#listen I’m sick and tired and coulda posted this earlier but I didn’t bc. sleepy.

[whumpacabra]

Day 6 - Recordings

Worldbuilding, fictional politics, vague mentions of torture

[Follows Hands of Time]

Sarah felt her blood run cold. She found what she was looking for. A quick glance through the security cameras proved she was still under the radar, her direct uplink to the severs undetected.

Harrison didn’t know she was here; she was on her own if things went tits up.

She came here to wipe the files. The recordings, the data, the history. She couldn’t let them use the results of that project. She couldn’t let them use what they had done to ordinary people - to Harrison - for the “greater good” of the country.

A country all too happy to bloody its hands for profit and control.

Then why was she hesitating?

Deleting these records would prevent something like the Project Leda becoming standard protocol, from happening again when the government inevitably wanted better results.

Deleting these records erased any evidence of the crimes committed by the government against its own people.

Against Harrison.

He didn’t know about any of this; he didn’t know about the recordings, about the Projects. It was her instinct to call him, to ask him what he wanted, what he would do -

But Harrison wasn’t here, and Sarah was on her own.

She saved the data to an external drive.

It would take the worm she released into the server mere minutes to destroy the original data. A project five years in operation, a body count blacked out in sharpie, festering for a lifetime in the minds of those that survived - lost to a string of intangible code between the time it took Sarah to cross the building and slip away into the night.

All gone.

Save for the little black box she carried close to her chest, there was no evidence left of the hell Harrison had survived.

[Followed by Freelancers: Changing Tides]

(Part of my Freelancers: Swansong series)

#whump #whumptober #whumptober 2023 #no. 1 #recordings #oc #whump writing #past torture #politics #not whump #<- I mean. it isn’t really. #freelancers #could probably use another editing pass but. I’m eepy goodnight #listen I’m sick and tired and coulda posted this earlier but I didn’t bc. sleepy. #also just kinda in a general funk of posting 0 note stuff which doesn’t normally get to me like at all #and I knew this one wouldn’t get a passing glance bc it’s not juicy but. I did have fun writing it at the time. #sorry like I said I’m sick and exhausted and it’s getting to my head #I don’t write for you I write bc if I don’t play w my blorbos like a 9 yo girl w her barbie dolls I’ll explode #OUGH I FORGOR THE MASTERPOST LINK AKDJEBDJANS #that should tell you how fuzzy my brain is today T_T