Lycaon
The tricopter set down gently at Scott Outpost. It was a military science facility that had begun as a temporary crisis response outpost during the early days after Hollowfall, but in the decades following, it had slowly grown into a slipshod collection of repurposed cargo containers and modular structures that now housed some of the most advanced tech and most confidential research in New Eridu. It was heavily guarded by military forces, and Lycaon spotted from his window at least three anti-aircraft emplacements tracking their landing approach.
A team of people in white medical suits rushed the tricopter door with a gurney as soon as it opened. They were clearly there for Belle, and so Lycaon released the unconscious woman into their care. However, he was unwilling to lose track of her; so he trotted after the running gurney team- which to his mild amusement, forced Qingyi to trot with him and wave off a sequence of sentries and guards as they stepped forward to challenge Lycaon's progress through the outpost.
The gurney was wheeled into one of the largest structures in the outpost, a mass of construction scaffolding and weather-proof plastic that had grown to a rather absurd size. Everybody apparently having decided that constructing an actual building would perhaps be too much wasted re-work. The interior was a maze of wires, blinking lights, and much more modern server blocks and other industrial-sized computer things. Belle was finally wheeled into a room that reminded Lycaon of a campy spy movie he saw once: this was the part of a mad scientist's lair where the hero of the story would be restrained and threatened with some over-extravagant death. Lycaon tossed the childish thought aside and looked around, gathering as much information as possible.
A half dozen people were moving about, fussing over their equipment while Belle was transferred to the central bed of the room. They all wore white coats and laminated badges on lanyards around their necks- every one a doctorate graduate of some full-ride government scholarship, Lycaon was reasonably sure. Not just anyone worked at Scott Outpost, from what he knew of the place.
A lot of deferential attention centered around a tall woman with dark gray hair. She had an interesting little robot arm attached to a small backpack, and the device seemed to function for her as a literal third arm. It was currently holding a sheet of paper in front of her face while her two organic hands typed away at a computer console.
"Dr. Ray, the patient is in position."
"Right," sighed the three-armed woman and she left what she was doing and transitioned to Belle's bedside and began fussing with a rather extravagant looking machine that looked like the largest and most expensive VR headset that had ever been produced.
Another man in a lab coat tried to shoo Lycaon and Qinqyi out of the room but Lycaon ignored him and Qingyi gave the man a withering glance that made it seem like she was bored with his very existence on the planet. He retreated quickly. Meanwhile, Lycaon wandered briefly over to the workstation that the woman named Dr. Ray had been working at, Qingyi shadowing him but having the professional courtesy to not remind him to keep his paws off things.
The workstation had copious notepads strewn around, many of those featuring technical drawings of human heads and brains. There were about five different computer screens showing different things and Lycaon couldn't make sense of most of it- save the one screen that had a video feed on constant loop. It was security cam footage of Belle getting zapped by the server block. He could even see the top of his own head in the bottom of the shot.
So: the government had been watching that server block closely. That's how Qingyi and her tricopter had arrived so quickly while knowing more about what had happened to Belle than Lycaon did. But that begged the question: if the government had that server block watched so closely… why commission Victoria Housekeeping to go plug a mini-HDD into the thing?
Lycaon turned and looked at Qingyi who glanced at him briefly before returning her attention to the activities of Dr. Ray and her attending flock of Ph.D.'s.
Why hadn't Qingyi, or someone like her, been sent to do the job that Lycaon had been sent to do? And just who had the power to remotely destroy an old government server stack? And what sort of data about what sort of things could safely and harmlessly sit in some forgotten hard drive for decades but now was suddenly imperative to recover?
Lycaon huffed a small, canine snort. Well, none of those questions were his business or his job to figure out. He was a contractor, and once the Client released him and Victoria Housekeeping from the commission, then all those questions could be worried over by Qingyi or whoever. It was not his problem.
Meanwhile, the super VR headset (or whatever it was) was being placed upon Belle's head of short bluish hair. Lycaon crossed his arms and watched. Whatever was wrong with her and whatever these scientists were doing was entirely beyond his comprehension, but the smell of sweat and tension was heavy in the air.
Belle
She knew she was drowning, but after seemingly endless hours of thrashing and choking, she never died. The process of endlessly dying was exhausting, so Belle floated along listlessly. Her eyes glazed over, her consciousness finally shutting itself down as a last-ditch effort of self preservation.
The current of numbers in which she found herself continued to swirl, sending her in one direction and then another. Sometimes she seemed to tumble. Other times she spun. A few times it seemed like she went backwards- like how the people in a rewinding VHS went backwards- the tracking lines of static crackling across her consciousness as if the magnetic tape of her soul was loosening from the reels.
Then something changed. The numbers suddenly funneled into a single current, and it propelled Belle along with an increasing pace. The universe of numbers around her began to take coherent shapes. Belle's eyes became slightly alert. She was still drowning. But the pain wasn't as bad, all of a sudden. Not that it was getting any less intense… but it was fading away like a dispersing fog.
Lycaon
The scientists were clearly excited about something. Lycaon's wolf ears rotated around as various people shouted out gibberish phrases of technical terms he didn't understand, but he could interpret the tones of voice easily enough: it was all going wrong. Qingyi leaned forward and grimaced, apparently grasping more of the talk than Lycaon could- she made a clicking noise with her mouth that sounded like an expression of frustration.
"The patient is encrypting," said Dr. Ray tersely. "We need to slow it down. Dr. Amato, underclock the system. Rotate through the processors and bring down their voltage as much as you can."
"Yes, doctor," came the reply.
Dr. Ray's head raised up and she looked around the room while her hands and her robot hand continued working on whatever they were doing. "Where's the damn agent? You! Qingyi! We need a Seeker! Bring the patient's relative. We need him."
Qingyi straightened up with a sigh. "He's not here, doc."
Dr. Ray blinked and looked flabbergasted. "I specifically requested the patient's next of kin!"
"And OpsSec said no! They didn't clear him for need-to-know."
Dr. Ray blinked and cursed. Then her eyes fixated on Lycaon. Her robot arm appeared over her shoulder and it pointed a metallic claw at him. "Who is that? Does the patient know him?"
Qingyi looked at Lycaon steadily, clearly passing the question on to him.
Lycaon looked at Dr. Ray. "I just met her. We exchanged a few words in the brief time she was conscious. That's all."
"Better than nothing," said Dr. Ray as her robot hand gestured urgently for Lycaon to approach. "Dr. Tamil! Get the secondary headset on that thien! Tell him what to do."
"Yes, doctor!"
Like any sensible person, Lycaon immediately obeyed the commands of the lead physician in the crisis. He stepped forward before he could even really wonder what was going on. But a mousey little man gestured Lycaon over to a chair that had another, much less impressive, VR headset and machine next to it.
As Lycaon sat down, Dr. Tamil barely spared him a glance, so fixated he was on the controls of the machine nearby. "All right, so: ever done this kind of VR before?"
"No," said Lycaon, who had never done any sort of VR before.
"It's really intuitive. I can't even really tell you how to do it. Your brain just sort of… figures it out. The inside will look different for each individual. So when you go in. You just need to-"
Another person across the room suddenly yelled out: "She's queued for buffering!"
"Now, Dr. Tamil!" shouted Dr. Ray.
Dr. Tamil suddenly looked absolutely terrified. He lifted the head set and poised it over Lycaon's head.
"Just get her out of the data stream!"
"What-?" said Lycaon, but the headset slammed down on his head and his consciousness suddenly flowed through tubes.
Belle
She continued to drift in a black and white world of numbers. The water was all threes. The sky was made of overcast clouds of eights. And Belle floated onwards on her back, her eyes blankly staring up. She'd stopped trying to swim. It hurt too much. But the longer she floated like this, the less it hurt. Soon, perhaps, she would finally feel nothing at all. For some reason, she really thought that was the case.
Suddenly, the clouds of eights far above her billowed apart, revealing a gap of nothing. A space in the sky of no numbers. Just white nothing.
And then a titan fell out of it.
A bipedal colossus of sevens descended towards Belle's drifting form. The titan had a fluffy tail that covered a significant portion of the sky, and its lupine head had a single gleaming eye in the center of its face, all made of crimson fives. It was the only color in all of Belle's numbered universe, and she watched the titan fall with a twinge of awe, feeling its cyclopean gaze focus upon her from far above.
It impacted in the ocean of threes nearby, throwing up tidal waves that washed Belle about like she was a bit of driftwood. Then the titan rose from the depths, threes flowing off its enormous body. It lumbered towards Belle and loomed over her, its giant hand plunging into the threes, scooping her up out of them. The threes in which Belle floated flowed away between the titan's fingers like water until Belle felt a solid surface on her back for the first time in what seemed an eternity.
The hand raised her skyward, soaring up along the titan's body, past the wolfish visage of the titan and its gleaming eye, and lifting her onward towards the heavens. Towards the numberless gap in the sky from wince the titan had fallen. Belle was slammed into that gap like a denny into a vending machine.
Belle's eyes shot open. A half dozen strangers in white coats were staring down at her with tense looks. She blinked. Relief spread across all the faces like a wave.
"Vitals?" said a dark-haired woman, looking at another face in the crowd. Belle noticed that the woman had a robot arm peeking over her shoulder.
"Normal!" said another voice.
"Good. Log everything."
"Yes, Dr. Ray."
Belle looked around, realizing her heart was beating quickly in her chest. Where was she? These people looked like doctors. Was she in a hospital? Was she hurt? Wise? Where was Wise? Was Wise okay?
"Heart rate is up," said a clinical voice. "Neuro-activity chaotic."
"Miss Belle," said the woman called Dr. Ray. "You are okay. You are at Scott Outpost. Everything is fine now. We've just treated you after your accident."
"Where's Wise?" said Belle. "Where is my brother?"
Dr. Ray blinked down at her in confusion for a moment. "He is fine, I am sure. You were the only one involved in your accident, Miss Belle."
"I'll take it from here, doc" said a new voice.
Dr. Ray stood up and moved out of the way as a much shorter woman walked into Belle's field of vision. She had green eyes and two enormous pigtails. But most alarmingly, she wore the obvious blue uniform of a PubSec officer.
"My name is Qingyi. I'm with PubSec" said the new woman, her voice soft and mildly sardonic. "You and I, Miss Belle, are going to have a little chat about trespassing in Hollows and hacking into government computer systems."
Ohhhh shit..., thought Belle.