[Open Post]

[missiondeterminant]

[Toplevels in the comments below! Canonmates, cross-canon, rp-canon, etc is all good.]

Comments

[mamabot]

[ Kara, meanwhile, is deeply familiar with dread. Walking through Zlatko's basement, freeing the androids he toyed with, thirium pounding through her body with every second that passed while she'd still been searching for Alice -- to say nothing of all that came before and after. Fear has driven her to make a lot of choices she regrets, but it has also moved her to action in the first place. Fear for someone else's life -- empathy -- set her free from the constraints of her programming.

(She doesn't remember the day she was "born" and how she'd been like this from the very beginning, and that's probably for the best. The dread that sat cold in her mind as she went dormant when put in a box to be sold... It's better to worry about Alice now, and to feel like she can actually make a difference if she tries.)

So she feels dread now too, but thinks nothing of it. The better part of the past few days was spent denying Alice's true nature, after all. This? It's easy as pie.

Barely sparing Connor a glance, she walks into the church, now big and silent and in pieces. It's the silence that bothers her, really upsets her. If she hadn't removed her LED, it'd blink red in the dim lighting. ]

Can you-- can you scan for people? Can you tell if anyone's alive?

[missiondeterminant]

Not like this.

[He could scan for heat signatures, for objects that break up the established pattern of their surroundings, for faces that come up in his databases. But the rubble of the church is too chaotic for his scanners to be able to determine anything from, and they're going to have to search for survivors by hand.

He really hopes they won't find anyone; that everyone somehow escaped, and so the church is just destroyed but empty and that's the reason for the silence. But he knows that's logically unlikely, and it's confirmed a moment later as he spots the first casualty.

It's an android he doesn't know--no surprise, he barely knows anyone--shot by the soldiers and still spilling thirium onto the floor even though their LED is dark. Connor stares down at them a moment before pulling himself out of the mess of emotions swirling around in his head, trying to refocus and stepping carefully around the body.]

Where was Alice when you saw her last?

[He addresses Kara quietly, but his voice still seems too loud in the somber place.]

[mamabot]

[ Staring at the mess of rubble and debris in fromt of them, Kara isn't sure she wants to find Alice here or not -- especially not when Connor finds a victim of the raid. Guilt fills her mind, mixing with the relief she feels at realizing it isn't Alice. She thinks that guilt is strange, hot and cold simultaneously. It makes her want to stay put and run away, laugh and cry, scream and stay quiet. ]

Uh-- [ It takes her a second to refocus her racing thoughts on the matter at hand. ] By the front pews. She got up to look at the altar. She only took a few steps when--

[ When the humans attacked.

She squeezes her eyes shut, feeling useless here; the best she can do is clean this place up. That's what she was built for. That, and taking care of children, and right now, it's all too likely she failed. ]

I shouldn't have let her go alone. [ Shouldn't have let her go at all. ]