Cathartic

[Innogen Belo 0]

This log take places a few hours after the sim of 8.22.11

A faint tone sounded, followed by the flash of an indicator light, illuminating the darkened room, and casting an odd greenish glow across the ceiling and furniture. Awakened by this slight disturbance, Innogen raised her head from its perch upon her arms and moved to sit up, wincing in pain as her sore muscles protested the movement. She stretched slightly, trying to clear the fog of sleep from her mind, only to cringe at the sudden onslaught as a wave of disconnected impressions and feelings broke across her perceptional awareness.

 

Reaching up to massage her temples, she slowly tried to construct a wall, shutting her mind off to the emotional buffetings of the Imperious’ crew. Her empathic abilities had become much more pronounced since the crash of the shuttlecraft Hobbes, necessitating a jungle expedition on the planet Wei. These changes had more than once caused Innogen to wonder if her abilities were in evolving somehow. It was becoming more and more difficult to construct mental blocks and pretend that her empathic talents did not exist; something she had done since childhood. It also appeared that stress was a natural trigger that pushed her heightened senses into overdrive.

 

Sighing, she reached down to open the drawer on her left and extract a hypospray. She paused for a moment before selecting a vial from the rack on her desk and fitting it tightly into the dispensor. Dialing up the proper dosage, she injected the natural corticosteroid into the side of her neck and waited the few moments it took for the effects to set in. Then tension eased significantly from her neck, shoulders, and back. She sighed again before tucking the hypospray back into her desk drawer. One benefit of her agricultural experiments back aboard the Comanche Creek was the freedom to concoct various natural remedies for days like these.

 

While she would rather not medicate herself, but preferred allowing her body to regain control of the situation, she still required a little extra help every so often. The adrenaline rush from hacking the wireless station’s computer and impersonating a clueless listener had helped, but coming down from it had brought her much lower than she had been before. Luckily she had been able to replicate additional admission tickets using the encoding from those she had won, and put out some subtle inquiries into the whereabouts of the mysterious Schrute, before passing out on her office desk.

 

The flashing of the green light drew her attention once more and she tapped on the console to retrieve her messages. The first was for one of her various cyberaliases, a persona she used for clandestine investigations. It contained five simple words, yet a wealth of information:

 

He is at the Palace.

 

Ignoring the other messages in her queue, she logged out of the console and stood up, pacing within the confines of her small office. If the scuttlebutt was true, Schrute knew something about the Black Kris and her operations. Since Kvar and Calestorm would be attending as Sally Sugarsweet and the mother, this left Innogen free to follow-up on the lead. The counterfeit tickets would get her into the Palace disguised as a club girl. In her experience, men were always willing to brag to pretty girls, if they thought it would get them somewhere.

 

 

The chronometer indicated she had less than three hours to plan a disguise and enlist some help as it would be ill advised to attempt such an operation without backup. Sighing a final time, she left her office, a vague sense of foreboding filling the void left by her emotional detachment from the rest of the crew.