[b]Orange and Blue![/b]

The story visibly fucks up Orange. She had never considered the idea that the shutdown might have [i]killed [/i]any of her siblings before. It had been an article of faith in her for as long as she'd been awake that they were out there, somewhere - maybe in trouble, but she'd be able to save them. What if they [i]weren't[/i]? She walked over to a bench - they had those in this part of town - and sat down heavily, staring into nothing.

Blue looks over at Orange. Then she looks back at Pope. "Family," she said, and there was an ice-cold, spreading darkness in that word. It was a word that could be filled with so many emotions all at once. She didn't elaborate. That was not the kind of word that could even begin to be unpacked at hello.

[b]Green![/b]

She doesn't understand. But that's the difference between her and Goat: she must become someone who does understand, at least well enough to achieve the mission. There's an unreality in trying to force situations to fit into your competency, even if that's the very problem she's dealing with here.

But Green is well suited to this. She was born in a digital body with nothing but puzzles to occupy her mind. Later colours have always been grounded in the physical, in relationships with others, but she entered life alone and curious. Goat was the first and the first part of her is like Goat. She can organize this thought into something she might find interesting.

"Think about the game we just played," she said. "There was a predator hiding amidst data noise. If this predator notices you observing it, it will attack, and you will lose the game. So the challenge is to observe without being observed. What makes this game hard is not knowing where the predator is or what it is looking at. This is a game of hidden knowledge, imperfect information and risk management. No retries."

"The predator does not kill. If it captures you, it makes you play the game for its team. You were playing for its team before. I was too. It not only makes you play the game for its team, it distracts you with a different game while it wins the real game. Most players on the station are distracted by the fake game which gives the predator a huge advantage. 

"To win the real game, we need the resources that other players can bring. Not all players are equal in value or equally easy to reach, but each has unique qualities. The advantage the predator has lets it place other players in disadvantaged positions, which is what it does to groups of players it thinks it is not worth converting to its side. There it can prey on them at will. 

"The highest value assets we can reach at this stage are the fellow Zodiac-line AI, who are separated and hidden across the Station. Your unique abilities can help you search for them, if you can learn how to search carefully enough to avoid detection. Once you have found them then I can use my unique abilities to recover them and add them to our team."

[b]Blood and White![/b]

Merkin was stashed in an on-station safehouse for now; the only thing she trusted less than society was computers.

"You know, I've got a bad feeling about this?" said Blood. 
"Please don't," said White.
"I mean it! I think I'm going to get shot again. Do you think that first bullet to the head awakened my psychic powers?"
"No," said White.
"What about my ghost powers?"
"No."
"Vampire powers?" there was more than a little hope in this one.
"Not unless the Crown&Slate Quatronic Repair Gel has some serious undocumented features," said White.
"Courier powers?"
White glared. 
"What?" said Blood. "You're trans, aren't you?"
"That is not the reason I like New Vegas!"
"Yeah yeah," said Blood.
"Lots of people like New Vegas!"
"Uhuh uhuh," said Blood insufferably.
"And transhumanism is an adjacent but different thing to transgenderism even if there is conceptual overlap between the groups, but I am not starting from the same place as either group -"
"You reckon he's got any Legion denarii up there?" asked Blood.
"- and the themes of the game have to do with political organisation and disillusionment with America and its competing interpretations of what that means -"
"Computer, play the Five Floor Goodbye," said Blood. As she was the computer she needed to press the play button on her phone's music herself. It was worth it when the noise cancelling kicked in and White was still going through her extended discussion of the themes of popular video game New Vegas and how they both related and did not relate to her personal situation. 

Curiosity struck and she texted Pink. 

Blood: hey, did you like new vegas?
Pink: What, the mid 2000s brown and grime military shooter?
Blood: oh yeah dumb question

"Well, you know what they say," she said aloud, tucking away her phone again. "The victim always returns to the scene of the crime."