Issue 1 Downtime

Taliyah is out and about on the town. She walks through the little shops and boutique's, trying on outfits and buying a new wardrobe. Summer is coming and she plans on looking her best.

As Taliyah was passing out of a store, she'd register a rather odd anomaly in her systems. A brief check would show a discrepancy in her visual/cognative relays.

Taliyah frowns, running a diagnostic while looking around a bit suspiciously.

The diagnostic was completed rather quickly, and showed that there was nothing wrong with her processes.

However, as she looked around, she'd register the same anomaly again as she looked up the street.

After a moment of hesitation, Taliyah started walking towards the anomaly.

Whatever the anomaly was, it didn't seem to be stationary. After a few moments of walking in the direction of the anomaly, she wouldn't be getting any discrepancies anymore.

A diagnostic on the discrepancy would show that it was apparently being caused by improper processing of the visual signals her hardware was feeding to her brain as she glanced around. It wouldn't register any corruption of the stored data, though.

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Lightshow: Cal, you online?

Taliyah glances around, trying to pin down some sort of pattern to the anomalies.

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Lightshow: Some sort of visual glitch. Are you having any problems?

Taliyah tries pulling up her memory to see what was at the spot where the discrepancy appeared.

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Cyberboy: No, but now I'm paranoid and running a diagnostic.

The visual records were, as stated, intact, and looking at them after the fact, Taliyah would see a figure she hadn't noticed the first time through. At each of the points where her vision had glitched.

And he created the same odd sense of deja vu as he had the last time he'd seen him, when he was blasting a robot from behind at the laboratory they'd pulled Salma out of.

Taliyah sends Cal the memory immediately.

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Lightshow: I think we're being watched. Look familiar?

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Lightshow: Bingo.

Out of curiosity, Taliyah sends an open query to any cybernetic systems in the immediate area.

Her broadband was able to project for all of about ten seconds, before she suddenly found herself firewalled into her own head by a signal that only seemed to last long enough to force her to stop.

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DXM:  Do NOT do that right now.

Taliyah does what she's told.

As Taliyah looked, her gaze would pass over two figures who were just wrong. Their bodies were distinctly cooler than the people around them, except for joints and an area in the middle of their abdomens.

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Once they've had you, there's no going back through the looking glass.  Don't do anything to get their attention and know they've found you, because I guarantee you that they know who you are, what you can do, and possibly what your shutoff codes are.

Taliyah thinks for a moment, then follows their advice, glancing at the window display.

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Lightshow: Cute dresses, not exactly my style.

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Lightshow: Good question.

Taliyah runs a search.

And it turned out that she did, although they came up as 'proto-functionality.'

Taliyah's implants flicker red for a moment.

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Lightshow: I don't think you're close enough of a friend to start requesting hits.

Nonetheless, she does as she's asked.

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You're free to not do it, but I'm pretty sure that you won't like the results.

Thankfully, as she passed the units, they remained unaware of her passing, like she were completely invisible to them.