only honeybees keep a neat hive. instead, clusters of disarray fill the basement of a shuttered radioshack. a careful eye can find the method behind the madness: finished projects sit separate from works in progress, far from her dented & burned punching dummy. her suit is draped over a muted newsfeed that praises the status quo for its exploitative, destructive nature.
idle buzzing replaces the droning on of talking heads advocating for the proposed police training facility. vought could protect & serve suburbia from militarized beacons of control, with detroit as ground zero. gold body armor barely obscures a fresh headline over one of their cop cities destroyed just outside the city limits. her community's thanks sits on the table cooling, within the savory aromatics of beef patties.
the only minimalist screen is an encrypted chat log: a board cleared of any cache or breadcrumbs of resistance. analog spy cryptography orbits karen in a notated solar system on the floor, lifted out of postwar redaction. she scribbles one last note of translation before overhead lighting flickers from footsteps arriving above ground. apprehension cuts her natural ambience short before she can sense familiarity, even before a voice rumbles into the room.
If only you knew what I just dealt with.
karen leaves the circle of data to call off the robotic hive preparing to swarm. "do i wanna know?" she concedes violence is always the ghost in the machine: ever-present, essential, silent. but newsfeeds parroting the status quo rarely ever caught the explosive, bloody landscape around @supekillaz. "the better question might be whether you were followed . . . "
an eyebrow raises at the bit of shrapnel glittering off marvin's collar, but her smile brightens with new energy to imagine the scenario. "it's gotta be like herdin' cats. but you a better one than me," she admits with all the unspoken distaste for the team's style. it sits on the surface with what's left of a flash drive in his hands. there's no surprise or even irritation in her eyes, just careful attention to make sure it was intact. enough metal is left to sit in her computer & upload a watermarked blueprint: downloaded, copied, encrypted.
"my birthday's in july, you're early." a dry remark is overtaken by the buzzing of a woman deep in thought. she scrolls through, skimming schematics before frowning up at marvin. "and you know this is hardware, right? i'm not complaining . . . I just thought y'all needed another skeleton key."
