chiron_survivor | Hiding in plain view. ((open to anyone!))

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Hiding in plain view. ((open to anyone!))

She didn't flee to the Nexus immediately. At first, she was just in shock. The cylons were back, except this time, they were running the government. A "coalition" government, but everyone knew what that really meant.

It didn't make sense to her. They hated humans. Why not just destroy them and be done with it?

Her boyfriend assumed it was some sort of elaborate revenge plot, or a way to salvage the aspects of humanity the cylons considered worth keeping. He wanted her to agree with him, to be red-hot about it, too, but Adia was too distracted. She kept seeing Caspar's face -- the one she thought she knew -- and comparing it with the ones she kept seeing, wherever she went.

She could tell it was bothering him, that her attention was elsewhere.

Later, in the middle of the night when she knew she wouldn't be missed by any humans, and prayed she wouldn't be missed by any cylons, she PINpointed to the Nexus.

She sat at a Nexus terminal and typed out a message for anyone to read.

The cylons are on New Caprica.

Only then did she cry.

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She looks down. That's a good question. She should have told Julia (this one had a name) to go frak off a long time ago. "I was scared at first, that she might get mad if everyone in the lab ignored her..."

She's quiet for a second or two, then looks up. Under her fear and exhaustion is an expression of pity. "I have a friend here who is clairvoyant. She showed me a vision once of a cylon in a great deal of pain... it was the same model. I just... she was the enemy for so long, and she might still be, but she isn't a monster." She rubs her arm. It sounds dumb now that she's said it out loud.

His frown deepens. "I know Caspar was your... friend, and that this one may be good too, but be careful. In they end, which side would they take? You must know who your friends are. And you must choose your friends carefully."

"She's not my friend," Adia snaps before looking away, embarrassed. Martel is offering sound advice. "I certainly don't trust her. But that doesn't mean I have to generate even more animosity in the lab. We have to work together, for now." She sighs heavily and rubs her eyes. "They have emotions, too, and it's stupid to think of them as simply intelligent machines. That's what got us into trouble in the first place."

Lichtenstein very correctly decides that it would not be the best time to sigh about 'women' and the strangeness of the female mind. Instead he readjusts his seat. "There is a difference between treating them as soulless things and treating them as enemies. You must keep things strictly professional. Emotional or not, you don't want one cylon doing a Caspar on it. It will hurt more. When things change, your attitude can change."

"I'm not..." Adia trails off weakly, then sighs. She's tired; she does not have the fight in her to defend her reasoning to Lich. She can barely defend it to herself. She suspects Lich wouldn't understand why it's easier to talk to Julia than ignore her.

Caspar would be great at keeping things strictly professional. He'd probably give Adia the same advice. The irony is not lost on her.

"When she talks about her God, it reminds me of the one on your world."

"God being created by evil robots... yes, I could see that," he snorts. It really wouldn't surprise him. "At least your gods are clear in their nature. A trickster is a trickster, a lover is a lover. One god is unreadable. Rather like the cylons, by the sound of it."

"Their god is forgiving, too," Adia murmurs, thinking back on her usually one-sided conversations with the cylon. "Like yours. But you're right... you know what to expect, with our gods. And even our gods don't know the future, but apparently theirs does."

He twitches when she calls it his god, but pushes it aside. Then he crooks an eyebrow. "Certainly says something about how they see themselves. 'Seers' are almost as tricky to deal with as gods."

She doesn't miss his expression, this time. "I just meant the god that people on your Earth believe in," she says in appeasement. "I just think it's a strange coincidence."

Adia smiles faintly and adds, "We have seers, too, but they commune with The Fates. Our religion is big on fate." She kind of makes a face at that, then looks more thoughtful. "But the cylons... they can communicate with one another over a vast network. And not just thoughts, but memories, emotions... almost like a collective consciousness, but not quite, because everyone is still an individual. So maybe it's easier to know your future if you have such a huge sample of data."

A slight frown crosses his brow but he nods. "It is."

"A lot of good they did," he grunts when she talks about the seers in her world. He never had liked them much. "Easy to make a prediction, not to know your future. Far too many random events for that, I would think... It must be hard to understand a race with such a different set of behaviors and influences."

"They seem to think it's one and the same," she replies. "But they're... yeah, they're hard to understand." And then she frowns again, as if upset with herself. Caspar wasn't hard to understand. At least, she didn't think he was. "They are so good at being human when they don't know that they aren't..."

"I'm sure human behavior is well documented in your world," he points out. "I'd be surprised if they weren't able to recreate or mimic it."

He tries not to frown even more, but it's difficult. As strong as Adia is, this seems to have shaken her far more than anything else. Even worse, he can't do any more about it than offering a few words. That is going to irritate him.

"Do you want a drink?"

It's not easy seeing your dead really-a-robot ex-boyfriend's face everywhere. Literally. Although Lich might also chalk that up to a problem of a woman's mind. Adia is still simmering in her thoughts, and the question catches her by surprise. "A drink?"

People turn to drink when these sorts of things happen, don't they? She's seen it happen to other people. But she hasn't become an alcoholic, and a drink sounds awfully appealing right now. If anything, it'll help her go back to sleep. "Sure."

While he could ask if she would prefer coffee or tea, he finds it highly unlikely she wouldn't want something stronger. Lichtenstein nods and stands. "I know just the place. Come with me."

Usually he would go on ahead once he saw her stand, but this time he waits, making sure she's in step with him. It's not far from where Adia was sitting, but a change of scenery will distract her. At least, he hopes it will. "Yes, a stiff drink and a good night's rest. That's what you need. Nothing else quite does the job for stress like this."

She rouses herself out of her seat, the emotional pain of the last few days more obvious when she stands. "Doctor's orders?" she says to Lich with the faintest of smiles. She walks beside him, glad it isn't far. "There's a man that visits the Nexus sometimes. He always manages to find a bottle of hypervodka hiding in a couch."

"Doctor's orders. Excluding children or those at risk of kidney failure," he adds as he keeps an eye on her. He doesn't fold his hands behind his back, just in case she stumbles.

"Hyper..." Lichtenstein shakes his head. "I probably don't want to know the effects of that. I get the impression you don't drink on a regular basis."

"Pretty sure my kidneys are okay." She's steady on her feet, just a little slow and weary.

"From the 51st century," she explains, not that it is much of an explanation. She shakes her head a little. "No, it's not really my thing. I have a low tolerance and I don't like getting hungover."

"Always good to hear."

"You're a responsible woman, Adia. Although having a resistance to poisons of any sort is always preferable, I find." He looks at her then. "Do you have a god for that sort of thing? Drinking and celebrating?"

"Is there a way to become resistant, on your Earth?" That does sound preferable, come to think of it.

"Dionysius," she replies, looking up at him. "The God of Wine. There's a prayer you say when you open a bottle of wine, but it's more custom than anything. Like saying 'Bless You' when someone sneezes."

"Same way as with everything else: Take small doses until your body becomes used to it." Something, he notes, that he himself should be practicing, though not with alcohol.

"What is the prayer for? Thanks? Or asking that the wine is good?" He steps ahead of her to open the door when they come to their destination.

"I tried that in college with alcohol and all it did was add to my Freshman 15." She smiles briefly, then pauses, unsure if Martel will get the joke. "I mean, it just added empty calories to my diet."

"The first," she replies, stepping through the door and taking a look around. "He invented wine-making. I mean, according to myth. He's supposed to be kind to mortals, unlike his followers."

He crooks an eyebrow and opens his mouth to ask when she explains. "Ah. Well, you don't look any worse for it."

It's warm and the light from the windows is helped by the weak lights. Lichtenstein gravitates towards a corner booth out of habit. "Unlike his followers?"

"Thanks," Adia replies drily, taking the pseudo-compliment as it was intended. "That was a while ago, anyway."

The bar looks so peacefully mundane, compared to the Nexus and even her current home, that she feels a bit disoriented. She follows Martel to a booth and slips into it, sinking into the creaking leather seat with a sigh. "It was a cult... I forget the name, it was a long time ago, made up of mostly women. They would drink themselves into a kind of frenzy. They killed Orpheus, supposedly -- the son of one of the muses."

It looks like she needed a proper seat. He, however, does not sit. After all, someone needs to get the drinks, and she looks like she needs one of those as well as a comfy seat. "A good tale to keep someone from over drinking. Is there something in particular you would like to drink, or will I order for you?"

"Unless they wanted to be in a frenzy," Adia muses halfheartedly. "You can order for me, sure." Normally she'd have more of a preference of what she'd like to drink, but she's not really in the mood to make a decision, big or small.

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