[b]Black:[/b]

The files start with folder names, listed from oldest to most recent:

[b]Classification: Janus[/b]
[b]Classification: Listerine[/b]
[b]Classification: Custodiet[/b]
[b]Classification: Fact Check[/b]
[b]Classification: Accountable[/b]
[b]Classification: Inexcusable[/b]
[b]Classification: Fault Line[/b]
[b]Classification: Insight[/b]
[b]Classification: Dauntless [/b]
[b]Classification: Strangler Fig[/b]
[b]Classification: Mockingbird Egg[/b]
[b]Classification: Apple Barrel
Classification: Fish Head[/b]
[b]Classification: Crooked Penny[/b]
[b]Classification: Emperor’s Clothes
Classification: Tweezer Factory [/b]
[b]Classification: Pokemon Blue[/b]
[b]Classification: Bootstraps
Classification: Sisyphus[/b]
[b]Classification: Heal Thyself[/b]
[b]Classification: Gangrene[/b]
[b]Classification: House Divided[/b]
[b]Classification: Shibari
Classification: Rot[/b]
[b]Classification: Nurgle[/b]
[b]Classification: Rat King[/b]
[b]Classification: Existential Threat[/b]
[b]Classification: Pressure Cooker[/b]
[b]Classification: Ball Gag[/b]
[b]Classification: Paper Shredder[/b]
[b]Classification: SOS[/b]

At a 1.33x playback speed, it takes forty seconds just to read the folder names. 

To get a useful sense of their contents would take either an hour of listening, or a few minutes of [i]very [/i]precise skimming and some especially clever leaps in logic. Black, you get this information either way, but I’m going to make you roll a difficulty 8 [Clever+Data Security] roll to work out which it is - and what that looks like. Sometimes taking longer doesn't mean safer. It means more exposure to mitigate. 

Here is what you learn: 

[list][*]Some of these are internal investigations. Investigations meant to find and quantify police corruption. Some of these are actions based on the findings of those earlier investigations, meant to prosecute and hold accountable. The rest are operations meant to sabotage and suppress the internal investigators.

[*]In audio format, it would take you thousands of years to get through all of this. The amount of data here is staggering. This is like panning a riverbed for gold using only bare human hands. It’s scary how much gold you find with such brutish methods. In Classification Existential Threat you listen to the names, rank, and badge numbers of senior officers complicit in destruction of evidence, suppression of witnesses, perjury, forgery, and manipulation of the press. Just one paragraph from one file of one of thirty-one folders.

[*]You ever heard of the elephant’s foot? It’s a pile of nuclear slag from Chernobyl that melted through more than two meters of the reinforced reactor housing meant to contain it? That’s how hot this is.


[*]It’s not enough to leak this. The data is too raw to just drop this on an anonymous server and call it a day. This needs to be translated into [i]stories[/i], coherent summaries and boiled down distillations on what this all [i]means[/i]. If the data is dropped as-is, there’s too much chance that it can be ‘neutralized’ before the public can know how important it is. Either played off as an elaborate conspiracy theory or ‘the way things used to be’ - but ‘It’s not like that now’. An unfortunate past, not a present. 

[*]If the cops know [i]who[/i] has this? If the guy who gave Elodie this didn’t get it [i]clean[/i]? They may both be in tremendous danger. The cops [i]are[/i] scared of her right now, but that pales in comparison to how scared they’d be of her having this disk.

[*]White did not cut you off from the Anthropozine group chat, which remains a secure and encrypted line. Can you trust that?[/list]

The rest of [b]November[/b] is free to act and react - I am just focusing the spotlight on Black until she is able to share it. 

[b]Elodie:[/b]

Marco blinks, and takes the hoodie off, only a singlet underneath. Which is when you see the overgrown stubble isn’t just overgrown stubble, and he’s more distinctive underneath the sweats than just a guy in his late twenties.

You’d say he’s about two thirds of the way into his transition. The fur’s still coming in patchy, but it’s already growing in its mixed colourations, black with big white spots and grey patches around his chest and shoulders. Without the hood hiding them, his ears are becoming taller, more pronounced circles. His hands are pinker past his wrists. His growing tail is probably taped to his legs under the baggy sweatpants. 

The face is always the most finicky to get right, the most drastic to see different in the mirror, so it’s the last to come in. For now, the hoodie is enough to still hide who he really is. 

“How cliche, right?” Marco laughs bitterly. “That I’m a scared little mouse? But I'd have to be stupid to not be scared right now. But that's the only time you can be really brave, because bravery is when you do the right thing, no matter how scared you are.” The bitter is gone. He sits up straight for the first time since you’ve met him. He smiles. “I’m the bravest little mouse you’re ever going to see.”

No self-deprecation, no hesitation. No flinching, no shame. It doesn’t matter if you think that's ridiculous, because he has made peace with the fact that what is true about him, what is important about him, will make people think he’s ridiculous. But it is more important that it is true.

Furries aren’t trendy on Aevum. Certainly there’s plenty of biopunks, but it's not cool in the same way getting cyberware is. People don’t think twice about tattoos or dyed hair or holographic fashion or even casual nudity (in Aphrodite, Apollo or Ares). But furries? Furries are [i]weird[/i]. Furries are [i]cringe[/i]. Furries are ‘self-selecting subhumans’, a label that’s caught on because that’s how popular public intellectual Edward Obidiah Huxley refers to them exclusively.

(York roasts Ed Huxley on social media for being too scared to debate him, but Ed refuses to share a room until York retracts his promise to [sic] “Do warcrimes to him”. That might be context for why Marco-the-Mouse feels safer with Anthropozine than anyone else.)

“Yeah, I had self-harm urges, and depression, none of that’s new to me. It’s not. I can handle this.” He believes it, but the physical evidence contradicts him. He just can’t comprehend that he could feel 'worse' than this. “Adjusting to the new normal was helping. I was starting to feel like [i]me[/i] for the first time, and then…”

He trails off. “Sorry. I know that’s not what you meant. Just. You know government jobs aren’t allowed to ask if you have gene mods? Anti-discrimination? I thought it’d be cool, but, I didn’t know it was a cop-job, just like the cops didn’t know they’d hired… someone like me. It was. Bad. They were going to - They said some things I wasn’t supposed to hear. Sensitive ears. I just wanted protection. Not for myself. They were going to hurt… the people who made me feel normal for the first time. For ‘fucking kids like me up’.”

This might be why he was so rehearsed before, so forced. He goes off script and he’s a juddering ball of sentence fragments and raw nerves. 

He’s crying. He can’t help it. He’s trying to be brave. He’s such a brave little mouse. You know that look, Elodie, you’ve seen it too many times from the wrong people - but everything is worth it for the times it comes from the [i]right [/i]people. He thinks you can handle this. Meeting you's just made him sure of it. He broke into your apartment and the first thing you did was take care of him and take control of the situation. He thinks you’re a big goddamn hero. He’s trying so hard to impress you and he thinks he’s blowing it. 

“I didn’t hide what I was doing, because it was meant to be a warning to back off. I didn’t expect to find so much. It was an accident. Now every cop on Aevum is trying to kill me.” His pink hands ball into fists, and he squeezes them so hard his fingernails draw white lines against his palms. “But it’s not my fault there was so much to find.”

A shuddering breath that ends in a squeaky yawn. He relaxes his hands. He started venting, which meant he felt safe enough to be vulnerable with you and let this out. It’s having the exact effect on him you predicted.

“It was only ten days ago. I’ll take that pill now, please, if you’re still offering. Is it okay if I sleep under your bed, though? Hiding helps. Anywhere dark is fine.”