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| Incursion; Adam plot, the team returns to the Hub | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 24 2009, 10:37 AM (1,176 Views) | |
| Owen Harper | Dec 4 2009, 04:56 PM Post #21 |
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Jam
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Owen staggered over to the couch and sat down heavily. He was shaking, and he felt sick. He ran. Panic and adrenaline flooding his system, he didn't look where he was going or care about what was in his way, he just barrelled on, until he wasn't sure where he was or who he was or what he was running from. He just knew he had to get away, because it hurt and it wouldn't stop. He let Andy walk away. He couldn't make out what was real, but it wasn't this. But he didn't want this other thing, the terrible memories hovering at the edges of his consciousness. He didn't know what was right, or what was his. |
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| Andy Davidson | Dec 4 2009, 07:10 PM Post #22 |
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Blames The Jam
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OOC: Andy's going up to the kitchenette. New thread: 'Blowing Off Steam' |
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| Martha Jones | Dec 4 2009, 07:47 PM Post #23 |
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Torchwood's Finest
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Martha went over to Tosh's workstation to join Andy and Owen after a moment of trying to get into Andy's terminal with her own login. As she approached, she could see that they'd managed to log in at least, and they were looking at CCTV footage. She recognised the footage she'd stumbled upon earlier of the two of them fighting in Medbay just as Andy turned away and walked past her, looking stunned. "Andy?" she called, but he ignored her and resolutely headed away from the workstations. When she turned back to look at the screen, the footage had been replaced with garbled pixels. Owen had turned away from the workstation as well and sat on the couch, pale and shaking. "Owen, what's wrong?" she asked, stepping towards him. "Are you okay?" Edited by Martha Jones, Dec 4 2009, 07:48 PM.
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| Owen Harper | Dec 4 2009, 08:02 PM Post #24 |
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Jam
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Owen shook his head. "I was --" his mouth was dry. Afraid of him. Angry. Jealous. "It's not real." He looked at his hands. "None of this is real." He looked up at her. "What are we supposed to do? Do I --" Do I really love him? |
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| Martha Jones | Dec 4 2009, 08:41 PM Post #25 |
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Torchwood's Finest
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Martha joined Owen on the couch, but sat far enough away that he wouldn't feel crowded by her. "I don't know, but whatever's going on, we'll get it sorted. I saw that video of you and Andy fighting earlier when Mainframe was misbehaving while I was cleaning up the CCTV footage from the park. That's probably why you could bring it up just now, Mainframe still had it in memory. I couldn't believe it either, but as far as I can tell it wasn't edited. Earlier, Adam said he remembered you and Andy behaving erratically for a while when you all got back from 1925. Is that what you remember?" |
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| Owen Harper | Dec 4 2009, 08:55 PM Post #26 |
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Jam
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He remembered snarling and snapping, circling like wary dogs, testing each others' boundaries. Fighting, afraid of someone knowing so much about him. But he also remembered that feeling of comfort, of relief, that someone knew him and understood. No need for explanations, or drawing old pains out into the light. Feeling safe. But that was so good, so perfect, it couldn't be real. He thought back to that morning, lazing about, kisses easy and familiar, but the details were faded, like a dream. "I remember both. Not -- not that I remember this other ...life, better, but everything's confused now. I don't remember having that fight, but -- I know, seeing it, that it happened." His hands trembled as he thought of Katie. "Memory's a tricky thing. I thought I spent the week after getting back from 1925 getting tested six ways from Sunday, then moving into Andy's flat--" his bed, could hardly keep more than three feet between them, if they wanted to, which they didn't "-- but that obviously never happened." |
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| Martha Jones | Dec 4 2009, 09:11 PM Post #27 |
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Torchwood's Finest
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"What do you mean, it never happened?" she asked. "Of course the two of you moved in together. You've lived together since before I started working here." She frowned, suddenly confused. Andy and Owen were inseparable, she'd seen it herself plenty of times, so of course they must live together. That was only logical. But how did she know that? She couldn't remember anyone telling her that, or Andy or Owen mentioning it, for that matter, but she knew it was true. Wasn't it? |
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| Owen Harper | Dec 4 2009, 09:19 PM Post #28 |
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Jam
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"No," Owen said bleakly. "My flat's still there. Hell, most of my shit is still there." Laughter burst forth for a moment. He didn't care about the stuff, he never had, and there it was, damning him. "Gwen made us stop by. I can't --" He shook his head. "I can't imagine anything else, though." He looked away, in the direction Andy had left. The need to touch the other man was pulling at him, but the images of the fight left him unsure, the conflict between the two making him nauseous. |
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| Martha Jones | Dec 4 2009, 09:49 PM Post #29 |
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Torchwood's Finest
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"That's just... I'm sorry, Owen," she replied. If that fact was utterly false, who knows what else in her world might be a fabrication, a lie. Was Tom real? Her mum and dad and sister? Did she just dream about all that time she spent with the Doctor? But if she had only dreamed it, how would she have met Jack, and ultimately come to work at Torchwood? So that part at least was solid and reliable. But what else didn't fit? "You said Gwen made you stop by your flat. Did she say why?" |
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| Owen Harper | Dec 4 2009, 10:10 PM Post #30 |
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Jam
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"To show us that we were wrong." God, it couldn't all be wrong. "None of us believed her when she said that Adam wasn't who he said he was. That he's not part of the team." Adam had been in charge while Jack was gone. But why did Owen have command login codes? And the fight -- if that had happened, Adam would have been the one to sort it out, make them work together. "I don't know if that's true, but there's something going on, and it looks like Adam's involved, somehow." Owen kept scanning the room, like he expected Andy to reappear any moment. The lack of Andy's presence was making Owen antsy, edging out over the fear. Adam had talked to them about the codependency. But -- when? And there was no room for Adam in the medical bay, no sign of any additional presence. OOC: Owen's going to go join Andy shortly. If you want Martha to move on to Gwen on her own, or if Owen shoves her off or whatever, any of those are fine. |
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| Captain Jack Harkness | Dec 4 2009, 10:54 PM Post #31 |
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Director, Torchwood-Three
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"I was clearing up shells and was about to toss a roll of the team's labelled targets. Sorry, I know you're... sentimental, Jack." Ianto flashed a quick, apologetic grin at him and rushed ahead. "They go back years. Uh...digressing. At any rate, Adam's weren't there and I thought that was kind of strange." Ianto's smile kindled an unexpected lift, as if everything weren't falling apart around them all. "Hey," Jack said, a little wan but game, "not sentimental, just lazy." Ianto went on. "Look. I know I'm fuzzy right now. But I keep records, too." Ianto pulled back from the two of them and picked up a torch from a nearby desk. "Martha brought my diary up. I think it's in the med bay. I'll fetch it if you think it'll help." There was no shouting, nothing from behind him were Martha and the others were but Jack's shoulders stiffened as he caught sight of Andy, reading his body and the explosive strain in it. Owen would settle him, but ... he didn't. Andy walked away and Owen let him. Jack watched him go. "Find it," he told Ianto. "And hurry up." He gathered Gwen with him as he turned to the others. "Tosh was always close to Adam," his mouth thinned as old training began, rustily, to kick in. Mental confusion, false memories - there were a dozen alien drugs, devices or creatures that could shape a human mind to their fancy. Jack couldn't trust anyone, not even himself. "So we all believe. And she's missing. You saw here, yes? What about down in the lower levels? Was she with Adam then?" And to Owen and Martha. "What happened?" Faint blue light illuminated them all, and the struggling signature from Mainframe's display bothered him almost more than anything else. Mainframe had been with Torchwood as long as he had - longer, really. Adam missing - and possibly an imposter. Tosh, the same - and perhaps she was not real too? Was that why she was missing now? For a minute, Jack knew exactly why; the horrible shame of it as he'd watched Tosh sign the contract he'd offered then smile at him as if he'd done her a favor. As if he'd been kind. Jack braced a hand against the nearest workstation, awash with the ache of what he'd done, stricken with guilt. Tosh ... Tosh. Of them all he protected her, he was responsible for her. ooc: some of this could be overheard by Martha, for example
Edited by Captain Jack Harkness, Dec 4 2009, 10:56 PM.
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| Martha Jones | Dec 5 2009, 09:48 AM Post #32 |
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Torchwood's Finest
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Martha looked up as Jack and Gwen turned towards her and Owen. "Tosh was always close to Adam," Jack said with a look of concern on his face. "So we all believe. And she's missing. You saw her, yes? What about down in the lower levels? Was she with Adam then? What happened?" "The last time I saw them both was when we were downstairs looking for Gwen and Ianto," Martha replied. "I went to the firing range because Adam said that's where he saw Ianto last, and he and Tosh went to see if they could figure out what's wrong with Mainframe--it's been dodgy all this afternoon--and to try to override the lockdown from the main server room. Ianto tried to call Tosh while you were on your way here, but he couldn't reach her, and we've been busy up here ever since. "And Jack, you should see this CCTV footage we found," she added as she rose from the couch with an apologetic look at Owen. She moved to Tosh's workstation to replay the video, hoping that it hadn't been erased or become corrupted by whatever was wrong with Mainframe. It took a few tries to bring the footage back up, but she finally got it to play again. "See? It's from soon after everyone got back from 1925, and as far as I can tell, it hasn't been tampered with. When I first found it, Adam said that Owen and Andy had behaved very differently right after they got back, and Tosh said she remembered that too. But no one else remembers it that way, do they?" |
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| Owen Harper | Dec 5 2009, 11:15 AM Post #33 |
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Jam
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As Martha rose to cue up the footage again, Owen slipped off the couch. He had no interest in seeing it again. Goaded into moving, and still feeling that insistent tug of missing Andy, he moved in the same direction that Andy had disappeared to. No use putting it off. OOC: Cont'd in Kitchen Area: Blowing Off Steam. |
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| Captain Jack Harkness | Dec 5 2009, 11:45 AM Post #34 |
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Director, Torchwood-Three
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Jack watched the clip in silence, arms crossed. "I don't remember that," he said. "At all." Which, really, made everything easier. Something had gotten to them - even Mainframe - and altered their memories, their thoughts, who they were. He felt the same rush of fury he'd felt all those years ago, when he'd woken in an Agency trauma unit and felt ... empty. Jack also scanned the Hub, looking at the familiar machines, the people around him and wondered if any of it was real. What if this was a game, a set, what if everything were fake? Maybe he'd never really woken up in that Agency unit, maybe he was ... and Jack's face paled at the thought he couldn't stop; maybe he'd gone mad and was still in the Master's hands. For a moment, he couldn't move at all. The terminal screen sputtered into brief darkness then a wavy rainbow pattern, Jack discovered a new and more terrifying worry. "Mainframe is a proto-AI," he said, a little hoarsely. "It has a mind, of a sort. What if those errors we've been chasing were early signs of the attack we're dealing with? It's been going on for days." He reached out, struggling to pull up an access screen and went in with his own emergency codes; meant to override anything else in the system. The visuals hiccuped, steadied and data began to scroll across the screen. anti-viral systems engaged ... data defense systems engaged ... core error detected ... core error detected ... unable to find sub-routine authority ... core error detected ... anti-viral systems engaged ... sub-routine GGHVI**** disrupted ... reinstalling ... sub-routine GGHVU**** disrupted ... reinstalling ... data defense systems engaged ... core error detected ... core error detected ... Then, when Mainframe recognized Jack's authority CASCADING CORE ERROR DETECTED. DATA DEFENSE SYSTEMS ENGAGED. DATA DEFENSE SYSTEMS FAILURE DATA DEFENSE SYSTEMS FAILURE DATA DEFENSE SYSTEMS FAILURE CASCADING CORE ERROR DETECTED. DATA DEFENSE SYSTEMS ENGAGED. DATA DEFENSE SYSTEMS FAILURE DATA DEFENSE SYSTEMS FAILURE DATA DEFENSE SYSTEMS FAILURE EMERGENCY DATA TRANSFER TO TORCHWOOD-ARCHIVES SECURE DATA SYSTEMS REQUESTED. Y/N? "Mainframe," Jack murmured, wrung with unexpected grief. The system was dying. "Mainframe being attacked. Not us. We were just gotten out of the way." He struck the 'N' key, denying the emergency data transfer and dooming everything that Mainframe knew, everything that it was, to a solitary death. And trapping whatever it was that had gotten to Mainframe with it. Edited by Captain Jack Harkness, Dec 5 2009, 11:47 AM.
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| Ianto Jones | Dec 5 2009, 08:08 PM Post #35 |
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Field Agent
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Ianto stepped back into the main work area to rejoin Jack and the team. He hadn't needed the torch to get to the Med Bay, really; the emergency lights were on everywhere and were faint but adequate. Ianto had just wanted to carry something solid... everything around him, it seemed, wasn't. He shook his head. He remembered how Adam had found him a few weeks ago. He'd been in the conference room adjusting settings on one of the new flatscreen television monitors and something inside had tipped over. The text on the monitor asking him to approve hue and brightness levels had blurred and began to swim before him as he felt his cheeks go damp. Adam had come in to retrieve his jacket from his chair and had seen his face and they'd sat together for a while, Ianto talking about Lisa. It was-- It was embarrassing. They'd all lost special people and suffered and seen terrible things but the other team members didn't break down and bawl at random moments. Adam had said he would keep his confidence, but he was certain he'd told Jack that Ianto had been having problems coping. It wasn't as if Jack didn't deserve to know, anyway, if it was affecting his job. But Ianto was sorry it hadn't been Gwen who'd forgotten her jacket; he'd have had to put up with extra clucking and probably a bit of pity but she would have kept his cryfest to herself. Seeing that Jack was intent upon getting into Mainframe via a terminal, Ianto sat at Andy's workstation and placed his diary on top, cracked it open and turned on the torch for extra light. His diary wasn't a diary so much as a diary/appointment book/shopping list/notebook. He'd kept them as long as he could remember being able to write. It didn't contain flights of imagination -- he wasn't a fantasist -- but it was filled with facts: details he noticed about about his first crush, homework assignments, lists of things he wanted for Christmas and 14 and didn't get (all right, he'd kept all of his diaries...who was the sentimental one again?) His memory was fantastic, but he wondered if that weren't sometimes a function of mentally seeing things in print. The diary Ianto kept now was full of duty-related data, with a few personal bits. Nothing terribly intimate or risky for security in case it was lost somewhere. The first entry was dated five months prior. He flipped through, page by page, smoothing the paper as he progressed. Birthdays were listed in the calendar section. Tosh's complicated Indian takeaway order, dates the SUV had been sent in for maintenance, suggested vendors for Gwen's wedding, Owen's request for more scrubs with size listings, reminders for Jack to complete some of Andy's hiring paperwork. Ianto leaned in to decipher some sections in his old shorthand and noted mentions of Jack but skimmed over those bits because that wasn't particularly important now. The important thing was that among the team's food orders and mundane notes about how things were run and cinema show times he'd jotted down there was nothing in Ianto's diary about Adam. At all. He and Adam had interacted a fair bit recently, and certainly Ianto would have listed him along with the others in passing notes. Page after page. Ianto had looked, and there was nothing. Ianto stood. "Jack?" |
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| Gwen Cooper | Dec 7 2009, 10:43 AM Post #36 |
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Field Agent
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Gwen had thought that, perhaps, once everyone believed her, everything would have been all right, the spell they were under would have been broken. But this was Torchwood, not a fairytale, and her relief was short-lived as she began to realise just how much destruction Adam had wrought. Watching Ianto haltingly talk to Jack was particularly painful, as she recognised almost nothing about either one of them in their uncomfortable interaction. She bit her lip, wondering about the awful possibility that whatever had happened couldn't be reversed, that the team she knew was gone now. Jack gripped her shoulder, looking lost, and for once Gwen had no words of comfort for him. "Mainframe being attacked. Not us. We were just gotten out of the way," Jack said, typing commands into a terminal and looking dismayed the results. Gwen's eyes widened. "God. Jack, we have to find Adam, stop him before it's too late." Then Ianto was approaching them, some dawning realisation on his face, and Gwen felt things spiralling every more rapidly out of her control. |
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| Captain Jack Harkness | Dec 7 2009, 03:16 PM Post #37 |
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Director, Torchwood-Three
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"What?" Jack snapped, and then saw the look on Ianto's face. "What?" he repeated, quietly, already not liking what he hadn't heard yet. Mainframe was still fighting for its life on the screen over his shoulder, error messages, and reboot attempts scrolling by as defenses fell one by one. "God. Jack, we have to find Adam, stop him before it's too late." Jack gripped Gwen's hand gently, warm, alive and safe. "We will," he promised. "Alright," Jack raised his voice, looking up to where he could see light and motion near the break area. "Owen, Andy - get back here!" "We need to preserve what we can of Mainframe," he said, starting with what they could do. "There's an active hack going on, that must have been what drew Adam here - the rest," he gestured to his head vaguely, "is camouflage. I bet he was most interested in Tosh because of her skills," and Jack sincerely hoped there was some way to salvage Tosh after all this. He worked as he spoke fighting past Mainframe's damaged systems to interface directly with what he needed - the security system and from there he abandoned the terminal to use his manipulator, engaging its specialized programs to override Mainframe and set an image trace on Tosh and Adam. Jack let it run as he spoke. Edited by Captain Jack Harkness, Dec 7 2009, 06:30 PM.
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| Martha Jones | Dec 7 2009, 07:38 PM Post #38 |
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Torchwood's Finest
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Martha had moved back from Tosh's desk to give Jack room to work. She grew more worried as she watched the status and error messages scroll past on the screen. She couldn't decipher them all, but she knew, even without seeing the increasingly grim expression on Jack's face, that the situation was very bad. She wasn't surprised to learn that Mainframe was a proto-AI. She hadn't worked with Mainframe for long, but she recognised intelligence, if not consciousness, in the computer's responses and the way it assisted her with her tasks. "We need to preserve what we can of Mainframe," Jack said. "There's an active hack going on, that must have been what drew Adam here - the rest," he gestured to his head vaguely, "is camouflage. I bet he was most interested in Tosh because of her skills." "I can't imagine that he would harm her... but then again, I couldn't imagine Adam not being, well, real before now," Martha said with a frown. "I can't help with Mainframe, but I can look for Tosh. I know where they were going when I last saw them." |
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| Owen Harper | Dec 7 2009, 07:56 PM Post #39 |
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Jam
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OOC: Cont'd from Blowing Off Steam Owen felt most of his comfort slide away as he approached the others. If Andy could really be a total stranger, he didn't want to think about the others. He managed to catch the tail end of Jack and Martha's conversation about Tosh. "If Mainframe's down, can we trust the cameras? What about the portable scanners? I don't like the idea of going searching, but I don't know what we can trust right now, if anything." |
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| Ianto Jones | Dec 7 2009, 09:09 PM Post #40 |
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Field Agent
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"What?" Jack asked sharply as Ianto approached. "What?" he said again. "Jack," Ianto said, with a glance at Gwen. "I leafed through my diary, and there's nothing about Adam. He'd be in it -- notes about picking up his favourite tea or just --" Ianto's voice faltered and he took a deep breath. "Everyone's in here, mentioned in some fashion, except for him." He gestured with the closed volume. "Here. Read it if you want to verify what I'm say-" He paused and took in the text on the screens. "Oh god. Mainframe." |
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