unknownseas | WEEK 7

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week 7

WEEK 7

Another Saturday gone and just like that you wake on Sunday, down five of your number. The largest dent taken out of you at once so far - it's surely noticeable, the head count being cut by a third. Almost enough to make you wonder how many of you will even be left by the next motive or two. Surely this isn't a sustainable rate for body counts to increase... right?

There's a new and, it looks like, final wing of the building to explore, bringing everything full circle. Maybe you'll get some more answers to some of the questions and mysteries of this place there - or at least, you can certainly hope for them. Time to turn your investigative eyes towards one last batch of rooms, who knows what you might find?

Angel remains around at night, her appearances much more common now that... well, she's certainly seen a downtick in necessary surveillance work, hasn't she? The app giving you a line to The Professor remains open, and well... whatever's going on with that ouija in the library continues to happen! You're not suffering from a shortage of leads, at least, even as things get more bizarre.

Something's going to have to give here, eventually. Right?

SUNDAY | MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY

[ ooc: Welcome to your last player case week! AC is over here, regains as always are over here, and... well, enjoy! After this we get to take our big turn towards the Serious. ]

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[ Well, good news is the key absolutely works! The lights are off in this room, you're going to have to find a lightswitch, but the door is now open!

The first thing that hits you, though, is the smell! Not necessarily in a bad way, you haven't found, you know, A Pile of Bodies, but it's... honestly probably a familiar enough scent to you to place even with the tinge of dust that's crept in under it. There's some kind of heavy-duty cleaner you can still smell the barest hints of, along with maybe a few other chemicals...

Look, I'm just gonna level with you, Birkin, that's the smell of a laboratory. ]

[...Oh.

Do you ever get the feeling that something is either about to be very good or very, very bad, because that is the feeling he's getting right now. It smells like the labs in the NEST; not like the ones in the mountains, those had the distinct unpleasantness of being underground with exposed walls, all rock and earth, but the NEST is like this place. All steel walls and windows and generally untouched by the nature happening outside of it, except in a few small places where...unpleasantness happened.

Great.

Well, since we just had the fucking tripwire case (thanks Anna) and his brain also very much associates this kind of scent with both traps and general impending death (thanks Umbrella) let's...see if we can find a light switch first, without going too far into the room. They're usually right by the door, kind of defeats the purpose otherwise?]

Edited 2020-05-17 17:44 (UTC)

[ You know, if one's only exposure to labs is the ones in Resident Evil, one would be alarmed, that's only healthy.

He can find a lightswitch pretty easily! And he'll find... well, it's not as horrifying as one might think! This room is a chemistry lab more than anything, and it's set up less like a collaborative workspace and more like a classroom, with a few rows of individual complete workspaces rather than any kind of specialized workstations. Most of them are cleaned up and under wraps, all the safety equipment and the like put back, though one of them near the back looks like it's been used - but nothing in here looks used recently, there's a thin layer of dust over everything.

Around the edge of the room, though, there are several notable things - both the usual (an emergency washing station, some cabinets full of supplies) and the unusual, particularly a corner of the room sectioned off by a number of thick bedsheets and a sliding automatic door near the back of the room through which you can see another glass door and a small area with light protective gear on the wall. ]

[...This is. Fine? Giving him less war flashbacks and more weird memories of the training facility because everything in this place comes back to the training facility.

Okay. So let's start with the station that's been used; is there anything noteworthy about it, any indication of what was being worked on?]

[ See? It might be bad here, but at least we're not funded by the Umbrella Corporation!

As far as you know, anyway.

So most of the containers around here are mostly or partially empty, but... only a couple of them are actual chemicals from this room? There's some pool cleaner, a thing of paint thinner, a lot of other things quick research won't tell me the exact combination needed but... Birkin's a scientist with a doctorate, he can get the general sense.

There's no telling in exactly what way, given how many things are here, but... these materials definitely suggest the creation of explosives. ]

[I mean, they also suggest the creation of homebrew napalm, among other things, and we're...not going to get into how I know that. Murdergames!

But okay. Someone was probably creating explosives and possibly some other fucked up shit in here. That's great. Apparently a while ago, too, given the dust...

Okay, so, if that's all our little anarchist friend left for us over here, let's check out what's behind the sheets...? Is there anything impeding him from doing that, and if not, is there something back here.]

[ It could have been! Regardless, yeah. Bad Shit.

There's nothing impeding him at all! That said, the blankets are constructed to keep the area pitch black when not opened - and inside there's a few plastic bins full of chemical solutions, and what looks like a makeshift clothesline. I guess this is as good a place as any to put a makeshift darkroom? ]

[...WELL, OKAY.

Are there any photos left in the area, or is it just guessable what it's used for? ...Is there still fluid in the bins?]

[ There's still some fluid, but no negatives. Looks like there's a couple of finished photos left out to dry, though! ]

[Oh, that's sure to be excellent and in no way terrible. What do we have here?]

[ ... it occurs to me very suddenly that Birkin is from the nineties, and therefore has no real concept of these, SO!

In The Classical Tradition, This Seems To Be Some Self-Portraiture. Just, you know, with a camera! There's a few here, all of this girl, in different locations throughout the facility!

The first has her in the Area E Living Space, in front of the wall you currently know as The One With The Huge Panel On It. That panel isn't there in the image! ]

[...so fun fact: birkin and wesker took over the arklay labs when they were teenagers and proceeded to do what any self-respecting teenagers that have just been handed a mansion would do

birkin has canonically taken many a selfie in his day is what i'm saying

anyway,

...That's. Interesting. Girl from the last set, maybe, or from however many sets back the area was flooded. He thinks it's recent, given that the dust isn't too thick and there's still fluid in here, and if it were that long ago he sort of hopes it wouldn't smell like fucking brine in there still.

Anyway. Are the other pictures more of the same, or are they different - different locations and all, maybe?]

[ oh thank god

The other two pictures are at least different locations! The second one is a bedroom - but it's different from how the bedrooms look now. Double-wide, with bunk beds and desks by the windows, it looks like they were meant to hold four or so people, though the only other human feature in the image is the legs of someone lying on one of the beds. ]

[...He is suddenly reminded of the notes regarding isolation.

All right. What's this last one?]

[ It appears to have been taken in Area B, but there's a couple things about it that are interesting! First is that the door to Area C is locked, and second is that, well.

This girl you haven't seen before is posing with a very confused-looking someone else who you've definitely seen before. ]

[...Duly noted. He'll definitely keep these; judging from the dust in the room, he finds it unlikely anyone is coming back for them.

All right. That just leaves the door at the back; let's go check that out, if there's nothing else here?]

[ Sure thing! Just note that a few odds and ends have been left on the counters under the cabinets - nothing notable, but it's notable that not everything was apparently put away.

Stepping through the first door will bring Birkin to what he'll recognize as an airlock. It looks like the seal of this cleanroom is long since broken, though - the second door requires a manual opening, but isn't locked, and there's a CLEAR - NO DANGER on the display above it. ]

[...Well, thank god it's all clear because he doesn't want to imagine how fucking dead we'd all be if it weren't. He'll note that the seal is broken there, though, and make...particular note not to fuck with anything that might compromise the place.

Okay. Through the second door we go, let's do this shit.]

[ I mean it might? Not be a horrible biohazard room???

Inside the room is... weird. There are three little tableaus with these holographic Generic Grey Person Outline figures in the room - one with two figures standing by a map, one with one figure at a desk, and one with two figures standing alone.

Huh. ]

[...why is he being confronted by the weird shadow diorama room. he didn't ask for this.

Let's go see what the map is looking like, first. Are there details visible, or is it more Weird Generic Stuff intended to give an idea of what it is without being too helpful?]

[ It's a map of the Earth! There are a number of Xes on some major cities, and one... in the Atlantic Ocean? There are small notes next to each, labelled things like "power cell" and "additional blueprints." There's no label next to the one in the ocean.

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean however, there's a circle with "Facility Site" written next to it. ]

[...That's happy. Is there anything else to note with our shadowfriends in this particular area here?]

[ One appears to be explaining something about the map to the other, whose hands are on their hips. It seems a little like a pitch, maybe? But between coworkers, not the usual "to the execs" kind of thing. ]

[...Huh. He usually keeps a pen on him, and...RIP Lisa Trevor, he's going to be repurposing your journal again for the sake of kind of...

...okay saying he's sketching anything is a stretch

he is diagramming this with some super janky stick figures god help us all

this entire room, as explained by xkcd

Noted, though! If there isn't anything else of note over here, let's check out shadowfriend at the desk? let's see what's happening over there.]

[ It appears roughly the same build as the shadowfriend who was explaining the map, so.

There are a couple papers on the desk - one of them is what looks like a rough draft of the test subject rules, with a couple crossed out - it looks like originally it was meant to be quiet hours after dark? That one's crossed out vigorously, looks like editing came down hard on it.

The other, which the figure is currently focusing on, is a page of notes they've started on titled ~~SECRETARY~~ ~~ON-SITE AGENT~~ ASSISTANT.

For our second time around, we need someone on-site to cut aggression. Can't have a repeat of hostage motive week. Perhaps we could use-

And that looks like that, for what's on this desk at least. ]

WEEK 7

Investigation!

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