The Croix Rogue
The screen had been recently added, a failed bid to resurrect a station dead since 1939.
It was lit, that was a good sign.
It didn't list the correct spelling for the station. That was not good, but probably harmless. Croix Rogue was... strange, to put it mildly.
"Vers quelle station voyagez vous? To what station are you traveling to? どこの駅に行きますか？In quale stazione stai viaggiando?" The voice echoed in the mostly empty station.
"Les Agnettes."
"De Croix-Rogue à Les Agnettes, vous allez devoir changer de train à Duroc, puis poursuivre sur la ligne 13. Pourquoi ne pas continuer sur la ligne 10, la plus plaisante des lignes de Metro de Paris?"
That was new, the disembodied voice, which some contreversial sources attributed to Carla Bruni, was not expected to emit value judgements.
Sofia Adiani: "It's creeping me out."
Scythe Magnum: "Me too."
Sofia: "It's not your mom's voice saying these things..."
Scythe: "Your mom?"
Sofia: "Her last role, she wanted to pad her retirement fund." Scythe had been there, for the funeral. She didn't need to add anything else.
Scythe: "Do any of the rubes recognize her name?"
Sofia: "Some of them, she hardly had the shortest, or most mundane career."
Scythe: "Yes, quite."
Sofia: "What?"
Scythe: "Darling, I never told you?"
Sofia: "What?"
Scythe: "I had such a crush on your mother, growing up..."
Sofia: "Oh, is that it? You're making do with her daughter?" Her tome was venomous.
Scythe: "Don't be silly, childhood fantasies must go away, when one becomes an adult. I had a childhood fantasy on the mother, I was endlessly delighted to even meet the daughter. So when, after a fifth date, the daughter told me, you're meeting my mother..."
Sofia: "Yes?"
Scythe: "You must understand, I've been a mercenary, a military staff officer, I've been shot at, bled. Been picked up from a battlefield insensate..."
"Yes?"
Scythe: "I never, in all my military career, have had a proper fright put into me like meeting you and your mother for dinner at Le Bateau-Phare."
Sofia laughed so hard, her eyes were streaming tears. "So much... So much... So much... for trying not to intimidate you, my mother wanted to meet you at L'Arpège."
"A three-star restaurant? Yeah, I'd have been so so in my element..."
"Honey, we've been married 18 years now, why pretend you can lie to me?"
"That was sarcasm!"
"Honey..." Sofia was clearly enjoying this...
"People." Ratu Atut Badak interjected.
"Sorry, we're getting away from our main point."
"Scythe, I don't remember the last time a french person confused rouge and rogue, in my presence, but it doesn't sound... normal."
"I hadn't noticed that. Sounds... significant, it is the name of the station. When was it reactivated? I know it closed in world war 2."
"In 2019, just in time for COVID-21."
"If it's been two years, how come it's still deserted?"
"Line 10 is still the least busy line outside of the special, 'rump' lines."
"Shows there is no accounting for taste!" There was a woman's silhouette, composed of squarish pixel blocks, trying to imitate the silhouette of a grey-robed nun, with the extra accoutrements of a world war 2 nurse, including surgical mask, on the screens. On all the screens in the station, all speaking in unison.
"I will teach them!"
History
In 1939 the Croix Rouge station, as in our world, was closed. In theirs, however, in 2020, it was reopened, after receiving significant renovations. The new computerized system, set to handle the full traffic of a station, set to open in 2023.., was a tempting target for the information warfare division, who sent their standard spy-and-malware payload. A week later, from the unholy union of a place long abandoned with software written with malicious intent came Croix Rogue, a rogue ai pretending to be Isabelle Adjani pretending to be part of station personnel.
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