[SPAM]

[He heard the announcement, it's not like he didn't know what was coming. But knowing something is going to happen and actually having it happen are two very different things.

When everything shakes out, Liam ends up in a room filled with what looks, at first, to be a collection of statues. It's not a bad place, at least not at first, but the more he stares at them the more they seem to stare back, and then something coils around his ankle, something slithering and glinting and he flinches away from it with much more force than he actually anticipated, ending up in a heap on the floor instead of just a few steps back. He kicks, and the thing unwinds and floats away, seeming to swim through the air.

He doesn't like this. He doesn't like this at all.

Some huge, lumbering thing moves between the rows, and it's all instinct that has him scrambling back towards the wall, trying to hide between a pair of statues to avoid whatever it is, and it's only once it passes that he pulls out his communicator.]

[VIDEO -- public]

...I think they're alive.

[Because this is an incredibly useful statement.]


[For the next day or so Liam can be found slowly making his way (in no particular order) between the second and third floors in his quest to find at the VERY LEAST Scott, although I wouldn't be at all surprised to find him ending up in the Repository either, because Liam.]

[PUBLIC -- (accidental) video]

[The Network is treated to an awkwardly-angled view of Liam's face, staring up his nose because this is a great way to address the masses. He looks worried, edging towards anxious, but determined to keep his cool about it anyway.]

I didn't do it.


[PACK FILTER]

[The angle's better now, although Liam seems no less uneasy about things for the change.]

Uh, so I found Kira? If anyone was...looking for her.

[He tilts the camera to show her, slumped on the floor but propped up against the piano stool. Like that helps. It doesn't make her look any less unconscious for sitting up.]


[SPAM -- Music Room]

[He's not sure what he's looking at, initially.

He'd been passing by, on his way somewhere else, when he catches the form out of the corner of his eye, as well as Kira's scent. Nothing to make that big a deal about on its own, but he moves closer and she's lying on the floor. Maybe she could just be on the floor, maybe she's just resting or something, but when he gets there, it's obvious something's wrong.

He addresses her, calls her name once or twice, but she doesn't move. He crouches down to shake her shoulder, and she still doesn't move. Shit. She's a kitsune, she's not supposed to be just...lying there.]

[PUBLIC -- video]

Come on, geeks, you have to be able to tell us more than "they're coming". We know that. When. We can't do our jobs if there's nothing to hit.

[SPAM]

[Liam, for all his comparatively few years, has never been short on enthusiasm for the Jaeger project. Ever since he showed up, all piss and vinegar and several layers of tarnish over what would eventually become a fairly promising pilot-in-training, he's done nothing but live and breathe the life. It's what he was made for, he's pretty sure, and considering how quickly he took to it, his enthusiasm's fairly understandable.

Of course, since getting paired off with his cousin Arthas when they turned out to be drift compatible, he's only gotten more impossible about the whole thing. That's not to say he forgets where he came from, of course, or the many hours spent with Scott and Kira honing the skills he's so quick to show off, but he's good at it, he knows it, and he's all too happy to let everyone else know too.

Today, he can be found in all his usual haunts, that is to say either training as much as physically possible for the next time he'll be able to go out and prove he and Arthas are at the top of whatever nebulous ranking he's got in his head or tinkering with their Jaeger to make sure it's in tip-top shape, between eating and sleeping anyway.]

[PUBLIC -- Video]

So...you're saying people can call here when they aren't HERE. But only today. What's so special about today? And...we're in space, so how does that even WORK.

[He doesn't even know if he wants to ask if anybody from home can hear him. Maybe it would be a good thing but it could just as easily be a terrible idea. So instead he just frowns, determined not to care one way or the other.]

Whatever. They're not here anyway, right?

[Right.]


[PRIVATE -- locked to Kira and Lydia, separately.]

Uh. So I just wanted to say sorry. About the other day.


[SPAM]

[For the next couple days, he can be found wandering the halls aimlessly. Efforts at sleep are shot more often than not, interrupted by berserkers he knows, rationally, aren't there. They're worse at night, when it's dark and anything could lurk in the gloom, so he rolls out of bed and stalks the halls instead until he's too tired to do anything but fall asleep. In the morning, he makes his way to the mess hall, finds a nice quiet table in the corner and settles in to eat, then hits the gym to keep busy. Stops by Scott's room every spare moment he can, every time hoping he'll just wake up.]

[SPAM]

[He wakes up in bed with a mouth full of ash, or at least that's how it tastes and a splitting headache like the vodka he'd been mixing his punch with finally caught up to him. But Scott said that didn't work for them, that they couldn't get drunk, let alone hungover, and anyway it wouldn't explain the taste in his mouth.

Slowly, it comes to him. The pulsating sound in the back of his head, the feeling of being drunk even when he shouldn't have been. Getting dragged somewhere, blurry, dizzying shapes passing by, looming. Hard, cold metal at his back, and then getting doused in kerosene, the shadowy figure with the booming voice asking him questions, and once everything caught up, he bolted out of bed. Lunged for the door, jerked at the handle a few times before finally just pushing. It gave way easily as panic rose, as the rest of sense memory returned; the buzzing in his head, the harsh smell coating his skin, the inside of his nose, the blurry image of cops standing over them, and he could feel himself losing it, claws pushing out of his fingertips, the growl building in his chest, but he didn't care.

They tried to kill him. It wasn't new but he was sick of it, sick of getting hurt, sick of being afraid, but he wasn't the only one who'd gotten hurt because of him this time. Scott, Malia, he needed to find them, needed to make sure they were okay, like the shadow-man had said they would be, and the howl that clawed its way from his throat as he stepped into the hallway, as he scampered down the hallway in search of familiar scents, desperate and plaintive like it had been when he was stuck in the well, was all instinct.

Help. Pack. Where are you.]


[PUBLIC -- Video]

[Later, after he's had a chance to calm down, after everything's broadened out, dulled into something he can process, something less intense, he retreats to his room. He remembers now, more clearly. He washes the gasoline off, scrubs and scrubs until he can't smell it anymore, trashes the clothes and finds the phone that isn't his, sorts through the functions before getting it set up.

Not that he has any clue what to say.

He looks more than a little lost. Looks entirely too young to be on the ship at all, but he can't do anything about that now, and judging by the determined set of his jaw he doesn't seem to think it should matter too much. He chews his lip absently, takes a breath.

Okay. He can do this. No sweat. Never mind that he's already made an impression in exactly the way he didn't want to.]

Hey. So you got stars here. That's...cool, I guess?

[Yeah nobody mind the kid who was running around as the wolf boy earlier. He's fine. You didn't see that, right?]