Quote Originally Posted by 5a Violista View Post
(near) Entrance Hall

Harley laughs along with the understatement-of-the-year-nomination. "Believe me, that was only half the year, too." She didn't even get in to the whole being-beheaded saga that her player put her in.

She looks in the direction he looked, in case there was anything there. "I don't know what's going on. Felandria said the base was under attack, but..." Harley takes a deep breath. Okay, her shadows and reflections have stopped talking with her, so maybe now she can think about what an awful mother she is again. "That's obviously not happening. I've been all over the base tracking down my missing daughter and there's only been a few explosion-noises but they didn't sound substantive, and. . ."

Harley trails off and thinks.
Starting just before the kitchen, she noticed traces of another person with her daughter.
She didn't even think about it, but now it makes sense. Considering what direction that person - Fel, probably - and Manja were headed, she now has a complete picture of what happened.
"!"
She turns back to Magtok. "Fel found my daughter, and brought her to Rein. He was certainly in that Simulation Room. A hologram version of you must have become sentient and is trying to escape the simulation to the rest of the base, and Fel and Manja got caught up in it all!" That's why Felandria specified that it was a fake Magtok. It all makes sense now! (Well, she still doesn't know how Manja got out of the crib and crawled around on her own, but that's a less-important question.)
On the one hand, it's a relief to know that her months-old daughter isn't wandering around alone. On the other hand, it also means her months-old daughter is trapped with a sentient AI.

Not sure how this affects Magtok's overly-complicated plan, but he might have to remove that sticky note again and make a few amendments.
"Oh good, it sounds like you have everything figured out now," the cyborg nods, which is great because he still has no idea what's going on or what the hell Harley is talking about. Is Manja the daughter, or is she talking about her Japanese comic collection and saying 'manga' wrong? Also, what's the difference between and explosion noise and a substantive explosion noise in an undersea base like this? Doesn't it only take one good explosion to get an entire room sealed off and flooded with high-pressure ocean currents? Magtok considers asking one or two of these questions aloud, but thinks better of it. Harley clearly has a lot of stressful things on her mind right now, and she doesn't need Magtok adding more violent and terrible hypotheticals to the workload.

"So I guess the plan is to find either the Simulation Room or the control console for the Simulation Room, and pull some emergency shut-off switch?" Just turn it off and back on again, that's how most technological disasters in the MagCave are averted!