was worse, but this week wasn't pleasant. Is it all just randomly chosen?

[chides]

[ aggressively rubs it in ]

I wish I knew. Doesn't really seem to be much of a pattern.

Guess that's another thing to talk about at the meeting.

[empathiser]

Or not. People might not want to discuss it in front of everyone.

[Because Will's... beginning to think that they're not dreams. He's always suspected, but with what he'd seen first, he thinks they seem more like memories. Or dreams tailored to feel like memories.]

But sharing opinions on what's happening here sounds like a reasonable idea.

[chides]

Yeah. And why these...weird dreams keep on happening. You think Dr. Price would be kind enough to tell us about that?

[ he highly doubts it. ]

[empathiser]

That depends on whether they're dreams, or whether it's something like controlled memory suppression.

[welp. might as well throw that out there again, as a reminder.]

Depending on what training he has, Price would have ways to trigger a memory. Either that or we're all lucky enough to have them float back up to the surface at the same time each week, but that would be stretching it.

[chides]

He could be doing that through the things on our arms.

[ god they're so annoying ]

That's pretty much how they have all this control on us, isn't it?

[empathiser]

It'd be likely that's how they monitor us on a personal basis. That's why I said not to write things on the note program.

[cynical? yeah. but he thinks he's right.]

I can't say I like the fact a psychiatrist has control of my memories, again.

[chides]

I don't.

[ pen and paper baby ]

...Can I ask what happened the last time that happened to you?