[How is he?]
[fine. The operation is set to start soon.]
[Time frame?]
[four hours, barring complications. are we getting it done before then?]
[Patience, 9A-91.]
[if there's a credible threat then we should-]
[...standby]
Nina's leg bounced impatiently. The 3.19 second interval passed like an old, obsolete train squealing its way into the station. Piercing, annoyingly constant and-
[Check details in the encrypted network. Change in the plan with new intelligence.]
She gets 20 bounces of the leg in the next interval, even bites at her nail. To anyone else in the waiting room, she looked to be just another nervous loved one awaiting the results, but they wouldn't catch the buzzing in her emotion module. Impatience and desire- they had a name, a face, and a rough location- they could go and snip a potential threat to the commander in less than an hour and all be back to welcome him out of the operation room.
But that's not what Kryuger's doll wanted. Just thinking about her made Nina's processors heat up, leading her to hiss under her breath. That caught some attention from some of the others, but no one spoke up. She got up to pace, subtly patting her concealed rifle to ensure it was still there. Tiss would be relieving her in the next hour, she'd need to be updated on the current status. While she set her frame to move, Nina delved to Level 2, cracking into the new folder filled with a glut of information barely filtered by Tiss' cursory scans.
Nina had to be impressed; her partner managed to crack the encryption on the police station's network and quietly copied what she could over to Gracia's external server in the time it took for Nina and Gracia to get human-intel. Tiss wasn't even an EW model doll, but maybe she really was cut out for all of the spy stuff, and that sentiment made Nina miss Val all the more. It should be all three of them here defending their commander from the shadows, not with this interloper stapled onto them from upper-management.
Logic processes suppressed the emotion module momentarily, giving Nina the briefest insight into what she'd need to do next while wading through the glut of intelligence. Her beloved commander had a record still- scrubbed on a technicality from the overarching Statesec system, but outdated backups still existed on local networks and devices.
And not just devices, but also in the more… biological memory as well. Tiss was still crunching through data, but what she had tossed out to the side, Gracia had connected with her own intelligence and forming -for lack of a better term- a metaphorical conspiracy board within the network.
Fedarov - Primary suspect of ill-intent loomed at the center of an interwoven web, though Gracia had been kind enough to highlight the name that Nina had pulled out of those Vor: Romanov . In fact, their "leader" seemed to be in the process of editing the current level of information on them as she checked the network. There were two new strings added since the last time Nina checked: a short profile of a blonde T-doll named "Sasha" that lacked model, make, and serial number, as well as profiling on a one Vasili Sokolov , a high-up on Statesec's priority target list.
Intrigued, Nina poked in a little deeper, wondering how a secessionist terrorist from the mountains factored into all of this.
Reading the man's convictions was quicker than a vestigial subroutine processed, but her digimind hung on a single thread that Gracia had no intel or insight to answer: Vasili Sokolov had operated in the Urals. A high-ranking member of a separatist militia at that.
Nina glanced at her commander's profile, knowing that particular scrubbed section of his work history that existed only in physical memory, and grabbed a fresh thread. Her processes spun, contemplating and theorizing all the different possibilities and outcomes, but her own hardware just ran up short every time.
Who knows what could happen if she connected those threads, illuminated a possible prediction for the others on the mission, sent them all down a very specific path.
A specific path that… may not be in the best interest of her commander. Kryuger himself was up to something. Why have the commander sent to Kazan? Why would the CEO send his personal doll to meet up with them? Why… alter the mission parameters? All they needed to do was keep a low profile and protect the commander while waiting out his convalescence time.
The excitement for the mission wore off quickly when not in the field, and now that Nina really scrutinized it, what they were doing would only bring more harm to the commander… and that… didn't sit right. She didn't have the permissions to write the protection of him into her Base Layer, but she kept it "close to heart" as humans say- close enough that she could prioritize that personal mission over all others, so long as this "Gracia" didn't have any higher overwrite commands.
But she may very well have them, given she was Kryuger's personal agent.
Nina bit her lip, so hard that it "bled". The threads slipped from her hands as she came back up to her surface-level consciousness. She calmly took her seat once more… but couldn't shake the feeling that there was something eerily out of place now.
If she were being… poetic in the way her commander encouraged… it felt.. Like they were adrift at sea, rudderless and directionless, and somewhere out in the dark… a rogue wave loomed.
Her digimind hissed; all of her routines maxed her virtual memory for that instant of pointless human emulation, and she simply sighed.
She simply sighed.
Gracia shook out both her system and Sasha's. The doll had let herself be slaved to Gracia as a dummy, if only for the breach. The illegal T-doll's tactical processes were absolutely outdated to the point of uselessness, so for the riskiest part of this particular orchestra of violence, Gracia was to be the conductor.
[Tiss, ready?]
[Ready.]
[Standby for breech.]
[Affirmative. Standing by.]
If it were just dolls everything could be conducted both instantaneously and wordlessly, but this was a joint-operation as Gracia turned her attention to the crippled terrorist behind Sasha. The man had hardened eyes, focus and steeled for the coming violence- it spoke to a level of experience and training that most yellow-zone scavengers didn't have. She only had to give him the look and nod to know that he was ready.
Gracia commanded Sasha to prepare, having the doll set her coach-gun at the deadbolt first. One last check of the "safe house" floor layout for confidence's sake. Standard post-Soviet communal living space; large apartment broken into ten tenements with a common hallway and a few connected rooms. Foyer first, then main hall, then side-room sweep until "Romanov" was found. Simple close-quarters action that a T-doll like Groza was programmed specifically for.
Command impulse started the choreographed violence of action; Sasha's first shot took the deadbolt off the door, the second took the latch before she kicked it in. Gracia slipped in with the frigid rush of air, suppressed rifle coughing three humidity-laden puffs within a single second. Three dead doormen and only one managed to get a hand on a weapon. There was commotion past the foyer, but Gracia was already into the hall, already fully engaged with her close-quarters protocols. She flung commands back to Sasha, expecting the doll to help guide their human component, but funnily enough the crippled terrorist kept up with her movements better than the doll did. Despite the vagabond demeanor, he had training- and that made Gracia reassign his threat assessment mid-operation.
First dead man to check the hall caught two rounds of 7.62x39 to the chest before even Gracia could service him; Vasili having posted up in the foyer, bracing his rifle against the doorway to act as a cover element while Gracia kicked in the first adjacent apartment with Sasha. Next target was greeted by Gracia's reflexes: a Vor gangster not too dissimilar to the want-to-be hound that had tried to bed her the other day. Double-tapped as he aimed his handgun at the doorway- doll reaction was faster than a human's. The two blondes swept quickly; no sign of the target.
Three rifle-shots resonated from the hallway; Vasili engaged someone else, and judging by the lack of return fire, his aim was true.
Sasha took the adjacent room, borrowing a bit from Gracia's processing power to breach, identify, and service another Vor with buckshot. Still no sign of the target, but they move forward methodologically, room by room, applying a constant pressure akin to a hydraulic press. Those that squeeze from apartments to either escape or engage are quickly put down with disciplined fire, and it's as clear as day that none of these Vor are as trained in the art of controlled and precise violence like Gracia's ad-hoc team.
[Squirters, window, rear of the building.] Tiss pinged.
[Rominov?]
[Negative. Male.]
[Let them run. Tail any female and intercept when possible.]
[Affirmative.]
Conversation in a millisecond as Gracia kicked in another door, this time taking cover behind the frame as a burst of rifle-fire ripped past her. She dipped further into the hallway as another burst punched clean through the drywall where she would have been typically standing. The shots became erratic after that, spraying blindly into the wall in an attempt to catch her, but the shooter didn't have any sort of predictive programming to increase the probability of a hit.
Unlike Gracia, who's programming narrowed the rifle caliber by sound profile, counted the rounds, and made an estimate of what kind of weapon it was- and more specifically made an estimate within acceptable error range of when the shooter was reloading.
She peeked the doorway and put two rounds into a man who was just about to rack the charging handle of his Kalashnikov before driving in with Sasha. Clean sweep adding more money, drugs, guns and ammunition to the "seized" inventory, but not the person of interest.
The pair were just about to breach the next door when a woman's voice rang out from the apartment next door.
"Okay, okay! I surrender! Guns down, I surrender! I know you're here for me. I surrender."
"Then come out alone. Hands up." Vasili barked from his end of the hall.
"Cool it. Cool it… I'm not armed."
"Any of your men still alive, have them close their doors and keep them closed." Gracia sang out, moving with rifle still at the ready. Just beside her at a set of double-doors was, well, the only woman they had seen so far in the complex. A well put together blonde with strikingly wavy hair, dressed as a respectable businesswoman that felt wholly out of place in a rundown apartment in the Quarantined District. Scarred on the face by what looked to have been a knife, but otherwise had a mature beauty to her- and a near one-to-one match with the… "descriptions" given by other Vor obtained from Nina.
"You heard the beautiful lady, close your doors boys, the adults will be talking." the blonde called back to the remaining apartments. Those that had open doors were quickly closed, but that did not relax the posture of Gracia, Vasili, or Sasha.
"You… are a doll." the woman continued, giving Gracia the once-over.
"And you are Romanov." Gracia counters.
"A doll with kill overrides… useful I must say. How much free will do you have, bot? Are you slaved to that man back there, or are you doing it for yourself?" the woman's words dripped from her painted lips like venom as she took a step towards Gracia.
Gracia took a step back in equal measure, muzzle still very much trained on the target. The overt caution made Romanov chortle, but Gracia wasn't about to let anyone get in striking distance. She motioned with her weapon for the blonde to turn around while announcing, "Irrelevant, you're coming with us."
"I highly doubt that you'll get far with little old me in tow. The noise you made in my home? Shamblers love noise."
"We'll see then, won't we?" Gracia once more motioned for Romanov to turn around before commanding Sasha to zip-tie her.
Romanov's laugh was laced with snark when she glanced at the doll cuffing her. "You're… that little boy's doll, aren't you? Since when did he get his hands on such a high-spec doll like that one, hmm? He's been holding out on us."
"Shut up." Sasha hisseed, roughly handling the objective by wrenching the wench around and shoving her towards Vasili. Gracia could feel a clear jolt in Sasha's system- the knowledge Romanov had of her was unexpected and unnerving.
"And him! Ohhhh I've seen him." Romanov cackled, eyes filled with delight. "Not a single field agent doesn't know that mean mug, Vasili Sokolov! Did you know that your commander is alive? Did you know that he's the one that sold you out back then?"
"Do as the doll says and shut your fucking mouth." Vasili growled, shoving the muzzle of his rifle against her breast. "If I had things my way you'd be dead already, hound."
"My my, such a scary wolf. " Romanov threw a mocking kiss at him as she was shoved past, and Gracia didn't have an image of a man so disgusted by a gesture in her entire database- until now.
"Take care, boys. Make sure the stoves are off and have the goods ready to go by the time I'm back." Romanov called over her shoulder.
"Bold of you to assume that you'll be coming back." Sasha snarled. With the spikes in the emotion module Sasha was experiencing, Gracia double-checked the illegal doll's fire-control safety, just in case.
"If you and your little master want his things back well…" Romanov rolled her eyes, smirking in a way that pulled at the scar across her face.
"Gonna need more than that to keep me from putting a bullet in your back and throwing you into the Kama, Vor." Vasili's tone peeled under the scrutiny of Gracia's emotion module. Doubt- skepticism in the illusion that this woman was anything more than a gang-boss… but when her details and picture were run through the Statesec database, there were no hits. None confirming her as a member of security services, assets, or even in the criminal database.
A deniable asset then.
"Oh Vasili~ " Romanov purred, face morphing with venomous false pity. "If you want to get your real revenge, you'll need me."
Gracia and Sasha exchanged glances, a ping of inquiry shot between the network before the recording being sent off the Tiss and Nina to parse.
"Get her to the tunnels before her hounds come and find her." Vasili growled back, not having blinked since they had cuffed the woman. "Or else I will drop her."
"Tunnels? Is that how you little rats move? You think they don't monitor the sewer too?" Romanov laughs, but Gracia's already tuned her words out lest she decide to say a few trigger phrases.
[Tiss, rendezvous point 4]
[Affirmative, rendezvous point 4- do you want me to-]
[Predict what you can and set up an extrapolation framework with Nina while we ready the interrogation.]
[Police network is lighting up. They've been tipped off.]
[Nothing changes.]
Gracia inwardly sighed but kept the majority of her processing to maintain security as the group moved to the sewer entrance. It was only when they were completely in the dark that Gracia started shifting to a more… multipurpose set of programs. They shifted the marching order, Gracia dropping back at Vasili's behest.
"Let me handle the first round of questions." he whispered. It was just barely audible over the sound of their footsteps in the muck, but she secretly wished that humans could realtime communicate via network to dolls so that there was no chance of being overheard.
"How can I be sure you will not kill her?"
"The information I want, it's no use to you so you can sit in and watch my work." Vasili's voice held contempt, but didn't have anything that could be flagged as intent.
"Fine. We will take her after."
"-and then-"
"We'll, as they say, 'cross that bridge when we come to it' ."
Gracia's night vision picked up Vasili's nod, noting the man's grimace. Curious how well he held himself together, humans tended to subconsciously let themselves express the truth when in the dark- product of instinctively thinking no one was watching. A man of grim willpower- she could respect that.
[Problem: can't rout to rendezvous. ELID presence increasing. Drawn by the gunfire.] Tiss pinged. There was a small, almost nano-thin thread of annoyance purposefully placed in the code that amused Gracia. These dolls were just so… expressive- far more than a normal T-doll. Perhaps that was why Kryuger valued their commander so highly? He found ways to get results despite the flaws in his dolls?
[Can you reroute via a second entrance?]
[Can try. Humanoid ELID though- armed. Need to move quieter. Will take time.]
Terse, punctuated response; Tiss was using more processing than normal to try and reroute, not to mention the signal was starting to get spottier the deeper Gracia's team moved into the sewers.
[Reconvene; 1 hour. Stay surface. Hide. Network silence until then.] Gracia ordered.
[...affirmative]
Radio silence left Nina with only herself and her processes- not exactly the most reassuring thing when the emotion module was playing havoc with the logical. She was finding her thoughts increasingly impulsive.
She should slip out and back-trace the previous intelligence, find where Vor and Statesec intersected.
She should pick up where Tiss left off and see if she could dig out who this "Federov" was… and neutralize him.
She should connect the thread from Vasili to Armen.
The commander's operation still had another hour or two barring any complications… so against all logic, Nina made her way to the operation room. A good mix of hysteria, verbal threats, and good old fashioned tears had gotten her into the observation deck usually reserved for students, staff, and supervisors. No one below noticed her move to the glass or observe how she stared down at them. She was no medical doll like the ones that assisted the surgeon -didn't have the programs to analyze what they were doing to the commander- and she happened to step in at the pivotal part when they were removing the mangled remains of his arm, just below the elbow.
Protection programs all pumped up by the emotion module kicked in hard. Nina had reached beneath her oversized sweatshirt, hand on the grip of her dangling weapon before logic managed to slam on the proverbial brakes. It was the harm-override, the kill-protocols, chaining away processing power that made such slip-ups more likely, an irony that only hammered in that she needed to be more careful when operating alone. Gracia… should have never given them before leaving- and who gave a doll the authority to let another doll kill?
Nina eased up slightly, letting that impulse fade as she watched the surgeon begin the diligent work of attaching a prosthetic. It almost looked as if they were doing the same kind of intricate repair work on a doll, reattaching wires that she could perceive. She just stood there, unblinking until her internal timer chimed one hour since last received message, and she'd need to post herself somewhere to receive- if she did receive anything. Being left out of the loop on this part of the operation was punishment for throwing a wrench into Gracia's carefully woven web, and it was one she'd have to just bear through.
The glance down at the commander is what helped. It took the logical overrides and tweaked their path a little… gets the emotion-module to feed additional processing to it. She just needed to remind herself that she needs to do this for the commander.
Be a good little subordinate to some other doll she didn't know.
Sit and wait.
Stay out of the way.
Search and destroy his-
Logic slammed down tight this time, tracing the command string back to the point where it looped; acting alone put the commander at risk. Increased attention from their actions within the local power structures put the commander at risk.
This mission by Kryuger put the commander at risk-
Her digimind seized up for exactly 1.3 seconds.
It was a conflict in programming. Unprogrammed, perceptive loyalty to the one who saved this iteration of a lost 9A-91 model instead of to the organization that held her authorizations. Loyalty to the human that gave her a name that she cherished dearly instead of those that had created her.
Should this conflict of programming make it back to IOP servers, she'd probably be reset, or at least rolled back to a previous iteration that didn't have these memory fragments. That… Nina couldn't abide by, and so she'd need to control herself.
One more glance, one more final glance to calm her digimind and one deep breath to try and suck in cool air through gritted teeth. There was no doubt that when they all returned to base after this, 9A-91 would need Neural Cloud maintenance.
But the commander came first.
"Mister Sokolov, it has been one hour." Gracia called out, and both she and Tiss could pick up the muffled reply along the lines of it would take longer to make a "FSB agent" crack. Tiss gave Gracia a small huff and shrug- neither doll needed to be networked to interpret the emotion.
"I'll make for exit six-seven and try to contact Nina." Gracia said softly, brushing herself off. "Ensure that Mister Sokolov and Sasha don't kill our only concrete lead, if you would Tiss?"
"Of course." Tiss replied with a salute- not that she needed to salute Gracia when they all were fundamentally the same rank… right? Either way, in the briefest local network connection, Gracia passed Tiss permissions to a running dummy-control program. Tiss was confused for a nanosecond; the command doll had no reason to send a redundant file, all T-dolls had dummy controls built into their Zenner Protocols.
That was until she realized that there was one active dummy on Gracia's localized network, and what Gracia's words really meant.
She had just passed control of that illegal doll, Sasha, to Tiss. It wasn't full command like Tiss'd get when interfacing with a proper dummy, something more akin to… a backdoor into Sasha's system to observe through the doll's sensors.
Just one of the many dangers that illegal dolls faced- hack-job programming that left them vulnerable to more than just electronic warfare dolls. She could peer through Sasha's optical sensors, take in all her audio data, feel off of the doll's epidermal mesh…
It was more feedback than what she was used to with dummies, and the spike to the processing it caused made Tiss physically recoil. Gracia was a higher-spec doll and could obviously take the full flow of data and still remain functional. Tiss on the other hand, she'd have to put her own processes on standby…
But curiosity got the better of her in the end. Finding a nice little nook where she wouldn't fall over, Tiss squeezed in and shut down all extraneous programs to free up memory and processing before diving back into Sasha's system.
Unblinking eyes stare at the gruff, scarred vagabond- but not Tiss's. She tries to look over at Romanov to gauge her condition, but the body she's in doesn't respond.
"Vasili, she knows who I am, who my little brother is-" Sasha's voice whispers, emotion module pulsing with nervousness that goes uncontrolled by logic circuits.
"So? She knows who I am too."
"That's not reassuring."
"You'll get used to it, girl." The hawkish man cracks a grin that makes Sasha heat up with indignation. "Or are you saying you want to paint the wall with her blood, too? I thought you couldn't do that- remember the last time? Couldn't drag your damn body out of there when you froze up after-"
Shame shunted aside Sasha's logic once more, making the doll blurt out: "You're the one who pulled my trigger! Not me!"
"My my… is your desire for me coming between you two love birds?" Romanov laughed, though her voice was more hoarse than before. Sasha reflexively glanced over, giving Tiss a second to analyze the damage.
Except there wasn't any- at least nothing physically visible besides the damage Romanov sustained getting her to the safe house.
"Won't work, hound." Vasili grinned back, and Tiss could discern the murderous intent as the terrorist forcibly pushed Sasha back slightly. The doll registered it as a sign that it wasn't her turn yet. Judging by the data Tiss could scratch from the surface neural cloud, these two had only known each other a few months, but it was enough time for Sasha to "adapt" to her human partner.
Vasili dragged a workbench stool over in front of Romanov, taking a seat. High enough that she was either looking up at him, or looking down at where his Kalashnikov dangled in his hand.
"Is this the part where you say, 'I have more than one way to make you talk' ?" Romanov mocked.
Vasili shrugged. "I'm not like you. The Komi are honest and straightforward people." he said with a slow drawl, relaxed in almost every muscle- except for his trigger finger. "Not like you Slavs. Corruption, lies, selfishness and backstabbing… always on guard, your folk. Must be tiring."
"So I'm offering you a deal instead of all the things you and yours did to me." Vasili held up his right hand, pulling the glove off of it to reveal the full extent of how crippled it was. It hadn't healed properly at all, and the bones beneath the surface moved in unsettling ways as he attempted to close it into a fist.
"A deal? After all that talk about how we Slavs are conniving, lying, underhanded rats?"
"Your words, not mine." he coldly smiled, and Romanov smiled back.
"Alright then, mister terrorist, let's barter then."
"Federov." Vasili stated more than asked as he tapped his trigger finger against the lower receiver of his rifle.
Romanov's face twisted slightly and Sasha's empathy module flagged the increased possibility of deception.
"He's on my payroll. A local police captain. Lets my band of goons to run the lower wall and grey districts so long as the bribes come in."
"Funny how he retired from the army to join the… what was it… the Kazan Police Department? "
"I wouldn't know what he did before, only that keeping him happy keeps the goods flowing."
Vasili looked over to Sasha, who had been focusing everything into her empathy software the entire time; practically a glorified polygraph machine at that point.
"She's lying." Sasha answered.
Tiss saw the split-second of surprise and didn't need to check Sasha's empathy module to catch the meaning.
"Perhaps I started this bartering off wrong- didn't properly incentivise you to tell the truth." Vasili grumbled to himself before he let out a soft snort. "I'll give you a bit of information as good will first, then perhaps you would be more willing
"And how would I verify?"
"Well perhaps that you should simply trust that I am an upstanding Komi man and have no reason to deceive you."
Romanov scoffed, shifting in the seat.
"Sasha, can you please check her cuffing."
The doll nodded, noting how the smile on Romanov's face was replaced by a scowl. She had been attempting to pick at the zip-tie's lock with a broken bit of false nails, so Sasha simply twisted the bindpoint out of reach. The moment Sasha returned to the corner of the room, Romanov's confidence had deflated slightly, replaced by a sour look.
"See, Romanov. I am an honest, observant kind of man. Making a deal with me will be refreshing and simple compared to what you are used to." Vasili shrugged, scratching at his stubble.
"Then what are you offering, if you're so honest?"
"I know what's being smuggled into Kazan." he replied, ignoring Romanov's incredulousness. "Shipments through the quarantine zones. One of those five-man teams got wiped out by an ELID pack a few days back but couldn't… dispose of their goods in time."
That put a nervous twitch to Romanov's face, but the woman made it appear as if she were trying to scratch an itch.
"... and do you have the goods? Are you asking me to buy them off you?"
Her question was well composed, even Sasha's empathy module hadn't picked up on anything.
Tiss did, though. Romanov's voice had fluctuated slightly. There was a high probability she knew what was in this supposed shipment. She shunted herself back to her own system before quickly pinging to Sasha's empathy subsystems, [she's lying. she knows about it.]
There was a muffled exchange, but by the time Tiss returned as the proverbial fly-on-the wall, she hadn't missed much.
"The shit sets off any radiation detection, so it certainly isn't anything good, right?"
"All the more reason you should get rid of it."
"Or all the more reason you don't want information about this getting out."
"And you really think anyone would pick up that story? It'd be censored, frozen out of any of the decent headlines and the writer shot before it even caught on to the seedier parts of the net."
"Arguing pretty desperately, isn't she, Sasha?"
Sasha's system buzzed in acknowledgement, but she didn't say anything. Instead she moved to a tarp-covered container beside her, pulling the cover aside. Beneath was a secured metallic crate, its locks clearly bypassed- somehow. Sasha glanced back at Romanov, but couldn't pick out any change in the woman's emotions yet. The Vor ringleader simply stared at the crate, noticing what Sasha predicted she would.
"You got it open?"
"With time. Lucky me how I really don't have a whole lot to do around here, what with the whole 'wanted terrorist' label you and yours put on me."
"I'm vory, idiot. I put no label on you."
"Vory? Or Suki?"
Now that got a visceral reaction from Romanov. The woman wrenched against her bindings as a feral, silent snarl gripped her face. Before she could snap at him, Vasili motioned for Sasha to change places with him.
"A vory smuggling in irradiated goods from beyond the quarantine wall? Local garrison does nothing? You Soviets always stink of pig-shit, but so long as no one brings up that it stinks around you, no one talks about it." Vasili shuffles himself to the corner of the room besides Sasha.
He pulls out a small metal box, but clearly is straining with the weight. Lead? Some other dense material? She couldn't get a good read through Sasha's optical sensors, not when Sasha changed her focus onto Romanov. The Vor's eyes widen slightly, eyes tracking the box in Vasili's hand as he brings it over to her.
"So, do you want to see the goods I'll sell you?"
His voice was venomous… laced with such honest dark sarcasm that even his supposed partner Sasha shuddered internally. At first Romanov seemed to be calling the bluff, but as Vasili fiddled with the seal on the small box in front of her, Romanov cracked.
"Y-You idiot! That's epiphyllum! You're getting a dose of-"
"No more than what I got swimming in the Kama or traveling through the Yellow Zone to get here." Vasili smiled. It was an unsettling smile.
"I already have nothing to lose. You on the other hand-" the terrorist brought the box closer to Romanov's face before setting it on her lap. The blonde reflexively rocked back and forth, working the heavy thing off her lap until it thudded onto the concrete. Tiss ran a materials prediction off that alone, coming up with some mixed layering of tungsten and probably lead.
"Careful, lady. Wouldn't want to break the container open, would you?" Vasili grinned wolfishly before glancing over his shoulder at Sasha. "So it's called… epiphyllum eh? Have our friends run a search on that or something."
"Right now?" Sasha asked.
"Yeah. Give me a second with our friend here."
"..."
"I'll get the information we need, Sasha. I promised you that." Vasili answered her hesitation. Sasha detected wholehearted truth, picking up on the vindication and care in his voice when Tiss would have found nothing. These two had a bond not unlike… her commander and the dolls that served under him.
When Sasha moved for the door, Tiss had to withdraw and get to her post to pretend like nothing had happened. When her systems flicked back on, Groza was standing over her, offering a hand up.
[Recorded everything said?] Gracia pinged in the closed proximity network.
[y-yes… how long were you-]
[Two minutes. Nina reports the commander is still in surgery.]
[sorry i-]
[You did what comes naturally to the curious.]
When the door squeaked open and Sasha slipped out, the illegal T-doll saw Gracia and Tiss exactly where they had been, conversing lightly about some topic that their subroutines had pulled up as a distraction.
"Our turn?" Gracia asked politely.
"Soon."
"Shouldn't someone be in there to make sure that Mister Sokolov doesn't do anything rash?" Tiss quietly chimed, purposefully partitioning her knowledge of the interrogation to not give any hint that she had been listening in.
"I trust him." Sasha says quietly, "He may be a total asshole, but he's true to his word for those he trusts."
Tiss and Gracia glanced at one another, sharing a brief and wordless transfer of signals with just a micro-expression.
"And you think he trusts us?" Gracia asked sweetly.
"Well, you did stay true to your end of the deal. Honesty goes a long way with him. Trust issues and .
"Oh I'm sure, regarding what Romanov had said-"
Muffled shouting- male voice, most likely Vasili shouting at their captive made all three dolls pause a moment to look at the door. Gracia couldn't quite parse what had been said yet, she'd have to put more processing power first, but she spun a few predictions. Intimidation" fell within acceptable margins for error, so he must have been softening Romanov up for a nicer, more "reasonable" approach from Sasha or Gracia and Tiss.
"He'll keep his word-" Sasha began to assuage them with a smile.
And then there was the rifle-shot.