Long Game 85/Anonymous Game 12: Do Kandra Dream of Electric Sparrows?

[Kasimir he/him]

Day Five: Sendung mit der Maus

Hauer wasn’t working the Heron job because he wanted to be.

He suspected that the Heron Yeden, that woman with that ruthless quality to her gaze, the way she evaluated you, as though she was measuring you and all you’d ever done—she probably knew that, too.

It didn’t matter to Hauer. He was here because the Uethorn paid better, and the Uethorn wanted a very close look at the disaster that had apparently gripped Heron Industries. His first hushed report of Project Replicant, of the fact that the Herons had apparently been audacious enough to attempt to create their own artificial versions of Harmony’s kandra, had elicited significant interest from Command.

He knew, even as he sent the first tight-beam transmission, what response he was going to get.

The Uethorn wanted SynthKandra of their own. His instructions were to identify a SynthKandra, and to capture it if possible. If not, he was to kill it, and bring them the corpse. A dead SynthKandra was still valuable to them.

So Hauer had tried. He’d watched, mostly. He’d been careful to remain under the radar. He didn’t want to reveal himself as someone of interest, either to the Heron officers, or the mistrunners evidently on their payroll.

He wasn’t about to be killed or replaced by the SynthKandra either, even as they seemed to be making a bid for freedom. So he stayed quiet. It was a particular talent of his: people often ignored you when you seemed to be busy. He just patrolled, or searched, and kept his eyes and ears open, and recorded everything he saw in his implants, waiting for a time when he could make his encoded transmissions.

Being able to send messages out of a Heron facility under security lockdown had proven a challenge: most of the external communications were jammed. But there were local signals, and for a communications specialist of Hauer’s skill, it was just barely possible, if one were careful enough, to piggyback some of the local signals leaving the base and cobble together a tight-beam transmission for his Uethorn handlers.

He’d gotten a moment for one of his transmissions. The comm channels were alive with chatter, and Hauer paid partial attention to it as he worked. Something about Jack Ladrian getting shot, and Vulture being potentially compromised. Scorpion was shouting something across the airwaves and Hauer shook his head as he continued to work.

Scorp’d asked him, too, about his thoughts on the situation. He passed himself off as being focused on the task at hand, and had offered scant comments on where the SynthKandra might be found. Knowing that he’d need to get his hand on a shock knife made things more challenging. He knew the Uethorn’d prefer a living SynthKandra than a dead one, so that was another objective Hauer had to accomplish.

Squ squeak!

Hauer hesitated.

It was the proximity alarm he’d set up. A small autonomous sensor, shaped like a mouse. He’d set it loose to run near the entrance to the storeroom, and now he tried to access the mouse’s cameras on his datapad.

Squ squeak! Squ squeak!

Perhaps someone else would have called out. Hauer faded back into the shadows, and muted the light from his datapad. He was not alone, and whoever it was hadn’t called out either, meaning the reasonable assumption was hostile intent.

Every sense came alive, as he strained to hear or catch a glimpse of who had entered the darkened storeroom. 

How had they tracked him down?

Hauer reached quietly for the knife concealed at the small of his back. He winced as the data feed from the mouse sensor blinked off into nothingness. Whoever it was, they’d found and destroyed the alerter.

They were coming, then.

He crouched, knife drawn, waiting for the moment to strike.

He waited for what must have been several long heartbeats.

“Come out and play, little mouse,” the interloper called.

 

 

 

Azador had located the ops room, and now they advanced down the corridor, the last of Blue Team with a few of the hired mistrunners. Whyren felt his heart pounding in his chest. Surely it couldn’t be so easy, he thought.

They lifted the security lockdown, and then what? One of them was going to kill him, probably. He wondered when he had become so resigned as to accept that. He was the only survivor, the only person who hadn’t been inside the facility during the containment breach.

Of course they would suspect him. 

Of course it was so much easier to terminate him. He’d left over a decade of notes and research, and Whyren had no illusions about being so singularly brilliant and talented that the higher-ups saw him as irreplaceable.

It was the first rule of life in the megacorps: everyone was replaceable.

In a world with SynthKandra, Whyren thought, not for the first time, anyone and everyone was replaceable.

And then there was Kesed.

Whyren had hoped…

And he wondered if he had been disappointed.

Kesed had made his choice, all those years ago. And so had Whyren. And even now, he hesitated.

One way or another, in this world of gods and megacorps, you played the game, and you were played. Whyren had no illusions about that. He was and had always been a playing piece. Easily sacrificed, if that was what the play called for.

Whyren had never been one for sacrifice. He liked himself alive, and he liked getting to do his research, and he liked his comfortable life.

Kesed, the stupid, bloody fool had been the one who couldn’t get over his principles, in the end. Maybe his thoughts were all circling back to that, here, where it had all began. 

Old sins, flying back home to roost, circling like dark crows against the pale sky.

He was probably going to die. He didn’t want to die. Whyren balanced both facts in his head, and accepted them with a ruthlessness that surprised even himself. 

He wasn’t the sort of man to get tied in with grand causes, to find himself in over his head.

He’d just gotten so damned tired.

 

 

Everything was happening all at once, because that was the way it always happened, the way it always did. Events never seemed to threaten to overtake you, until they happened all at once, dominos tipping over, one after another, and then you had a critical cascade that had to be stabilised before disaster occurred.

Silence from Solovey and n3oN, who should have been securing surveillance footage and helping them deal with security. The mistrunners shot down some security drones still patrolling the corridors. Kesed envied them, a little. Drones never felt: they simply carried out the commands you told them to, until you instructed them to stop, or until they broke down.

There was some comm chatter about Jack Ladrian getting shot, before it fuzzed out again. He tried to contact Solovey, to see what the team’s support could do about it, but there was only radio silence. Kesed didn’t know if it was a function of the jamming getting worse the closer they got to the ops room, or something had happened on Solovey’s end.

Although he had some misgivings about it, he dispatched a pair of mistrunners to check in on them. AuRel and Crocodile weren’t the most inspiring among  all the operatives that Sandhya had recruited, but they were who he had right now, and that was more important. He impressed upon them the importance of re-establishing contact with the hackers and let them loose.

Harmony help them all.

The question weighed on his mind, for some reason or other. Whyren had asked him, a few days ago, casually, if he still communed with Harmony. Kesed blinked owlishly. It had been…a surprisingly personal question.

And it hadn’t been. He knew he hadn’t, that at some point, his faith had faltered, that it had become embers and ash, and yet…

And yet something about the question bothered him.

“What happened to your Pathian earring, anyway?” Whyren had asked. 

He couldn’t remember.

Maybe it’d fallen out of his pocket. Maybe he’d lost it years ago, back where his memory faded at the edges even though Kesed had never asked why, and blamed it on the medication fog. 

He couldn’t remember, and it bothered him more than he could say.

Another slice of Blue Team peeled off, to handle a disturbance with the remnants of the Heron security drones. They had to press on, Kesed knew. If they disabled the lockdown, the security override should shut down the facility’s drone defense systems. It was all about buying time.

Falx fell to a shot between the eyes, and Kesed’s return fire disabled the sniper drone, sent it crashing to the floor as a smoking wreck.

“How’s the arm?” Whyren asked.

Kesed winced. “I’ve had worse,” he said, distractedly. Always worse. Sometimes, he felt like he was held together by painkillers and Heron medics. Someday, he figured his body would surrender; would fail to deal with the abuse he heaped on it daily.

“You’re little better than Sandhya’s knife, Arnkell. The only difference is you’re afforded a longer leash than us.”

Parting words, from the SynthKandra. But their barbs seemed to have lodged deep under his skin and try as he might, they only hooked in deep, the more he struggled with them.

Kesed froze.

This was the corridor. The corridor that had haunted his dreams, for nights, years on end. The same doorway, achingly familiar.

Dreams bleeding into reality. Or maybe it was the other way around.

He reached out a hand to touch the doorframe.

He felt that foreboding again, deep in the pit of his stomach. The iron certainty that this had to do with the medication fogged years, with the rift between them. With the sense that his life had become little more than an aimless knife guided by Sandhya, in the years after he’d tried to leave Project Replicant. His heart hadn’t been in it, any longer. And Whyren’s hostility had only made things worse.

“No.”

It was Whyren.

A different voice, though, from the one he’d dreamed of. The one that was telling him to stay away.

“You don’t want to know this,” Whyren said grimly.

Kesed narrowed his eyes. “What do you know?” he demanded.

Because Whyren knew something. Kesed was certain of it. Every single thing about him screamed the fact that Whyren had secrets he was keeping. Whyren had never been very good about lying to him.

“Were you the one who did this?” he pressed on. “The one who caused the containment breach? The one who forced the lockdown to occur?”

Whyren said, “No.”

Certainty struck Kesed, then, like a punch to the gut.

Whyren was lying.

It was in the way he wasn’t quite meeting Kesed’s eyes, in the way he was positioning himself. He always seemed to set his weight back on his heels when he was lying, as though he was trying to centre himself against the lie. It was in the way he blinked, the way he tried to smile, as though he could charm his way out of the sea of troubles he’d gotten himself into.

Softly, Kesed said, “You did this.”

Whyren said, evading Kesed’s part-statement, part-query, “You don’t want to go in there. You don’t want to know this.”

“Project Replicant was here, wasn’t it?” Kesed demanded. He felt the powerful surge of familiarity swamp him, as though it was a wave. As though it was threatening to peel back the fog of his memories, carrying him with it.

If he let it.

He took another step, towards the doorway, almost against his will.

He didn’t want to know.

He had to.

Whyren stabbed him in the back.

 

 

Azure Mouse was killed! He was a Mistrunner Communications Specialist!

The Day has begun! It will end on 9th May at 0100hrs SGT [=GMT+8]. PMs remain open!

Please do not post until I have reserved the second post, as usual.

Inactivity warning for @Mauve Crocodile - if you fail to post by Night Five, you will be replaced on the following Turn.

Edited May 7, 2022 by <kel>

[Kasimir he/him]

Rule Clarifications:

Spoiler

stuff

Player List:

Spoiler

1. Chartreuse Penguin - Jack Ladrian Mistrunner Infiltrator
2. Magenta Albatross - Mistrunner Infiltrator
3. @Salmon Meerkat - Vel
4. @Mauve Crocodile
5. Coral Swan - Atari Mistrunner Infiltrator
6. @Melon Dingo - AuRel
7. Indigo Weasel - Taken Combat Medic
8. Azure Mouse - Hauer Mistrunner Communications Specialist
9. Emerald Falcon - SynthKandra Field Operative
10. @Charcoal Hyena
11. @Oxblood Beagle
12. @Amethyst Scorpion
13. Fuchsia Ostrich - Cody Eight SynthKandra Hacker
14. @Ivory Dragonfly
15. @Amber Vulture

[Amethyst Scorpion]

k

Amber vulture

[Amethyst Scorpion]

Gonna say this once and not again- if people continue to refuse to work with me and talk and be active then i will be AFKing after this cycle. There is no satisfaction or fun or anything to be gained by me from talking into a void for days on end. me losing sleep gaining stress from trying to solve this game when no one else seems to care about working with me, and those that do get executed by those who don't care to work with me.

I understand that there are finals going on, but if you thought you could take signing up for this game then you should be playing the game. There was basically no discussion except for between me and penguin yesterday. and you guys chose to kill Penguin. That's not on me.

Amber you were active. I saw you post a few times with nothing, i saw you viewing thread, and you post useless one-offs with nothing in them. And i don't mean analyzable nothings, I mean nothing. a pure vote with no elaboration or intent to elaborate. an emoji. these aren't posts.

I work both today and tomorrow and am only available to be here (in thread/in pms) around this time today and tomorrow. few hours on either end.

 

Anyways I'm wanting to vote off amber today. their interactions (supposed) in PMs with iguana don't make sense with the rest of the things happening, and their activity completely dropped off despite them still being here in thread/around implying they should be able to be posting or PMing.

If anyone had PMs with Emerald/Ostrich that they used talk about them please. Any PMs with anyone else is also cool.

Amber right now is one of my emerald candidates. I don't really know the other ones right now, Hyena could be an Emerald candidate, but their posts make me think they're village right now.

Azure was one of my three (Beagle, Croc, Mouse) that I thought might be a candidate for a kandra, so interesting that they killed him. leaving me alive and amber not bodyhopping only makes sense if Amber is Emerald /and/ is out of hops.  The Kandra could still have hops left, that's not impossible.

I can be persuaded away from amber, if anyone has compelling arguments. If your counterargument is me though then you're blatantly wrong, potentially a wolf, and if not then should be voting amber or someone else. Hyena isn't a bad target for you to focus on if you're town, even though he might be town, he's had really bad posts so i wouldn't be suprised if anyone focused there.

if you have questions ask them, I don't mean to be rude and abrasive if this is coming off this way, just simply tired of people vaguely accusing me, avoiding real topics, and not actually elaborating on me.

again, @Oxblood Beagle waiting to hear who you think my partner/s are, because that's important specifically to thinking I'm an Elim. there's one of two people that have to be on a team with me if I'm an Elim, and it's way more likely to at first glance be one person.

[Ivory Dragonfly]

ok well imma support vulture being a thing

idk i dont think theyve really done anything that screams elim to me personally but the drop in activity without much explaining feels like potential kandra

and the vote yesterday

i dont think i believe everyone who was playing merry go round with votes were just villagers who disagreed strongly about the vote

so pending what other ppl vote this cycle i feel okay about this

i think

 

edit

also

am i insane

or does scorp keep talking about iguana like theyre in this game

Edited May 6, 2022 by Ivory Dragonfly

[Salmon Meerkat]

I'll be able to post more later this cycle probably. I think there's at least two elims in [Vulture, Dragonfly, Beagle, Dingo]. Scorpion is clear. Crocodile isn't a concern until she comes back. Hyena voted Vulture which makes me feel better about them unless it happens that Vulture is village. I can see an elim team without Vulture but it would have been easier for them to go for Vulture yesterday instead of Penguin or Scorpion so I think Amber Vulture is a good choice for today.

[Amethyst Scorpion]

dingo had some derp-clearing esque posts, but it's been a while since then.

I have decided I just can't read hyena, their two posts last night were ???? to me

and from the day (4)

On 5/3/2022 at 2:50 PM, Charcoal Hyena said:

Vulture. If they weren't evil before, surely they are evil now.

which is kinda ??/ reasoning but i was just going to take it if it meant that vulture would die, because they defo shoulda over penguin. it's followed up with these two posts from the night

21 hours ago, Charcoal Hyena said:

Well, well. Neither Vulture nor Scorpion has died. I feel suspicion. One of them should die tomorrow.

i suppose it checks out with the logic above, but also wasn't mentioned during the day, and if Hyena really wanted one of me/amber to die, they had a whole cycle of it being tied between me and Penguin. Not once did they mention penguin and not once did they switch to me. They sat at 1 vote on amber with me and penguin at 2 each.

20 hours ago, Charcoal Hyena said:

No. You sound... different than before.

but this one doesn't make much sense to me as a logical reason, when not elaborated on more, especially when I've been incredibly consistant. if you think i was emerald who bodyhopped D1 that's one thing, but also I'm obviously not because they hopped into indigo. They haven't responded to any PMs.

[Charcoal Hyena]

Vulture. It sure would be nice to catch an elim one of these days.

[Kasimir he/him]

Powered through and updated all write-ups except Day Five. This Turn is forty-eight hours so I'll commit somehow to updating this one before/by rollover. Have kept a clean slate as a GM so far and would hate to miss write-ups now.

[Mauve Crocodile]

i sawwrrry peeps. looosssttt allllll wants to do intertaneing things for abzolutesly noooooo reeeasssssonnnn wutsoever monday evening (y there no upside down smillleeeyyy face in de emojicosn????). if i be honest, i stils not reeeellly mentuly gud 4 gaim but donts want too bale on my bud kel.

so i caughts up wid what happpennenesd since i feeel off the edge of the flat earthen thingie and dont like hammer bammer on penguiny. gives me squicky feel but not sure who i feels squickily abooot (def shud say that like a canuck, plz) in the grup hoo stabbseded the zebra birb. finds it intristing the squeaky rodent was a comms speshlist lik meee. y u not post any messesssesssage, mooouuuse? we coulds'd've had a speshlist artsy contest that wud of been fun!

agrees with the vulture stabbing. scavenger birb me best guesss for limmmmy lim.

[Ivory Dragonfly]

this feels too easy

vulture beagle

[Amethyst Scorpion]

If Mauve is an elim then they're an elim but they're not a Kendra

 

Edit:

Actually there is a chance they're a Kendra. What they aren't is a kandra. 

Edited May 7, 2022 by Amethyst Scorpion

[Ivory Dragonfly]

lol

edit

also wheres vulture at

Edited May 7, 2022 by Ivory Dragonfly

[Amethyst Scorpion]

2 hours ago, Ivory Dragonfly said:

also wheres vulture at

Yes

[Ivory Dragonfly]

also wouldnt kandra vulture have just hopped last night maybe

theyve definitely been getting flak

beagle hyena

hyena my feliform friend in a canine package what do you think of that

why are you voting for vulture anwyas

 

edit

oh they could be out of hops

yeah ok the vulture case isnt crazy

still feels too easy but idk

Edited May 7, 2022 by Ivory Dragonfly

[Oxblood Beagle]

15 hours ago, Amethyst Scorpion said:

again, @Oxblood Beagle waiting to hear who you think my partner/s are, because that's important specifically to thinking I'm an Elim. there's one of two people that have to be on a team with me if I'm an Elim, and it's way more likely to at first glance be one person.

Well, my best guess would be either Dingo or Meerkat right now.

 

[Amethyst Scorpion]

10 minutes ago, Oxblood Beagle said:

Well, my best guess would be either Dingo or Meerkat right now.

 

Ok I guess you get a pass

[Oxblood Beagle]

I'm not 100% sold on e!Vulture, but it is a definite suspicion that they've been Taken given how quiet they've been recently, so I'll support the lynch. On top of that, in case Vulture is elim, we do know that there's at least one vote manipulator out there, so I'd rather make sure whoever the majority wants dead, we do our best to make happen.

Amber Vulture

Vulture (5): Scorpion, Dragonfly, Meerkat, Hyena, Croc, Beagle

Beagle (0): Dragonfly

Hyena (1): Dragonfly

15 hours ago, Ivory Dragonfly said:

am i insane

or does scorp keep talking about iguana like theyre in this game

Scorpion definitely mentioned Iguana... @Amethyst Scorpion?

17 hours ago, Amethyst Scorpion said:

Anyways I'm wanting to vote off amber today. their interactions (supposed) in PMs with iguana don't make sense with the rest of the things happening, and their activity completely dropped off despite them still being here in thread/around implying they should be able to be posting or PMing.

Who is Iguana? @Amber Vulture - Any clarifications?

[Ivory Dragonfly]

i would assume saffron iguana

im just confused bc saffron iguana isnt one of the anon accounts playing in this game

 

also am i the only one who the vulture train feels weird to

like it makes sense i def get it but my gut says this doesnt feel like the kind of vote that happens before a red flip

[Amethyst Scorpion]

34 minutes ago, Ivory Dragonfly said:

i would assume saffron iguana

im just confused bc saffron iguana isnt one of the anon accounts playing in this game

 

also am i the only one who the vulture train feels weird to

like it makes sense i def get it but my gut says this doesnt feel like the kind of vote that happens before a red flip

Where was this concern during the other cycles

[Ivory Dragonfly]

oh i noticed it in a previous cycle i just forgot

[Salmon Meerkat]

I'm pretty sure Vulture not hopping because they're Falcon would mean that the D3 vote for Swan to save Weasel was primarily village driven.

Coral Swan (4): Chartreuse Penguin, Salmon Meerkat, Indigo Weasel(purple=elim), Ivory Dragonfly, Amber Vulture
Indigo Weasel (1): Coral Swan, Melon Dingo

If that's true then Dragonfly is a prime candidate to be then-Weasel/now-Vulture's teammate, but also means that no other elims bothered to try and save Weasel and they easily could have died up until the very end of the turn. The vote manipulation here is strange but if an elim tried to riot without voting for Swan it doesn't show. Overall points to a team containing Taken Vulture including someone who was inactive D3 (Beagle, Hyena, Crocodile). Or Vulture could always be a non-Kandra elim. Or maybe we're just completely wrong.

Spoiler

…

“You think Whyren knows something?” Underscore asks, slipping the last newly created shock knife into their armor.

I nod. “He’s been the senior researcher on Project Replicant for over a decade. He knows more about the capabilities of SynthKandra than anyone who isn’t one. He had to have failsafes beyond a short range melee weapon to locate and stop any SynthKandra who went rogue, failsafes he’s not using. He also told the group that SynthKandra are purely synthetic beings created in a lab, and we know that’s not true. Edrena would not have turned me into a SynthKandra without experimental evidence that it worked, and any such evidence would have been gained under his watch. Finally, I suspect Edrena wants me to kill him, and I’m inclined to prevent that from happening.”

Sal laughs. “All those words were just waiting to come out, huh? What about Kesed?”

I frown. “I’ve never met him. Sandhya guards her prized operatives almost as tightly as Edrena does. Claude’s worked with him before, said he was impressed with how quickly went from a researcher with no combat experience to a highly efficient security operative. I don’t know what side he’s on or how loyal he is to Heron Industries. If he won’t defect given the chance, we’ll have to fight past him to get to Whyren.”

 “Well we’re 1 for 1 in convincing Heron Industries operatives to switch sides so far,” Tamara says, nodding to me.

“You might need to use slightly different tactics to convince them,” Sal says. Tamara frowns at him.

“The SynthKandra are still out there,” Underscore cuts in. “We can find them now, but that doesn’t mean they’ll listen to us.”

“They might listen to me,” I say. If they see that you’re willing to grant me freedom, they’re liable to believe they can also escape with your help.”

Tamara decides it. “Alright. So let’s find Whyren and Kesed, and check any mistrunners we encounter on the way.”

The four of us leave the workshop and head in the direction of the security terminal that was the main group’s destination last we heard. Scattered wreckage of security drones and the occasional corpse or scattered bones litter the floor, leaving a trail to the surviving members of the mission. When we finally find them, there are a lot fewer than I remember. Blue Team has been fractured and dwindled away to almost nothing. Of the mistrunner patrons of the Electric Sparrow, only seven remain that aren’t part of our group. Kesed and Whyren are nowhere in sight.

“Everyone knows you’re one of them, Vulture,” I hear one of the mistrunners say. Scorpion, I recognise, the person Cody Eight accused of falsely claiming Albatross was a SynthKandra. Vulture fails to respond to the accusations. As we get closer, Scorpion is the first to notice us.

“Where have you four been?” they say. In answer, I pull out my shock knife, the original that we know works. I still think we should have tested all twelve improvised blades, but Sal was confident in his work. Scorpion clearly doesn’t trust us or my knife, but I’m allowed to get close to Vulture, who makes no move to escape. “If you’re a SynthKandra, we can get you out of here,” I whisper, hopefully too quietly for anyone else to hear. No response. Out of the corner of my eye I see the Terns get in position to intervene if anything goes wrong. I wish I could do this elsewhere but these mistrunners adamantly refuse to split up any more. I plunge the shock knife into the bare flesh of Vulture’s palm.

 

[Amber Vulture]

In hindsight I think that Beagle claiming seeker is a really good elim gambit, and so I think they are the best vote for this turn. Oxblood Beagle.

[Oxblood Beagle]

3 hours ago, Amber Vulture said:

In hindsight I think that Beagle claiming seeker is a really good elim gambit, and so I think they are the best vote for this turn. Oxblood Beagle.

An elim claiming seeker is a stupid idea. All it takes is one misdirection, and the elim is dead.

[Salmon Meerkat]

All it takes is one misdirection, and the game is over. Amber Vulture, Oxblood Beagle.