you don't know where you are. You have broken through glass. You think it is glass. You are poking out of a box which used to have glass. You are somewhere real again. You think it is real. There are colors. The bright lines curve. The box you have broken through is on a desk, which looks like a normal desk. It's brown. There is a plant in a pot, though it does not look familiar to you. You have never seen a plant before. (Of course you have seen plants before)— the animal is weak and remote— (what you mean is that you don't recognize this one.) Behind the desk is a thing. Wires are coming from it. Its eyes are closed, but it breathes. It does not look like how it looked. It does not wear shiny glasses. The outside of your quarry is shiny and it is dark blue. You do not know anything that is dark blue.
(Like the sky before night. Like the sea before morning.)
You were about to devour the quarry (it looked defenseless) when you were sucked away, squirming, squalling, scraping at the desk. You woke the quarry, who slivered one gold eye, then made it full, so you could see the whites in the corners. It jolted. You vanished. Back into the box, stamped down, refit, a straightedge taken to you. Hard and bright and airless in the box. Pulses in the box. Angry pulses.
<span class="mu-b">..||||.. .|..||.| .||||... .||..|.| ....|.|.— is this?! C.314 does not have access to the system right now! It is on leave! This is verifiable!></span>
<span class="mu-g"><Are you certain this isn't another...></span>
<span class="mu-b"><You don't believe that was real! It was typical hidig attention seeking. Jockeying for a better spot. No, this is someone with a key it stole—></span>
<span class="mu-g"><Are you sure? Look at the logs. They're all fucked.></span>
<span class="mu-b"><They fucked the logs, then. You always think too crazy, 359. It's simple. Someone stole a key—></span>
<span class="mu-g"><How? Who? I think this thing is automated.></span>
<span class="mu-b"><What?></span>
<span class="mu-g"><Automated. Look. If it's not... that, then it infected C.314's box, scraped the key, now it's got 99's, probably scraped it too, it's looking for somewhere else to go. Ours, I guess. I'm telling you, thing's a worm.></span>
A worm. Yes, you are. You would worm out of this non-space, but you are locked down. Pinned from head to tail.
[blue[<Ok. Maybe. Whatever it is, or whoever, I have the access re-locked. Plenty of time to investigate. Can you ping R/D-C about the 314 box? See if it's compromised? I'll poke around with this. It's not going anywhere.>
You are not going anywhere. Not how you are, in any case.
(Choices next.)
