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Gideon Kaspar     It's not exactly the final battle yet, so it's an unusual occasion to be called for. There isn't a proper briefing from Helian either, but rather it's left up to Clover to explain, because she's the one who had noticed it. After an awkward moment of her spacing out when prompted by Gideon on the ride over, through more snowy mountain passes that seem essentially abandoned compared to before.

    Apparently, it's that while going through operational records to plan the assault, Clover has found 'an abandoned database' has changed coordinates to where it shouldn't actually be. "This is an area we came close to on our original mission by Persica to infiltrate deep into Sangvis Ferri lines and retrieve critical data from Agent's database at the start of all of this. Going by our records, this database itself seemed fine, but its current coordinates clearly do not match its location as previously indicated." she explains. "We didn't actually visit it in person along out infiltration route, but this means that Intruder has somehow altered our topology records, had faked the coordinates of our original mission, or otherwise there is some kind of Sangvis trap, that only the A-R team would be able to notice. Please be on your guard."

    That said, the dropoff is far from the usual hot firefight zones or long hike recon and ambush open maps. It seems to be completely desolate, without even inexplicable Sangvis Ferri robot activity over the abandoned infrastructure previously occupied by humans. Steep slopes, heavily packed drifts, bleak fields, frozen rivers, and crumbling rocky barriers are most of what makes up any of the terrain, without signs of roads or checkpoints or outposts. It seems that nobody has been here in a long time, which is probably why it was ideal territory to painstakingly slog through the first time in the name of stealth.

    The characterizing feature of the terrain starts to reveal itself going along, though. Encased in layers of ice and buried under mounds of snow and dirt are the rust-streaked hulls of crippled tanks, significantly less ultramodern-looking than what has been seen of the military's gear so far, roughly lined up for an artillery battle. Parts of the snow aren't safe to step on as they lead to a plunge into deep trench networks, or the cracked open tops of old concrete bunkers and bases, barely sticking out of the frozen gravel and silt. Bits of corroded barbed wire are found in tangles here and there, and Clover has to warn about possibly still-active landmines in broad stretches to the west.

    he signs of war are actually so old, that when you reach the database, being little more than a concrete and steel radar building ostensibly for drone operation away from the frontlines, there are actually the bones of human beings in a small handful of snow drifts, mixed amongst the wreckage of unfamiliar models of bulky, practical, slightly robotic and skeletal humanoid frames, a step back in sophistication from human-like PMC T-Dolls, and a step back in obvious technology girth from the heavily armoured bespoke military T-Dolls.
Gordon Freeman     "Temperature warning." The HEV suit synths gently as Gordon trudges. He'll be fine, the HEV suit may as well be tundra gear. He's as silent as ever, and keeps attentive to Clover's warnings. He's not much of a conversationalist, certainly, but there's no reason he can't be a pleasant walk. For some reason, his silence has palpable, positive, almost social warmth, as if he were constantly talking about encouraging things.

    Once they get to the radar building, he gets to investigating. He regards the machine bodies with academic interest, but regards the human corpses with a sober sort of posture, first confirming that these are human remains, and then giving them respectful distance. Once this is done, he'll surely find a clear patch of earth to dig up. Later, though. For now, he searches for the entrance to the structure; no doubt it's old as all get out, so he gets his crowbar out to pry the door open too, once he can find it.
Nova Terra     "Or the topology itself has been altered." Probably the more unlikely scenario, given Intruder's obvious skill with infiltrating networks with false information. But it's not outside the realm of possibility.

    Snow crunches under armored boots as Nova jumps out of the helicopter. She walks a short distance away before shouldering her canister rifle and bringing her visor down over her eyes. She slowly turns her head as she takes in the area. But nothing immediate reveals itself. Once more raising her visor, Nova begins to walk in the direction of the objective.

    As the empty snow starts to give way to burried military equipment, Nova stretches out with her psychic senses to see if she can pick up on any minds in the area that shouldn't be. All the while she looks over the status of the equipment, "Whatever happened here, looks like it happened a long time ago. The battle itself, anyway." The more recent change in database coordinates is probably more recent.

    Speaking of, Nova comes to a stop as she reaches the database. She glances at the robotic remains, before shifting her rifle into both hands and starting to look around at their surroundings. She hmms, asking Clover, "I don't suppose you have any old satellite footage of the area we can use to compare to its current state?"
Tony Stark "Huh. Retrotech." Tony's lightly tinny voice emerges from the Mark 43, as Iron Man trudges through the snowy mountains. "Lots of rusting hunks of scrap of a tech I'd generously offer as modern to me. I bet Steve'd get a kick out of that sentence."

The snow-packed terrain (and deadfalls into awful trenches and the like) is navigated adroitly, Tony letting Nova and Gordon push forward into the mystery area.

"What really bugs me, personally, if anyone's asking..."

Nobody's asking.

"... Is why this would be a problem that only the Anti-Rain team would notice. Shouldn't someone in logistics or an accountant find these problems? Maybe a field team? I mean, really. It's a map mismatch. Perfect way to hide a base or lose a facility, but still. It strikes me as totally coincidental that this was found."

Scanning the pathways with his visor, Tony smirks and sighs (where nobody can see the former, but everyone hears the latter).

"Doctor Freeman, watch your footing, but I actually think you're the retro expert here. Got any feelings on the matter?"
Gideon Kaspar     Clover shakes her head towards Nova when she asks for satellite footage. "Not anymore . . . this was . . ." "A big disputed territory between the East European Alliance and the Pan-Asian Collective Republic way back in the day, or something like that. Right?" "It means all the military satellites that cross this area were shot down by anti-orbital weapons." "Yeah, and Griffin isn't a space company! We pay to rent I.O.P launched satellites!" ". . . right. That." So this is the chatty dynamic of the full A-R team.

    Poking at the downed robots makes it fairly obvious that they're a good couple of decades old. They're significantly more sleek and professional than the humanoid stuff Boston Dynamics is up to in the average 21st century, but not quite built to completely replace a human, it seems, given the bulky power supplies, integrated weapons, relatively clunky manipulators, and obvious receivers for remote orders. A handful of them are relatively posh and fitted with exterior chassis that at least gives them a relatively organic, doll-like silhouette, though obviously not with any kind of synthetic flesh or blood or uniforms, badly mangled, but apparently carrying last-generation laser rifles. Very close inspection shows the S.F. corporate logo on them.

    "We're the only ones who have laid eyes on this area in years." Clover explains to Tony. "If it wasn't altered recently, then the military would have trusted their maps, with no reason to ever go here." "It's still unlikely it wasn't though. If Sangvis wanted to hide the location of the facility, wouldn't it make more sense just to erase it?" "Yeah, it kinda feels like we were *meant* to find it, don't you think?"

    The entrance to the database building is largely unremarkable. It doesn't seem like there was any kind of intense firefight here, with the casualties mostly those of a hurried fallback operation; the communications and drone control equipment hasn't been shelled or sabotaged, for one. The doors haven't been left blowing in the cold, but the locks have long since succumbed to seasonal freeze and melt, and Gordon's crowbar is required to force the door.

    Which makes it sort of odd that there's dried red fluid trailing across the floor. A basic sniff test, never mind scan, shows that it isn't human blood, but the old generation Dolls outside didn't seem to have whatever current generation circulation tech that makes T-Dolls 'bleed' a little when shot. Deeper in, there are a number of locked minimum security iron doors to either side, and a disheveled monitoring room filled with scattered papers and overturned chairs, the monitors themselves dusty and the heating unit left cold. The main power died forever ago, but the backup power cell was never switched on, so it probably still works. No dead people inside, so far. No psychic signs either. Not even extremely split down remote Ringleader ones.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon immediately sets about business. The computers are a bit out of his league, as a native of the Superscience 80s, but Tony Stark is here, and will undoubtedly have more of the answers. He also has his own answers to Tony's question here. He tries to follow the general apparent layout of the bunker's power systems -- since these walls are concrete and steel, not drywall, it's prudent to leave maintenance covers or rigid encased wiring along the surface -- to find the backup generator, which sort of shows his opinion that more answers will be found in this.

    Before he does, though, he visibly checks over the computers, one more sign of an answer to Tony Stark's question. Any sign of removed hard-drives? He may not know much about the elaborate details of modern hardware, but he does know that an active computer actively builds up more dust along its fan-vents than an inactive computer, and if someone took the hard-drives or otherwise fucked about with the hardware, they'll have vents with only the amount of dust the rest of the facility has, not the near-absolute blockage he expects if the hardware's been interfered with, so he checks it for digital dustbunnies.

    He's gonna see if he can get that power on, and then while Tony pokes at the machine, maybe see what else can be found about the trail; does it seem to be leading anywhere?
Nova Terra     Nova sweeps her rifle left and right as she slowly moves through the small facility. She wasn't able to sense anyone in particular who shouldn't belong. Though that doesn't discount the possibility of robotic units that would not fall within her ability to read. However it quickly becomes clear that the place is abandoned.

    Briefly eyeing hte antique computer systems, Nova decides to leave them up to the other two. Even if she was a computer geek, they're far below her tech level, "All yours, boys."

    Nova doubles back towards the iron security doors. Reaching her hand out towards one of the locks, she attempts to use her telekinesis to manipulate it and unlock it. If she does so, she raises her rifle and slowly moves in.
Tony Stark Gordon forces the door, and Nova sweeps and clears. It's comfortable, working with this crew now. Nobody ever said his leadership was inspiring, or the strongest part of what he brought to the table, but...

When you worked with professionals, sometimes you didn't need the full on Captain America bring-the-team-together to handle things. Sometimes, you just needed the mechanic.

"When I said retrotech, I didn't mean I wanted USB 1.0." Tony complains lightly, stepping up to the mainframe - and then stepping OUT of the Mark 43, the suit spreading open and a (rapidly cooling) Tony Stark in an Tactical Hoodie and tight-ish sweatpants beelining for the systems as Gordon gives him room to work.

"Friday, Sentry Mode."
From the suit, Friday's tinny voice rings out with an air of humor, as the Mark 43 closes up around the now-empty interior. "And shoot the corpses?"
"What? No." Tony replies, pulling out a small toolkit from his pocket and starting to access the systems manually with the surity of someone who either knew exactly what he was doing, or quickly would learn the same.

"They're not zombies. This isn't some trash zombie movie where they all come alive, groaning, to grab at our ankles."

"Right, Gordon? Miss Terra?"
Gordon Freeman     Gordon's reply to whether or not they're zombies comes in the form of a contemplative beard-stroking, and several chin-taps. He regards one of the corpses, scrutinizing it briefly. Wordlessly, he takes his shotgun out of the hardpoint holster at his back, loads several shells into it, cocks it, and then re-holsters it. Then he gets back to what he was doing. Silence communicates so much with this man.
Gideon Kaspar     Opening locks from the other side isn't too hard. There are multiple on each door, but they're fairly standard bar and tumbler affairs, not being a major enough database, or a big enough building, to go using keycards and e-locks when already inside; it would be crewed by 20 people at a time at the most. One of them leads to the backup cell Gordon is looking for, turning on the lights with a weak, sterile LED flicker, making the heating unit clunk, groan, and cough out a plume of foul-smelling dust, and lighting up a number of monitors now just tuned to nothing, as well as turning on radio static along wavelengths that no station actually uses anymore.

    Others contain fairly regular storage, except for one that has a rack of extremely heavy duty hazmat suits, looking more like primitive plastic predecessors to Gordon's HEV rather than yellow pajamas. Another is just a fusebox, and another is the internal machinery pillar underneath the transmitter equipment on the roof, to be worked on without going outside or turning on the reception. Still no dead people, so probably evacuated.

    Some of the drives are missing. No doubt the ones with sensitive intelligence and passwords were removed during the evacuation. A lot of them have just been left where they were though, no doubt containing nothing of importance, or at least, nothing that the enemy didn't already know. A lot of them look pretty small capacity, just there for hosting executables and logs of remote field use. As far as Tony can tell though, none of them were used for anything like UAVs. The logs correspond to human operators giving directions and programming routes and strategies into T-Dolls day by day. More accurately, the last generation ancestors to thinking T-Dolls, if they required modifications to their AI whenever they needed to be re-customized for each battle strategy coming down from up top.

    The slick of artificial blood leads to one computer in particular, where the drive has been switched out entirely. There is no useful information on it, save a single audio file with an incongruously massive file size. Playing it results in grainy distortion that has nothing to do with the quality of the speakers on the dusty old computer. After several seconds of uncomfortable static, a stiff, monotone, androgynous voice utters a single sentence, and the file terminates with a loud series of rapid clicks.

    "--they -- are in-- -- your-- homes--"

    The A-R team turns around from milling about and poking at the dead Dolls. "In your homes? What is that supposed to mean?" "That's totally useless as far as audio logs go. You'd think it's probably some kind of code or passphrase." "Yeah, who's 'they' anyways?" Clover is the one who looks spaced out in thought.

    ". . . if it was left behind by a T-Doll, it probably wasn't meant to be communicated to humans. It's on physical media. Left behind somewhere it wouldn't be found. Sometimes, when T-Dolls have mission critical information, but can't back up their neural clouds, they make hard copies at specific locations that can be retrieved later. Like a dead drop. Do you think it's something like that? Encoded data from an old operation?"

    Hazel scratches her head. "Well, maybe, but it looks a lot newer than whatever battle this was. Why would another T-Doll have come through here, and their company never bothered to retrieve their backups?" "Maybe they just forgot? Or maybe they're haunted!" "Maybe it's just nonsense and we're wasting our time."
Nova Terra     Nova does a little exploring. Finds the backup cell and turns it on, "Did that help?" Finds access to the transmitter. Finds some extremely outdated environment suits. Finds some probably old storage.

    Nova returns to the others, "Well, there's not much to this place. And no signs of any hostiles." She looks around at the old computer systems, echoing one of the Griffin dolls, "So this seems like it might have been a bit of a waste of time." She glances at the others, "Could it be Intruder screwing with us some more?"
Tony Stark When you're dealing with things like hard drives, you can do a lot of magic. Reconstructing files. De-junking them. Applying holistic algorithms that would, in effect, be like if Doctor Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, waved his fingers in a meaningful way and went 'skidaddle skidoodle your files are no longer data noodles'.

Very, very powerful data-magic, that. Unfortunately, mostly what Tony can pull up on a pair of designer smartglasses he produces from his pocket is that the hard drives are physically missing. Nothing. Less than nothing: he could tell if data logs were just straight empty.

"Can't do anything with hard drives that aren't here." Tony mutters, moving from the mainframes across - gingerly - the horror film smear of mechafluids before the landing stripped computer and the file with the absurdly large clicking file.

"Well that's way, way too much data for just a series of clicks. I'll run a cryptoanalysis on it. Pull up a chair, if you can find one. Or... You two can search the compound for a dead drop. Maybe it's in the armory, or some other important area?"

"With the state of this base, it'd probably be obvious if anything was messed with if you give it a good look. Try the inside of doorframes, maybe?"

The idea of clicks - of a code 'only a computer would look for' comes to Tony's mind.

"Friday, run an analysis of patterns created by the missing hard drives, standard cipher search. Morse, too."

The AI-piloted power suit begins visibly painting the area with a scanning sweep beam.

"It'd be really stupid to disappear a place that didn't exist, unless..."

Tony's shoulders slump. "Unless it REALLY didn't matter, and everyone forgot about this hole."
Gordon Freeman     Gordon listens to and regards the audio playback. The issues of large volumes of data are beyong his understanding. The issues of what could have happened here is less so. He doesn't speak up, but he does swiftly move back to the main door, double-checking the locks, the rust on them -- they were /thoroughly/ broken, right? He moves to examine the interior space in more detail, looking at the trail and at the doors... Then he starts just sort of rapping his crowbar along the walls and floors. Listening for something. Searching for something.

    A back door? A hidden underground passage? Somewhere a T-Doll could have gotten in, without needing to take the front door? They are in your homes, she said. And they were supposed to seek out... Her teahouse? He sniffs, as if expecting the scent of fresh-brewed tea to waft over the air. He doesn't, but it sure would be nice, out here in the shitty cold. But what happened here had to have happened a little more recently, right? So there must be more to the structure than met the eye. Gordon looks for airflow signs, tracks in dust, the patterns of the weird fluid trail. He might not be a detective, but at the very least, he's very good at finding ways to get in somewhere, and that might mean he can find the ways someone else got in here.

    Or he might just discover that there wasn't any way that someone got in here, and that the mystery has a hell of a lot more confusing timeline than they expected.
Gideon Kaspar     "The fact that the coordinates were altered at all is starting to feel like Intruder meant for us to find it." Clover replies in a plaintive tone to Nova. "Not no Sangvis units. Not even dummies. Kind of a useless trap, right?" says Hazel.

    Though the newer T-Doll passing through was certainly more recent than the old generation units destroyed in a yet-nameless war, it doesn't seem to have been *that* recent. Gordon's poking around doesn't reveal much in the way of fresh activity. Though there are some smudged spots, there has been enough time for dust to half-fill in the places where it's been disturbed again already. Poking around through the doors Nova had opened eventually takes him to an emergency hatch, which leads into a claustrophobic, squared tunnel, through which a power and fibre optic line are run, quite a distance in the northern and southern directions.

    As with Tony's expectations, the cryptic and useless audio file of suspicious size is quite clearly encoded. The clicks themselves aren't a code, but correspond to data compression baked into the audio format. After crunching it for a little while, he comes up with . . .

    Another set of coordinates. Breadcrumbs. To the north. Violet leans over. "Well, that at least looks like something a T-Doll would leave, so she could find the other backups from here." "Why not just put all the info on one backup though? Coding it and splitting it up sounds like they didn't *want* someone to find it." "If it *is* a neural backup, that is."
Gordon Freeman     Gordon regards the emergency hatch. His face scrunches up like it's being warped in photoshop. He gets the feeling that this has been something that was handled quite a long time ago, and he doesn't like the idea that they're getting involved in Old Business. Older matters like this are chronically an issue, in that they so often tend to include helping no actual living, breathing people. Well, thankfully T-Dolls probably don't breathe, so Gordon is acclimating to that just fine. He's not about to take that hatch, but it's clearly gone through enough places that he gets the idea that it wouldn't exactly be a precise sign of the new site of investigation.

    What would be, though, is the new coordinates. He leans in to see what's going on, silently regarding them, and then nods firmly, but cautiously. He's wary of more danger, if Intruder is a step ahead of them, but he's definitely not going to abandon the path, and intends to see this business through.
Nova Terra     "Might not be a trap. Might just be a distraction while something else goes on." Though there doesn't seem to be anything else going on right now. Not that they've heard.

    Still, apparently Tony is able to break the encryption, revealing some coordinates nearby. Nova plugs them into her own suit's systems, glancing at the map that comes up, saying, "They may have split it up to reduce the chance of someone else-like us-finding every piece of it."

    The coordinates lead north. And there just so happens to be a tunnel recently discovered by the orange one that heads in that direction. Walking up to the entrance of said tunnel, Nova lowers her visor down over her eyes and peers into it... "Well, I guess I am used to tight spaces." Nova shifts her rifle to aim forwards as she begins to move down the tunnel to the north.

    However, Nova does radio, "Maybe you should track us from above, Stark? Keep an eye on the outside and maybe get an idea of what we're crawling into."
Tony Stark "When it comes to encryption, there's three kinds. There's the stupid shit that you use in ARGs: You start with 'I'm going to dump about of cryptic bullshit, work it out community'. Then there's the kind with one spook communicating with another - the kind where you know exactly where to look, what to look at."

"Then there's what we'll call 'barrier to entry'. Just making it more difficult, more time consuming to get at the info, so that it's not worth the effort to chase it down."

With a flourish, he produces the coordinates, gesturing with a 'well, there it is' and saving the rest of the group the trouble of, most importantly, WikiHow'ing 'breaking futuretech data encryption'.

"Sure, I can handle that. I'll let you two do what you're good at." Stark cedes, as the Mark 43 steps behind him and opens up. With a backstep and double fingerguns, the armor closes around his body once more, the faceplate clinking down and eyes flaring to life.

"I'll run topographical scans and feed them to you two - should be able to get a pretty decent map, if not fine details. A few hundred pounds of rock a metal does hell with conventional scan pulses, whod've thought for a secret mountain base."

Backing off, through the bloodsmeared corridors, Iron Man takes off to do the requested aerial recon - and start feeding Soliton Radar data to the pair on the ground.
Gideon Kaspar     "Maybe." says Violet noncommittally to Nova. "She did say her goal was to 'kill time'." Rose then pipes up with "But then wouldn't it make sense to create a distraction that uses up the bulk of our forces, right?" in an oddly insightful fashion however, drawing a sound of discomfort from Clover. Hazel pats her on the shoulder and says "Well it's already too late now! It'll take hours to get back anyway; might as well see where this goes."

    The drive is not formatted by an expert cryptologist, but someone with military keys who scrambled it as best they could in a moderate hurry. If they were hoping to leave them well-hidden though . . . they probably weren't. The trail doesn't lead far, apparently erring on accessibility if they'd somehow managed to pinpoint the first one. It seems the assumption is that this zone is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, dead.

    Gordon going underground finds more speckles of that synthetic blood, albeit much more spread out than up above. Whether that means the T-Doll had come this way last, or had patched themselves up with some material or scavenged parts from the outpost, is unclear. Tony overhead finds that going north just leads to more wasteland --and more *of* a wasteland. The snow becomes almost choked with the remains of a previous large scale battle, including a very obvious and quite expansive minefield, and far, far to the west, a thick curtain of unseasonal and eerily unmoving dense storm clouds, piled up miles high like a wall.

    The signs of dead soldiers in scattered helmets and discarded rifles mix together in great quantities with scrapped last generation T-Dolls and wrecked vehicles, and signs of sweeping fires have clearly scarred the sparse trees, known to grow and regrow very slowly in climates this cold, only in the summer months. Deep in the tangled mass of it, past several nearly identical pillboxes, observation posts, and temporary command bases, he locks in on a similar database at the same coordinates, wherein Gordon will just have to pry another hatch open with his trusty crowbar from beneath.

    The story isn't much different within. Knowing the drill by now, the A-R four join in on the hunt, scouring the place for a hard drive, which is eventually discovered via Gordon's method of checking dust. The blood has just about disappeared too, and no more maintenance hatches lead out, though snow has piled up immensely through the crack under an iron blast door to the outside that seems to have sealed itself via being filled in with ice, rather than bound shut in rust.

    Playing this one generates the same kind of grainy clicking and distorted, androgynous voice. The message is as cryptic and useless as the first one, but shifts subject matter slightly.

    "They--- -- -are in-- --- -- --you - --- - -cars."

    Somehow, it feels as if that one were a little more . . . insistent. A little evangelical, almost. Like a homeless person talking up the endtimes. The unencrypted data isn't so helpful and polite as to just give another set of coordinates to continue the eerie little scavenger hunt, though. Instead, the bulk of the data is a tremendous amount of madly repetitive text format, repeating 4A1SOP2A15M16 and then 404 404 404 over and over and over again for megabytes before going back to the first string and repeating. It also contains a snippet of a tactical order plan, attributing the drive to 'Team Foxtrot; Dummy #8. Operation OO7, tactical plan: Omega. Firing retreat progress 33%, unit battle damage 68%, CER 12500. Vector south-southeast, bearing 15.3 degrees. Vector adjustment at 3 klick mark: due south, 3.1 degrees, four klicks. Wait for pickup.
Nova Terra     The mapping data provided by Tony makes it quicker and easier to move forward, translated into a wireframe overlay in Nova's visor. Quickly making it to the next facility at the end of the tunnel, Nova focuses on securing it first. She makes sure there are no hostiles before regrouping with the others to go over the new drive they found here.

    As she listens to the once more short audio recording, along with watching the data scrolling across her visor, she hmmms, "This doesn't seem like SF data. More like Griffin units. Parts of the text string are similar to that of your unit names."

    Nova looks at the Griffin girls with them, "Can any of you identify the units? Or possibly a mission that corresponds to the maneuvers reported in the data? It may give us an idea as to why Intruder has led us here."
Gordon Freeman     Regarding the tunnel, Gordon gives it further thought, stroking his beard, before he resolves to dive into the underground. If someone wounded could go this far, then someone capable ought to be able to. He flicks the flashlight of his suit on, an over-the-shoulder LED thing that floods the tunnel with light. He lets the others take an aboveground route if they so like, he certainly prefers the interior spaces. He ought to be at the place just around when the others get there, prying up the hatch with his crowbar. He looks, and looks, and the dust-check is successful again.

    "They're in your homes! They're in your cars!" Gordon imagines the voice. What more could they be saying? The voice is androgynous and monotone, the voice of a doll... Isn't it? He turns the idea over in his head, thinking about the nature of tactical dolls. What could come next? "They're with you in every moment of life, won't you let these girls defend you on the front line?" Perhaps a recruitment, an old memory, or some piece of dramatic irony that Intruder is trying to lead them on a merry chase with after she already hijacked the trail.


    Listening to the information once Tony provides it, he runs through the calculations in his head. As if to answer Nova Terra, he pulls out a pen -- a big, thick one that you'd use for whiteboards in a lab -- and scrawls the calculations for the vectors on the smooth screens of the deactivated machines around the facility. Simple translation, really. 3 kilometers south-southwest bearing 15.3, four kilometers south at 3.1 degrees means exactly 1 kilometer west and 6.888 kilometers south from their position, which Gordon marks on a haphazardly-drawn grid, then just... Wanders back out, looking at a compass on his HEV suit's wrist.
Tony Stark Playing eye-in-the-sky is not exactly calming for Tony, but it does allow his mind to wander. Broken fields of end-war drudgery. Corpses of fighting robots for both sides. The feeling that what shaped this land was not nature, but technology. Weapons.

The heartless calculus of taking ground and moving chess pieces around a board.

This leads to another base, which Iron Man lands at and inspects the premises for clues. Which, while forthcoming, make less and less sense which Tony gets off on a tangent about.

"The string of characters sounds like the armaments that the Anti-Rain team use. But Vector... That was Gideon's adjutant, wasn't it?"

Tony paces, tapping a metal finger on titanium alloy chin. "Tactical plan Omega? CER? Vector... Oh. Wait."

Iron Man's palm clonks on his silver forehead. "Right. Directions." though before he can do the calculation in his head Gordon does it for him, marking the map and already setting out.

"In your homes, in your cars. The data repeating the two Griffin elite teams, maybe this isn't a data dump from a Griffin T-Doll, but a Sangvis one?"

"Like those weird ones, we found in that weird not-a-trap last time. Maybe Intruder is some 'artist' type, that is trying to get us to understand their statue of a burning metal horseshoe with a T welded to it is actually a really deep take on the brittle yet impermeable nature of humanity."

"Also, that's a thing, I owned it, it was dumb and I donated it to some MOMA or another."
Gideon Kaspar     It definitely seems that they can indeed identify it, as Nova asks. Specifically, Clover has her head downcast, thousand yard staring in a way that she hasn't seen before. It takes a bunch of annoying prodding from Rose hovering around her back, poking this way and that, to get her to say something. "That was the operation where we struck into the heart of Sangvis Ferri to retrieve a file for Company President Kyruger himself. The one that Agent appeared at, and nearly wiped us out. Fifteen Griffin echelons came to bail us out, and just like us, they scattered across different escape routes to spread Sangvis Ferri thin in pursuit. I've heard that every one of them was destroyed, and Sangvis Ferri demolished the database."

    Gordon then just reverses the scrap of garbled orders that have route plotting broadcasted into the memory of the almost-definitely T-Doll in question, doing some trigenometry to walk backwards along the route. It's a little more difficult than just following extremely precise GPS coordinates, requiring he keep careful track of their heading and corroborating with data from Tony from above, as natural formations that have shifted with the drifting of snow and reformation of ice get in the way, as the route leads straight through blatant minefields that the retreat operation probably had data on at the time, and into deep and densely entangled wreckage fields.

    Outside of the distant, eerie howl of the wind, the crunch of boots in snow, the faint rush of repulsor thrusters, and the groaning creek of old metal stressed in the cold breeze, it's really just Rose trying to keep the mood up, occasionally blurting out into the quiet things like "Isn't a horseshoe for horses though? How does that represent humanity? You'd need a human shoe right? Ah, but then if you burned it, it would just burn away in a few minutes. Wait, wouldn't that be way better at representing brittleness of humanity?!"

    The end destination, this time, is not another database. What they find has to be dug out from the snow, with a thin but dense layer of black ice having to be chiseled or melted away over a bunker hatch; the less suicidally useless equivalent of an old war pillbox, with a long, indirect corridor to the spring supported chamber at the bottom.

    This time it isn't even a search. The light doesn't work, and the fusebox is completely dead, clacking uselessly in the cramped, echoing dark when flicked. Shining illumination on the concrete cube of a room reveals stacks of untouched cans, filters, ammunition, and electronics, most of it still in its plastic. A pool of synthetic blood much wider and thicker than the other locations has spread out all over the floor, in keeping with the final destination of a wounded survivor's futile escape, yet, no Doll is to be found anywhere in this tiny, empty room.

    "This place has been frozen over for a while." "There's no way it's as recent as that operation." "Something else picked up Griffin operations chatter. I don't think that hard drive was misformatted. I think they only caught that much."

    This time, the remaining drive is just left on the floor, sitting dustily at the edge of the blood pool, casting its long shadow up the wall, looking so overwhelmingly suspicious it feels like some long-fingered horror will grab someone from behind and drag them off into the dark the moment they approach it though. It doesn't. The recording plays.

    "They are-- - --- --- -in-- -- --- - -- -the- - -- --- -- -- ---sky"

    "----------- ------- ---- -- - --This is the end. Of everything."

    The recording clicks out. The only other thing of note is, when lights are shined upwards, most of the way up the wall, someone has painted in old synthblood: WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD
Gideon Kaspar     Decoding the last drive doesn't give coordinates or directives. This one is clearly a partition, like a piece of a series of compressed folders to break up an extremely large file --the kind you unzip from file 1 to get through the whole chain, or else it just corrupts completely. It does, however, match the exact data structure of the other two, albeit without anything readable, meant to be cracked and interpreted to find more drives. It's probably the last one.
Nova Terra     Nova looks impressed at Gordon. The calculations were simple enough, sure. But Nova herself wouldn't have thought to retrace the steps of report. Although there's no guarantee it'll lead anywhere. But it's worth a shot!

    As Clover recalls the specific mission in question, Nova raises her visor to listen closely. There's a solemn look on Nova's face. The knowing look of someone who's experienced the loss of numerous comrades in war.

    It's another trek through the cold snow, Nova once more thankful that her suit interior maintains its own temperature. Though she can definitely feel the frigid air on her face. At Rose's strange attempts to keep the mood up, Nova hahs, "It'll take more than fire to burn my shoes." Armored boots and all. She's still scanning the stretching icey wilderness for signs of the enemy, this being a trap remaining an ever constant thought in her mind.

    Soon though they arrive at what appears to be the end of this little treasure hunt. The resulting recording is still mostly gibberish to her. Along with the totally-not-disturbing message of not-blood on the wall. Nova shoulders her rifle with some annoyance, "What the hell kind of game is that Intruder playing here? If the recordings really were SF's interception of Griffin comms, then was she just looking to drag up old memories for you guys? Seems kind of a waste of time."
Tony Stark Tony's somber attitude and the lack of big explosions or things to quip at beyond AI girls, Tactical Bodysuit Ladies, and nonverbal particle physicists leaves a quiet and restrained tone on the trip along the vector path.

It's a lot of time for anyone to be in Tony's head, especially Tony. Double especially Tony, in fact. Thankfully, SOPII picks up some slack. "That's basically modern art. Like a seeing eye puzzle for the mind - except instead of actual, literal perspective, it's really more like getting a joke explained to you that isn't funny and only makes sense in a vague way."

Iron Man gestures to the painting (in blood) on the wall. "The New World... Mmn. If Sangvis traced your diversionary squads around, maybe this was a diversion. A way to 'kill time'. A message, like the burning horseshoe, that you only get when it's explained to you."

The database is picked up and scanned for later, but it's secondary to the real 'results' that happened. "Well. We got what we came for. Clover?"

Iron Man passes the hard drive to the T-Doll. "Make sure Persica, or Gideon, or Kyruger, or whomever, when they open this one, to make sure that whatever they do it on is airwalled and secure. 'They're in your homes', and all."

"Seeing AI get so personally invested in things like the Sangvis do... Maybe that walking WMD had a point. You need passion to really create a perfect weapon, a tool for killing. Derivative knock-offs don't pack the same punch."
Gordon Freeman     As ever, Gordon's mood somehow seems conversational and positive while he remains completely silent. When they arrive, he uses the flat end of his crowbar to help break the clumped and condensed snow and ice, though digging through to the hatch below takes a toll on his hands. The HEV suit isn't made for this nonsense, or at least his fingers are a tad numb at the end of it.

    It doesn't take too much to find the last one. It doesn't take much to get started on listening to the last of it. Gordon scrunches his expression up like he's face-first too close to a bonfire. This is business he can't deal with on his particular level, the kind of thing where he has to hand it off to men who are more academic and men who have more money to be able to handle it. He checks things over, continuing a scouring search as if he might find the key to this situation by scrutinizing even more corners, but nothing is forthcoming.

    Eventually he just settles into a contemplative staring at the blood-painted wall, until it's time to leave. If he has concerns or conclusions about what they just acquired, he isn't saying, but he sure doesn't seem satisfied with what happened; he'll surely be eager to dive into finding out more once the data is handled.