Hmm. Should had taken a rope or something. Oh well, too late for that now.
Through the roof we go! Hopefully piecewise won't be necessary. If things go wrong we can just have him shoot the lock and go through the front door to come rescue us.
You take a moment, breathing deep, waiting for the man to walk a little further away. You count seconds silently to yourself, and on ten push the drain cover up and very carefully set it down, making as little sound as you can. The rats swarm up to join you, sitting on your shoulders, and maybe 30 second later piecewise lifts himself heavily out of the hole. You move to the wall and piecewise braces himself against it, boosting you up one fluid motion that tosses you halfway up to the roof. You catch the edge with your upper body and then swing a leg up, pulling yourself the rest of the way. You command piecewise to return to the drain and replace the cover, then to wait for you to come back. You tell him to be ready to come to the rescue, if things should go badly. You can't see it, but you somehow sense him readying himself down there like the coiled spring of a bear trap.
You keep low on the roof and look around; according to the plans there's a vent up here that should lead into a boiler room of sorts. You can't squirm through the vents like your rat friends but you should be able to break them open and get into the normal rooms. You find the vent, much bigger out here than it is further on, and carefully remove the grate on it. This grate isn't for security, just to stop birds and things from flying into the heating system, so its easy enough to unscrew and gently set aside. You send the rats down with the mission of checking things out and, if possible, making your way clear. They vanish with a gentle "clickclickclick" of claws on metal but reemerge a two or so minutes later and beckon you to come. The vent starts horizontal on the roof but then curves vertical as it enters the building and you have to carefully lower yourself down, trying to both prevent yourself from falling and not make too much noise. These labs should be empty now, their workers all tucked away for the night, but you never know who could be here. After about 10 or so feet the vent curves horizontal again, but this time is far smaller and filled with screws. The individual sections of metal venting are screwed together and the points of all those screws are lining the vents like barbed wire. Luckily for you, the rats have already carefully unscrewed the first section of vent and are motioning for you to remove it.
Removing that vent section is a slow and terrifying process, each clink and clank and grind of metal forcing you to sit silently for a minute after, listening. Finally though, you get it free and set it to the side, finally getting a look at the space inside the roof of the building. Its not much more than a crawl space, about 3 feet high, wooden beams running in a regular fashion from side to side and back and forth, supporting the roof and the actual ceiling of the rooms below. Your eyes are accustom enough to the dark to see bits and pieces of the space via light leaking in here and there, but its almost totally dark. You crawl out onto a joist and scramble forwards, mostly navigating by touch and via the guiding squeaks of your rats. They lead you to a section of ceiling, through which you can hear the chugging of machinery. Again you remove a section of vent and the grill it was attached to, opening a hole in the ceiling. You lower yourself down into the dark room below, dropping the last meter or so, and almost collapse into the a cautious stoop. Nothing happens for a full minute so you stand up, bumble around in the dark a while, and find the light. You flip it on.
The room is a small one, more of an oversized closet than anything else. Its a combination maintenance room and boiler room of sorts; the wall to your left is pegboard lined with simple tools that a handy man might use, including a ladder, boxes of replacement bulbs and fittings, screw drivers, wrenches, pliers, drills, hammers, boxes of nuts and bolts and screws, a level, three hammers, and even a metal square. The right wall is a tangled mess of copper tubes, conduits, fuse boxes, and an industrial water heater and oil furnace. First thing you do is set up the ladder so you can quickly get back into the ceiling if need be, then you check the door. Its locked, but from the inside, so you open it without issue. You flip the lights off and then crack the door open and peek out. The hall beyond is partially lit, maybe every third light is on, giving just enough illumination to find your way through. You sit and listen for a while; trying to hear if anyone is out there. You listen for footsteps, for breathing, for rustling, for the sniffing of a man with a cold, or the whistle of a bored guard on yet another tedious night where nothing happens. Nothing. Nothing besides the idle chug of the heater. You open the door just a bit and step out. Nothing. You pause for just a moment more...then then slink forward at a half jog.
The halls are institution white and barren; aesthetics reserved for government work or mental asylums. Each hall is near identical, just rows of metal doors. Some doors have windows built into them, others have no windows, still others have locks. You assume they're locks; big metal boxes where the handles should be but no sign of a key hole or anything like it. You scramble, peeking through the doors that do have windows and moving on. Meeting rooms, break rooms, office space, storage, nothing of great value. You stop at one though, a meeting room, and slip in. On the center table are papers and you rifle them quickly. Mostly worthless, but in the stack are two important sheets: the first is a list of projects and their funding amounts, the second is a top down map of the building with the rooms labeled. There are Lab rooms that are labeled via numbers -Lab 01, Lab 03, etc - and those labeled by project name. There is no indication as to what the projects revolve around but you can tell a bit judging from just the funding numbers and the amount of space dedicated to each. The three largest projects, judging by time and space, are: Project Puzzle-box, Project Sinker, and Project Mortar.
You backtrack through the building, rapidly double checking the map until you slide to a stop outside a room. Its a windowless room, but one without one of the metal boxes: on the map its got the name "Project Puzzle-box : Low-grade specimens". You try the handle and the door opens without a fuss; you slip in and close it behind you before turning on the light. The room within is a fairly standard lab of sorts: A series of long tables topped in non-reactive black laminate, with multi leveled shelves in their centers, stainless steel sinks and cabinets against the walls, Animal cages, and a great deal of scientific paraphernalia like beakers, test tubes, pipets, bunsens, microscopes, and glass containers of who knows what. But the thing that stands out is not the nature of the lab, but the experiments that are taking place. You have to build backwards from the remnants left on the tables, from the notes and images and other clues, but the lab seems entirely focused on some sort of vivisection. There are a great number of living rats in cages along the back wall- something you didn't really expect from a necrolab - and on the tables you find what look like mini operating rooms with splayed out paper diagrams and notes. You read what you can, flipping through pages and examining diagrams. Its seems like the goal of their research is not using the vivisections as a method; the vivisections themselves are the goal. Specifically, they seem to be attempting to very carefully and deliberately remove tissues from the rats while keeping them alive. Their end goal seems to be to keep the rats alive as long as possible with the most tissues removed as possible. There is no indication as to why, nor any indication as to the larger goal of the project. The best you get is a scribble in some of the notes.
"S-112: Survived for 2 hours, 22 minutes, 03 seconds. Consistent with past trials; still no advancement beyond
Kell Haber line. Likely will not surpass it without significant mechanical intervention. Anima capture rough estimate 65%, still unable to isolate in either case, considered lost."
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Topic: The Left-Hand Path (Read 118410 times)