Author: artemis.ronan

[Post description intentionally left blank]

Charlene directs her internal agent to connect her to an encrypted line.

Through a chevron overlaid on her vision, she goes over the plans one more time, ensuring every obstacle has been considered and accounted for. After flipping through a few different pages, and cross-referencing some details, she is finally satisfied with her prep work.

Charlene relaxes a bit, clears her vision overlays, and cracks a rare, genuine smile as she looks out at her view of the Oasis streets. Her agent hums away for a few more seconds, before a small alert appears, notifying Charlene that the encrypted connection has been established. She takes a moment, clears her thoughts, and begins carefully transcribing her message…

Reed finds himself in a dark room, handcuffed to a table that has been welded to the ground.

Four hours go by – Reed tries to make himself comfortable, and get some rest.

The soft steps of a pair of sleek, matte-cream-leather high top athletic shoes echoes down a side hallway in the Trickle Down Hydroponics Tower. There’s a beep, as one of the security doors opens, and then a few seconds later, closes again, and locks.

Entering into the main lobby, the figure occupying these shoes… pauses – an open office door catching their eye.

Reed, Sedoy, Mavis, and ISO stand frozen in place in their apartment lobby, not wanting to make any sudden movements and risk the wrath of the three Oasis PD-branded Very Heavy Pistols trained on their heads.

ISO opens his mouth as if to speak, and then closes it a second later with a frown.

He tries again, reaching deep to summon some sort of explanation, something he could say that will get them to the other side of this room, and to the relative freedom of the city streets… but for the first time in his life…

ISO finds himself at a loss for words.

ISO struggles in vain with the restraints of the tangle-foot carpet, as Reed’s slashes into the reaching tendrils. The combined scuffle does an excellent job of muffling the faint hum of an Oasis PD drone hovering into the room behind Sedoy. The near-unheard sound sparks something in her subconscious, drawing forth memories of the past few days – she reflects, temporarily, on the simpler times… when the biggest problems she had to worry about were finding water filters… or a building the group could burn down to satiate that pyromaniacal rockstar’s creative ambitions.

She snaps out of her recollections a moment too late. Before she has any chance to react…

The Oasis night air feels like a heavy fog threatening to envelop Reed as he stands on the edge of the apartment building’s roof; his face gone starkly pale while contemplating the implications of what he sees.

A noise breaks through the haze of Reed’s consciousness. He hears a Russian accent calling something that sounds like his name, followed by some other words, swallowed by the smoke in the air, and he turns to face the sound, the faces of Mavis, Iso, and Sedoy come into focus.

—
Produced by Starling Ronan

ISO’s eyes are fixed to his agent’s screen, as he sees it change to “CALL ENDED” before he even hangs up. June Gold’s glibness during their call, coupled with how quick she was to hang up the phone, sets off alarm bells in his still anesthesia-ridden head.

Something seems wrong.

He just can’t quite figure what that thing might be.

—
Produced by Starling Ronan