Pinkgothic played:

Thomas Bennett

Dumb, dumb, dumb - and above all stupid.

Bennett sat at his desk, trying to get a grip of his emotions. That hadn't been constructive, but he felt beyond any such ability. It was irrational, he knew it was irrational, but he felt nothing but a burning, all-consuming hatred for Francisco Ahlgren and his smug attitude. A small part of him pointed out that there had been no smug attitude in the dialogue he'd just pried himself out of, and was prompty squashed.

If he was entirely honest with himself, he was scared.

He'd let Francisco get away with so much. He'd taken it upon himself to simply chew him out like an errant child - to grit his teeth, try and smooth things out with his superiors. Now, though? Now it seemed like there was no way he could explain this away. He couldn't extract good news out of this disaster.

If he was entirely honest with himself, he wanted to run away. Certainly, formally, he only had his job to fear and he could recover from that, but he wasn't optimistic enough to think it would stay at that. Maybe he was being paranoid, maybe he'd watched one too many movies, but on very basic levels, he felt confronted with his own mortality and he was scared out of his mind.

If he was entirely honest with himself, he had a good idea where he could run away to. But he didn't want to think about that, not when the abstraction of that particular place was cause for his current situation. He couldn't forgive it that. In consequence, that thought process was barely even cerebral.

> Hello, Thomas,
>
> I hate to play the role of a harbinger of bad news,
> but the circumstances demand I do.
>
> You may recall the broken network that Ian was playing
> a role in opposing. The efforts against it have long
> since formalised into 'Project Bitscorch', something
> I imagine he's told you about.
>
> Perhaps we should have given the problem a greater
> weight back when we felled our mutual decision to let
> Ian stay in touch with The Mictian Project through
> the internet. I know we discussed the possibility of
> his eventual entrapment, but as you probably recall,
> we thought the benefits outweighed the minimal risks;
> we reasoned the network didn't have a grasp of him,
> having never interacted with him in any way other than
> indirectly - but whatever the specific cause, it's
> found him.
>
> Thomas... I'm very sorry.
>
> I don't even know what to say, other than that this
> is a terrible day for both of us.
>
> I wish I had enough to report about Bitscorch's
> efforts to say there was a chance of carving him back
> out of the network's grasp, but as he presumably
> hasn't contacted either of us from within his new
> prison... I don't think we're going to get him back.
>
> I'm very sorry.
>
> If you'd like to talk to me about this, I'll be waiting
> for you in this Conglomerate session:
>
> e46ac f9012 dff42 58cca
>
> Let me know if there's anything I can do to make up for
> this.
>
>
> Yours,
> - Francisco

It was a mockery of the gravity of the situation. 'I'm very sorry'. Of course he was 'very sorry', the bastard was a couple of miles out on sea and out of legal grasp of the nation he'd stolen an asset from. Stolen and then destroyed - perhaps accidentally... but no insurance covered this sort of loss.

'Vandal'. At this point, it was unfortunate that he had to concede any sort of brilliance to the man, but it was such a beautifully succinct concept that described everything he'd done to The Mictian Project.

Unfortunately that wasn't going to do Bennett any favours.

If he hadn't firmly destroyed any benevolent image of Francisco in his own mind, he might have spoken to him in such a different tone. Help me. Oh god, help me. I don't know what's going to happen to my friends and colleagues now. I don't know what's going to happen to me.

There was no point to this.

He was just going to have to sleep on it - and hope his nightmares resolved the loose ends enough to gift him a semblance of coherence in the morning.

Maybe he could even forget about the Arcan Archon. Maybe everything would be that much easier if he tried to look at this as a personal failing - there were too many uncertainties in holding any part of Dark Arcadia responsible. If he tried that, he was dependant on Francisco's benevolence - something he was long since sure the man hadn't any of.

Maybe this would be much easier if he just pretended it was only his own neck on the line.

Maybe in the morning, he could get past his visceral wish to have it be Francisco's instead.