THE FRACTURED WORLD: ARRIVAL

[modormenace]

 

A

rrival for some goes all but unnoticed. It's a sudden shiver, the sensation of being watched... and then nothing at all. Life continues serenely as it always has. The only indication of any change comes with sleep, wrapped in dreams: vague and distant echo imagery of another life, melting away in the morning.

 

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or others, arrival is a sharp jolt. In the space of a single blink, they find themselves in an unfamiliar world, surrounded by the trappings of a life they have not lived. They are replacements, spirits taking possession of bodies belonging to people very much like themselves...

 

A

nd for the rest, arrival is a procedure. Routine. Those ported in to the Fractured World wake hazily in the comfortably dim light of the Porter room, laid out on an exam table. Their wounds, if they remember having any, have been healed— and even those who remember their own deaths find themselves miraculously restored. As they regain consciousness, an automatic audio-visual presentation is triggered. Regardless of their backgrounds or physiology, all imPorts 'see' and 'hear' this message as if in their own language:

"Greetings, imPort."

The voice is calm and gently authoritative, almost certainly selected by committee.

"On behalf of the Synod and all imPorts it represents, we welcome you to the planet Earth."

A decidedly non-humanoid robotic arm holds out a palm-sized device and rather insistently demands the new arrival take it. This is the imPort's comm, used for accessing the Porter's database of information, as well as the communications Network— though it won't receive communications from outside the Porter building until carried through one of the many Gates set up in a long, crescent-shaped array on the far side of the room.

As each Gate is approached, information about the faction it leads to flashes up on the comm device's screen. Which will you choose?

THE WHITE TOWER SANCTUM AURORAE KRAKOA HOUSE OF M EMPIRE OF LIGHT EQUALITY BEFORE LAW THE TWIN CITIES OLIN VALE EDEN SEEKERS OF THE NEW DAWN NORTHWESTERN IMPERIUM GREEN PIECE MAD BURNISH LUMINARY

Comments

[numberthree]

They can just barely hear it from here. The base from the night's party, on the other side of the island from where she had this place built. There, but almost if you weren't focusing, it just gets lost in the rush of waves running up the shore to stop not far from her toes.

It's not exactly her beach, but sometimes she thinks of it that way. The mostly untrodden paths off from their house, that is already well off the beaten trail from where everyone else's houses are more collectively grouped. Towards the sides, the center, the hubs of activity, and the pulsing nightlife of rapturous freedom.

Nothing feels like that right now for her.

She doesn't mind that Klaus is there when she looks up, carrying drinks and that question of a look, offering her a shoulder or a distraction. As well as that drink that she takes. She knew if she didn't come back eventually someone would come. She thought it'd probably be Luther. But she doesn't mind that it's Klaus. Maybe that's even a little easier than if it was Luther.

When she can just take a too deep drink of what he's brought first, before pulling it down. A fingernail absently tapping one side of it, when she decides to ask the night sky and her brother a question, with not context -- and yet it's the context the whole island has, everyone's breath held, Josh, the Synod, the stringing tension.

"How did I get here? I never wanted Luther's job."
Beat. Stronger. With a winced frown at the waves. "Never."

It was still true enough, too. There was nothing about being a team leader than interested her. Ever had. Not the way it had for him as Number One for two decades. But here she was. One of five people, running what amounted to a country. (Here she was, possibly the one person with the most fault for why Josh was gone, why Josh might be dead.)

[evoque]

In this created little safe haven, it was easy to forget the tensions that lead to its necessity.

Well, no. That's an incorrect statement. It's easy for Klaus to delude himself into ease, because survival comes easier with acceptance, and even more so with lies. And he's very good at lying to himself.

Her inner turmoil - tension, guilt rolls off of her in the same cyclical spin as the waves to their left, and Klaus hums into his straw, fills his glass with bubbles.

"I think," he starts, a slow drawl. "You did what a lot of people were scared of doing."

In the words of Shakespeare, some have greatness thrust upon them, after all. Maybe it's strange, to be having a conversation without his typical flare for bullshit. But it's easier to be honest away from everything else. "Sure as hell doesn't make any of this stuff easier," he continues, waving his arm out inland, towards the dull, faraway pulse of music. "But just - don't forget to come back up for air, right?"

[numberthree]

Sometimes Klaus was better at putting his finger on the dot of something than anyone liked to give him credit for. There's something almost too true about those words, whether he means for them to fall out that way or not. About how the rest of the world feels about this job now, and felt about it when it was first steering off from the rest of the world.

"I never did do good at being scared."

Did she mean as a child? Obviously.

Did she mean when Krakoa started? Probably.

Did she mean with the Synod a week away? Possibly.

Fear only came out of Allison in two flavors -- angry and terrifying -- and more the pity anyone who caused it in her. On a battlefield, in any of the factions, in neutral territory (that's never been neutral since this all began). She could make it so much worse, she wanted to, if David was right, but, also, David needed her level and in control more than ever.

It's the first year she wishes she could stay home. Curl herself around Claire, and inside Luther's arms, with her family never far enough away to stop seeing. But it wasn't an option. She was going. The Council was going. They were all going. Whatever happened now, happened. It couldn't be stopped now, only met head on. Hoped to survive in one piece.