Post by Vincent Laeretti on Jan 29, 2017 8:35:25 GMT -7
10th of the Winter Storm, 5152 Artavia Restia Adria Tiira is not a woman who is easily surprised, bested, or put on edge. She is in fact one of the most capable people in the world anyone would ever have the privilege of meeting, and her tenacity, skill, and sheer wit and intelligence were the likes that made many others fear her on reputation. Artavia's military, already lauded for its technological advancements compared to other countries, was made all the more intimidating with Adria Tiira at the helm. Perhaps the only reason she didn't command quite the same level of respect as the likes of, say, Pelagia Xista or Tristan Cowell, was because she tended to be much more subtle in everything she did. Well, perhaps that as well as the fact that the military leader of Artavia had markedly less freedom to simply do as she pleased than the warlords of Aurcaele and Malscure did. Still, the fact remained that for her to be feeling, in this moment, surprised, bested, and on edge, was something of extreme unfamiliarity to Adria. And it was also suspiciously familiar. She had been enjoying a day of leave today, though still staying within the military city, simply contenting herself to a day of leisure for once as she perused some shops for some overdue shopping she'd been too busy for. That was when she detected the presence of another. Someone who was tailing her. She made no surface indication of her awareness, but as her day wore on she felt as though her pursuer somehow knew. Knew that she knew that they were there. But she was curious. Who would have the guts, honestly? So rather than simply return to base, she tried a few creative maneuvers, shortcuts, and swift movements with her legendary agility that would be hard for anyone to follow through the twists and inner workings of Restia. Still she felt her pursuer no matter how she tried, and frustratingly felt bested. And when eventually she made to take a sharp turn into a sewer tunnel only to find that there was a man standing there before she had reached it, she felt both surprised and put on edge. So he was finally making a direct move, hm? He was- He was Vincent. Adria blinked, a stunned look of disbelief on her features as she realized why this had all felt so familiar to her, her mind trying to process what shouldn't be possible as she looked at the man standing before her. The man who was looking disgruntled and perhaps even a little winded. "Did you know that you are quite possibly the most difficult person I have ever had the displeasure of trying to follow?" Adria blinked again, and smirked. "Did you know that you're supposed to be dead, Vincent?" At this, he smiled. "Yes, well. About that." Altuena She had insisted on a change of venue. Too many officers who would recognize her in Restia. Here in Altuena, in a cafe in the midst of a tourist hotspot, she could simply change her clothes, her hairstyle, and wear some glasses like Vincent, and no common citizen or tourist would recognize her. And obviously people recognizing Vincent wasn't going to be a problem. She'd made this venue decision when (after a long discussion of other matters, including Vincent's false demise and what he'd been doing the last several years) Vincent informed her that he wanted to discuss matters of potential delicacy. He was lucky she considered him a good friend, once upon a time. It couldn't really be said that they'd grown up together. They were, after all, eight years apart. But when a 14-year-old Vincent Laeretti arrived in the Artavian training corps, fourteen years ago, it was Adria (then still a low-ranking officer herself) who had been assigned as part of the group who would train the newbies. She remembered scoffing at him initially - he was hot-blooded, bent on a major morality kick. He came from a very privileged household, lots of money, and could have just gone into school and inherited everything from his folks. He had a different mentality, though. He had his whole justice shtick, his desire to grow stronger, to not just rely on brains but also have the might to back it up if he needed to. She never thought he'd last more than a week, silver spoon boy that he was with his dreamer's ideology. He quickly proved her wrong. No matter what was thrown at him, even when it was harsher than the others (a personal call on Adria's part), he never gave in. He stayed dedicated. He, a younger recruit than most of the others as his participation had been entirely voluntary and even insisted upon, managed to show up cadets that were four or five years his senior. He never complained, merely pursued everything with a steely determination. Adria decided she could respect him, then. And she had taken to personally training the daylights out of him. He wanted to be perfect, he wanted to have all the skills one could ever need to enforce his ideology of justice and morality. She would make sure he got those skills, learning everything she knew. He never surpassed her, not back then. But he came close on several occasions, and Adria became familiar with the sensation of being put on edge that only this precocious young trainee seemed to be able to inspire in her. They spent four years this way. Adria couldn't train him the entire time, of course, not officially. She received promotions as time went on, moved on to other stations. Vincent received new superiors as his progress in the academy continued, his time balanced between the military and his time at home, learning engineering and science. But even despite the limit on their free time, despite no longer being officially required to spend time together, they continued to meet. Adria would train Vincent privately whenever they had the time. And she would ask him questions, and get asked questions in turn. They got to know each other. Adria would laugh as she realized she knew the names and faces of each one of Vincent's five siblings, feeling almost as though she had met them herself. She knew his youngest brother was a Moonborn, like her, and that he kept that truth hidden from him. She often found herself wondering about little Endless, and what a rude wake up call that was going to be for him some day. She respected Vincent, but she didn't believe his ideology could be realized, didn't believe Endless could truly be protected. And Vincent learned of Adria's most secret ambition. An ambition she never told anyone, but that she trusted him alone with. He could never quite say he approved... but he swore to her he'd never speak of it. If nothing else, it would be the one thing he would look the other way on for as long as he could ever help it. And, purely hypothetically of course, he would even offer his own ideas for how one might ever go about breaking into Storrisina. Hypothetically. When the Laerettis were exterminated, mere weeks after that last meeting, Adria could remember feeling pangs of true sadness at the news. She remembered the anxious thrum of her heart as she desperately scoured the news, hoping to hear word of survivors. But no word ever came. The Laerettis were gone, and Vincent with them. Considering all of that, she considered it a pretty good job on her part that she hadn't actually started crying or anything mortifying like that when she suddenly saw his face. It was also a good job that she didn't punch him square in the jaw for letting her think he was dead all these years. He probably deserved that much. Especially since he wanted to talk about something privately, now. Yes, his first act of reaching out to his dear best friend who thought he was dead after all these years was because he needed information. "Did you know that I could honestly kill you for real right now?" she asked him from across their table, kicking him soundly in the shin underneath. He winced, and she knew the kick had not been light or joking. Good. "Yes, yes I know. I don't know how many times I'm going to need to apologize." "Ten years, Vincent. Ten years you let me believe you were dead. And you've even been coming back here." "I couldn't let the state know I was still alive. You had a high-ranking military station. Reaching you was difficult." "And yet you did that just fine today." "Today, Adria, I have many more resources at my disposal than on the day that I "died". It's taken me years in Submiere and covert visits back to the lab to get to where I am now." "Then why now? Why not once you felt as though you could properly stage your infiltration of Restia? Surely it wasn't just today that you deemed yourself capable." At this, Vincent cast his gaze down, looking regretful. "It... was difficult. I had to spend years by Lord Woodrow's side. I had gotten used to not existing. I had gotten used to no one knowing me. One day, it occurred to me that I possessed the means to get in and out of Restia undetected, but..." Adria held her silence, watching as Vincent truly looked mournful for a moment. Even in the years she had known him, he had been stoic to a fault. Usually the only emotion he would openly display back then was anger, passion. She rarely saw him looking sad. "...After having been away for so many years already, I felt as though I no longer had a place in your life. Nor did I have a right to. I'm still an invisible man. I can't live out in the open. I thought perhaps it would simply be better if you continued to think I was gone." Adria might have punched him for that one, finally. But they were sitting in a cafe. No one was recognizing her at the moment, but it would be best not to draw attention to herself all the same. She settled for kicking him under the table again. "But you show up today because you needed something from me." "Yes," he answered, at least doing her the dignity of not trying to sugar-coat it. "I am sorry, Adria. Really I am. But I would not have come to you unless I determined it was absolutely necessary." "Don't you see that that's the problem!?" she demanded, careful not to raise her voice too loudly but still keeping her tone suitably angry. "You should have come to me if you needed something even if weren't absolutely necessary! You should have come to me even if you didn't need anything at all! As soon as you were capable of it, you should have. You think I would have cared about the delay if I knew you were at least trying? You think I would have cared that you couldn't stay? Vincent, you're my friend. At one point I thought of you as my best friend. I just wanted to know you were alive." Her words awoke a tenderness inside of her that she didn't often expose. A tenderness that was rearing its ugly head for the dear friend she thought long dead. "That's all I wanted." Vincent's gaze almost looked broken. The face of a man who never displayed his emotions, but for an instant, overcome with something. He closed his eyes and nodded, a solemn acknowledgement. "I am so sorry, Adria." There was silence for a while, and Adria sipped at her drink thoughtfully. Finally, she spoke. "So then how important is it. How dire?" "I fear the very moral fiber of the SSPB may be at stake," Vincent replied, his expression and tone serious. "And what is it you need?" Vincent sighed and steeled himself, and Adria knew he was about to make a big ask. "I think you and I both know that the state has had a bit of a history with cover-ups." Adria narrowed her eyes. His tone was hushed, but this was still dangerous water. But she knew it well, he was right. She nodded quietly. "This isn't about my family. I am certain on some level that someone in the government must know who was responsible for that, but I am also certain that that is the one thing you'd have already told me if you knew it. This is rather about something else, something I cannot even confirm but for which I have my suspicions." "And the fact that you can't confirm it is what makes you think the state may possibly be involved?" she replied, her own voice hushed. Vincent nodded. "There is a doctor. He was once a major, but has since been discharged. There is nothing suspect about this discharge on paper. He served his time and made his contributions. But I have reasons to be especially suspicious of him. He has a contract with my superior, a contract which abdicates him of retribution for his actions from our hand in return for a service he is providing. This service of his is very unethical, but to my knowledge, not strictly illegal. But it is not just the contract that binds him to us; he makes a habit of ingratiating himself to my Lord, working his way into his good graces, becoming chummy. It's clear to me that he wants something, but what exactly, I cannot tell. My only aim is to stop him and his crooked research before he corrupts the whole damned system. This led me to investigate him." This was all starting to sound slightly familiar to Adria. An inkling sprouted in her mind as she listened, and she grew more and more sure that she might know who was being spoken about. "And what did you find?" "He owns and runs a hospital situated in the mutant fields. He and two others are the sole staff. One such member of staff is an old-strain merfolk woman, who should not have legs, and yet does. She tells me her name is Lily Green, but no records of a Lily Green can be found in any census records for Artavia, and even in worldwide census records none of those reported were of merfolk heritage. Her past cannot be confirmed, and her circumstances were not explained. There is no record that this hospital even exists according to Artavia, and I cannot order a formal investigation of the place by the SSPB to force the state's awareness because the SSPB are contractually forbidden from getting involved with him. And to top it all off? The service this man offers to our SSPB, this unethical practice. Mind control." It was obvious now who Vincent was talking about. Adria knew this case well. "His name is Thomas Dunn. I've dug as far into it as I am capable, I have scoured any lead I could find. But I find nothing. I am aware that there are certain ethical concerns to this form of technology, but I am unaware of the strictly recognized legal nature of the material. I can find nothing that damns him or warrants a termination of contract. The state ignores his hospital, and my attempts at reporting its whereabouts go unnoticed. His chief nurse is a woman with no past with impossible biology. I am certain that there must be something there, and yet I find nothing. And he seems entirely too confident in it." Adria didn't know what to say. She knew going into this that Vincent was going to have something steep to ask about. Something potentially damning. But she had hoped, perhaps vainly, that whatever it was could have been something that, if employed just for Vincent's purposes, wouldn't potentially blow up in the government's face. This was not that. This was Project ACACIA he was investigating. The state had taken great, great pains to cover that up. To leave no trace of evidence that it had happened. Thomas Dunn was given an on-paper honorable discharge, but any who knew of the project knew how dishonorable it truly was. The state would not acknowledge that this project happened, not even to punish the researchers involved. Because to acknowledge it would mean acknowledging the kidnappings that had occurred for it. The unlawful abduction of unwilling subjects for the experiment. The unlawful abduction of Tehodis Kitai in the hopes of being able to use her to control Tristan Cowell. Adria could not share this information, not even with Vincent. Vincent would use it to persecute Thomas for his current actions. But the only way he could do that, given the contract of non-involvement the SSPB were stuck in, would be to drag Thomas before an Artavian court. And that could only be done if there was something for Thomas to answer for. And without information on the past instances of Project ACACIA, there would be no precedent for punishing Tom for whatever his current involvements were. Persecuting Tom for Project ACACIA would require Artavia to acknowledge the project. That would require admitting to the kidnappings. That would implicate Artavia in the scandal surrounding Tehodis. That could lead to potential war with Malscure and its emotionally unstable warlord. No. Adria couldn't let Vincent have this information, no matter how much he meant to her. "Vincent... there's nothing here for you." Vincent almost looked stunned at the answer, but when he met Adria's eyes, and saw how serious, how apologetic they looked, he didn't say a word. "There is nothing, Vincent," she said again, though her eyes said otherwise. I'm sorry. I can't tell you this. I can't let this get out. "I see," he replied, stone-faced. I hoped otherwise. But I understand. But Adria Tiira was not happy. She was not happy with Thomas Dunn. In the interest of saving their own asses, keeping their own hands clean, the state was now turning a blind eye to Thomas. He had been ordered to cease his Acacia project, and they defunded it, but clearly they didn't have any intention of stopping him directly, and if he was funding his own research (as he clearly was), they wouldn't stop that either. Personally, Adria didn't like it. She wasn't so much against mind control for ethics, like Vincent was. No, she rather just found it boring. Cheating. A coward's way to win because they couldn't simply best their adversary. So they had to control them instead. Adria never liked Thomas, not when he was employed by the state, and not now. And she was not pleased to hear that he was doing whatever he wanted and getting away with it. She wouldn't allow it. "Vincent," she said, and she caught his eyes with a small smile. "Did you know that Artavia is the only country in the world with actual laws drafted to regulate mind control tech?" Vincent blinked slowly. "I attempted to dig up what I could, but didn't find much. Not here or anywhere else." "It's fairly new," she said, leaning forward to sip at her drink again. "The tech barely even exists anywhere else in the world, so you won't find laws governing it in most of Fortuna. They're just stuck on regulations on enchantment, not technology. But we do have a few regulations here. Anyone on Artavian soil must follow these regulations. But did you also know that even outside of Artavia, the law applies if the offender is an Artavian citizen?" Vincent leaned forward now as well, wearing a small smirk. "No, Adria, I did not know that." Adria's grin widened. "Artavian legal code C027. Newer regulation, only about five years old now. Mind control technology is legal, but only under the requisite that the subject of the control is either: A) a volunteer who has offered their contractual consent, signed in the presence of an Artavian judge and at least two other researchers, B) Someone who has been volunteered by someone else that has legal custody of them, such as a parent, warden, or other legally-acceptable custody-holder, once again with contractual signing taking place in the presence of a judge and two other researchers, or C) A criminal who has not yet paid due sentence for their crime, in which case being volunteered as an experimental subject can be done in lieu of that time. Any use of the technology outside of these currently-approved regulations is illegal. You could get in real trouble for violating them." Vincent leaned back in his seat, and he pondered this. Adria had just given him a huge tip. Thus far, the only known subjects of Thomas's experiments, as far as the SSPB was made aware, were animals and Katerine Vexler. Katerine fit the criteria for regulation C of the law. But these were simply the known subjects. And Vincent knew... not factually, not with proof, but in the way that any good detective truly knows when their hunch is not just a hunch. Vincent knew there had to be others. Vincent had taken Tom's measure, he'd gotten a feel for the kind of person he was, the kind of slimy, smug personality he had. There had to be others. And among them, there was bound to be one for whom Thomas was in violation of the law, using them as a subject. Vincent just had to prove it. "Thank you, Adria," he said. "Truly." "It's the best I can do for you," she replied. She cast a glance around, simply out of habit, but was confident the two of them were still only surrounded by tourists who were paying them no attention. "I hope you can do something with it. Honestly." "You and me both." She really wished she could tell him more. Give him the full story. Tell him where he needed to start looking to rake Thomas across the coals. She wished she could simply go and exterminate the man herself, if only to silence him and prevent him making waves that could get Artavia in trouble. But Adria had superiors. It was to their discretion how Thomas was handled, and if they were ignoring his proclivities then it was evident they would not approve of Adria moving out of order to take care of him. And Adria also intended to go places still. Like Vincent, who still clung to his broken ideology that he believed in so fiercely that it made Adria want to believe in it too, she too still clung to her own goal. Storrisina was in her sights. And Artavia was a valuable piece of that puzzle. She was not going to jeopardize that by releasing forbidden information that could throw the state into chaos and potential war. No, it would be up to Vincent to bring Thomas down through other channels. She had to stay out of it. "I..." Vincent said, appearing hesitant. "When I return to Submiere, I don't know when I will be able to see you again. I depart tomorrow to man a vessel that will be sailing around Aissic. The final bout of guard duty for the festival. And there are a great many other things that will hold me back." Adria nodded. "And I'm sure we can't have you infiltrating Restia on a regular basis. You'll get yourself killed eventually." He released a rueful chuckle and nodded. "Indeed." "Still impressive that you managed it," she said airily, giving him a playful smirk. "No doubt thanks to all those lessons, hm?" Vincent smiled back. "You taught me everything you know. But I've learned more than just that since then, I'm afraid." "Dream on," she replied challengingly. "How much more do you think I've learned since when I was training your bratty ass? Don't forget who between us is General now, Vincent." Vincent's smirk only grew more devious. "Clearly not enough if you were outflanked and caught by a lowly SSPB operative today." "You're aiming for another kick, aren't you?" "We have time before I have to get back," he replied casually. "I suppose a few more kicks wouldn't be too much of an imposition." The two shared a small laugh at this, and Adria decided it was time to order another coffee. She had a lot of catching up to do with her old friend. |