>>6319326>>6319431>>6319443>4, 3, 4 translates to 3 Success, 2 Advantage Boost Dice>IRL Difficulty Roll comes out to 2 Failure, 3 Threat>Final Tally: 1 Triumph, 1 Success, 1 ThreatThe signal rides the network like a living thing under your fingers. Your mental HUD blossoms into sharp, cold lines as you repackage the ZIP Bomb and Gremlin subroutines into the turret matrix. Packets unspool in precise, calculated timing – maintenance pings that aren’t maintenance, jitter and false telemetry that whisper the turret to initiate shutdown.
>1 Success<span class="mu-i">Uplink established. Watchdog loop suspended. Auxiliary Bus exposed.</span>
A thin chime of confirmation reverberates inside your skull. The turret’s barrel droops half an inch, and the rest soon follow. One by one, the nearest banks stutter and then go slack. The exploit ripples through a shared entry port as laser emitters darken, and sonic emitters power whine down.
The atrium itself seems to exhale in relief. So does Harper.
“Holy Moley. Nice work.”
>1 TriumphThe exploit opens more than you aimed for. The turret array coughs up a small, raw packet before sliding closed: a cached auth-token and a short bit of administrative telemetry.
<span class="mu-i">watchtower.access.nodes:6; adminKey:partial.</span>
You snatch at the fragment, filing it away. It isn’t nearly the whole key – the array suffered too much damage for that. But it’s enough to bypass through most systems, if not fill in gaps for future hacks. Even subordinate them to your command.
>1 ThreatAnd then the world bites back.
The turret’s fail-safe tripped, a sympathetic pulse of its ICE bleeds back through the shared network. It’s only a fraction of a second, a flare of white noise and static across your cortex that’s strangled by the subroutines only a heartbeat later.
It still hurts like hell.
<span class="mu-s">– a child’s emaciated hand, begging during a water shortage –</span>
The modem in your neck spasms. Circuits in your spine spark in sympathy.
<span class="mu-s">– soldiers bearing Terra’s emblem, shields against a starving mob–</span>
They sliver past like a memory that isn’t yours.
<span class="mu-s">– a mass of writhing bodies, screaming their hatred of Spacers –</span>
The world lurches.
<span class="mu-s">“No stars while Earth starves! No stars while Earth Starves!”</span>
You stagger, collapsing against the wall as nausea grips your senses. Breakfast nearly comes up.
>You suffer 2 Strain Damage.Harper’s hand clamps on your shoulder. You cling on the sensation like a lifeline, grounding yourself in reality as the torrent of memories ebb.
“You alright?”
“’m fine,” you groan, then grimace as the metallic taste of blood hits your tongue. Stress nosebleed and a migraine that feels like a hot knife jammed into the back of your neck. “Just…need a moment.”
He gives you several. Long enough for the pain to fade to a dull pulse and the world to settle back into focus.
(cont.)
