The Doctor is In

[thecounselor]

[Dr. Price's office is just about exactly what you'd expect from a psychologist's office in the year 6972. There's a large chair next to an equally large and comfortable couch, and a coffee table within reach of both. On the other side of the room, there's large desk with some kind of a computer screen made of glowing light. The metal walls in here have been covered with dark wood paneling, and the lighting is warm and comforting.

There is one of those shitty brass-handled green plastic-shaded lamps on the desk. Why is it there? Aesthetic, apparently.

The desk is flanked by bookshelves filled with nonfiction. There's of course the DSM-40, right next to the DSM-238. Both editions look about the same age, curiously enough. There are also various other books on psychology, psychiatry, and... Artificial Intelligence?

Huh. Everyone's gotta have some hobbies.

There's a long counter with various kinds of tea and a kettle that sits on the counter next to a button, as well as a small sink expressly for washing dishes. There's also a door in the back of the room that probably leads to Dr. Price's personal quarters (good fucking luck).]

((OOC: This is where you can tag if you want to chat with Dr. Price one on one. Y'all know how office hours work by now.))

Comments

[thecounselor]

[He knows. Everything that she says, he knows, he's the only person still alive who knows exactly what information she stole, who knows that she bartered it, where she went, what happened.

She deserves the whole story. Now that she knows everything.]

The Project fell apart after your defection. Agent Texas rebelled. She abandoned the Project, and she convinced Agent York and Agent North to go with her. They broke into the Mother of Invention, and...tried. To steal something integral to the project. The Alpha AI.

Agent Carolina was presumed killed in action during the attack. In its aftermath, the Director moved the Alpha to an outpost of sim troopers and assigned Agent Florida to watch over it.

Agent Washington led an attack that destroyed the Freelancer storage facility, along with the Alpha and most of its fragments. I...was arrested, while the Director went underground. [He said bitterly, with a bitter expression.] By the time that the UNSC reached him, he was already dead.

[tuskenlancer]

[ After so many sessions in which he'd refused to betray anything, so many weeks of prying and begging for the tiniest scrap of information, this outpouring is almost too much to take in. She listens, rapt, doing her best to process and analyze everything he says on the fly.

Too much. There's certainly too much to respond to it all. But a flicker of triumph, of victory, makes her eyes light up when he mentions Agent Texas. It worked.

It had worked. Maybe not exactly in the way she'd imagined, but the Director...

Well. The Project had been halted. And hopefully, some pain and suffering had been avoided. ]

...Thank you, sir.

[ She pauses, watching him. Hearing what had happened is one thing (assuming, of course, that it's all true at all), and it's certainly better than not knowing. Still, that doesn't tell her what the Counselor thinks of the whole thing.

But he'd told her the facts. Maybe his opinion on top of it is too much to ask. You're a good soldier, he'd said. She has to believe that he means that.

She nods, and this time, she lifts her chin proudly. ]

Thank you for telling me.