twenty-eighth jump;

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond.
WARNINGS: Maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: It could just be the standard sensation of air on wet skin, but if you bother to check, you might notice the steam rising from your body, barely there and gone within a minute. By the time you get to the showers, it will be clear that it's not just taking you time to adjust. The room is cold — colder than usual, but no worse than the last jump. While it's nothing dangerous, it's certainly motivation to hurry through the usual routine and get dressed quickly.



It's getting closer.




YOUR EYES ARE OPEN.

KEEP LOOKING.

You wake up in darkness.

There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

You are not alone.
There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

This is your welcome party.

Comments

[mindtricks]

I'll walk you there.

[ she kind of needs to shower as well, anyways, and she can look for jax won the way to the showers just as well. it'll make her feel better to see charles there safely, to keep an eye on him for a moment longer to reassure herself that he isn't going to collapse —

he almost died. ]

[forgodssake]

Thank you.

[ --is said rather then shooing her away, her intentions and priorities easily read not only in context and tone, but the assuring presence of his gift once more wiring information invisible and swift between them. She doesn't need Charles to request she do otherwise.

And. His clothing is hanging off him and dripping. Charles lets go of her hand and tucks his arms around himself. There is an absence of him testing his ability past only her mind, a closing down as opposed to the near obscene openness to sensory input that he usually operates with.

Probably wise.

When he addresses her again, it's as a voice in her mind. To the rest of the world, they're walking silently through the medbay. ]

Do you believe it was so clearly a fool's errand?

[ She didn't go, after all, and nearly everyone else does. ]

[mindtricks]

I believe it was risky.

[ sometimes risks pay off, sometimes they don't. anderson wants to make a difference, yes, but she usually errs on the side of caution rather than risk. still, she remembers dredd's insistence that they take the offensive in peach trees — that had been a risk and it had paid off.

this risk hadn't, but it hadn't come at a great cost, either. ]

Someone needed to stay in Gunnery.

[ an explanation why she didn't go. ]