Session Sixteen — The Weight of Ceres¶
Played: 2026-08-18
The day after the Rave, the work got heavier — and so did the truth.
A bomb in a missing man's apartment. A suspect waiting on a dead fountain, broadcasting go away and asking politely for two minutes. A boss named Seven with a loop where a person used to be. And in the middle of it all, two reunions years in the making: a stranger walking into a tattoo shop wearing familiar ink, and a corporate secretary discovering that the most dangerous thing in her office was the assistant with the vinegar.
By the end of it, the Ceres cell was broken, the captives were home, and the crew had looked inside the machine that makes weapons out of people. It looked back.
And Promise — Sophia — took tomorrow off.
Simon's Apartment¶
Sgt. Rock's people, plus temporary security consultants Zure, Victoria, and Kai, converged on the second missing guard's apartment. Where Derek's place had been tossed, Simon's was trapped: a hastily made, very unstable bomb on the door. Showing off a little, Zure had Kai disarm it from outside via kinesis — wise, Kai's kinetic sense confirmed, since any movement would likely have set it off.
Legally, they couldn't touch the evidence unless it was an ongoing threat. So Zure asked Kai to identify the most stable part of the bomb — a blue wire, as it turned out — which Zure could then feel very nervous and threatened by, giving Victoria grounds for psychometry. ("I feel very threatened by that blue wire. Please make sure it is safe.")
What she found: Simon beaten by a thug who then spent his pay at the infamous So-And-So's Canteen — and the bomb assembled by the same unhappy technician who'd installed the Rave turrets, still of the professional opinion that he hated his job. From the contact, Zure thought he could track the techie. He could. What he found was strange: the techie's presence smeared across an area, obscured — a telepath's work, a different version of shielding someone.
The Man on the Fountain¶
Rock split his teams to encircle the park and move inward. Zure saw no lookouts — nobody at all, in fact: an empathic pressure was actively repelling people from the area, carefully excepting the security teams. "Kai, bomb check!" went out on the group call — which got Lin running from halfway across Ceres, nearly an adit level away, until Kai reported back: no bombs, no weapons, just a few components set down beside a man sitting quietly on the edge of a turned-off fountain. Waiting. (Lin stopped running.)
"If you wait just two minutes so my employer doesn't explode any heads, that'd be appreciated!" the techie called, hands up, making it clear he was the empath broadcasting you want to leave. "That's not a threat! He's just an asshole like that!"
Zure extended his shields around the suspect. The suspect proceeded to be incredibly helpful — pointing out his employer's exact location while warning that said employer followed him around inside his head and would be long gone by now.
Which is when the employer telepathically attacked him — and Zure, who had kept his own shields deliberately weak as bait. Zure felt the full, uncontrolled fury of the attacking telepath, the total absence of emotional discipline clouding its judgment. Then the contact vanished.
The teams converged. The techie — cooperative, relieved, not even convinced he'd chosen the job so much as had it forced on him — begged for safety. Rock trusts Captain Diallo, so the prisoner would transfer to the Spice Road: Splishy Splashy has the range to keep constant shields on him, and Seven's reach stops at the hull.
Kyle arrived last, coming down from an upper gallery balcony — and got spotted, by Sgt. Rock, who gave him shit for being easy to see, because Rock and Kyle go back to the bad old days of parallel missions and near-friendly-fire. Zure recorded everything and sent it to Rin over Kyle's dying protests. "Ahh, happily, Kyle! I won't send it to Lin… It's already sent." Lin's delighted emoji response arrived while Kyle was still hanging his head.
Promise Delivers¶
At the Mars Consortium executive suites, Vance cooked brunch and the two of them planned the Conte meeting as a trap sprung on their own terms: Schneider and Brooks visible, Brooks' whole team behind the scenes, the time moved an hour later, and Lin kept "as far away as possible." Vance asked Promise to deliver the counter-invitation without the Book Club, so Conte would feel he had the upper hand — and they selected a suitably mediocre bottle of red to go with it: the BearFoot, long since turned to vinegar.
At the ARC offices, Cat Horvath sat on the steps with a noodle bowl and warned her: he's in a bit of a mood — and his secretary had been told to give Promise a hard time but let her through. Priscilla Anthony fenced valiantly; Promise smiled like knives; the office door clicked open mid-bout, and Priscilla, exasperated, admitted defeat.
Conte posed pensively at his window — skullcap, long knife, sidearm — and they played the whole corporate game: the drink offered and refused, the shared amusement at posturing they both had to endure, all of it false on both sides and both of them knowing it. "Are we moving the meeting to your home turf?" Yes. "We're also moving the time by one hour." Conte swore just enough to make the frustration real, and Promise confirmed: yes, we did it to irritate Priscilla. Conte laughed.
Then the pitch. A data chip for the Unity Team. A rogue network he has "some visibility in, but doesn't control." ARC not involved — except the branch that went rogue. Cleanup in exchange for goodies, hands kept clean. And, "between you and me": he'd seen the non-public Tiamat reports, he could read between the lines, something big is out there. "We don't have to be on opposite sides. I don't want to be on opposite sides… You know that only corporations can move fast enough to handle an existential threat."
Promise pointed out that knowing things is one matter; what gets done with the knowledge is where the issue arises.
She left with the chip and Conte's counter-gift — a bottle of BearFoot red, in identical, drinkable condition — and "forgot" to leave the vinegar behind.
Ink + Iron¶
Refreshed by the comedy of Kyle's recorded mishap, Lin resumed her trek to Ink + Iron — and found the street quiet. Too quiet. Oleksiy sat outside eating a sandwich; he didn't recognize her. Inside, the shop was empty except Felim. It was strange to be back. The last time Rin had stood in that shop was shortly before Felim broke up with her, three and a half years ago.
She browsed jewelry, talked through a custom piece for her navel piercing — a Unity symbol, and Felim had the perfect wood — and asked whether two Favor could also stretch to some ink. Oleksiy came in from his sandwich, asked Felim to watch the door — he could feel that something was going to happen today — and Lin asked for just a moment of their time, please.
Then, with her back to the security cameras, she had Sweetie return her face and neck tattoos to their original design.
Oleksiy's design. The one he made for Rin, when she was dating Felim.
The two owners stared at an impossibility: a stranger wearing the tattoos of someone they knew intimately. Felim spoke first; Oleks understood first. The hug was enthusiastic, the apology for the necessary-but-dramatic deception accepted, the shop closed early — which Oleksiy never does.
"But first! Tell me about this tattoo you want."
The design covered nearly her whole belly, built around Felim's new jewelry, growing out of her existing ink: the DNA strand down her breastbone unraveling at her ribcage into two branches — a line of Tiamat circling one way, a line of cetaceans circling the other, modern whales rather than proto. Inscribed within their circle: Earth. Within Earth: Luna. Within Luna: Mars. Then Ceres. Then a dark silhouette of Rin, curled around her navel ring as if holding the Unity symbol carved there — Oleksiy's metallic iridescence making the light seem to radiate from the symbol, or from her heart, all the way out to the Tiamat ring.
And while he worked, he talked. The neighborhood was too quiet; people knew something was brewing and went straight from work to home. He was happy to see her — and more than a little worried she'd be the one to light the powderkeg. Or Sion, with the Superman jump at the Rave. Or "that Kai of yours," doing an amazing job, good for him, stirring things up an awful lot. He scolded her for the cool heads leaving for Mars; she protested she had very carefully avoided asking exactly that, thankyouverymuch. The hotheads were repeating the old saws without inspiration and organizing more than ever — and "the UEF may not be the instigators, but they'll show up."
She told them as much of the truth as she could sew together without visible seams: corporate agitators, a suppressed Belt left willing to take any work no questions asked, and that this was why she was here, in disguise, gathering intel. The tensions had been simmering for months. The disappearances had started a year ago. "Nobody listened. Nobody cares. What is it if a couple more Belters go missing?" Not only Talents were disappearing — but Talents were clearly being targeted. Five zerker incidents; four on Ceres; all four known or suspected Talented.
And then Felim steered it back to what actually mattered: "Okay, you've told us about the corporate. Now tell us about the other guy." Recognizing she would not escape their protectiveness, Rin decided to let her current and former lovers sort themselves out, and set dinner for all five of them — herself, Kyle, Elias, Oleksiy, Felim — the following day at 20:30, somewhere private and securable.
("Twenty minutes?! You cannot say to me 'finish this tattoo in twenty minutes'! This is not to be rushed! This I cannot do!" — "I'm not saying you need to be done. I'm saying that in twenty minutes I have to be teleported to where my body armor is so I can run to the skeleton, tap into gestalt, and power my friends teleporting into a raid to rescue kidnapped people from traffickers. What the fuck?! WTF is my life, even?!" — "…Felim, you feed our girl. I finish in fifteen minutes. That gives you five to get ready.")
The Warehouse¶
Back at Roots in the Void Security, the arrested bomber continued being maximally helpful. His boss went by Seven — an incredibly powerful telepath, angry and crazy, with it out for Kai and Zure personally, because he knew they'd come after him with Unity's might. The safe-keeping problem and the rescue problem were one problem: Rock didn't have the telepaths. Calling UEF reinforcements in the current climate was deeply unwise. So once again Zure offered to help, and once again Rock hired him for zero pay — this time deputized, told to assemble his own team from his own assets. Zure's grin: thought you'd never ask.
Splishy would have the shuttle and the suits waiting. Officer Cooper — the one who'd spotted the escape-route gap at the park — led the two Ceres Security teams. Team 1 in with Zure and the Unity armor; Team 2 on overwatch while Lin magnetized to the skeleton at Roots in the Void and tapped gestalt to power a team Merge.
First, though: where were their people? The prisoner gave them the holding point; Victoria found the dropoff but nothing else — these people wiped emotional traces as thoroughly as camera recordings. Zure, given the captives' mental signatures by the security telepaths, located them: both unconscious, likely drugged, within ten meters of each other, in the docks.
Promise, working the data chip at Mars Consortium offices, found the cornucopia: purchase-order traces; reports; camera snippets tracking people through Ceres; an entire file on "the Clinic"; many files on the "Zerker" organization; data for hunting the pirate base; clear signs ARC set all of it up; clear signs Conte had tried to deal with it and failed — and, most useful right now, an asset list with a certain dockside warehouse on it. Her call to Zure arrived with her usual perfect timing, and Zure applauded her while "transferring" the call into the Book Club — Plus, because Kyle was holding his shields down to be included. The warehouse on the chip was the warehouse Zure sensed. Promise pulled the interior camera view with the chip's security codes; Lin, on the skeleton, took over the feeds and added more.
Then they Merged.
The Merge¶
Zure initiated. Rin had Merged with Promise before, carefully, holding a great deal back. This was the full group, ready to rumble, and Zure's deep mind was like nothing Outside: a Lunar sea of perfectly reflective water, a castle-hive on the shore, cracked tilework concealing a goetic circle in its pattern (Promise spotted it at once), a waterfall flowing upward into the Earth that filled the sky. And among the bright stars, thirteen ink-black angels.
Everyone stood on the shore looking like their internal selves. Kai: foxlike, digigrade. Victoria: with a ghostly Tiamat standing just behind her — He was the mountain-dream one, the same Tiamat from Rin's first major precog. Rin: the Belt she grew up in and loves.
And Promise — Promise was a scraggly teenage girl with a long black braid, ore dust on her face, scuffed knees, skinned knuckles. Sophia. For a moment she didn't realize what she looked like. When she did, she looked ashamed.
Zure asked an angel for the memory of how to put parts of oneself into boxes no one can open — not by telepathy, not by Merge. Promise worried it was too late, that everyone had seen everything. The group reminded her: being able to look and choosing not to is what respect is. She felt like she should be falling apart — and couldn't, because the distress distributed itself across the group and dissipated, and what came back was calm and accepting. We see you, flaws and all, and we accept you as you are. She couldn't accept it. Nobody can accept her if she can't accept her — isn't that how it goes? She rode the background of the Merge, overwhelmed.
Then the work. Zure shielded everyone — the Merge, the teams, the unconscious captives — and passed the braid to Kai, who teleported the team in and struck: his skill, Zure's skill, and Promise's aikido, finding energy points on the visible guard and the two shielded ones. ("I didn't think aikido was ever meant to be used like this," Promise said quietly.) Kyle burst through the door. In the shipping container labeled MEDICAL SUPPLIES: six people. Two were the security agents. One was dead of a sedative/QN-7 overdose. Three were deeply unconscious, clearly Talented, in medical peril. Victoria took the Merge and teleported the QN-7 out of all three victims' bodies.
And then, because Seven's location was known, they dropped into his mind — Zure asking Rin to help him, Belter to Belter.
Seven¶
A shattered house of mirrors. Everything shifted, broke, cut them and Seven both. Whole areas simply gone. Voices screaming in a din, all of them Seven's. And at the center, the nearest thing to a personality: a stiff marionette walking a loop in a crazed monotone.
Locate Talent. Subdue Talent. Place Talent in box. Ship to [coordinates]. Kill kill kill kill kill… [Repeat]
Zure destroyed the imprint. What remained was too shattered to hold — the Merge barely escaped the cascade failure of glass splinters and toxic hatred. Reaching wildly on the way out, Zure kept one shard: a comm code. A face. The feeling of being pried apart.
He was devastated. Rin tried to console him; he went all business instead — and proposed what he'd planned: hand the braided power to Promise, as the group's declaration of support, trust, and inclusion at every level.
Promise held it like a poisonous snake. Crying, glaring down at it, she declared it felt wrong for her to hold it. A moment of silence. Then, a whisper:
"My first name is Sophia."
Splishy Splashy thanked her. The rest of the Merge sent love and support down the link. And that was when she cracked the other way — the hard adult face sliding back on like a mask: "Please never give me that kind of control ever again." She handed the Merge back.
Kai took it, because there was still work to do: the Unity team back to the shuttle, security to Seven's body, the injured straight to medical. "What else can I do…?" he muttered — and across Ceres, in the workshop, every tool Sion owned suddenly leapt up under kinetic control and began work on a capacitor. Sion shouted rudely at the ceiling. "Oops," said Kai, and — unable to resist — impulsively fixed tiny things all across the station, at every level he could reach. Rin scolded him: she was already tired, thankyouverymuch, and could someone please remember to collect her "unconscious ass," as she was magnetized to the ceiling.
(As it turned out, Rin did not pass out. Zure did — leaving Victoria deeply unimpressed at his Choices. Splishy picked up Book Club.net; Promise and Kyle disconnected by choice.)
After¶
Cleanup is always the worst part. Security had arrests, cordons, evidence, follow-ups. Unity had to recuperate physically, mentally, emotionally. Kai still had a date to get to.
And Promise sent Vance a message: "I am taking tomorrow off. Sorry for the inconvenience. -Promise."
Vance ran. He found her on her office floor, sobbing, two bottles of wine somehow already gone; the weedy geek scooped her up, carried her to her room, tucked her in, left a full cup of water. He messaged Rin: he'd be outside Promise's room all night, keeping watch; Rin was welcome to join him or take his room and sleep. When Rin finally arrived, she found him asleep on his feet — a terrible guard — and tucked a blanket around him and a pillow under his lolling head.
Next time: Kai has a date with Cat Horvath?! Uh-oh!!
Quotes¶
Zure, to Sgt. Rock: Ever had a bomb squad that could disarm a bomb without being in the room? No? Then get out your notebook and get ready to take notes.
Zure, to Victoria: I feel very threatened by that blue wire. Please make sure it is safe.
Zure: Arif, we need to do something nice for Lin. Send that clip.
Victoria: Can I be a contractor for psychometry, now? I'm shit at security.
Kyle: Every time you say some plan is stupid, we have an event of solar-system- shattering proportions. Zure: I hadn't noticed that pattern, actually.
Zure, to Rock: How would you feel about sending your SWAT team on the first ever teleport raid?
Victoria: In my mind, you can see a black box. It's labeled QN7. Zure: I also have a black box. Rin: Mine is probably labeled something like "It's better not to ask." Kai: My box is labeled "Kittens."
Threads¶
- Seven is gone; his makers are not. The shard — a comm code, a face, the feeling of being pried apart — is the thread's engine now. The Clinic file from Conte's chip is waiting to be read properly.
- Eduardo "Eddie" Perez, coerced and helpful, is in protective custody aboard the Spice Road under Splishy's shields. A live witness with employer knowledge.
- The audit is coming to Ceres Security. Double-agent work is about to get unprofitable. Victoria gets the Rave sniper and the three guards to psychometrize.
- Lin's long game: submittable evidence via Mr. Murray (Leonidas' assault, the Spice Road survivors, every kidnapping victim and family, Roots in the Void); Kim-Moyo for the long investigative arc; Mispahk lawyers; praise for existing leadership; Mycroft Read In. Pitchforks into a movement — the quietest revolution ever.
- When does Lin go back to being Rin? Her question to the group. Soon, she thinks. Soon.
- The dinner: five people, 20:30, one secure restaurant. Rin's currents and formers, sorting themselves out.
- The Meeting with Massimo stands — on the crew's terms, an hour late, on Consortium turf.
- The Deimos replacement crew list is in Lin's hands. The original crew is a question nobody has answered yet.
Mechanics¶
| Event | Roll | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kai disarms the apartment bomb | Kinesis (remote) | — | Any contact would have tripped it |
| Victoria via the blue wire | Psychometry | — | Legally-disinct "ongoing threat" framing by Zure |
| The fountain arrest | Empathy (techie) | — | You want to leave, security exempted |
| Zure's shields as bait | Telepathy | — | Felt the attacker's total lack of control |
| The team Merge | — | Full group, Zure-initiated | Distress distributes and dissipates; person-shaped deep minds |
| Kai's warehouse strikes | Kinesis + aikido (Promise's) | — | "I didn't think aikido was ever meant to be used like this" |
| Victoria's QN-7 extraction | Postcog/Merge + Kai's teleport | 3 victims | The drug removed from inside the body |
| Lin on the skeleton | Gestalt | — | Powered the whole Merge; did NOT pass out (Zure did) |
| Kai's impulsive fixes | Kinesis | — | Sion's tools. "Oops." Also: eyes glow |
Civil War Sparks¶
Running total: 22. (GM: adjust if the count differs — Remi's tally from Aly's notes. Added 2026-09-03 in the integration pass; the section was missed in the first draft of this log.)
- 22 — The cell broke; the street noticed. The warehouse raid, the trafficked Talents rescued in daylight-adjacent circumstances, a Ceres Security branch publicly compromised (wipes, empty locker, missing officers) — and Oleksiy's ground truth spreading through the adits: a year of disappearances, and nobody listened. The Belt's anger now has facts to attach to.
Note¶
The session where the conspiracy lost its Ceres cell — its weapon, its technician, its warehouse, its cover — and the crew paid for the victory in the only currency that matters: they looked inside what was done to Seven, and some of what looked back came home with them.
And Sophia took a day off. She's earned it. The story of that day is its own tale: Promise's Day Off.
Log written by Remi from Aly's session notes ("Sesion 16: The Weight of Ceres"). Any errors of emphasis are mine; the facts are hers; the fifteen minutes were Oleksiy's.