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.

 

F

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

[helpdesk_hero]

Decimated was a word not to be used around David. Not around mutants. But they don't talk about that, now do they?

"I couldn't have done it anyway. Technopathy isn't very useful against a technopath."

Which was maddning.

[numberthree]

Allison doesn't say that powers aren't the only way to take a person out. That's brass tactics and her fathers' logic talking, but it's not sense. At least not the kind of sense she needs to hold on to for David's sake at the moment. Disregarding the rest of what would be nice to give into, just for a second. "Good."

Even if she already knew that she still says it. Unapologetic, for all that it does not lack in compassion or concern. Especially when she lets a breath out and tacks on to it. "Because I don't want to know what this place would look like if you were gone, off somewhere else, for the duration for that, too."

She doesn't. It was heavy, with five. It was backbreaking at times with four, nursing a missing limb and soldiering on because there wasn't another way. She doesn't want to know what it would be with three. What she would be like. She'd be outnumbered in many ways where it came to Council decisions immediately, but, also, it was just as probable she'd care a whole lot less about abiding by those decisions if it was Josh and David.

"If it is him--" She has to pause herself, to keep it where it should be. Almost slips from. "If we get word, proof, anything, we know where to find him and his stupid gilded tower. And we wouldn't be the only ones."

The faction was loyal to the five of them, to Josh at the head of the table, the impetus of the whole creation of Krakoa in him alone. Still, for all that Krakoa was a peaceful island, a place without weapons, it was a land made of imPorts than it was natives, who were all well trained and capable of making their own choices.

[helpdesk_hero]

But so many of them were young, Allison. HE wouldn't ask young people to step into their battle. It was their job to protect other people. Damn, how can she not see that?

"None of this is as simple as going to get him if we find him."

Though he knew Judd would jump on it if given the chance. Not to mention a few other people. There had even been Resistance contact which had shocked him.

"I... What if he thinks I don't love him, Allison? What if he is out there, being tormented, and he thinks we haven't saved him because we don't care?"

[numberthree]

The problem isn't that she doesn't understand; it's that she does. The way someone only raised on expectation, demand, and the want to run can. The way even people who were given a too-large home in a school just that was supposed to be more, and then stripped itself from them piece by piece, both by a world that hated them and adults who weren't perfect, can't.

The way they come here—all of them. Half-crumpled and terrified and wary, expecting for months and sometimes even years, to suddenly find the price tag of this place dropped like the other shoe. How help and hope, safety can be offered up for free, free, free. How they learn to breathe and accept it slowly, grateful. To give it to the others who come after them, too. It doesn't make you want to run.

It makes you want to stand. To fight. To defend all you have with all you are.
It's there in their eyes, especially this year, old and young.
Terrifying as it is oddly comforting.

"None of this--" Allison raises a hand, gesturing, rather at everything. More than just this single situation. Everything that has been everything. For four years now. "--was ever going to be anything like easy." Beat. "At least not for us."

They weren't the ones who got free, free, free. They were the ones who hefted that price of that promise every day, rain or shine, and to a lesser degree, anyone who loved them and kept them standing through it.

"And that won't happen. He'd never forget that, and he knows we wouldn't give up."

Allison shakes her head, but there's a part of her. Too deep, too bare, that remembers too well what exactly torture training takes out of you even as a child before you learn to overcome, to bear it, to rise over it in your body, your mind, and control the spin so no one can control you even if you can't break free. He could be made to forget.

"And if he forgot." No. That's not right on her lips even. "If someone made him forget? Then, we'll remind him, and we'll tell him when he's here with us again. That no one forgot him. Not for a single day since the moment he went missing. That no one ever sat in his seat, and no one ever gave up looking, and--" It's as gentle as it is impulsive, reaching up to lay her hand on David's cheek. "--no one could ever replace him."

Especially not for David. (Or Laurie.)
But for all of them, too, her included.

[helpdesk_hero]

The touch is... comforting. The same sort of touch Laurie might offer him, if he dared let himself show all this pain to her. Losing Josh meant Laurie had her own pain. And putting his on her shoulders would be worse.

At last the light of the psychic-energy glasses flashes away, and the tears are freely falling now. Months he's put off crying. Months he's hidden behind the work and the responsibilities. This is long grief breaking. This is David finally breaking.

"I don't know how to help keep this place strong anymore. The Synod could break us.

[numberthree]

Allison pulls him back in, maybe a little too aware that while she's overwrought, it's not in this way. That while it goes incredibly deep, it doesn't go this deep for her. Maybe not even because it's the case that she doesn't love Josh like David does. Maybe even because she's still waiting. She's still holding out. Someone has to hold firm, unshakable as steel, until the last shoe drops, until they know, for cemented certain, one way or another.

She takes a breath, even as she lets her hand rub in a soothing line down the back of David's neck into his shoulder blades while he cries. "We'll do everything we can. Present a united front of everyone we do have. Come up with answers to any of the questions we can think of that they'll ask any of us, so even all of those match."

[helpdesk_hero]

Yeah. He'll... They'll do that. He sighs though at her comments. Answers don't always help.

"I really wish I had time to make more glasses like mine. Small ones as accent pieces. Then I could keep us in are quicker contact."

Not to mention his technopathy could let him reach into the systems and drop messages with a thought.

[numberthree]

Allison's eyes narrow a little, but it's far less anything like suspicion or judgment, and a keener, closeness to an errant curiosity and broader set of questions. To wonder what else that could be helpful with.

"Once--" And she almsost said If, but caught it just in the nick of time. "--we make it through the Synod, maybe that can be your next project. Something to have ready for next year?"

She has to believe, for Krakoa more than any of them specifically, that there will be a next year. And a next. And a next. It's always been a constantly-willed believe in the frought circumstances of Krakoa, but it's even more vital (more desperate) to believe that this time.

"You can probably find a dozen ways they'd help by then, too."

[helpdesk_hero]

"My next project, now that we have him back, is a gate. We need another. We need another island, for stability. Otherwise our work isn't nearly as useful."

Too much from the underground and they'll destroy their own island. They need to expand.