RPC-XXX-1 appears to have died from strangulation via a botched suicide attempt, which was meant to involve the snapping of the neck utilizing a noose.
unnecessary and gratuitous description for clinical tone, just shorten to "deceased by self-inflicted strangulation."
violently flail and thrash about as if being strangled.
too colloquial… something like "involuntary spasms" would be better.
wave of guilt
too informal. sense of guilt, or "report feeling guilt"
in 100% of cases, will lead RPC-XXX-2 instances to attempt suicide. This attempt will always fail, resulting in the RPC-XXX-2 instance having a much slower death than expected from such an attempt.
"…RPC-2 instances will invariably attempt suicide unsuccessfully, causing prolonged death."
In some circumstances RPC-XXX-2 will survive this event, and in such circumstances, 12 hours after the event RPC-XXX-2's throat will become blocked by a mixture of sulfur and human blood, resulting in death. After the RPC-XXX-2 instance expires, by any method, a pressure gauge will grow from the body and the body of the RPC-XXX-2 instance will gain RPC-XXX-1's cognitive-hazardous properties.
not sure how but this could use trimming.
the academy plotline is weak and should be axed imo.
yeah the academy plotline is really weak and needs to be solidified a lot more to justify its lengthy inclusion. The characters in particular feel very stilted, with a lack of distinct speech patterns and characterization to prevent the meh dialogue from being too samey.
I would recommend reworking all the dialogue, possibly drafting character sheets for your inclusions to better flesh out their plot.
Overall, it feels like it's trying very hard to distract the reader from the fact it's a generic suicide-cognitohazard, and fails rather dully.