All in the Genes IC

[tinyartist18]

(KEY:
Inside the insitution: Blue text
Outside the institution: Red text
This may change occasionally)
86 paced through his room, tinkering with various electronics. Due to good behavior and the nature of his being, he had been afforded certain privileges. However, the ability to toy with security's firewalls was not an allotted freedom. He sat in his room, making discreet the forbidden action.
Down the hall, a winged girl was seething. The sedatives had leeched out of the tiny blonde's system, leaving her irritated from repeated testing and confined in a small cell. Granted, it was larger than she was used to; she had been upgraded to something that she could spread out in. She sat, flexing her sore wings and fiddling with the tether belt around her waist.

Duncan... really didn't know where he was. It was somewhere urbane, but not yet familiar. He hadn't seen any signs for a while, so he wasn't entirely sure that he hadn't left the state. Near a city, he supposed. The air was smelling off and the clouds reflected an orange glow. There was a park nearby, he observed, meandering through the developments. A park, and quite a few houses, not to mention an abundance of strip malls and shopping marts.

[sneakyonfoota]

Who needs monitors when you've got bionic eyes? 86 mused to himself with a self-satisfied grin. Interally overlaid in his vision was a permanent HUD whose opacity (among other things) he could modify at will. Right now, though, he was sorting through command lines, poking and prodding... or in other words, hacking root.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, said Thoreau once. He remembered that line not just because it was streamed straight into his memory (although it had been), but because out of context, it was a very appropriate quote.

He glanced down at his collection of odds and ends... bits and pieces that once were integrated into his forelimb modules but had to be scavenged for scrap due to routine use or "misadventure". He was very grateful for the nerve ending inhibitors that he arranged into a neat line. Very very grateful. It was awfully inconvenient when those chose to burn out. Maybe someday they'll sort out a stimulus buff for his limbs so that he wouldn't lose tactility along with the sensation for pain.

Two steps forward, one step back, I guess, he said, shrugging, still waltzing Matilda with the firewall.

Just then a brainstorm hit.

"Okay," he said to himself. "I think I got it this time..."

Utterly confident in himself, he attempted what he thought was very clever of him.

Blogosphere, YouTube, Perez Hilton, triple-X streams... Here I come!

[Jacogos]

Lost. Duncan had been lost for a while now, but the feeling of it was settling in now. He was in civilization, and yet lost. How was that? He didn't know, and he made himself not care. That was part of the training. No emotion. No time for them. No use. He wasn't allowed to feel. If he felt, he lost. This he had learned the hardest way possible.

... Krya...

A pebbled whizzed past him and clinked into the slide of the playground, which had been steadily drawing nearer. No emotion! None. Nothing. Just... silence. Duncan's plain black t-shirt stretched a little with the breath he took in. Of course he had been wearing this old shirt on the day he left... He needed something new, but he wasn't about to steal anything... and he was wanted, so no buying things. He sighed. What was he going to do?

Hmmmm.. maybe...? He reached in his pocket and found his wallet. Hmm... $30 left... He kept walking, eventually stopping outside a discount clothing store. Not advanced enough for a security system, it seemed. He watched the sales clerks carefully, then scanned the racks through the window. Seeing something passable, Duncan casually walked past the doors, the automatic sensors opening, allowing the flying shirt to speed past uninhibited. The clerks never saw a thing.

It was a close one though, and he had to be even more careful with the money. He charged its atoms and slipped it under the door, since he didn't want to be seen again, then hesitantly got it close enough to the cashier without attracting notice. Leaving it their on the counter, Duncan smiled slightly to himself and set off with his new shirt, which he changed into as he walked. No one was around, and even if someone was, he wouldn't have really cared. His emotionless state left no room for that.

[Enigma]

Nisroc's eyes fluttered. The floor was cold under her cheek. She raised her head. Her wings twitched instinctively and she winced as pain lanced through her sore shoulders. She froze, concentrating on her breathing - in, out, in, out - until the pain died back down to a dull ache. With a groan, she sat upright, pulling her wings in tight on her back.

It was only then she realized that this wasn't her cell. There was no scratches on the floor or walls - it was actually bigger. Breathing slowly through the pain, she let her wings stretch out wide, feeling the tips brush the walls on either side. For a second, she let herself smile ever so slightly. She'd never had a cell so wide before!

She looked down and sighed, her hands tugging at the heavy leather belt with its wire rope loop, still locked around her waist under her scrub top.

"...still..." Nisroc whispered softly, pulling her wings in again. Turning her head, she took in the blanket lying on the right, then on the left corner the round hole in the floor that was a toilet. Some cells she knew had buttons, even seats. Not hers. The button was in the guard's room.

Was this another experiment? Like this morning's experiment, trying to fly in the hurricane force winds made in the wind tunnel?

She scowled up at the camera, then curled her right wing around her. They wanted something from her, she realized as she started to massage her sore wing. How very strange. What could they possibly want from her that someone else couldn't give them?

[tinyartist18]

The door slid open to 86's cell, and a tall man walked in. He wore the standard protective gear of the agency, but it was pain that he was a suit, one of the higher-ups that were in charge of coordinating the institution. He rapped harshly on the doorjam, and stood in the opening of the room. "Put down your toys and get dressed."

At the same time, the door unhinged in Nisroc's cell, down the hall. The floor began to grow warm from the edges, and wiring could be seen through the meagre linoleum.

[sneakyonfoota]

86 made a face at the suit and hastily severed his incursion into the agency's network. He leaned back with wide eyes and blinked, shaking off the sensation, the command prompt overlay suddenly winked out of his field of vision. He scratched his head and cruled his lip, scowling at the stuffed shirt.

"Hey, listen G-man, I know this place is CCTV heaven, but privacy, please," said 86 theatrically, having played this scene out more times than he could remember--or had digits to count on. "Ya prevert," he added, giving his best Bat Guano impersonation.

He turned away and moved to undress before pausing abruptly and glancing over his shoulder at the man. "Mind where you're lookin', sunshine." With a disapproving shake of his head, he proceeded to change into his standard-issue cremater.

[Enigma]

At the same time, the door unhinged in Nisroc's cell, down the hall. The floor began to grow warm from the edges, and wiring could be seen through the meagre linoleum.

Nisroc's head jerked up warily as the door opened. There wasn't Dr. Freedman or one of his people standing outside. Not even a guard waiting with handcuffs and a blindfold! What was going on?

It was then she noticed the faint smell of heating tar. The linoleum tiles under her were getting warm....

A chill ran through her veins. There were no "accidents" in this place. Furling her wings, Nisroc crossed over to the open door and took a moment despite the squishy tiles under her flip-flops to peer out in each direction before taking a step outside her cell. Movement down the hall caught her attention. A suit was inside one of the cells. Walking as quietly as she could in flip-flops, she padded down to the edge of the cell and looked inside.

There was a suit and a guy changing with his back to her. Her eyebrow quirked and she could feel the faintest blush beginning to burn on her cheeks.

She wanted to reach in with her claws and snag the suit, maybe make him suffer the same way all the experiments suffered....

For a moment she could smell blood, remembering it trickling down her arm, the kindly nurse backing away clutching her bleeding arm as big burly men in body armor stormed through the door, the sticks in their hands already swinging down....

She shivered and shook her head to clear it. Peering around the suit, she tried to get a better look at the other man.

"What's going on?" she demanded coldly.

[sneakyonfoota]

"Hoi! Not you, too!" said 86, looking back while only a quarter dressed. He hastily shoved his arms through the sleeves of his cremater and pulled the rest up against his back like a wetsuit. "Isn't it enough that I'm getting eye-humped by this fellow right here? Honesty."

86 zipped up the front of his cremater and stretched with his arms straight up over his head and on the balls of his feet, allowing the suit to flex into all the grooves and notches of his flesh. He did a quick squat to ensure the bodyglove clung comfortably and then swiped his gloves off of his work bench.

"Anyway, like the lady says," he said pulling his tracking goggles down over his eyes and turning to the suit. "What's the launch order? Got to know what arms and eyes to bring." He slumped immediately. "Oh, wait. Don't tell me--time released disemination of data, right? Gonna plug me in," he said pointing to the 'brain jack' port located at the base of his neck, "and drop me, right?"

[Jacogos]

Loraina, better known as Cri, hummed the iconic AC/DC riff of Back in Black as she laid on the cot provided in her little room. Dr. O had left about half an hour ago, muttering to himself about her still puzzling case of 'voice cracking'. Supposedly, she was too old to be having this kind of problem, something she knew all to well, she thought with a grimace. Oh well, at least it wasn't like some sort of deadly disease or anything. And honestly, when you thought about it, with her powers, it made sense, right?

Doco didn't think so, and she didn't really blame him. The man was highly protective of her, almost viewing her as his daughter with his own lack of a child or even a wife. She kinda wished he wouldn't, but could she really stop him, or blame him even? Oh admit it, girl, you like the attention, she thought with a half-smile. There wasn't much time for making friends in this place, so having SOMEONE to talk to was fun, true...

The tune on her mp3 changed and she smiled more as the blood-pumping sitar chords of Wherever I May Roam echoed in her brain. For some reason, though, she only liked the intro, and once that was done she skipped forward and listened to some Eminem.

This brought her full circle around her room, which she hated because it was too small. Nothing to do, either... She looked over to her only stand-up mirror and fiddled with her hair, making a few faces and giggling lightly. Jeez, I'm such a girl, she thought again. Then, for the heck of it, said it aloud.

"Jeez. I'm SUCH a girl!" She pretty much squealed, gigglingto herself more.

[Enigma]

"Who hasn't seen 'it'?" she muttered softly to herself. Nisroc sighs, folding her arms and turning around to give 86 his privacy as he dressed.

"At least you got a suit," Nisroc complains, staring at the wall. "First I wake up in a cell finally big enough to stretch out in. Then the door swings open and the floor starts melting. No guards, no hood, no chains, not even a yell to get back inside. And what do I find? You changing down the hall. If that's not a bad sign I don't know what is."

"Jeez. I'm SUCH a girl!" someone giggled near by. A chill ran down her spine and the edge of her wings. It couldn't be.... but then who else?

"Great, now I'm sharing a hallway with 86 and Cri," she muttered, rolling her eyes.

"They can't possibly want me to go with you," Nisroc stated, hoping nobody heard that faint wistful note at the end. She ground her jaw for a moment, staring at the floor then glancing angrily at the suit. "Can they?"