MD #217: Level Four Incursion
Level Four Incursion
Summary: Miri enlists Randy's aid in unfraking Atticus' head now that he's been declared medically unfit to be able to consent.
Date: 10/11/2017
Related Logs: Laying the Groundwork
Miri Atticus Randy 
Brig - Deck 3 - Battlestar Orion
The battlestar's brig is comprised of a line of four individual cells organized in separate walled-off bays. Each cell is six feet wide by eight feet long and possesses a bed and toilet. Whenever even one cell is occupied, so too is the metal desk and chair at the entrance hatch — and backup for the guard is never far away. Each cell has had their bars specifically reinforced to prevent a Line member from being able to gain access or escape. Brig rules are posted behind the desk on a white panel with blocked black lettering.
29/05/2049

Sometimes cooperation requires an elaborate ruse. Miri wasn't sure when this ruse became so elaborate. It just sort of snuck up on her. She hand-selected two of her biggest corpsmen to escort Atticus from his cell to the interrogation room, where she had already set up her machines. On the table is a dataslate with a static image of a handprint on the screen, and there is also a portable blood pressure cuff machine. Also in the room is an old printer, which has cables running to the datapad and the blood pressure cuff machine. These cords are taped on. She and Private Flynn are in the room when he arrives, dressed in medical scrubs and hairnets. "Take a seat, Sir Atticus," Miri says, voice gentle yet firm.

Atticus is dressed, rather predictably, in fleet issue PT gear as he arrives with the MPs and corpsmen. Once through the hatch his eyes flick about to take in the scene, the equipment, and the people. Miri he recognises, and gives a brief smile to, but Randy gets a longer look as she's unfamiliar. Still, he doesn't seem to be about to start anything, and moves to take a seat as instructed. The dataslate is inspected visually, but not touched, as is the pressure cuff, then once he's settled in the chair he clasps his hands together and rests them on the edge of the table. "Is this your machine?" he asks, sounding perhaps a touch disappointed, he's imagined something grander, "what does it do?"

Randy is dressed in medical scrubs, looking rather Medical-y today. Additionally, her eyes and ears have been disguised, and although she has prosthetic tips on her ears, she opted to grab a surgical cap so they weren't pushing the boundaries of realism when getting up close with the patient. She has a clipboard and is looking over it with a pen she keeps twirling in her hand. "It says here you might have passed out during some kind of visitation?" She turns to Miri, "Is that what we're investigating today?" Maybe she was brought in last minute…maybe she's an incompetent medical person…or maybe Randy's not a half bad improviser (or impulsive).

"It reroutes the neuron impulses to the plasma dampers, meaning the counter-imposed data stream goes directly to the dopamine receptors," Miri explains to Atticus, spitting out meaningless babble. "And this one takes your blood pressure. Let's do that first." Because she actually does want to take his blood pressure. If he lets her, she will wrap the cuff around his arm and let it do its thing. "Indeed, we are worried about that fainting episode. Have you had any fatigue, nausea, constipation, or dry mouth?" She feels almost bad for that one.

It's fair to say that Atticus has literally no idea what Miri just said. He listens, then stays still for a few moments as he tries to work his way through that one step at a time. It doesn't help. Blinking out of the thought process as she approaches he holds his right arm out for her, so she can take the reading. He's watching closely, although for now it seems to be more curiosity than anything else. Randy is given a glance as she mentions passing out, but then as Miri covers it he looks back to the more familiar face. "No," he says, brow frowning a little in thought, "none of that."

"Damn…" As if realizing her slip of professionalism, Randy straightens up and looks up from the clipboard to Atticus. "It's just, the more symptoms, the easier these things are to figure out…sometimes. Sometimes all the signs overlap for like twenty five different causes. So it's a bit of a hunt." Randy nods and puts the clipboard down so she can move up to assist Miri if needed.
Miri has partially disconnected.

The cuff inflates, then slowly deflates. "Your blood pressure looks good. Now, I'm going to need you to place your hand on the pad over there. It will send small electrical impulses to scan your neural network for tampering." Miri indicates the handprint outline on the dataslate. She keeps the cuff on him and reaches down for his wrist, ostensibly taking his pulse. Skin contact.

Randy gets a glance as she rattles off her explanation, then a brief nod as it seems to make a lot more sense than the last one he got from Miri. Atticus actually understands all the words for a start. His attention goes back to the pressure cuff as it starts to inflate, it's an unfamiliar sensation and he tenses slightly, although he relaxes as it does. "What's blood pressure?" he asks as he watches it finish doing its thing, then turns his attention back to the dataslate. His expression shows that's he's clearly in two minds for a moment, but then tentatively reaches out with his left hand to place his hand in the outline, letting Miri do what she needs with his right.

"Each time you press down on something, you are applying pressure. If you fill a balloon with water, eventually it will pop. That's also pressure. Blood pressure is how much pressure there is in your circulatory system. It helps, along with counting the beats of your heart, to calculate whether your heart is working too hard, whether it might not be able to pump enough blood into your brain. Your blood carries oxygen to your brain which keeps you awake and alive." Someone was paying attention in biology. Randy, ever the engineer, seems to have identified with the mechanics of the body to some extent, at least to her exposure of it.

Turns out the image on the screen isn't static after all. Colours flash around his hand, text scrolls quickly, then the whole thing went red. The words "Level Four Incursion" flash on the top of the pad. Miri must owe some confused asshole down in engineering something big. She sucks her teeth. "Well, that's not good. That means we have some deep-level tampering going on. Good news is we can deal with it." She catches his gaze. "I would recommend letting us give you a sedative first."

Atticus is clearly listening to Randy, even if he's watching the dataslate as his hand touches it. "So you think I passed out because my blood pressure was wrong?" he asks, flicking his eyes across to her for a moment then back to Miri, "you say it's okay now though?" Any further questions are put on hold as the screen starts to do its thing. His hand is withdrawn in alarm and his gaze locked on it for a moment before Miri's words work their way into his brain. Turning his head sharply back towards her his reaction is instinctive as he pushes his chair back away from the table. "What? No!" He starts, looking back to the screen, "no. That's not a thing, it can't be." Not that he has any coherent argument why it isn't mind, right now he's just reacting with alarm and deeply uncertain as to what the frak is going on.

Miri grips his wrist. "Hey. Calm down. We've got you. Don't worry. I have no plans on letting anyone turn you into your father, okay? My team will get everything straight."

"It's possible. It's also possible-yeah. That's what I was worried about," Randy says as she 'plays some kind of expert' ping pong with Miri. She looks over to the woman and takes a deep breath. "In these situations, it's more likely that if you are tampered, the tampering was done in a way to setup defences around undoing it so that it can stay in place as long as possible." Makes sense right? You don't make a precious asset and then leave it with no defences. "We've also seen individuals not even know the existence or vehemently deny until we've shown them the proof. This is a system we are still in early stages in trying to help people who have. To help detect such things. Miri is your main care provider, but generally our goals in this situation is to try and only undo what was done, not change. This does /cause/ changes. When you untie a knot, the string changes shape right?" she tries to illustrate. "But the string is still the string it was. Does that make sense?" Randy keeps a calm and patient voice.

The first part of what Randy says is lost on Atticus, he's too busy pushing back away from the table and getting to his feet. He hasn't pulled his hand away from Miri yet, she's not on his threat radar at the moment, but the table and that thing on it appear to be. "No," he says again, calmer, but by no means calm. "No Clerics. My mind is my own." His neurons are firing at ten to the dozen and he's trying to make sense of the charade in front of him. And failing. He shakes his head again, if in doubt, repeat "no" it seems. He's gone tense as well, in the early stages of some kind of flight or fight response, before he gives his head a single, smaller, but more violent shake, as if trying to dislodge something. "My mind is my own," he repeats, then adds another of the perennial favourites, "I am a knight of House Benning, and I'm proud to serve the King and Queen."

"Do you see any Clerics in this room?" Miri glances over to one of the burly corpsmen, who catches her cue and approaches quietly with his autoinjector full of lovely sedatives. "We have no desire to control you. That just sounds like way too much work." There's a little pinch, and soon he's about to start feeling reeeeal good. She maintains her grip on his wrist.

Randy works to clear away the instruments, putting them in one of the far corners of the room since it's pretty obvious Atticus feels threatened by them. Then she turns back to him and holds her hands up slightly as she talks, not moving. "I hear you. I wouldn't want some Cleric mucking around in my head either and no one said anything about Clerics. We're not in the business of taking over and molding people's minds…" but Randy fades out her talking as she realizes what's just occurred is taking hold of the man.

Atticus doesn't feel the injector, his adrenalin has spiked and he's focused on the tablet Randy is clearing away. "No Clerics” he repeats, not able to understand how they would intend to 'fix' him without them, and that's without him even being convinced that there's anything wrong. Just before the drugs do their work Miri can likely see what's going on. He's thinking hard, and thinking fast, but not thinking entirely smart. Thoughts are flying about, and some are firing themselves towards the second barrier she'd found. None get through though, they're all obliterated on impact, and now she can see that, she can likely also see, or at least sense, the other reactions. The odd twitch, could be missed, but it's blindingly obvious when one destroyed thought seems to trigger an outward one and he says again as he's still trying to back away from the table, "my mind is my own." He doesn’t get far though, before his legs start to buckle from under him, and then he's out.

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