[ Be brave, Kitty. You volunteered for this. You volunteered for it very forcefully. If you were going to falter, you'd have done it back before everyone agreed to put lives in your hands.
But she knows, soon as she steps out into this Matrix, that something's wrong. She's talked with people who've gone back in, and even with a shitty operator you typically just don't actually make it inside, or you see everything backwards, or something. Something to do with bad code. You don't feel like someone's grabbed your head and squeezed, digging their thumbs into your ears for good measure. You don't feel disoriented and wrong. You don't feel like there's someone standing right behind your shoulder, watching you.
You don't feel with inexplicable certainty that that someone is your mother.
This signal she's jacked into is a trap. It's got to be. Conveniently left open, and now with all of this, this feeling like there are programs sitting in her Matrix code, hanging from her neck, curled up on her shoulders...So she's got to do just what she'd have done if she'd been captured back home - captured by someone a little more by-the-book than Mandrake - She's got to get something advantageous to her people, and flip the fucking bird to her enemies. Let them try to use her. She'll make it tough.
She sees faces beyond the dusty glass. God, let it be ours, let it be our crew, let them have sent me true... She stumbles to the door, dizzy and disoriented, and fumbles the door open. She braces her shoulder against the doorframe, and gasps out at the people just beyond there: ]
Hey. You're the tour group, right? From...from down south? [ Clumsy code-words, obvious and broad, but if the machines are spying through her at least she's not going to give them the ZDG confessing to their allegiances in unambiguous terms. No hand-delivered confessions. ] I'm from there too. Can I...talk to your group leader?
no subject
But she knows, soon as she steps out into this Matrix, that something's wrong. She's talked with people who've gone back in, and even with a shitty operator you typically just don't actually make it inside, or you see everything backwards, or something. Something to do with bad code. You don't feel like someone's grabbed your head and squeezed, digging their thumbs into your ears for good measure. You don't feel disoriented and wrong. You don't feel like there's someone standing right behind your shoulder, watching you.
You don't feel with inexplicable certainty that that someone is your mother.
This signal she's jacked into is a trap. It's got to be. Conveniently left open, and now with all of this, this feeling like there are programs sitting in her Matrix code, hanging from her neck, curled up on her shoulders...So she's got to do just what she'd have done if she'd been captured back home - captured by someone a little more by-the-book than Mandrake - She's got to get something advantageous to her people, and flip the fucking bird to her enemies. Let them try to use her. She'll make it tough.
She sees faces beyond the dusty glass. God, let it be ours, let it be our crew, let them have sent me true... She stumbles to the door, dizzy and disoriented, and fumbles the door open. She braces her shoulder against the doorframe, and gasps out at the people just beyond there: ]
Hey. You're the tour group, right? From...from down south? [ Clumsy code-words, obvious and broad, but if the machines are spying through her at least she's not going to give them the ZDG confessing to their allegiances in unambiguous terms. No hand-delivered confessions. ] I'm from there too. Can I...talk to your group leader?