An Antiquated Letter to "R" Honshu, at a rented flat
At the close of Revenant’s day, an immaculate, old-fashioned letter awaited her upon the bedside counter, placed with such deliberate precision that to miss it would have been impossible. When her eyes settled upon the front she found only two careful marks: "To: R", and there, holding the envelope shut, a wax seal bore the unmistakable crest of a gryphon. A familiar visage, indeed.
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Honshu, Kanazawa, City Flats
The days were long and arduous within the depths of Kishiro’s secretive Kansai facility... The Research Facility where Revenant, under a newly crafted alter ego and a fresh face to match, now found herself occupied with theoretical sciences in the ever so problematic hyperspatial studies. Her temporary employment under one of Kusari’s great corporations demanded long hours, all beneath the ever-watchful eyes of the KOI. With each passing day, the scrutiny grew tighter, her every movement observed and assessed. Moments of respite, of peace, of tranquility, were becoming more and more rare. And when they came, she clung to them, savoring even the smallest relief while trying, futilely, to silence the weight of stress and fears lingering in the back of her mind.
Upon returning to her new temporary quarters situated on Planet Honshu, it never took long for Revenant to indulge upon her inner sins in silence.
Mindlessly reaching to refill her glass, she allowed herself to mentally drift off... until something felt wrong. Object permanence. A subtle disruption in the rhythm of her carefully rehearsed zombie routine. Curiosity stirred, tempered by a hint of unease, as she leaned in to inspect it, a soft hum escaping her mouth, slightly droning from the effects of the ruby intoxicant. But then she recognised it. The sigil. How did he know? The question lingered, unanswered. Perhaps her discreet little drone had delivered the note. Or perhaps the little slice of seclusion was a comforting lie to get through with the duty at hand.
"Mhm..."
There was no time to dwell. Too much remained unfinished. Research would not complete itself, nor would answers reveal themselves unbidden. Still, she allowed herself a quiet, fleeting hope that this time, the message might carry something more… favourable. Praying for that glimmer of optimism.
The old-fashioned envelope sighed as it was opened. A thin film that had sealed the contents tore free, releasing a faint oily perfume into the room. From inside came a letter, the paper warm and ridged under the fingertips, the handwriting dense and continuous; at its base a small, standard data chip was affixed with a precisely spread, watery glue.
The ink on the page flowed heavy and patient:
“
R,
It has been some time since our last meeting.
I was made wary by your exchange with the Tribune.
Do you have any updates on our project as we agreed?
Those under my command and I have been at our tasks without respite.
We used parts of your data in the recent improvements. Given the silence from your side, I ordered my people to press forward with our own solutions, returning to the original schematics more closely.
Attached below this letter you will find a data chip containing our latest progress and a report. It is encrypted. You know the keys.
If you require resources, tell me and I will supply them.
Answer soon, by whatever means you deem fit.
”
When Revenant finished reading, the letters began to thin, the words evaporating slow and until the page lay blank and the room smelled faintly of oil.
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But of course, it arrived. The inevitable distraction, surplanting itself to the ever-growing list of burdens upon Revenant’s mind. With haste, she retrieved a pair of gloves and carefully inspected the letter, her gaze sharp and deliberate as she absorbed every detail from the page. Her attention quickly shifted to the peculiar object attached, just as described within the message. Her eyes narrowed in recognition. The message was delicate, yet the faint, unusual scent it carried was enough to raise concern.
Her head lifted abruptly, scanning the room in search of her small robotic companion, pulling away the artifical note.
"Rascal...? Are you here?"
A reluctant sigh escaped her. The foolish little minion has found itself scheming elsewhere again.
"Of course I have to do everything-..."
Uncertain of what the device might contain, she began searching the room for a spare PDA, she was unwilling to risk exposing her primary systems to potential malicious code. A safety precaution, common sense to most, but to the more commoner man of Sirius; an apt foresight. Once she found one of the many spare devices, she inserted the drive and began decrypting the data. Revenant studied the contents in silence, her focus unwavering as she intently assessed the contents displayed upon the shoddy screen. The integrity of the data was intact, which satisfied her. The results however, were underwhelming in expectation. Subpar. As if the collaborators have deeply misunderstood the job they were supposed to undertake. Now, a ticking timebomb was set off.
Sighing once more as she removed the datachip, she turned her attention to her wrist-mounted armband device, reattaching a component that would typically accompany the armband which had since been carefully minimized to avoid detection within her workplace.
Soon after, she changed into another disguise: a cream and brown ensemble, composed of a longcoat, concealed armor, and her familiar mask. With her cosmetical metamorphosis achieved, she departed, very intent on delivering a message to her elusive collaborator. She vanished quietly into the deep Sigmas without a trace, much to the dismay of her secretive guardian angels and demons that shadowed her.
The chip electrified to life, its file system encrypted against ordinary curiosity. The locks were nearly perfect, built to frustrate conventional cracking, yet deliberate gaps lingered in the code. Small pointers and half-phrases had been left for one mind alone.
Two files opened when the cryptographic phrase was completed. One was an image, the other a report.
The image showed a laboratory carved in classical Corsair lines, dark stone and ironwork bending into arches that remembered older, quieter faiths. In the center of that geometric room floated a vat-grown brain, suspended in a nutrient bath. This was the Interface, the bioelectrical translator TRIBUNE had hinted at. Some sensory tendrils escaped through the reinforced glass, the edges of them blurred by the slow, patient motion of something learning. Around the vat, scientists have their hands on instruments, faces hidden under protective visors that suggested both rigorous safety and the inevitability of risk.
The report read like a ledger of obsession. It cataloged procedures, experiments and results with a neutral hand that made the horrors colder. Casualties were not footnotes. Dozens were listed. Fifteen scientists had been recorded as permanently removed from the team for "total nervous breakdown." About fifty more were placed on "cautionary leave" or held under "observation," phrases that felt like polite veils for people who might have become part of the experiment itself. The document outlined tightened security protocols and logs of background scans for psionic radiation. Over time the scans trended downward, but not smoothly; jagged spikes rose on dates that matched experimental runs.
Near the end, under Methodology, the text grew franker and worse. The team is using artifacts known for their psychoactive properties to modulate the artificial neurons, a crude parallel to magnetization. Their intention was precise: to fashion from the Interface a translator that could turn electrical patterns into controlled psionic emissions. The Interface would do more than read the array of artifacts; it would speak with them, bend them, and through that conversation seize access to their power.
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