Mcmolly

Amygdala Circuit

Camille had arrived first, bursting through Quinn’s door with rapier in hand. The twins followed, heads poking in, curious, concerned. The captain sent Sybil to let security down, and the two or three dozen soldiers set about clearing the floor.

When it was done, Toussaint came down to apologize. He said there had been some kind of flicker in the dorm’s power grid, coinciding with the passing of a nearby satellite, which during the flux had managed to accidentally cross its broadcast over the floor’s PA systems. Everything was fine now, he assured, and emphasized how there had been no danger, and that nothing important had been compromised and no danger had been posed. Just an odd little accident, and a—literal—cosmic coincidence.

That satisfied the twins, who regarded Quinn with a mixture of pity and concern, but left when the captain dismissed them. Camille was the last to go, and she did so quietly, casting only a silent look of mild disgust over her shoulder before Quinn’s door shut behind her.

Toussaint, for his part, raced to the bridge faster than he had moved in a good few years. When he reached the circular room at the Ange’s crown, he was red-faced and barely composed enough to keep from wheezing.

“Well?” he barked to the tables of analysts who ought to have been able to prevent anything remotely like tonight from happening. “I want to know who the fuck cracked our comms systems. Now.”

“We’re running a trace on the signal, commander.”

“Have you recovered the feed from the pilots’ hall?” He was answered with guilty silence, and his fists balled. “So we were hacked, possibly infiltrated, and you’re telling me we have nothing?”

“There was nothing, sir. The unauthorized message was triggered but sensors didn’t pick anything up. No life forms on that floor that weren’t the pilots.”

“So I’m to believe amidst this shit storm, that alone happened to be a coincidence? No. I’m giving Internal Security limited access to the dorms, and I want our camera feed’s contingencies to have contingencies. It’s bad enough someone spoke to our pilots, but god help me no one is touching them.”

He took a deep breath. Then another. The Ange’s doctors had warned him about stress, too bad his occupation didn’t care much for medical opinions.

“Get me that trace,” he snapped, and whirled for the door to his office. “I have to make a call.”

---

When next Quinn did sleep, and the blackness of the lake formed around her, it was off. Not in the typical way where the water was too dark, and the sky was poorly constructed, and the moon’s reflection didn’t always ripple when it ought to have. Rather, it looked hasty, haphazard. It had been thrown together at the last moment as if her familiar host did not expect her, or had not properly prepared.

There were gaps in the lake, like it had been sketched in with a pen thinning on ink. Water sloshed across these gaps, which were themselves nigh imperceptible, lacking in color and blankness alike, yet despite the innumerable holes the levels did not sink. The boat was similarly lacking, and though water splashed across the floor, it did not sink either.

Ashore, the town of Hovvi was a mass of blocky scribbles smeared into the dark, rocky landscape. Above, the stars were holes poked into the sky, and the moon looked flat, like it a sticker pasted onto a ceiling. Tonight, it had no reflection.

The two shadows swimming out to the buoy were pristine, though. Perfect as they were every night. They pulled themselves onto its muddled form and chatted away, unbothered, while the boat rocked gently in silence.

Quinn wasn’t given much time to ponder her surroundings, though, before a shape slammed into her. At first, it looked like nothing more than a shadow, until, slowly and as imperceptibly as the faults in the lake, it seemed to remember itself. She took form, arms wrapped around Quinn’s waist, and stared up into the eye of her older self. There was fear, and worry, and blossoming relief on her face.

“We’re still here!” she said, surprised. “You can still dream. You’re okay! It’s okay…”

Her head rested against Quinn’s stomach for a moment, until she finally pulled herself away. Her face screwed up with frustration then, and she cast her eyes down to the shallow water in the boat. Slowly, it began to drain, and the boards knitted themselves tightly together.

“Fear. Look what it’s done to us. How it hurts us. Our mind. We’re still scared.”

Amygdala Circuit

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Amygdala Circuit

The Ange hung, poised above Illun like a sleeping whale. Though time was scarcely concrete in space, as the cycle of night closed around the station, its levels fell into a calm, solemn quiet. Lights dimmed in the shopping centers, their stores shuttered, the walkways void of civilian and crew alike. Only in the sparsely-lit halls of the labs, and the medical wing, and the offices of those with the schedules of owls, did the faintest proof of life remain.

On the pilot’s floor, that proof was Quinn. In the dim lights and suffocating quiet, her footsteps were the only sign that anyone was here at all. Of course, the others must have been around, likely retired to their rooms, or perhaps sequestered away in the gym across the level. Either way, Quinn walked alone—or alone as she ever was, anymore. The day was behind her, and tomorrow had yet to rear its forbidding head. So, like the Ange, she too hung in limbo, drifting like the station itself.

Their side had rotated away from Illun, and through the windows she could see nothing but the blackness, pinpricked by so many microscopic lights. Something suggested, or rather, pleaded with her, to wait. To stop, and look. There bubbled up within her a wonderment, a familiar longing. Images, or more like emotional sensations eliciting the moonlit lake at Hovvi flashed within her mind. For the briefest moment, if she let herself imagine as much, she might have been able to believe she could feel a small, cold hand gripping hers, as she stared out into the infinite night.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

The robotic voice, soft and considerate as it was, still tore the silence apart with jagged nails. The stars were so beautiful. Lights in the dark. Such anintimate thing. In the glass she could see her reflection, and over her eyepatch, there hovered a particularly bright cluster of incomprehensibly distant and luminous secrets.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

There were no non-pilot personnel to exit the floor.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please ‘decide where power lies.’

‘There is no king in the mirror.’ the gentle voice said, and its robotic edges frayed, gave way to something much smaller, and frailer. A young and quivering voice, speaking slowly and quietly, as if she did not wish to be heard by anyone else.

‘Only a throne, a crown, and a promise. And with great pains, I will see this done.’

The lights went out, and the long hall was plunged into darkness, broken only by intermittent panels of starlight. Silence’s reign was brief.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

Quinn, who was only ever as alone as she could be anymore, suddenly knew she was not alone.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

The darkness ahead of her led towards her room. Behind her, to the lift. The alien wonderment within her curdled, and what remained was the tiny imprint of a panicked voice that did not like the darkness behind her.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

It told her to Go.

Amygdala Circuit

“Oh gosh, I wish!” Tillie said, and an excited gleam glinted to life in her eyes. “I’m serious, we’ve never seen something like that in a Modir before. They’ve all got template states they return to whenever they’re damaged, always. Arm off? Fine. Leg off? No problem. Even head injuries—like with Dragon’s jaw—boom! Like nothing ever happened.

“But Ablaze…it’s unprecedented. The earliest ideas were that the Modir had some brain damage from when it was captured, but nothing came up on the initial scans, or the secondaries. And besides, it wasn’t a random thing, y’know? It didn’t just fall out outta nowhere. It happened as soon as you connected. For some reason, Ablaze mirrored you.” A wide grin split across her face. “Isn’t that so cool? Centuries of pilots getting the feedback from their Saviors, and you’re the first one to do the reverse! Some countries still don’t believe it, they think we’re just using a patch to cover it up.

“It’s huge, though. It could be the secret to cutting off the Modirs regenerative powers, maybe even more. Imagine if we could find some way to harness that sort of process, weaponize it. We could fight the Modir without the Saviors. All the little places across Illun that can’t afford a pilot program could start defending themselves too.”

She blinked, remembering suddenly that she was not, in fact, alone in her room, monologuing to her posters. “Oh gosh, uhm! Sorry, rambling. It’s still way too soon for anything. For all we know, you just got the first anomalous Modir, which, even if it doesn’t go anywhere, is still super cool!”

Time passed, and though Quinn wasn’t filled with many more questions, Tillie volunteered a handful of new topics. She explained a bit about energy-reading, tracking singularities and the like, then jumped to how the speed of movement that Modirs possessed was still an inexplicable mystery to the entire field. At length it devolved into fringe, if enthusiastic theories and failed attempts at turning complex mathematical formulas into analogies. Eventually, however, their time ran out.

There was a bell chime, then from speakers in the hall outside, a gentle, automated woman’s voice said:

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

“Oop,” Tillie said, hopping up onto her feet and checking her phone. “Holy moly, I had no idea. Look at that! Time flies, huh? This was so much fun, really—I hope you had a good time too. I’d love to do this again some time, when we’re both free, but in the meanwhile, y’know, you’re totally free to hold on to any of these. I sorta brought them along just in case you wanted to—I’ve got them all on digital anyway, so I won’t miss them!”

She began to gather up some of the less-entry-level books. Not that should would mind if Quinn asked for those, too, but she figured they’d work up to them over time.

Curfew is now in effect. Non-pilot personnel please exit the floor.

“Alright alright, I’m going,” she giggled. “Wouldn’t wanna get us in trouble. Wanna walk me back? I think I need your clearance to use the lift anyway.”

Amygdala Circuit

Tillie could have died happy knowing she made Quinnlash Loughvein laugh at a joke. Not even a joke, really, just a silly little thought. But even if it wasn’t that funny, she found herself laughing right alongside her. It seemed she hadn’t been annoying the pilot after all, and the relief of that realization just made laughing easier. It was nice not to worry, to just cut loose and enjoy herself in the moment. It reminded her of her early undergrad years, and getting locked out of the dorms on rainy days. It reminded her of…

Well, she was having a good time.

Gosh, and she’d been so anxious about coming to the Ange. She hadn’t been anywhere but Runa for almost ever, but Casoban was turning out great! The people were polite, the crew were kind and the scientists just as invested in their work as she was. And she got to do this—hang out with her favorite pilot ever.

She owed the commander big time.

“Oh no,” she said, rubbing the happy ache out of her cheeks. “I totally get it! Uhm! This is a lot of fun! I really appreciate the opportunity to share this stuff, especially with a pilot. It's important, for sure. Do you have anything else you wanna know about?”

Amygdala Circuit

Oh, whoops. Right. Tillie let herself go and for a moment she’d forgotten that this was a complex and still not entirely understood field of science, through which many of its most capable scholars traveled blindly by hope and intuition, and Quinnlash Loughvein was sixteen. It seemed teaching was more difficult than Tillie had thought. But, oh well, who did anything perfectly on the first try?

“Oh gosh, uhm! My bad!” she broke into another giggling fit. Best to laugh it off, right? The last thing she wanted was for either of them to take this too seriously. Learning was supposed to be fun! The only reason Tillie was here was because she enjoyed learning, it was only fair she at least try to give Quinn the same experience.

“I know it’s a lot. Trust me, hoo boy, the first exam I ever took, I was totally lost. Ex nihilo is just how we classify the regeneration, it just means that something comes out of nothing. Cause, y’know, it’s not like the Modir body is eating anything, or sticking pieces back on. It sorta just happens out of thin air. Isn’t that neat? What else can do that, y’know?

“For awhile there was this theory that the Modir could summon replacement cells to rebuild from. You know how you draw your cannon out? We thought it was like that, just on an iiiiiitty bitty scale. But we can read weapon summons, the same way we can read the energies of a singularity opening, and there’s no spike during the regeneration process. So actually, we don’t really know much about it.

She shrugged, just a bit embarrassed. That was the way it was with modiology; sometimes the facts presented themselves with no explanation, and absolutely refused to budge for reason. The Modir said it could regenerate from nothing, and the laws of nature had yet to prove they could refute the claim.

“As for the melting, well, like I said, I couldn’t tell you why. But if you cut a piece off of a Modir, or a Savior, it’ll break down like ice, or wax. Turns into liquid modium. Can’t change it back, can’t slather it onto the body again. You either bag it for research, or you destroy it. It’s neat to watch under a microscope, actually—and through a few layers of hazard gear.

“As far as anyone can tell, it just happens to anything that isn’t attached to the brain, or attached to something attached to the brain. It’s like without the head, it doesn’t know it’s supposed to be a body! Could be the modium’s just rotted them so much, or…” she snickered, eyebrows shooting up. “Maybe the Modir are secretly just big, nasty cans of soup!”

Amygdala Circuit

Tillie frowned in thought, tongue pressed against her teeth. Well, if Besca Darroh had mentioned it, then surely there was more to the theory than she thought. RISC’s commander might have put her lab coat aside, but in the few and admittedly brief conversations they’d had together, Tillie was acutely aware that the woman’s passion for modiology had not withered over the years. Tillie respected everyone, but she super respected commander Darroh.

“Y’know, why don’t I look into it a little, hm? I never gave it a whole bunch of thought, but, uhm! It could be fun poking around in shelved theories! I’ll let you know if I come across anything interesting, how about that?”

With her fun little side-project established, she turned her attention to Quinn’s next questions. These didn’t surprise her much. Speculation on Modir and the Circuit was wildly popular all over Illun. There were hundreds of years of theories and stories and films all centered around the idea of what exactly it was humanity was dealing with. It fascinated her, too, and she felt bad that she wouldn’t be able to give her a real answer.

“Well, uhm! That’s sorta out of my wheelhouse. See, modiology is split into two big fields, two sides, y’know?” she held up her hands parallel to each other. “You have this side of the singularities—us—and you have that side of the singularities—them. I study the ‘us’ side. I can tell you that modium melts, and to a degree I can tell you how and under what conditions; which, by the way, happens at a molecular level and to any bits of the Modir that become disconnected from the brain. I can tell you that regeneration happens ex nihilo and basically in the reverse.” she giggled. “And, up until you came along I could have told you that regeneration is a static process that returns each Modir to their ‘template state, without variance. Buuuut, now we have Ablaze and we get to study this whole new exciting theory on it!”

She paused, only just noticing that Quinn was leaning into her. Uh oh, was this her way of telling her to scoot over? Maybe she didn’t like someone else crowding her bed; Tillie could sympathize, she was very particular about her own spaces. Quinn was a nice girl, surely if she was annoyed, she would have said so. Tillie held on to that hope, and decided it was best to carry on with her explanation until instructed otherwise.

“But when it comes to that side—the why side, I’m kinda in the dark. I’d say we all are, for the most part. The Modir aren’t really forthcoming with information, and the few times I can think of, ever that people go into the singularities, they don’t come back. Unfortunately pretty much all of our knowledge about the Circuit comes from psychological evaluations of pilots, and, I mean I only studied it a bit in undergrad and, don’t get me wrong they’re super interesting, but they’re also not really reliable. No one knows what the Circuit is, just that it’s there.

“Sorry I couldn’t be much help.” She smiled again. “Actually, it’s kinda funny. You probably know more about it than I do. Technically, that makes you a modiology expert too!”

Amygdala Circuit

“Yeah!” Tillie beamed at Quinn’s conjecture, and inwardly exhaled a little sigh of relief. Okay, so she could explain things without tripping over herself and getting it all wrong—that was good! But it still wouldn’t do to leave things half-correct, or only partly described. She chewed her lip for a moment, contemplating how she could convey herself without sounding like a graduate thesis.

“Well—kinda. Uhm! You got the right idea, phasing is definitely tied to your connection. See—and forgive me for getting a little more complex—phasing is like a secondary thing, and we’re not…actually super sure how it works. The way you said it, y’know, with everyone having different sized bridges, that’s more or less one of the prevailing theories, revolving more around the idea that everyone has a different baseline connection. The other one is more like…everyone starts with the same connection, and the variance is just how fast the bridge expands.

“I lean a bit more towards that one cause it makes phasing a bit more concrete. Uhm! Everyone phases differently, right? So I like to think of it like, everyone’s connection clears at different rates, and also, everyone phases at a different point in that clearance. It also stands that once you do pass that point, your clearance rate speeds way up! And we don’t really know why that happens, either.” She flipped the cover over, tapped the title. “That’s where the ‘meta’ part comes in, I guess. And the ‘human’ bit.

“‘Cause Modir, y’know, they don’t phase. That’s a Savior thing—a human thing. But it’s also clearly something the Modir are inherently, physiologically capable of. There’s something unique about your place bridging the Circuit, some way you fit in, that allows it. Isn’t that so cool? It’s like our species were made for each other!” She blinked, and her excited smile withered a bit. “Eugh, uhm! Now that I say it out loud, actually, it sounds kinda creepy. Maybe don’t think of it that way.”

Tillie was grateful when the subject veered, though she did find the change odd. No phasing? She didn’t dismiss the idea outright, but she did spend several moments racking her brain, searching for anything she might have read that would support Quinn’s question.

Eventually though, she shook her head. “Hm. No, I…hmm. I don’t think so. At least as far as I learned, phasing is really a yes-no thing. Granted, some people are really small bridges—or slow-growing bridges, if you prefer—uhm! But those people generally don’t get cleared to pilot even if they technically can. I guess it’s theoretically possible for someone’s phasing point to be so close to the Circuit closing they would never know, but, I’ve never heard of a pilot who couldn’t phase.”

Amygdala Circuit

“Oh,” Tillie chirped, face pinching quizzically as she hunched down and danced her fingers down the spines of the bookstack. She plucked one vertebra free, a thin book titled: ‘Metamortality: The Human Link’, and popped up with the wide smile back on her face. “That’s a good place to start! Easy enough, too. Uhm! Here,”

She flipped through the various dog-eared pages, colored tabs, and post-its scribbled over with illegible shorthand, and turned the book to her opened to a diagram of a Modir’s head. The skull was cross sectioned to depict the brain, which, for the most part, resembled what anyone might think of when they pictured one. The only anomaly, aside from the size, was a dark, spherical object at the back, bridging the fissure between the hemispheres. A tally marked it quite clearly as: cockpit.

“So,” she said, plopping down beside Quinn with the book on her lap. “I think a funny way to look at it is like this: when you’re in it, it’s a Savior, and when you’re not, it’s a Modir! ‘Cause, see, you know how Modir can regenerate basically anything, right? Well, they say brains are the exception, but that’s not really true. A Modir’s brain can regenerate, if it’s conscious, it’s just that usually any real damage is enough to put it out for good. Disrupts the Circuit.”

She tapped the cockpit on the diagram. “That’s where the tricky part comes in. We can’t cut too much, or it’s actually dead and it’ll just melt, like what happens when one loses an arm or a leg. So, we cut just enough to fit the cockpit, and then that’s where you come in!

“Pilots can actually slot in to the Modir’s brain, and neurologically close the little gap we make for the cockpit. See, Modir can’t function without the Circuit, so think of yourself like a drawbridge that’s a little bit thinner than the rest of the road. When you’re connected, the bridge is down and traffic can get across, just a lot slower than usual, then when you disconnect, the bridge is up and traffic stops! Sort of.” She giggled anxiously—metaphors were never her forte, and she found herself suddenly thankful she wasn’t doing this in front of a class. “Basically you’re a buffer for the Circuit, and the longer you’re connected, the clearer that signal gets. That’s why you don’t stay in for too long at a time. Completing the Circuit is pretty much just like bringing the Modir back to life.”

Scion: The Prophecy of Anani

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As Asher went on describing the situation, and the shape of their mission here began to sharpen, Ionna grew excited. This was by all accounts new territory for her, both figuratively and literally. Having spent her whole life in Rodion, she was no stranger to stories about monsters, but her own experiences were severely limited. She’d fought nobles, peasants, up and coming duelists, even a few soldiers—and recently, mysterious magic terrorists. But she couldn’t recall having ever raised her blade to a monster. Did that make her a bad knight?

Well, technically she supposed she wasn’t any kind of knight. Still, she couldn’t help but feel just a bit anxious. People she got, people could be read and reacted to and when everything was done you could grab coffee and laugh the bruises off. Monsters, though…no emotions to read, no strategies to discern, and certainly no laughing after the fact. Then again, she supposed you didn’t have to feel bad after you beat them. That was a plus, right? Justinian certainly didn’t seem to feel bad, and she wagered he had more experience than most.

Between him and Theobald, this place didn’t have much to worry about. Two hours. If she had to guess, her Scion would want to charge in rather than wait, but she didn’t know what Bianca and Justinian would suggest. Her own mind wandered to the tent of supplies, and a little pit formed in her stomach to think that they might be expected to use firearms. Harpies flew, after all, and she couldn’t very well shoot them down with a sword. But if they gave her a rifle, she’d bring unparalleled shame to both herself and anyone unfortunate enough to witness.

Well, she’d burn that bridge when she got to it.

“So, what do y’all think? We going hunting, or we setting up here?” she asked. “Not that I don’t have confidence in you, but, uhm, I’ll say I’m a little worried about staging an attack this close to the town. Fire, rocks, fiery rocks, y'know like Asher said.”

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_{@Hero@Xiro Zean@Raijinslayer}