[center] ___________ [img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/200508/beeb4ddcb23fe2e770a27e2806edaf45.png[/img] [img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/200409/c4f0884a9d2c19df583c86778d99d5dc.png[/img] ___________ [/center] [i]When the time is right.[/i] At least that’s what it was being framed as when the pencil-pushers and various nutjobs who ran the Science and Technology sector continued to assure the young woman that she would eventually be able to speak with her parents again. But this would never be the case only after a few short weeks of being held in some unknown government-run facility in the middle of fuckall. Tess wasn’t an idiot. Small signs here and there, data imprints from files they thought to be buried in their system were only too easy to recover with enough persistence. The truth was, her parents no longer wished to see their “monstrous” child. Not after what had happened in their home. Not after the embarrassment of their friends, colleagues, and neighbors finding out that their little girl was one of [i]them[/i]. Those meta-humans who would one day tear the world apart with unchained powers no one could ever understand. Or so it was sadly assumed. It wasn’t as though she had much time at all to explore the abilities that manifested shortly after the “big explosion”, her mother and father worried for not only their child, but their own self-preservation and future livelihood. Of course the only reasonable solution to the problem was to pass it on to someone else. To pass their only child into a world that would merely chew them up and spit them out. How could seemingly loving parents do such a thing you ask? Perhaps it was out of fear. But their daughter believed it was simply not wanting to deal with a problem they just didn’t fully understand. And who could blame them? Tessia saw herself as an abomination in the worst of times, and simply a “lost soul” in the best. Was there a middle ground? A happy medium? Solace in knowing she could exist and live a normal life? But who the hell knew what normal was. Certainly not the institution that took Tess away from everything she ever knew, threw her into a test tube environment, and basically pushed and prodded her until real results transpired. At least, [i]results[/i] that the scientists and researchers were satisfied with. Their main testing ground seemed to come in the form of the [b]NITE[/b] framework. A virtual world that sometimes seemed more real than could ever be imagined. An ethereal experience that had all the sights, sounds, smells, and a myriad of other sense-driven aspects which could cause anyone tapped into to lose all sense of what was actually “real” anymore. A framework that seemed to have way more questions than answers, as each day since arriving, the young woman would jack into and travel the binary playground. Tinkering. Exploring. Breaking what wasn’t essentially bolted down, only to hack through and uncover things that were most definitely not for her eyes. It was the breadcrumb trail that was sorely overlooked by the higher-ups. A specific meta-human, or so it was presumed by Tess, being kept deeper within the facility under much heavier security guidelines. A “menace to society” as one line of code read. It wasn’t merely lock and key, but layers upon layers of firewalls, system protocol rewrites, and a myriad of other security placements that made the teenager wonder just what was so special about this particular person. News of the heroine known only as “Sol” was certainly an interesting article to come across, almost around the same time information about the mystery project had been discovered. Coincidence? Perhaps. Or was this the same person? Although another name emerged as well... Sentry. [hr] The short greeting and question from Miranda Mendoza came as almost a dream. Had the government agent been standing in the apartment long? Was she early or late? Tess was wrapped up in her own mind as usual, but rather than burning away the remaining hours of down-time on video games, the young woman was curled up with a paperback book in one corner of the cushy leather couch situated in the middle of the living room. The sounds of Vivaldi's [i]The Four Seasons[/i] filled the remaining nooks and crannies of the modern living space. There were a few moments of awkward silence before Tessia began to speak, not once looking up from the engaging book as she did so, voice fairly low, but loud enough to be heard across the room. “'Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history...'” Tess paused and tilted her head up as she glared with a deadpan expression at the [i]pantsuit[/i] agent standing a few meters away. “...It's poetry.” She concluded, closing the book and placing it in her lap. “Pardon me?” Agent Mendoza arched an eyebrow as she stepped into the living room proper, and stopped just a few feet away, crossing her arms and trying not to seem too amused at the random comments coming from the other. “The Catcher in the Rye.” The seated girl responded. “It’s a book.” “I know that.” The Agent snickered. “I haven’t read it though.” “And why would you?” Tess shrugged. “It’s message goes against everything you and your colleagues are striving to fight for.” “And what is that?” “Oppression.” She said plainly. “Essentially stripping away what freedoms we might have left and any semblance of childhood innocence, just so you all can play God.” Agent Mendoza sighed. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard this kind of rhetoric from the girl. The insane conspiracy theories that built up in her beautiful and intelligent -yet troubled- mind generally had a very circular pattern, always ending with a “coverup” of some sort of another. Always placing blame on government machinations, and the people behind it all. But, the Agent also was not a least bit surprised considering how much information Tessia had acquired in such a short amount of time from their mainframes alone. The girl’s innate abilities to tap into and travel at great distances secured computer networks with the right amount of time has been a cause for concern. “Tessia, I don’t have time for this right now. Just please eat something, get dressed, and meet me in Studio-C in one hour.” The woman, clearly a bit put-off by the conversation, turned on her heel and headed for the door. “Who’s Rachel?” [i]Shit.[/i] With fingers wrapped around the handle, Miranda stopped just short of opening the door, pausing for a moment and hoping that the flushed feeling in her face would go unnoticed. While it was one thing that the nineteen year old meta-human could telepathically link and read countless computer systems, the Agent at least felt a small comfort in knowing she couldn’t read minds. “That is no one you need to be concerned with.” Mendoza finally said, opening the door and stepping through. “Please be on time.” Her stern voice echoed as the door closed.