hexaflexagons | [Liberation AU]

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[Liberation AU]

The world had changed since one man's cry had sent her crashing across the training room floor, mind ablaze with a single name. And so too had Carolina's place in it.

That she'd awoken alone and scared and dazed, with nothing and no one to anchor her in the recovery ward except the chatter of two imbalanced AI hadn't helped matters. Not with the whispers at her back in the corridors and the feeling of all eyes on her when she'd all but stormed the bridge. She'd been down, yes, but not out. A miscalculation wasn't enough to discourage her, not when she knew that she could handle it. She would prove she could handle it. It hadn't been her fault that the match had been interrupted..

But that hadn't stopped people from staring, clearly wondering just how much more rope was needed for Carolina to hang herself with, for when she took that next fall from the high pedastal she'd worked so hard to climb on top of...

Because that number one slot would be hers again - but not through her own doing. Not in the way it was supposed to count. No, it was 'thanks' to Texas leaving, breaking the trust of the Director and the Project. Attempting to steal other AI. Defection during wartime carried harsh enough penalties as it was, but no, no, Texas had to go one better. She couldn't settle for one death (traitor or no traitor, and oh, it hurt to think of Connie), Texas dared to try and drag the rest of the team down with her. Her team. Her best friend.

Between that news, Iota's petulant whining and Eta's discordant drone in the back of her mind, it had been all Carolina could do to keep from screaming like the child the Director accused her of acting like.

Even now, Carolina could feel the press of two discordant minds on her own, whispering about the shapes in the corridor shadows, how they lingered in the elevator shaft behind York as he stepped out of the dark towards them. "What are you doing here?" Her voice was taunt, wavering in spite of her best efforts, unable to hide the hurt. Across the twin barrels of her plasma rifles, gold visor tipped, tilted to glare as she shook her head. (Distantly, she was aware of the thrum of her weapons', the energy pulse vibrating even through her gloves. The ship shuddered around them, but that, Carolina didn't seem to notice.)

"Why are you helping her?!"

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York wasn't sure he ever would have pulled this off without Delta in tow. He needed to push off the wall at just the right moment, at just the right angle. Delta told him just what spot to aim for to ricochet off in the direction they needed to go, and though it took a couple more bounces they eventually got pushed off in the right direction and headed back to the landing bay.

He couldn't help but be relieved the moment when someone apparently got back to the switch and turn the artificial gravity back on. Now he'd have to carry Carolina along, but at least he wasn't forced to bounce around anymore. Though the huge chest plate didn't make that task an easy one either. It took some maneuvering and some suggestions from Delta but he eventually got her into an approximation of a fireman's carry and hauled her the rest of the way back to their Pelican.

He grunted as he set her down in one of the seats, then stood and pulled the crash bar over her lap. "There." He didn't like the way she was flopped into the seat and he frowned. "Sorry, 'Lina," he muttered, then clicked on his radio.

"Hey, Tex. Reached my objective. Got 'er sitting in the transport. You on your way back?"

"Be there in two." At least Carolina would be out of here and beyond the reaches of the Director soon enough.

It was a lot easier to haul ass through the ship with the gravity back on and her camo unit made it easy to get by without alerting the few that were slowly making their rounds into the mess they'd made. She slipped into the transport ship and gave no warning before turning off her camouflage.

"Start flying. Now."

They'd had a real crash course in flying when they'd fled the first time and he had the engine revved up by the time Tex got there. "Sure thing," he called back, and floored the throttle.

Their luck held as he maneuvered the craft, choosing to enter into orbit of the nearby planet after getting to the far side, out of sight.

"We're going to want to make a planet hop, and soon." This was far too obvious a place for them to be and once the MoI got things under control they were likely to find themselves being pursued if they stuck around.

Her eyes lingered on Carolina as she tried to see how bad of a beating the girl had to take. Any daughter of Allison's and Leonard's wasn't going to be hauled off without a fight, but it didn't look too bad from the little she could see.

She chose a seat across from Carolina rather than next to and got the safety bar down. "I'm ready back here."

"Hang on then, I barely have any fuckin' idea of what I'm doin'." With that, they were off again, hopefully on a good bearing to one of the other planets in the system. Nothing else would be close enough to get to before they ran out of fuel. Hopefully that would be enough.

With that there wasn't much to do but wait until the autopilot got them into orbit. It didn't look like there were any asteroids or anything in their way, so he decided to leave the autopilot to do its job and got up out of the pilot's seat. He entered the doorway to the crew compartment and crossed his arms, leaning against the frame. "How's she looking?"

The readings from Carolina's suit showed all was more or less well, though some cranial trauma was to be expected: York had slammed her head into the wall of the elevator shaft twice. The rest of her vitals read as normal, but it wasn't clear how long it would be until she woke up.

And she wouldn't likely be happy when she did.

Eta and Iota were still silent. How much so because they were (quite rightly) afraid of Omega, or because their host had been offlined was unclear. But they were most certainly listening to the goings on intently.

"She'll be fine. How did you manage to get her in here?"

She was avoiding announcing that she had come back empty handed. Omega had demanded she take the Alpha with her regardless of what condition he was in and was sulking as Tex had opted against it. Really, the AI could be like a child sometimes. A very angry, deadly child, but still.

He wanted to go over and lift her helmet off and get a look at her, even though logically he knew Tex was right. Better to do that when they were sure they were prepared for her to awaken, because that would be the most likely outcome of doing that.

"If you want to know if she came willingly, that answer's no." He was clearly watching Carolina as he entered the troop compartment and took a couple paces closer. "We got into a fight after she wouldn't listen to me. I was pretty lucky to knock her out, considering her armor." He paused. He wanted to take Carolina's hand the way he'd done at her bedside just days before, but it wouldn't be a good situation if she happened to awaken. Instead he stayed where he was, his head angling slightly as though to telegraph his worry over her. In a moment he remembered he'd been talking to Tex and he continued. "Ah, we were at zero-G at that point and we ended up floating around for a while. That was interesting."

"She'll be fine, York," she repeated as she got out of her seat. If Carolina was any daughter of Allison's and Leonard's, it would take a lot more than this to take her down.

"I'll take over flying if you want to keep an eye on her." The woman was going to be pissed at the both of them, but Tex knew she'd be more amenable if she saw York upon waking instead. It might at least minimize any outrages during flight if their tag-along happened to wake up before they landed somewhere.

"Yeah, yeah. I know she will." That didn't keep him from wanting to be able to see her. It would just make him feel better.

"Thanks," he said quietly to her suggestion they switch roles and he chose to sit in the spot across from Carolina. As much as he wanted to hold her hand he knew she would be fit to be tied when she awoke and he wanted to be out of her arm's reach when it came to that.

She settled into the pilot's seat and mapped a course toward a nearby planet. It was colonized with only a few bustling cities on the surface and several small ports they could pull into. The Director would hesitate before bringing his search toward anywhere his authority would be called into question and that was a risk he couldn't take with the nature of the project. He broke too many rules and would need to sweep this fun event under the rug as soon as possible.

York had the autopilot initiated already and she altered its path to head towards one of the planet's smaller ports. It would be a couple of hours before they'd make it and hopefully by then, they could talk some sense into Carolina.

Now that all the excitement was over, the adrenaline had left his system, and it left him feeling a little drowsy. There wasn't much else to do besides doze there in his seat. Delta had offered to run some probabilities as far as their chances of being followed and so forth, but that wasn't something York was interested in hearing right now. Not right now. Especially since so much of the information that D would be working from was speculative. They didn't actually know how much damage the missile barrage had done or what kind of disarray the ship had been left in after the gravity had been turned off. No, for now it was best to watch and wait things out, and try to conserve some energy for what was to come.

With re-entry into the atmosphere shaking things up within the pelican, the first stirrings of consciousness began within Carolina, difficult at first from beneath the sea of mental chatter generated by the other two minds occupying her own. She hadn't really, truly, made time to intergrate with them properly, and now it was an effort to bring the unruly fragments to heel.

That both possessed a(n un)healthly sense of self preservation would either be her salvation, or her undoing.

Behind her visor, green eyes flickered open, and a slow breath was taken as she tried to get her bearings; it took a minute for Carolina to realise that this wasn't the Mother of Invention, a fact backed by the chatter of Iota in her ears, pointing out York across from her.

If he was there, then who was..?

Texas. Of course. (They added kidnapping to their crimes, Eta rumbled, as Iota flickered offside.)

She had no desire to give away the fact she was awake. Instead, her body shifted a little to the left, pressing against the support rails brought down to hold her in place while they were in transit. It was a natural enough action that it wouldn't cause alarm. With the right application of pressure, she could unlock it from its moorings. Even use it against her captors! ..But she'd only get one chance to break away while their guard was down once they'd landed. So for the moment, Carolina bided her time, and waited. And fumed.

The advantage of being an AI was that she didn't have to worry about winding down and needing an immediate rest. There were too many things that could go wrong, as little as they could be and she wasn't going to risk something happening to their ship on their way in. She accessed the ship's mainframe and changed it's designation so when they were hailed, it wouldn't ping as related to the Mother of Invention. Just a small, convoy ship coming to assess the situation on the planet, that was all.

It was a simple enough cover story and she stood to head into the back to make sure York would be on the same page.

"Hey, you awake in there?"

He hadn't noticed her come back but at the sound of her voice he was immediately attentive. "Yeah, of course," he said, sitting up straighter. "Looking like we're in the clear so far?"

"For now. I've chanced the ship's designation, the people planet side won't be able to connect us back to the Mother of Invention if we don't give them reason to," she said and glanced over at Carolina. Looked like she was still down for the count. "What did you tell her before she passed out?"

He sighed. "Not enough. Everything I'd planned to say just went out of my head when I went to tell it to her."

She shook her head and glanced at Carolina. "I had a feeling she wouldn't give you a chance to say much."

She couldn't see his frown but she might hear it in his tone of voice. "I know what I should have said, it's just too late now." He hadn't rehearsed it to himself enough. Why had he gone in so sure he'd get the whole story out in such a high-pressure situation?

Too late, Carolina mentally agreed, resenting both of her kidnappers. She'd given him a chance, more than he should have because she'd believed that York deserved that much, that just maybe she could make him see the folly of his actions.

And all she'd learned was that she didn't know who to trust anymore.

us us us no one everyone wants us can't trust anyone

She mentally ran through checklists of possible destinations they could be headed to, trying not to trip over the white noise of her AI. But she came up short each time, all too aware that she wasn't even certain what system the Mother of Invention had been passing through when they'd sabotaged it. Let alone what planets were in range to be reached by pelican.

Said pelican jostled with a bout of turbulence, and Carolina winced, not quite able to suppress a sound as she was rocked from side to side even with the bars in place. She wouldn't be able to continue feigning unconsciousness for much longer.

She glanced over at Carolina and braced herself as the turbulence passed. That didn't seem to awaken her, though she was curious about how the girl's AIs were handling the trip. "How good of terms is D with the pair in there?" she asked and motioned toward Carolina's head.

"Well...at this point they're not on any terms. You think we should try talking to them?"

"Informing Carolina's AIs of the reasons for our actions will only aid in her understanding once she awakens," Delta offered.

"Yeah, I agree. Let's try it." York sat up, leaned forward a bit. This could be a really important conversation and it needed to go better than the one earlier had gone. "Programs Eta and Iota, online."

At the command, Carolina winced, the two AI buzzing loudly in her head. They did not wait for her to give them approval: two incomplete armored figures materializing, one over each shoulder in cyan and gold. They slowly gravitated towards one another until their outlines blurred into a singular hazy shape before Carolina's visor. A flickering holographic mess which would fall in and out of oversharp focus.

"Command acknowledged." said one, the other's voice overlapping in a hiss. "trAItors"

"Tell that to the Director," she replied and folded her arms over her chest. There were a lot of different directions this conversation could go and Omega wasn't offering any suggestions for help. Whether this went well or poorly, he had decided it didn't matter. Either outcome could be warped to his benefit and he imagined it wouldn't be long before he managed to get Tex to kill off her main competition, one way or another.

"I'm Beta and if you want to know what's really been going on instead of the pretty little lie you've been buying into, then allow access to the ship's network." The gift she had been given spoke for itself and she had the files downloaded that she could share. Her only hope was that they weren't too far gone to care about the evidence.

The pair fizzled, briefly unmerging to exchange a glance as they gossiped between them, while Carolina's mind reeled beneath their static shock. She couldn't buy that line, couldn't believe what Tex had just stated, though whether the doubt was fed by her AI or she was feeding them, she could not have said.

Eventually, the two (three) turn their focus back to the one claiming AI siblinghood. "Warned about lies, warned about you," was the cautious timbre of Iota, before blurring back, letting Eta take over. Yes, thought Carolina. Even the Director had to admit you were flawed in the end, that you couldn't be trusted, look at what you've done.

"How do we know it is not a trap, to get us out, get us away." The two AI nodded out of sync. "Sigma said you would try such things."

(When did he say that?, she demanded, unable to remember, but neither of Carolina's AI deigned to answer.)

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note to self, make more icons later

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