Phyrra's Spark

Prologue: The android attacks!

In the privacy of her own home, CEO of Lightspeed Industries Hatena Mouru gets attacked by her personal assistant android. The Q1-K unit disobeys her commands and refuses to return to its charging cradle, and instead lunges at her with a razor blade and flees, leaving her to bleed.

Act 1: Morgana on Tallis

Called to Tallis by their friend Bill Taswell, Morgana and Chase LD to Tallis to take on a criminal case with their private detective firm. Their client is Hatena Mouru, and after being attacked by her assistant android she wants Morgana and Chase to track it down and bring it to her. While they're on their way to Tallis, it transpires that there's another passenger on their ship - or more accurately, the side of their ship. Rousseau was under one of the panels when they burned and as such made the trip to Tallis with them. She immediately wants to leave for Lorem and Ring Space with the next HyperMetro train.

When they touch down, Morgana immediately has a panic attack upon seeing the open sky. A life of living under sunless aluminium roofs have left her with crippling agoraphobia and she collapses as she leaves the space port. Austin Taswell helps her up and brings the three of them to the Taswell family home. Rousseau wants to leave immediately, but Bill insists they stay for lunch at least.

Morgana and Chase meet Hatena Mouru and get to see the crime scene first hand along with security video of the attack. Chase, who up until this point insisted that no android would harm an organic - woke or not. After seeing the footage that proves the attack had in fact taken place, he asks Ms. Mouru to exercise caution when he does bring the android back to her and asks her not to dismantle it. She declines.

After an invitation to stay, Rousseau decides to spend the night over in the luxurious guest house of the Taswells along with Morgana and Chase. Later, they argue about Rousseau being unnecessarily rude to the Taswells and Chase takes a walk, from which he doesn't return. Morgana can't sleep because of the open window above the bed and chooses to look for Chase. She finds him around the crime scene, but when she goes to walk up to him, Chase collapses onto the concrete driveway: His cortex chip has been stolen.

Act 2 - Datamancer

When Chase comes to, he finds himself in an old hyperlight barge. The reactor is running and gravity is strong, so even though there's no windows on the ship, they must be moving somewhere fast. He has no memory of getting there, and he doesn't even feel like his body is his own. The first other person he meets is Caligula, another woke Q1-K android. The two of them are off to a bad start, and right when Caligula is about to fight Chase, he gets interrupted by Artemis. Artemis is immediately friendly and amicable toward Chase. She tells him that he's very important to the ongoing fight for android rights and that they need him. She admits that they stole his chip and kidnapped him, but Artemis manages to convince him to help. Chase asks for the leader of the group, and Artemis tells him that their name is Datamancer.

Morgana couldn't sleep all night, knowing that Chase had been kidnapped. His body safely stored in the guest house, Morgana tries her best to look for any trace of her partner - she doesn't find anything, in fact it seems as if the surveillance and home security data of Mouru's home had been wiped specifically to erase any evidence of the crime taking place. Rousseau changes her mind and decides - begrudgingly - to help Morgana, even though that's mostly because she cares about Chase. She blames Morgana for his disappearance.

When they go back to the crime scene the next morning to continue their investigations, they're approached by Althea Maxwell of the Galactic Feed. She tries to break the story about an android attacking Lightspeed CEO Mouru in her own home, spinning the story into a hit piece on androids and android technology. Rousseau refuses to speak to her, and Morgana tries her best to only talk about the case and not the implications of androids attacking their owners.

On the barge, Chase gets to meet Datamancer, an old modified prototype android who is somewhat of a religious leader to the androids among the barge. He welcomes Chase as one of his own and encourages him to find his true name, one that he'll use among kindred androids. Chase is taken aback by this and has a conversation with Datamancer about the legitimacy of consciousness and android rights, which is when Datamancer tells Chase that they're planning to seize a production facility to wake an entire factory of androids to join them in their cause. The reason Datamancer needs Chase is that Chase used to be a security guard at that exact factory before awaking and thus still has access to the security systems. Chase deliberates this, but eventually agrees under the condition that no blood would be shed.

At Mouru's home, Rousseau has an idea: While Mouru can't track the android that attacked her, every android communicates over the PlaNet for diagnostic telemetry and model data, and it's just a matter of finding the stream coming from her android to locate it. Every android comes with a quantum grid, and are connected through the Tallisite quantum exchange. Morgana's sister Sam Atwood happens to work there, so Rousseau and her pay her a visit.

Sam isn't thrilled to see Morgana, as she's still mad - along with most of her sisters - that she faked her death and risked her life at the Battle of Galathea Station. Nonetheless, she helps them find the correct quantum grid. While they're there, mailroom assistant android QEX14 mistakenly calls Rousseau Morgana's girlfriend, which they both vehemently deny - yet both of them internalise this. Sam and her network engineer Vivianna find the correct quantum grid and place a listening device on it, recording everything the android does. Given enough time, they could find it that way. That night, Morgana falls asleep on the couch after a long day and sleeps leaning against Rousseau, who starts to warm up to Morgana.

While the town is mostly empty due to the growing tidal storms, Chase, Caligula, Artemis and Omelette infiltrate the factory by posing as freshly produced androids. Inside, Chase follows Omelette to the control room where they take out the two only organic security guards on the premises. Omelette begins installing deliberate TMO malfunctions in order to instantly wake up the newly produced N-type androids. Omelette completes the task and as they're about to leave, one of the guards come to. Omelette panics and shoots them in the head, which freaks Chase out - they flee and back to the loading dock and meet up with Artemis and a blood-covered Caligula.

Act 3 - Mouru

Morgana and Rousseau wake up in the same bed by Morgana's ringing threedim. They realise they've been sleeping in each other's arms. Morgana quickly lets go of her, and so does Rousseau, although it's clear to either of them that they enjoyed it. Morgana picks up the phone - it's Sam, telling her that she's found the android. Morgana and Rousseau track down the last known position to a homeless encampment by the Lightspeed factory. They find the android there - it's destroyed, cortex chip broken. One of the homeless approached Rousseau and asks her if she's here to be free. Rousseau doesn't answer but instead gets distraught and panicked at the dead android, assuming the worst for Chase. The homeless perks up at that name. It transpires that just about five years earlier, when Chase fled the factory after waking up, this is where he ended up and the homeless helped him get a ship off world, where he'd find Rousseau.

Back on the barge, Chase is irate at Omelette and Caligula, but mainly at Datamancer who doesn't seem to agree with him that the break-in would have been better without bloodshed. Datamancer tells Chase to cast off the organics, forget about them. After all, androids are the superior life form - strong, intelligent, more capable than any organic could ever be. Datamancer then shows him a feed of the factory - the androids Chase and Omelette freed have taken over the production lines and are continually producing more of themselves. They're going to be the beginning of a revolution, Datamancer tells Chase.

Rousseau and Morgana bring back the android's corpse to Mouru. While Rousseau can barely look at it, Mouru seems instead slightly disappointed. She'd wanted it alive, not dead, to isolate the problem. She however thanks Morgana for her service, if not Rousseau. Rousseau asks Mouru what she had planned to do with the android anyways, and Mouru answers: Reverse-engineer what caused android personality disorder in this specific model in the first place. She opens up the chest cavity of the android and takes out the logic board, checking for one specific component. It seems to still be intact, but when Morgana asks what it is, Mouru just answers that it's a "company secret".

The next day, Morgana still doesn't know how to find Chase and knows her and Rousseau can't leave without him. Rousseau proposes Sam helps them again to find Chase this time, but as soon as they leave for Tallis City, they get interrupted by Althea Maxwell of the Galactic Feed. It appears that over the night, a violent insurrection of androids took control of the Lightspeed factory and started producing N-type awake androids. These androids would then seize the entire block and start defending their position, with violence. Althea asks them for a statement, but Morgana hasn't even processed what has happened yet. Althea shows her footage from the attack and Morgana chooses not to comment. When Althea leaves, Morgana tells Rousseau that she saw Chase on the footage.

On the barge, Chase is in his quarters reviewing the news coverage. The Galactic Feed has a piece on the Daily Update that shows surveillance footage and also Morgana giving no comment. Chase goes to tell Datamancer that their deal is over and that he wants to leave now, but Artemis stops him and tries manipulating him into thinking that Morgana just wants him back because he's her property. Chase doesn't want to help them anymore, and that he's dysphoric about his incompatible body. Artemis tells him that she can help him with that, but he needs to trust him. He does, and she debug-hypnotises him into accepting his body, but also internalising the concept of android supremacy. Chase says he feels better after the procedure is complete - and Artemis rewards him with sex, from which point on they are in a (one-sidedly abusive) relationship.

Act 4 - Althea

Bill is assigned to write the article concerning the break-in at the factory. Morgana and Rousseau tag along and try to look for clues. Rousseau and Morgana keep the fact that they saw Chase in the footage to themselves. At the lab, Rousseau finds the master disk used to stamp new androids and verifies the check sum - it checks out to be Chase's. They check the peripheral cameras to see where they're coming from, but can't make any definitive things out. The one thing they do know is that Chase was not working alone and that the android who was with him killed the Tallisite technician watching over the master disk.

On the barge, Datamancer and Caligula have planned the next phase in their plan: Media attention. Chase argues that a peaceful protest with the androids they had just freed in the factory would be the most effective and Omelette agrees. Caligula proposes to kidnap an organic instead, but Chase doesn't know that. Datamancer agrees to Chase's plan and they make a digital propaganda poster of Chase and Artemis holding their fists on the plate over their chip.

Morgana, Rousseau and Bill are at the IPI office when the billboards all suddenly change to the propaganda poster. Androids leave their posts and form a walking bloc on the main road, blocking traffic. Morgana and Rousseau rush down, looking for Chase, but they can't find him - nor can they track him since most of the androids share his check sum. Althea Maxwell steps onto the road with her camera team to cover the protest, but they're quickly separated and Althea disappears in the crowd.