contagio | ( MEMES ) TEST DRIVE >> 7

THE TEST DRIVE

Like it or not, you've been dragged from your world into the sanctum. It's a pretty nice city, all things considered--sci-fi, high-tech, glamourous.... Except, of course, for the giant dome encircling it, and the threat of glitching, contaminated zombies at your door. Looks like humanity's built itself a fortress that looks suspiciously like a cage, too. Toss in the odd memory blanks and the everpresent logo of Bifrons incorporated and it's enough to make someone paranoid.

The object of this meme is to get people familiar with the world of the Sanctum, and to try to see if their characters would fit in a sci-fi utopia such as this. Here are your options:

1. Intro: Waking Up. Make your intro post, folks. You wake up in a strange place, and get a strange transmission to go with it. There's a pair of glasses connected to some sort of communications network, but otherwise not much else in the room with you. What are you going to do?

2. Pet Adoption. Maybe you have the perfect genetically engineered pet in mind. Maybe you found a stray little escapee--do you keep it or turn it in? There's a reward if you let Bifrons know where the potentially dangerous little bugger is at, after all.

3. Alterations. Feel like you need an edge in the city? Find yourself injured and looking at options? Why not consider genetic alterations or, better yet, upgrading to a better, healthier you? Be warned, some of the side effects can be a little unpleasant.

4. Network Glitches. Strange garbled messages keep trying to come through in audio and text, but no way to track where they're coming from. Do you try to make contact? Compare notes with others? Surely it's nothing to be concerned about, right?

5. Dome Glitches. What was that in the window? There, again, in the bathroom mirror! Is that another you, living another life? Or maybe you spot an ominous shadow lurking around in the corner, something like a dysthrope but...worse. You're not going crazy, are you? Others see it, too, don't they? Oh, I wouldn't touch that reflective surface if I were you, or you might end up thinking you're living in that strange other world.

6. Outside the Dome. You're out and about without an armed escort, suited up against the atmosphere and dysthropes. It's supposed to be a green sector in this run down shell of what used to be a suburb, right? Nothing could possibly go wrong

7. WILDCARD. Choose your own adventure or create a cocktail from the presented options! The choice is YOURS.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, that wasn't good. He looks around, trying to find something for her to breath into, but all he has is his pocket handkerchief. It was a poor replacement, but hopefully it might do the trick. He glanced at the man beneath the dome, but was sure that whatever that field was it could contain him for a few moments. The electric shock should keep him down and out for awhile yet.

"Here you are, miss," he said, holding out the golden cloth to her. She could breath into it, he hoped, simulate a bag. Even if there was one out here in the alley, he wouldn't dream of giving it to her. Who knew where it could have been? "You all right? He was a bit rough with ya', though you got a hell of a kick." He smiled a little, pushing his glasses up his nose.

Elizabeth is definitely feeling a kind of panic, though that hadn't been the worst situation she'd been in. Just the only one where she'd nearly been strangled. She considers, for a brief second, laying into this crazy acrobatic dandy because he'd more or less completely destroyed her undercover operation. But, in the end, she'd obviously needed the help and he'd had no idea what he'd been walking into. He's obviously more observant than everyone else in the dome, Malik had been trailing her for blocks.

"Thank you," she wheezes, taking the handkerchief from him. Long time since she's seen one of them-- and she gives it a hesitant little sniff before holding it over her nose and mouth to breathe for a few seconds. Once she's done, she pulls it away and nods.

"Bruised but I'll live," she looks over at the detention field again and rifles through her bag before producing what appears to be a simple two-way speakerbox system. "This is DeWitt, I have suspect in custody, please extract from my coordinates."

Pause, then the affirmative came over the line. More breathing into the handkerchief.

"...Galahad? Really?"

"What? It's a good name," Eggsy sniffed, smoothing down his suit, brushing off stray bits of dust. The suit itself was bullet proof, so he didn't take to much damage from anything that had happened.

"Are you an officer then?" he asked, looking to the two way communicator she had and back at the man they had stopped. Well, he knew he had a wrong feeling about him. Looked like he was right. But if she was an officer, maybe she could be of more help - like explaining what the hell was going on, why he woke up here. Luck was with him today, it seemed.

"Investigator," Elizabeth corrects, swallowing a few times trying to inflate her larynx again. She looks Galahad over-- the suit is almost familiar in a 'non-futuristic' way, and she tilts her head trying to get a look at the back of his head. Immune ports? Native ports? She can go out on a limb and guess without looking, though.

"I haven't seen anybody dressed like that in a long time. Did you just come out of the lab?"

Dressed, right, the extraction team would be there soon and Elizabeth had used an... unorthodox method of reeling her man in. She holds up the handkerchief with a little wince. "And can I borrow this?"

There's a brief twinge of wariness at that question, and a sharper turn of his gut. To ask that sort of question suggested that he might not the only one to show up like this before. Which was not a comforting thought at all. He glanced at the man again and back to Elizabeth, doing his best to keep his cool even though there was the slightest bubble of panic inside. But a Kingsman did not let panic rule his actions.

"Yes, of course," he told her in response to the handkerchief. "And I certainly left there not to long ago." He could lie, but he had a feeling she would know and being an investigator meant that she couldn't be completely twisted, right?

She sighs in relief. "Thank you," she turns around and starts tucking the handkerchief into her dress to cover her cleavage. The dress alone would raise some eyebrows, she didn't need Church panicking while Tex gave her the evil eye. It wasn't her fault that this particular serial killer was attracted to fuller figured women-- and she didn't exactly fit the 'fuller' part of that statement without some heavy suggestion up top.

"You saw the film too, I'm guessing. The one with the man saying we're their 'last hope'," And her tone suggests just how she feels about that. She finishes making herself decent and turns around. "Welcome to Proles-- wherever you came from, you're not in the same timeline that you started in. You're in a domed in city, the year is 3163 if that means anything to you. The both of us are part of a program called 'Project Immunis', which consists of outsiders being yanked from their respective timelines and brought here to supposedly discover a cure for a disease that was introduced by the very people who started Project Immunis. I, for example, originally came from a city called Columbia, on Earth, year 1912. They call people like us the 'Immune'."

"Not big on easing a person into things, are you?" he asked as he tried to absorb the information dump.

Naturally he wanted to balk, protest that she was pulling his leg, that this test was ridiculous or whatever the hell this was. But having seen the city, the glasses, what she had just used to contain the man and what the man himself had used... well, it was hard to argue with so much visual evidence. He definitely hadn't gone to sleep here, and he was a fairly light sleeper these days.

"So, what, we're just guniea pigs then?"

Elizabeth's expression softens a little, and she rubs her neck a little. "Sorry. That wasn't kind of me, I'm just..." She casts a glance over at Malik-- his metal hoses are starting to try to breach the force field, but Elizabeth isn't worried. They're getting little electric shocks for their trouble, and Malik himself is so toasted the hoses are basically on no-pain-feedback autopilot. They'll zap themselves into oblivion before they make any real effort. She gestures to the mess. "Still over there."

She takes another breath, maybe Galahad can even see her switch gears once she's done. "That's the idea. Apparently there's something about all of us that makes us resistant to this disease, and they want to find a cure or a vaccine through studying us. Of course, we're not stuck in a lab being poked and prodded, most of the time our help is pitched as 'voluntary'. Which is crazy. I don't know who in their right mind would say 'Sure, sounds like fun, I'll help you guys out; you only kidnapped me and and subjected me to involuntary surgery'. But there you are."

Well, she made it sound like oodles of fun, didn't she? But, in all fairness, he wasn't sure how you explained that sort of thing and didn't make it sound horrible. At the least he didn't want to run around screaming and tearing at the things on his back, which he was sure had something to do with this cure for the disease business. But it sounded a lot like what Valentine had been pitching, providing a cure for a disease that was destroying the world, except in his case the disease had been humanity itself. Damn, he hadn't been a Kingsman even a full year yet and already he was tired of megalomaniacs thinking it was fine to play God.

"I'm guessing the things on my back have something to do with that?" he asked her, glancing at the tentacles again, fingering his signet ring just in case he needed to shock them once more to get the message of 'stay down' across. It would make him feel better, personally.

( MEMES ) TEST DRIVE >> 7

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