Logs:On Further Reflection

On Further Reflection
Dramatis Personae Ansel, Lily, Mirror
In Absentia	2023-07-06 "We are going to get Joshua next, hm?"
Location <PRO> Testing Room E 31, Lassiter Research Facility - Ohio
There are dozens if not hundreds of rooms like this in the sprawling research complex, and while their specific purposes vary, most of them could easily be mistaken for exam rooms at a regular doctor's office. This one, today, is doing its damned best to look like a police station interrogation room. All but the cabinets actually bolted to the walls or floor have been wheeled away, leaving only the cold steel table in the center, the sole occupant sitting facing the two-way mirror. Across from her, two empty steel chairs, only recently vacated by her interrogators. Is there actual protocol for discovering one of your employees is a spy? Since the riot, Lily's life had been limbo after limbo as Lassiter tries to Figure That Out. Some orderly has taken pity and give her scrubs during her stint in solitary, taking the scraps of her clothes away along with her keycard. Some food, little though it looks like Lily had eaten. Some water, though the paper cup in front of her handcuffed hands has been empty for maybe half an hour now. Presumably, upstairs, the telepath that was just here and the head of IT are logging into her computer and trying to salvage the data Lily has been deleting and doctoring for weeks. Here, Lily, hair hanging loose and stringy around her face, is staring vacantly at the paper cup. Takes it in her hands, and slowly starts to tear at the rim. There's a beep at the door, and it opens -- just a crack, at first. Then a little wider, a familiar face -- large neat afro, brightly patterned scarf tied neatly around it like a headband, jeans, a black tee shirt with the Gunnerkrigg Court symbol emblazoned on its chest -- pokes through. Sophie's eyes are wide, an expression of worry etched across her face. "Lily! They've been saying -- well. The things they've been saying. You're some kind of a spy, can that be true? Been a bit hard to sort the real from the utter insanity the past days, how did you --" Her shoulders fall. She keeps one sneakered foot holding the door, and her badge jiggles restlessly in her hand where she taps it against her opposite palm. "Oh," is softer, "look at you." Lily's bloodshot eyes are slow to focus on the scarf, on Sophie's face. Her mouth (swollen at one side, still) start to twitch up towards a smile -- the motion is quickly aborted. Lily presses her lips together, flat and thin. "Look at me," she echoes, voice flatter than Sophie has ever heard it, and lifts her cuffed wrists. "What do you think." She turns her gaze back down to the cup. Tears the rim off in one long strip. "What do you want, Soph." Ragged nails catch on the next layer of paper. Less tight, more curious -- "Can you even be down here?" Sophie seems to give this question a very earnest consideration. "Oh I think you're a terrible spy," is her eventual assessment, lighter than before and with just a touch of amusement. "It's like you've never done this before. -- should've listened to me," and here she's ambling in, casual as she plucks a bobby pin from her hair and stoops -- Lily's handcuffs are unlocked in short order. "Terrible plans, like I said. Deserve to be scuttled. C'mon, then, I'm quite sure we don't have long." Lily blinks, brow furrowing, when Sophie sets to work on the handcuffs -- then snorts, lets the corner of her lip twitch upward. "This your idea of scuttling? It was a bit dramatic, don't you think?" She peels the cuffs from her wrists and tosses them onto the table, stands to follow !Sophie. "I guess we don't have time to get my watch before we get him, huh." "Oh, sure, and after we get it we'll just pop round HR for your final paycheck, too, yeah? Maybe do a last round of goodbyes to your coworkers?" The NotSophie is badging back out of the room with Sophie's badge, leading Lily at a brisk walk towards the stairwell. "My idea was you two never start this rubbish to begin with, but here we are. You're one to talk of dramatic -- my God but this whole place is in a tizzy. Tell me," she's holding the door for Lily, glancing down the hall briefly before she ducks into the stair, "all that mess with the riot wasn't you, was it?" Lily lets out one high pitched, short, slightly hysteric laugh. "Why not? Save them the trouble of fucking forwarding the check." She's not actually turning towards her office, though. Follows closely behind the engineer, one scraped hand brushing against !Sophie's knuckles around a stairwell turn. "Not me. I was supposed to be at a fucking barbecue with -- well, you, actually." "Barbecue was loads more fun, in case you're wondering. Admittedly, the bar is set at 'not actively getting shot at' so take that how you will." Mirror hesitates here, before continuing: "-- your friend was quite worried, you know. Lent me her badge and all. This next bit," they're pausing just by the door out to the ground floor to look at Lily with a critical disapproval, "might be easier if you change your face some --" Demonstratively, they are warping, features melting briefly into Lily's own before donning Sophie's once more, "but if you're very attached I guess we'll make do." "Tch. Like you actually asked her." Quick, dismissive, skeptical, though for a brief second Lily's wane face warms. "Do you know where you're going, do you know where --" Lily's face melts, in reverse of Mirror's transformation, briefly into Sophie's -- back, then into drooping-basset-hound Joshua -- "he is." She manages to hold that face longer before it twists back into her own skin with a nauseated look. "I'm not attached, mine just doesn't work like his." Still, she's gamely trying to pull on a different face, growing a few inches as her hair darkens, shortens. "How the fuck does this work," is Lily's cadence, but it's Mouse Graziani's voice that comes out. "Of course I asked her. This place is in complete panic-mode, if she lost a keycard it would be deactivated right quick. Wouldn't be much help then, now, would it?" UnSophie's eyes hitch on Lily's face when it becomes Joshua's, and the brief twist of scowl that pulls at her lips sits unnaturally on her round and cheery features. "-- works just like that," she says, in place of answering anything about Joshua, "but my God, just don't speak, you're terrible at this." After a beat , with something resembling sympathy: "... it does feel very strange, the first few -- dozen times." She purses her lips with a reflexive distaste at the sight of Mouse's face, and from the oversized purse slung over one shoulder pulls a folded labcoat. "Maybe someone smarter, else he's getting a quick career change. Which other shitfucks have been around lately? Try thinking spiteful thoughts about 'em. The spite doesn't really help but you might feel less dirty later on." "--Oh. I didn't think she would --" Mouse shakes his head, shrinks a couple inches as he takes the labcoat, loses more hair at the top of his head as it lightens. "This fucker smart enough?" is still Lily's reply, but it's losing the bitter edge from before. Is Lily thinking spiteful thoughts? Her new face is souring in expression, anyway. "Fascinating. We are going to get Joshua next, hm?" In Graham Taverty's voice, out of Graham Taverty's face, there is a quiet sense of expectation. He slips into the labcoat, buttons it over the too tight prison scrubs. "Or is he waiting for us elsewhere?" "Oooh." Mirror!Sophie says this with a wince, with a shudder, but it's somehow approving all the same. "Perf, you look horrid. Almost want to kill you myself." This is oddly cheerful. She hefts her bag higher onto her shoulder and pulls the door open. They, at least, wear this skin with ease, easy and pleasant with the (many! Sophie is popular, around here) coworkers who greet them in passing. They are, also, quite clearly heading through the winding corridors in the direction of out, and not anywhere in the facility that might be stashing a stray labrat. "Putting him in those hands now would just feel dirty," she's offering -- companionably, not really making much effort to quiet their conversation -- and at breezy smalltalk-volume, few people seem invested in whatever ongoing conversation the engineer and the geneticist are having. "You know the man probably gets off on the thought of whisking him off for private time. -- You don't happen to drive stick, do you? I can fine but a nap would be a blessing." "I must be able to if you can, surely," Lily!Mirror!Taverty replies absently. Through this walk he's letting the engineer take the lead, being perhaps uncharacteristically stand-offish with his coworkers, but maybe they expect that from him, what with What Happened with Doctor Allred. Maybe less expected is the paranoid darting of his eyes as they move further and further from the prisoner's wing. "Though I am not exactly well-rested either -- why are we leaving," Taverty hisses when they seem out of earshot of most of the other employees, rounding on Sophie as he does so, "when Salinas is still here?" There's a heavy clomp, clomp, clomp, Ansel's quite unnecessarily weighted footsteps audible before he rounds a corner. He's probably heading downstairs, his habitual swagger aimed vaguely elevator-wards, but stops with an automatic smile when he sees Sophie. "Soph!" It's the same default cheer she seems to inspire in many of the staff around here, though his expression has soured slightly when he adds, gruffer: "Doctor." At least some of the sour edge leaves when he tacks on to the tail end of what snatch of conversation he overheard: "Won't be still here for long, though, will he?" Clearly this thought is bringing some cheer to Ansel's life. "And overdue, too." "Because you're still here!" Mirror whirls abruptly on the UnTaverty, their borrowed expression contorted now with pain. "Do you have any goddamn idea how much he -- it would kill him if you died in this place and I am not letting the last fucking news he hears on this earth be -- 'don't you dare'," and now, as she whirls again, on Ansel, this time, her voice is deepening; when she reaches into Sophie's purse it's Mouse's hand that pulls a handgun out. "You don't get to even 'think' about him." The buttons on his jeans have popped, seams straining and stretching, t-shirt absurdly tight and beginning to tear, but the pop of broken-zipper and creaking seams is easily drowned out by the bam! bam! bam! of the shots fired directly at his partner. The tears stinging Mouse's eyes look almost as absurdly out of place as the tight and warped tee shirt. "We're going," he snaps. "--fuck that, we can still get him out, I'm not leaving him here to be fucking executed --" Taverty's voice breaks as he cuts in over Sophie's, until Ansel chimes in and he goes quickly silent. There is rage in his eyes when he turns towards the guard, eyes that are rapidly becoming hazel-green. The gunfire echoes -- even in this empty hall its not long before someone, somewhere, pulls an alarm. With her own face Lily looks back towards the elevator and the way to the prisoners wing. Her agonized expression is slow to tear away, gaze lingering for a moment on Ansel's injured (but not dead yet, alas) form when her face begins to melt and twist again. "That won't kill him," starts in her voice and morphs into Ansel's own, labcoat tight around his broad shoulders, "we should finish the job properly--" Prison slides are not the best shoes for kicking in your enemies, but wearing Ansel's face and powers, Lily is making her best attempt with one dense, heavy blow to the torso. Ansel's eyes widen, his expression twisting -- confusion, first, then understanding, then anger, but by the time this last hits him, so do the bullets. He stumbles back, slumps down, and though his body hits the floor with a heavy thud and a crack of linoleum, he's definitely still breathing. Eyes still open, albeit heavily dazed; he watches the foot descending toward him with a vague creeping dismay. The heavy stomp of overly-dense foot on overly-dense chest rings the hallway with a shudder. Ansel groans, twitching and shifting beneath the blow, but nothing cracks. He doesn't get up, either, although his eyes are starting to try and focus in on Lily. "You're not going to kill him, you fucking moron. Just need to slow him enough to -- ghh." Mouse's face is twisting as Ansel groans. He lowers the pistol to his side and now his flesh is warping again -- a little shorter, a lot reedier, this one is unfamiliar. Lily only sees it for a split second before the world shifts, twists out of place -- for just a moment, around her, there's an oddly fancy pool complex nestled in the center courtyard of what looks like a luxury condo building. Several familiar children's faces are somewhere, here -- but maybe it's just a trick of her eyes, maybe a weird hallucination, because in the very next moment she's not there at all. Not in Lassiter, either. Instead, around her there's warm fresh mountain air, a winding drive leading away from the wide porch she's been dumped on to snake through picturesque peach orchards. The white farmhouse behind her looks like it might have come out of a painting, sensible and rustic and oozing welcome, from the smell of fresh bread wafting out the screen door to the pleasant slow-thump wag of the truly enormous shaggy mutt lounging in a patch of sun by the steps to the colorful glimmers twinkling on the wood planks from the sun slanting through the stained-glass suncatchers hanging from the eaves to the COME AS YOU ARE doormat. The dog lumbers to his feet, gives one deep-chested 'WOOF' at the front door. There's movement inside, bustle, before an older woman in faded overalls and a plain workshirt makes her way to the door. Sarabeth Holland is peering out for a time at the (too familiar) (very unfamiliar) face outside, still wringing her hands on a towel. Her eyes go wider, her face very pinched and slightly paler before she looks closer, critical -- at the warped and straining scrubs, at the prison shoes. She tosses the dishtowel over her shoulder before pushing the screen door open. "Oh, goodness. You must be one'a Jackson's, ain't you? Come on, honey-honey. His family's ours." !Ansel is gearing up for another blow, foot falling fast towards his double's face -- -- and then he's stumbling forward, falling heavily on hands and knees to the drive Somewhere Else. He pushes himself up at the dog's barking -- looks up at Sarabeth, brown eyes narrowing at the sound of Jackson's name for one long moment. His family's ours breaks the spell -- all at once Ansel is disappearing into a warping mess of flesh, Lily taking his place and casting around for -- who? There is no Mouse, Sophie, or Mirror in sight. She pulls the distressed labcoat tighter around her body as she shuffles up to the porch. "-- Missus Holland?" This is in itself a question, heavy with sudden exhaustion as she comes up to the older woman. "I'm Lily Allred, and I -- I need to call --" Voice trembling, clearly fighting back tears, Lily manages to get all the way to the door before finishing, "-- I know where the kids are. I need to call home."