LogBrink-Jason-12

Game log for the 2015/01/18 session of Brink, as taken by Jason

Absinthe is having sex for money with a woman named Anna. It's their first... transaction. They're in a room that Anna borrowed from a friend, on Ring 12. Things are going fine until after, when she asks, "Do you like sushi?" Absinthe replies that she doesn't trust it around here. Anna agrees, since you don't know what you're getting. She explains about fugu poisoning and tetradontotoxin, and that Absinthe has a lethal dose in her system right now. "You always have to be careful of what you eat, my dear." Anna's already taken the antidote. If Absinthe does what Anna wants, Absinthe can get the antidote too... if she smuggles Anna into the Den. Absinthe doesn't get visibly angry but she assures Anna that no cooperation will be forthcoming until she gets the antidote. They discuss the exact details of what Anna wants and it seems that it's a specific storage vault (1021) that she wants access to. Eventually Anna explains that she's going to leave Absinthe alone for a while to consider her lack of options and try again when Absinthe's feeling a bit worse.

Absinthe pulls one of her springblades and Anna pulls her gun almost at the same instant. Absinthe knocks the gun out of the way and takes a chunk out of Anna's throat. That's good in that Absinthe is clearly winning and bad in that if Anna dies, Absinthe may be dead. Anna's grabbing her throat and gurgling as Absinthe conference calls Swan and Cipher to get help, trying to bandage Anna as she does so. They advise her to get to the clinic for help. Torch and Swan head immediately to Ring 12, Swan phoning ahead to Fletch to see if Fletch can help, but she has no idea what the hell fugu is.

Swan, Torch, Cipher, and Absinthe all arrive at Fletch's at about the same time. Fletch can't help. Torch and Cipher head for the apartment where it all happened. Fletch explains to Swan that the poison is fatal at the cellular level, keeping nerve signals from being transmitted across cell walls. Absinthe tells Swan that she wants his help finding who might have the antidote, and that his interests are involved because these enemies want a piece of the Den. Swan realizes that vault 1021 is Raskolnikov's office.

When Torch and Cipher arrive at the apartment, Anna seems to be dead. Cipher tries to touch her mind, and manages to be in her thoughts as she dies. Torch begins searching everything he can find in the apartment but it's a pretty dry hole. The place looks lived in but there's nothing personal there. There are pictures but no two pictures of the same person. The furniture is worn and sparse. The kitchen has a spice shelf with thick dust on it. Anna had a communicator, a small gun, and a crumpled slip of paper with some sort of code on it - a sequence of strange characters. Torch consults his Neer senses, just hoping to pick up something touching upon this woman, and hears someone saying "do you think we should go?" Torch is excited that there may be a backup unit to ambush and interrogate, but when he goes to share this discovery with Cipher, Cipher's unconscious and not breathing. He calls Swan for help.

Swan sends the help and calls Libby to warn him that he's sending a lot of muscle to his turf but not to pose any threat. Swan then asks Dr Raskolnikov if he knows about how to treat fugu toxin or how to bring Anna back to life. Raskolnikov consults his suitcase and finds no answers, but realizes that he has to have answers. It gets worse when Torch sends a photo and he realizes that Anna is actually Janet.

On Ring 12, someone sees all the muscle coming in, and shooting starts. Torch tries to put a stop to it but eventually the bad guys throw smoke. He runs through and comes out the other side to be met by guys in gas masks who are very surprised to see him. Torch offers them a chance to surrender but they try to do a bounding retreat. Torch gives chase and takes a prisoner, who claims to know nothing. Torch threatens to sacrifice his soul to the devourer. He swears that Zeke knows. Torch tries to break the guys' legs so he can't escape if the data is bad, but overreaches and kills the captive. Oh well. Things are tough all over. Torch goes running after Zeke.

Cipher's brain is touching death. For most people that would be really bad but Cipher can handle these things. He feels like he's been sucked into something, that he's floating around the wormhole in an unstable orbit, spiralling in. He sees the wormhole pulse and then open... and he looks through it to see some creature made of weirdly iridescent bubbles.

At Fletch's, Swan tells his men that he wants prisoners, not corpses. They adjust tactics accordingly. The fire tapers off soon as the bad guys break contact. Libby calls to find out what the heck is going on and to complain about people shooting up his ring. He claims there have been hull breaches. Swan tells him it's taken care of, and orders his men to move over to damage control work where they're not engaged. They report that Cipher's dead. Swan say he's coming.

Absinthe begins to feel a tingling in her extremities. She starts calling anyone who might know about tetradontoxin hoping for help, but nobody she calls has any clue.

Swan and Dr Raskolnikov reach Anna's apartment at the same time. Raskolnikov touches Cipher and uses Predator Advantage on him. Cipher would trust him if Raskolnikov pulled him out of this pickle he's in. The person most important to Cipher is Anastasia. He also senses a heartbeat. He tells everyone that Cipher is alive but having some weird brain problem. Swan sees this and picks up on the fact that there's something really going on between them. He reads Raskolnikov and calculates how he can use whatever connected the Dr and "Anna" to his advantage.

Down in Fletch's place, she detects the pulse but finds almost no respiration, so she goes right to heroic measures. As he floats out there in the darkness, something makes him thing about Anastasia, even though he hasn't thought about her in a long time. He sees the two of them dancing in some grand ballroom, but the ceiling of the ballroom is the open wormhole, and the chandeliers are evil space bubbles. He tells her he loves her, and then he wakes up and sees Fletch. "Fuck!" The good news is that he actually sees her - he's not blind anymore.

Absinthe feels the tingling getting worse. She tries to get some feeling back into her extremeties but it's not going well.

Torch has lost contact with the running men. Swan checks in and hears this, and asks Libby to lock the area down to help stop them.

Swan goes to Fletch's and touches base, and thanks her for her help. He gets a status check from Absinthe. Swan suggests that maybe they should put Absinthe on ice while they look for the antidote. Swan tries to push her to go into cryo but she's not willing to take that step yet. Fletch seems very surprised that Swan is interested in putting someone on ice.

Torch finds that his quarries are in the elevator. He gets there but Libby's men are guarding the elevator. Torch tries to get let through, loses patience, starts a fight, and gets shot up and captured. Libby tells Swan that they "got one", so Swan and Absinthe go to interrogate what they think will be an enemy prisoner.

Twenty minutes later, Swan and Absinthe get to Libby's interrogation facility, which is a repurposed meatlocker. They have Torch prisoner and a guy trying to save two of Libby's men that Torch shot up. Swan thinks fast and pays Libby for the prisoner, which has Libby thinking they're square. Flail and Warchest lead Torch away as Swan negotiates to get Torch's cutter. Libby will go for it in exchange for a meet with Rattle on neutral territory.

As soon as they're away, Torch shares the piece of paper with the code and the name "Zeke" with Swan.

Cipher and Dr Raskolnikov end up drinking together and reminisicing about old friends and times. Since Cipher's involved, the times never happened. They exchange ideas about the wormhole and Cipher tells him that he and Anastasia were are "the ball" laughing at how Raskolnikov was wound around Janet' finger. At that point Raskolnikov throws his drinking glass at him and leaps across the table. Since he's physically inept, that doesn't work out well for him at all. Cipher ends up forcing the Doc to put him in contact with Dr Occulus. The Doc makes a phone call to try to set up a conversation.

Absinthe suggests that Raskolnikov might be able to decode the code that Torch found, so Swan makes a phone call. The Doc is willing to look into it but he's a tad tied up. Absinthe persuades Cipher to give up Dr Raskolnikov for this purpose. Everyone heads back to the Den. Swan finds a tranq in his emergency aid kit and decides to use it on Absinthe, thinking it will slow the poison. She goes alon with it and it seems to work. Swan lays her down on a cot.

Swan orders Raskolnikov to decode the writing on the paper. No solitude, no privacy, sit down and get it done. He does so, and in the process, everyone is very impressed with the supah-fancy technology the suitcase contains. It turns out to be a command to coerce Absinthe to get access to a quantum scope. Raskolnikov has the only working one on station. Whoever wants is obvious a hardcore science type, and it must be someone who isn't on good terms with the Doc. Could be Dr Occulus, could be a group that's trying to do some life sciences research. Raskolnikov suggests asking Occulus directly, since if he was willing to have Absinthe killed for this, he can't afford to turn down any chance to get access. Cipher insists on going along to see Dr Occulus, but Rasknolikov begs off.

Swan takes Flail and Cipher to Control with him, leaving Torch to watch over Absinthe. He's met by station security at the elevator door. They take him to a waiting room. Everything in Control is under emergency lighting, a dim red light. That's a little too much like "The Red" for Swan's comfort. After a few minutes, the door opens and four dudes and a robed man come in. The robes look pretty silly in zero-G. They exchange pleasantries. The robed guy is Dr Occulus, and he has a very strange, slightly mushy manner of speaking. Swan lays out the situationfor Occulus, admits that he was the one who hired "Livia" to get access to the quantum scope. He felt that Raskolnikov could not be trusted, which meant direct negotiation was out of the question. Swan offers to negotiate for access but the antidote must come first. Oc counters that he needs to install the scope in an array and keep it for some time. Therefore he cannot accept just having access to Raskolnikov's lab, he needs to actually take possession of the scope. Occulus offers to provide the antidote and then, once Absinthe is healed, Oc gets the scanner installed in his array, to be returned when the research is complete. Swan agrees. Swan also insists on waiting right there for the antidote, but backs down when Oc points out that he may need to go take steps to prolong Absinthe's lift.

While he's there, Cipher realizes that this place is full of secrets, to which he could gain access by becoming an initiate of the Farsight Brotherhood.

Raskolnikov uses his suitcase to access the root substrate. He inserts information that Anastasia never loved Cipher but stayed with him out of pity. This information will persist without being maintained, and it is stable and contained, no bleeding.

Absinthe accessed the maelstrom. She sees herself lying on a cot in and open field, playing with something in her hand. The thing in her hand keeps changing. She realizes that she was probably picked for this screwjob because she has been a professional infiltrator.

Torch tries to use his Neer senses to figure out how to make Absinthe happy. His Neer senses, not reliable, do not serve him well. Suddenly he's in the field with her, and she can see that Torch wants to make her happy.