vor | Fifth Cream Cake: [Action/Voice]

[Almost two weeks spent in Malnosso captivity and what does Gregor have to show for it?

Lots and lots of band-aids, mostly. Also a minor cold that has turned into a chesty cough.

Instead of any great torture, drugs, or whatever he'd been expecting, the Malnosso mostly took DNA samples. Blood samples. Tissue samples. He's from further in Earth-universe's future than most besides Ivan, so maybe his specific point in human evolution was of interest. He understands the "lab rat" metaphor pretty well now. There hadn't been a lot of space in his cell, so he's a little stiff and sore. At least the hallucinations are gone. That had been the worst part--having to assure himself that this was a normal reaction to solitary confinement. He slowly heaves himself to his feet, blindly scrabbling for his journal. Writing is not easy with all his bandaged fingertips, so he speaks, sounding hoarse, slightly congested, and exhausted.]

Ivan. [A pause. ] Buffy. Adele. Whoever's...interested, this is Greg. I'm back. [He coughs a couple of times, fairly hard.] The Malnosso...anyway, I'm fine. It...wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm heading home now. Did someone take care of my horse?

[He'll take about fifteen minutes to walk home from his spot in the woods.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Like agents carrying poison capsules. [He sounds awfully mild when he says this.]

Isn't the common practice to have a false tooth in that instance?

[It's simpler if she doesn't think about it. Or the requests she'd been given, and declined, to remove a molar now and then. It wasn't her field.]

By my time, we've gotten a little less cruel about it. Most ImpSec officers have an induced allergy to fast-penta. If anyone tries to interrogate them, they go into anaphylactic shock.

That's a great deal more efficient, if macabre.

It won’t stop anyone from using torture. But they’re trained to withstand that.

As much as I would like to say I think our minders are above such brutality; I know for certain it is not the case.

I don't think they're very interested in Barrayaran secrets.

I think they're interested in whatever they can learn from us, of us, or through us.

If they wanted to learn anything, this was the time to do it. I'm not allergic to fast-penta.

I've given up on attempting to learn their intentions beyond 'because we can'.

That tends to be the agenda of individuals more than organizations.

That is but one of the things about the Malnosso that worries me.

They're trying to get home. Same as we are. The difference is they're using us. The question is why they think they have to coerce us in order to make our goals the same as theirs. It's only backfiring.

We know that because they've told us as much. I don't expect them to be entirely honest- though that's most likely to be true. As for the rest...we're tools and test subjects. Collusion requires shared information, which isn't something they're overly fond of.

Then what are they hiding, I wonder?

What they use to make their newest version of droids, for one. We've some idea- but it came at a price.

...You realize those people were allowed to escape so they could relay that information, don't you?

Which makes the fact that it was more or less planted information all the more questionable. I can't help but think there's more than one faction at work in the organization aside from the rogue branch we know of.

Either way, the information isn't as useful as they would have us believe. Good to know, but it doesn't give us a real advantage if we were meant to know it. They're playing a game. The trick is to learn the rules, then take a third option.

The rules are as fluid as the physics in the village. It makes it somewhat difficult to pin them down.

And we don't have people doing so full-time?

[He looks...a little disturbed at the realization that there really is no equivalent of ImpSec, or even Service Security, here in Luceti.]

Individuals that do so on their own time, most likely, but no formal organization.

Individuals working on their own time do not make an adequate system. Why do we have an organization for cheering people up, but not one for intelligence?

Edited 2012-08-13 20:26 (UTC)

Because our sources are limited, our priorities skewed, and the age range in the village tilted heavily to those younger than twenty.

[A tiny, tiny smile at those last two.]

Youth and a lack of resources are no excuse.

[Says he who was an emperor at the age of four.]

[Action]

fleurdesel - 2012-08-13 20:40 (UTC) - Expand

vor - 2012-08-13 20:47 (UTC) - Expand

fleurdesel - 2012-08-13 22:27 (UTC) - Expand

vor - 2012-08-13 22:30 (UTC) - Expand

fleurdesel - 2012-08-13 22:31 (UTC) - Expand

vor - 2012-08-13 22:36 (UTC) - Expand