WIREMAN PROJECT

authorized personnel only.

[wireman-au]

ACCESS GRANTED.

WIREMAN PROJECT BRIEF - TOP SECRET

welcome. you have been selected for participation in the wireman project. you are to send messages of communication (“asks”) to our project subjects. these communications, as well as other observations and recordings, will be replicated here for use in the project.

this is your only role. do not attempt to interfere further.

please be aware that the following files contain potentially distressing topics, such as:

unreality

hallucinations

government conspiracy

body horror

non-consensual medical procedures

violence

death

human experimentation

coercion

please proceed with caution. [REDACTED] cannot fully guarantee that all relevant warnings will always be tagged, though we will make a strong attempt. for additional information on the files, such as clarified warnings, instructions for participation, or other details not intended for use within the project itself, please contact the project head with the tag [OOC] for clarification.

all asks sent for communication with project subjects may be potentially replicated for archival on our offsite storage (“archive of our own”). this will be done with full credit, and only the contents of asks that are used in communication files here will be replicated (IE, excluding “OOC”, “submissions”, “fan works”, etc). if for some reason you are concerned with this policy, please inform the project head. 

we here at [REDACTED] thank you for your continued participation in the wireman project.

CURRENT ONLINE CONNECTIONS:

impulse, unauthorized connection through unknown means. do not contact.

bdubs, military volunteer and bounty hunter. chosen for physical prowess, loyalty to chosen friends.

[redacted]

[redacted]

CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL DOCUMENTS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.

[terracottakore]

I know it’s been a while, but do you think we can see some Wireman Au doodles? I miss it, and seeing your art and style for it always makes my day :D

IM SO EXCITED ABOUT GETTING THIS ASK!!! thank you for giving me a reason to clean up this old wip

(please don't resurface my wireman au obsession.. i can't handle it /lh)

[au created by @/theminecraftbee, @wireman-au]

[terracottakore]

anyone else feeling a little bit insane over these two? [@wireman-au]

(im like a broken record, but please check the au out it is so cool)

[wireman-au]

We’ve thrown a lot at you, especially about Etho. You say you love him, does he love you? More importantly, does that love equate to trust?

So here's the thing:

Thinking love and trust have to be hand-in-hand is the kind of thing you can afford in lines of work that aren't yours. Thinking love and trust have to be hand-in-hand is the kind of thing that someone with a nicer life than yours can do. It's not something you can do. Trust, and love, and everything in-between; they're luxuries, really.

Etho is hiding things from you, is what you mean. Of course he is. He's hiding things from everyone, all the time. He tries to keep his work and personal life separate, for one, but for another, he just chronically lies. Doesn't like to let his heart out to anyone. Makes sure that a stranger can't tell what they're looking at, and his friends have an even worse time of it.

Here are some things you have only learned about Etho today:

Where he lives.

That he has a friend named Impulse.

That he's visited Tango's house before.

Here are some things that are true about Etho anyway:

He has painkillers in his glove box; the first time he gave you them was a day after the last time you had to do one of these stupid experiments. He's never admitted why he has them.

You have watched him kill a man with a knife.

He has watched you do the same thing.

In the middle of the night, one time, he told you he was scared.

You know.

You'd have to be stupid not to know.

He took a bullet for you once.

Here is something that is true about you:

Etho isn't the only person keeping secrets, you know.

So. Trust? You aren't an idiot. Trust is the wrong word for what you feel about Etho. Love, though--

Well, the thing is, you'd like to think it goes both ways. You're not sure how else to describe it. You'd go crazy if it didn't.

That's really all there is to it.

[wireman-au]

Wait wait wait wait.

So there are *two* bodies at the base of the stairs? And faint blood drips leading to Tango’s room.

Last time we (not you Bdubs) were here there was one guy in the bedroom with a coat hanger in the eye and one person at the base of the stairs. Now I’m no expert, but I’d assume an eye wound would bleed a lot: more than the droplets leading up the stairs. So if the first person didn’t move and trip down the stairs…

Who came in and moved the first body?

Did Cleo find a bloody hanger anywhere?

You consider this information and turn around towards Etho, who seems a little confused at how thoroughly you're searching the closet. Eh, you'll be able to explain in a minute. You go to go back to the stairs and holler to Cleo to ask about the coat hanger and apparently badass and sort of gross ways to fight someone.

Etho stops you.

"Hey. Those voices in your head. They're probably lying to you, right?"

You consider Etho carefully.

"They're mostly a real pain in the ass," you say instead.

"Whatever or whoever you were looking for, they probably aren't here, right?"

Well.

"Etho, I love you, but you know that this is fishy. We're probably going to be asked to finish cleaning this up, yeah? And if signs point to that Impulse guy..."

"It can't," Etho says.

Ugh. He's so stubborn. And what a thing to be stubborn about! The voices in your head are talking about 'possession' and 'not meaning to', but that doesn't mean that whoever did this didn't have a say. After all, there's something really weird about the crime scene.

"Hey Cleo!" you shout down the stairs. "What's wrong with the bodies!"

"One of them definitely has a broken neck. The other one's eyes are super fucked up. I'd say don't come look, but you should add this to your nightmares too."

"Fun!" you say, and you add one more point to 'things the voices in your head somehow knew ahead of time that they should not have'. It makes you more inclined to believe the rest of at least this guy, since you were right about the eye thing, apparently.

[wireman-au]

Tango's gadgets are missing too. there were a few on the shelves earlier, and now they're not.

You look around. Gadgets? This looks like a normal closet to you.

[wireman-au]

there should be some papers in the closet too, including one on ESP. might be a good idea to pick that up

You pause. You frown at the closet.

There are no papers.

That's a weirdly obvious lie to tell someone. It's also not a lie; you wouldn't lie about that. So what gives, huh?

You search harder in the closet for good measure. There's nothing you wouldn't expect to find in a closet.

[wireman-au]

what a suspicious situation... is it just me or does it feel like updog happened here

You contemplate the best way to handle the safe. "Maybe we should take it out back to the car and crack it at home?"

"I mean, we could stage this as a robbery gone wrong, probably," Etho agrees. "As long as the bodies are reasonable for that, I mean."

Suddenly, you pause.

"I'm not falling for that by the way. No sir. Not falling for Updog!"

Etho tilts his head. "What's Updog?"

You take a moment to realize he might be serious.

"Don't worry about it, there are just people being stupid," you declare imperiously. You wouldn't want to make him feel bad.

[wireman-au]

check tango's room, in the closet there is a safe

You head upstairs. "Apparently Tango has a safe in his closet," you mutter to Etho.

"Oh, I don't know, Bdubs. You don't know what a guy like that could be keeping. Then again, maybe it's a gun or something that would explain this being an accident."

Etho is not normally stupid. He knows full well this wasn't an accident. Interesting.

"I'm good at breaking things," Bdubs says. "We can check that."

It doesn't take a genius to guess which room is Tango's; there's a trail of blood leading to it. Mostly droplets, so not from a wound that bleeds egregiously, but the blood's still there.

When you open the door, it's a remarkably plain room. Everything's kept in order. The bed's made. Typical of one of the eggheads, huh? You go over to the closet.

The closet is significantly messier. The clothes hanging on the hooks are askew, and a few hangers seem to have fallen. In the middle of the closet is a fire safe. It is locked. It does not appear to be bolted to the floor. If you and Etho tried hard enough, you could probably carry it down the stairs to your car instead of breaking it here. If you wanted both yourselves and your bosses to get to see what's inside, you could get it cracked by one of the guys back at base, but frankly, you don't trust those guys to do a good job. They'll manage to destroy something inside and try to blame it on you or Cleo, probably, and then you're back into trouble.

"Geez, they didn't do a great job staging this place," mutters Etho.

"Huh?" you say.

"Last time I was here it was a mess," he clarifies.

"...really? Doesn't seem right to me," you say, but whatever. "You think the safe's important?"

"I mean, it could just have his social security card in it? It's not tagged for document chain of custody..."

Good. He doubts that too.

[wireman-au]

Listen, just because Etho knew the guy who killed your guys doesn't make him a traitor! He didn't help him kill them!

Etho had seemed pretty convinced the guys he knows wouldn't have killed those guys, actually. On the one hand, the voices are consistent about this one; when they're trying to cause problems, normally they're inconsistent. On the other hand, Etho is many things, but a poor judge of character is something you'd say he's not.

Socially awkward, sure. Bad at judging someone's character...

"We should search the house for clues," you say.

"You just want to leave me to clean up this mess," complains Cleo.

"No! I'll help! Promise! But like, what if there's a banana peel up the stairs or something? That's important for whoever we give these guys to to know."

"I'll go with Bdubs," Etho says.

"Great. And leave me with the dead bodies."

"You're good at dead bodies!"

"I know and they're gross," complains Cleo.

You look around. Where to go first? Probably upstairs; the way these guys have landed at the bottom suggests a very bad fall at the very least.

[wireman-au]

Etho is a traitor. He knew the people that killed the guy on the floor. He let them go.

“What? Etho would NEVER be a traitor! You guys are crazy! There’s no one smarter, or more loyal, or—”

“A traitor, huh?” Etho says. “Man. That hurts.” It’s almost in the register of someone making a joke. Almost, but not quite.

“I never said that!” you say, because you’re going to continue the bit anyway, no matter how tenuous it is. “I was in fact telling everyone otherwise, because I can’t, can’t imagine you being a traitor to nobody! You’re just too cool and perfect for that. A traitor? They’ve gotta be joking.”

Cleo stands up from where she’d checked the bodies for identification. “Glad to see we still do vaudeville routines over dead bodies,” she says. There’s a wariness to that, too.

You don’t like any of this.

“Well, I’m not making jokes! I’m defending Etho’s honor! That’s never a joke.”

This is where—

“I always appreciate being your damsel, Bdubs.”

“Good.”

At least he’s not being totally quiet now.

[wireman-au]

Just so you know. The front door is probably unlocked, considering all that’s happened in the last few hours, but just in case it isn’t:

One of the lock pins is a bit fiddley and might take a little extra finagling to properly unlock.

"I"ll take point," you confidently declare. It's not like you're that worried, outside of the very worrying fact there's still a car parked outside that probably shouldn't be, and also all the voices in your head talking about how it's not murder if it's an accident. They're right! That's manslaughter.

You try to open the door. It doesn't immediately open all the way until you really work the doorknob. It's not locked for real, it's just stuck.

Thanks, mysterious stranger! You would have asked Etho to break down Tango's door otherwise. The three of you walk inside.

And stop.

Yeah, that's, uh, at the very least a very unconscious two people at the bottom of the stairs.

"Ah. That's why they didn't check in. They're fucking dead," Cleo says.

"Yeah, I can see that!" Bdubs says. "Geez! Who would do something like that, huh?"

"Bdubs, we do. We do something like that."

"Yeah, but we're not the ones who did that!"

Etho is oddly quiet.

[wireman-au]

okay. I have to know. how good is etho at parking

Etho is great at parking. Fantastic at it, even. You know, you really don't appreciate how much the voices make fun of Etho. Just because he's a fundamentally weird guy doesn't mean he isn't also cool!

Anyway yeah he's pretty good at parking.

Concerningly, you recognize the other car parked in front of the house. It's definitely one that would have been issued by one of your people. You can't be sure, since you don't have the license plates memorized or anything, but...

You purse your lips.

"Well, everyone out," Cleo says. "Time to get this over with."

[wireman-au]

bdubs!!! you won the 2nd week of decked out 2!!

And every time one of the voices says something useful, they say utter nonsense again.

You have no idea what this is talking about.

Well, at least Etho's parking the car now.

[wireman-au]

"Expendable"? Buddy why do you keep saying that???

Please tell me this- this thing, this implant that you keep mentioning is safe?? Was put in you with consent???? You and Cleo are starting to make me nervous

You're not going to die, right?

"You people have an optimistic idea of how the world works for a buncha science experiments," you mutter, and you decide very, very firmly that you aren't going to elaborate further.

[wireman-au]

How many other people do you know for sure have the implant? There's gotta be at least two, not counting Tango, if my sources are reliable (starting to maybe doubt that though!)

Life would be a lot easier if people stopped trying to get classified information from you. Weirdly, people tried to do that way less before they started talking in your head. Of course, that's because all of your friends have at least your level of clearance, and frankly you just don't have friends that aren't Etho and Cleo in general because you're a little too expendable for that, and...

Geez. No more going down dark roads, huh?

Besides, if you want to complain about something, it's the way these voices are trying to convince you Tango would have an implant too. That doesn't make sense. You're expendable. He's... not.

Of course, inventors killed by their own inventions is a really funny list to read on Wikipedia, and every day you hope some of the people who have 'worked with' you visit it. Is that dark? You're still thinking too dark. You're still thinking towards actual answers to the question, too, which is exactly the thing you're trying to avoid.

Uh.

Pink elephants. Isn't that the thing that they always tell people to think about? Pink elephants? You can do that. Pink elephants. Pink elephants. Oh, look, you're getting closer to Tango's house. You can check it over for the apparent dead bodies and then move on.

[wireman-au]

A list of concerning things regarding Tango:

Impulse is his civilian friend. Impulse has an implant. Tango is about as strict about keeping the personal and professional separate as Etho, so either he acted wildly out of character or someone else did that

As of five days ago, Tango thought the Wireman project would be inactive enough that he'd have time off. This is basically the opposite of what happened, where a new feature (Voices and whatever else) went live in the field

Tango has been out of contact for five days. Your group is still not done with basic cleanup. This timeline does not line up at all

Tango himself has an implant. Other people were definitely involved with this, because you physically can't operate on yourself. This is bad news for you specifically because whoever was responsible cares more about their thing then making sure that the guy that can fix your implant won't be incapacitated by an implant

There has been precisely zero management of Tango's civilian friend group. This would be an oversight if his friend group was normal. Tango's friends are not normal. Tango's friends are so not-normal that this feels less like an oversight and more like enemy action

Tango himself has been preoccupied for the last... 4 hours? 5? however long the voices have been online. Considering the circumstances whatever is demanding his complete attention is almost certainly Wireman related

Someone left a bloody knife in his kitchen???

Someone left a classified document in his pile of mail

Whoever staged the house generally did an absolutely terrible job

You frown as Etho pulls off the highway towards the house. You're beginning to realize the voices didn't know Tango was in charge, which is stupid. How else did they get here, huh? Still, the people willing to give you massive amounts of information are helpful, if any of that information can actually be trusted.

You aren't sure this should be trusted.

...you love Etho. You love Cleo. You should probably tell them about this. You aren't sure you should while you're still being listened to by voices. No offense, of course, but it seems... bad, to try to talk this through where they can hear. That hasn't stopped being a thing that's true.

That being said, you do have an appropriate joke for this:

"Boy, you guys have never worked for the government before if you think 'inefficient, bad way to do a thing' is weird!"

"Yeah, the saying's 'good enough for government work' for a reason," Cleo immediately picks up on.

Etho remains silent.

He never appreciates your jokes enough for how incredibly funny you are, honestly.