Time to Kill: Quarantine
Feb 25, 2014 15:34:15 GMT -7
Post by Abigail Gunn on Feb 25, 2014 15:34:15 GMT -7
When malicious software was detected by a system, it was hunted down and quarantined by the miles and miles of binary that caused a machine to perform such functions. It was isolated so it couldn't infect anything else, a malignant section of code for the machine to evaluate. If it wouldn't interfere with any other programs, it would be eradicated entirely. That's what she was. She was that malignant piece of code that the machine was evaluating. She was that leper on the island, infectious and quarantined.
She'd spent her first few minutes alone pacing and running her fingers through her hair. Then, she'd thrown all of the pillows across the room and watched them thwap angrily against the wall. If she full on started breaking things, chances were good that she'd be checked on, and as much as the captain wanted her quarantined, she wanted to be alone. She'd gone back over to get them, then thrown them again. She'd thrown them against the wall with largely unsatisfying, fluffy thwaps until the idiocy of doing so dawned on her, then she'd dusted them off, piled them into a little mound, and tried to lie comfortably back on them.
She was angry with Vitale. Oh, at heart, she knew he was doing the reasonable thing. She didn't blame him, either, but that didn't stop her from being angry at him. Maybe it was one of those things she was just going to have to feel, to let it simmer and burn while her logic coaxed it down. For the moment, though, she needed to hate him. She'd given up what life she'd had in pursuit of justice that had just dragged and drained on and on in a perpetual hell that she'd secretly feared would never find resolution, and now she faced a potentially brutal death because of it. Being angry with Vitale gave her something to vent the pressure, so for quite a few hours, there was no one in the Verse that despised him so thoroughly, down to the veiny, sausage-like intestines pulsing food through his gut, than Abigail Gunn, the woman he'd put on trial.
If she was smart, she'd have been tying her bedsheets and pillow cases into a strong noose and dropping off the side of the bed, leaving them with nothing but a cold, soiled sack of meat to find. The thought did occur, but she didn't act on it. It was a pragmatic thing to do when faced with a mafia-style death, a fact which few people would probably understand. There was no escape. If the Peerless dumped her in some border-world harbor and Onas caught wind of it, there was no safety on any planet with access to the cortex. Anything that could take a digital scan of fingerprints, facial structure, any gorram thing, could be access by some information broker some where. She knew that better than most; she'd used that fact to get leads. Suicide wasn't the emotional cut-myself-to-feel bullshit in her line of work that it was in the civilian sector. She wasn't considering that because, somewhere, she really had believed Vitale's assurance that he had her back, that it would be okay.
Wouldn't keep her from hating on him to keep from worrying, though.
After that, she'd rooted around in Desmond's bunk until she found a couple of tools, then she'd went back to her own and drummed on the bedframe above her, humming and singing along with some or other song that served to distract her. She didn't care to repeat a song or a chorus a hundred times, if she was just amusing herself.
It's not like she had anything more pressing to do.
She'd spent her first few minutes alone pacing and running her fingers through her hair. Then, she'd thrown all of the pillows across the room and watched them thwap angrily against the wall. If she full on started breaking things, chances were good that she'd be checked on, and as much as the captain wanted her quarantined, she wanted to be alone. She'd gone back over to get them, then thrown them again. She'd thrown them against the wall with largely unsatisfying, fluffy thwaps until the idiocy of doing so dawned on her, then she'd dusted them off, piled them into a little mound, and tried to lie comfortably back on them.
She was angry with Vitale. Oh, at heart, she knew he was doing the reasonable thing. She didn't blame him, either, but that didn't stop her from being angry at him. Maybe it was one of those things she was just going to have to feel, to let it simmer and burn while her logic coaxed it down. For the moment, though, she needed to hate him. She'd given up what life she'd had in pursuit of justice that had just dragged and drained on and on in a perpetual hell that she'd secretly feared would never find resolution, and now she faced a potentially brutal death because of it. Being angry with Vitale gave her something to vent the pressure, so for quite a few hours, there was no one in the Verse that despised him so thoroughly, down to the veiny, sausage-like intestines pulsing food through his gut, than Abigail Gunn, the woman he'd put on trial.
If she was smart, she'd have been tying her bedsheets and pillow cases into a strong noose and dropping off the side of the bed, leaving them with nothing but a cold, soiled sack of meat to find. The thought did occur, but she didn't act on it. It was a pragmatic thing to do when faced with a mafia-style death, a fact which few people would probably understand. There was no escape. If the Peerless dumped her in some border-world harbor and Onas caught wind of it, there was no safety on any planet with access to the cortex. Anything that could take a digital scan of fingerprints, facial structure, any gorram thing, could be access by some information broker some where. She knew that better than most; she'd used that fact to get leads. Suicide wasn't the emotional cut-myself-to-feel bullshit in her line of work that it was in the civilian sector. She wasn't considering that because, somewhere, she really had believed Vitale's assurance that he had her back, that it would be okay.
Wouldn't keep her from hating on him to keep from worrying, though.
After that, she'd rooted around in Desmond's bunk until she found a couple of tools, then she'd went back to her own and drummed on the bedframe above her, humming and singing along with some or other song that served to distract her. She didn't care to repeat a song or a chorus a hundred times, if she was just amusing herself.
It's not like she had anything more pressing to do.
