Scene #7357: Graywashing: The Coverup

Owner	Pose
The Janitor	MONDIAL NEVADA, 4:37 PM The sky is a sickly orange. It's hard to say how much of that's from the sunset and how much is from the roaring flames. Mondial Nevada is a shady brutalist three-story concrete facility in the middle of arid nowhere. The warpgate a few miles away is essentially completely unused. Sun-bleached asphalt roads like sclerotized arteries stretch off away from it in multiple directions, not finding civilization 'til out past the horizon. Busfuls of employees enter and leave in the mornings and at night; tanker trucks whose NSFA hazard diamonds show excitingly high numbers arrive irregularly and unload their chemical paylaods out back. That's about all the traffic this place ever gets. Judging by how little effect the desperate sprinkler system's having on the searing orange-green fire consuming most of the first floor, you're probably witnessing some of those exciting chemicals in action. 3:20 PM: A nondescript custodian finishes silently garroting a trucker with an oil-rag in the loading bay. Before his body even hits the concrete floor, the custodian has started jerry-rigging his truck's transfer tube to the adjacent one's chemical tank and clamping the flow to a trickle. By the time that hideous mixture blows the custodian will be long gone, already wearing a different nondescript skin. The whole facility's surrounded by a ten-foot-tall barbed wire fence at a distance of fifty yards; its automated gates are shut. Minigun-like automated turrets every sixty feet or so swivel restlessly, tracing ominous arcs with their laser sights in search of prey. About half of them are pointed inwards, which can't be normal. As the fires rise and crowd desperate office-workers onto the second and third floors, some of them have tried jumping from windows to the sandy ground below. The inward-facing turrets pick them off before they can even reach the fence. 3:31 PM: A nameless security guard rips out their "boss's" neck with a stapler and shoves him onto the ground to bleed. Over his body, they slot a USB stick into the security mainframe. New instructions: universal kill-on-sight. Elsewhere, the turrets pitilessly obey.
The Janitor	r As the fires spread to the smaller building nestled in the corner of Mondial Nevada's L-shaped main structure, lights start to flicker and sputter. Even the turrets' tracking is interrupted for unpredictable split-seconds when that happens. It must be the on-site power plant, though it's hard to say whether its impending demise is a good or bad thing. Mixed in with the office workers and scientists inside the main building are a few people in white jumpsuits, most with a sun-starved pallor and all with visible disfigurements. The two groups rarely get along; though the human test subjects may soon be perishing alongside their former captors, some of them are taking advantage of the fleeting opportunity for revenge with fire axes or improvised weapons. More are escaping from the basement-laboratories below, through the few stairways and elevator shafts the first-floor fire hasn't yet subsumed, and climbing up to the second- or third-story offices for temporary refuge. EMS and firefighters are forced to keep a healthy distance by the turrets at the perimeter. There's no way they're going in there. The office-workers are of debatable culpability- if grilled they'd doubtless say they didn't know about the human experimentation, they were just doing their mundane desk jobs. The scientists in the white labcoats, who worked in the basements below, are absolutely guilty as sin. And the human test subjects in white are inarguably innocents, even if some of them are currently relishing taking justice into their own hands. All of them will perish together- and with them, the evidence of Mondial's wrongdoing- if you don't figure out something. As you watch, part of the second story right above the main entrance caves into the first as its metal supports melt to slag, spilling cubicles and computers into the incandescent hellish fires. Employees, already packed as tight as sardines, scream and back away from the newly-formed sinkhole. One office worker nearly falls in, but another grabs his wrist and pulls him back from the edge.
Selene	Everything about this situation screams crimes against humanity. Even for Selene, EMS workers get a certain level of deference that most emergency workers don't, and she takes their apprehension at entering as a sign that the turrets are going to be a constant problem if not dealt with sooner rather than later. "Alright, team! If we're gonna get in there, we need to be thorough about this. VERY. THOROUGH." She announces proudly, smacking a hand against her chest for emphasis and wincing moments later. The giant cat bear thing with the teal and white luchador mask painted onto its face grumbles briefly, and the smaller black and red cat perched on her shoulder yawns lazily as it hops off her to trot alongside her. Selene reaches over to give the larger beast a pat on the leg before pointing at one of the fire trucks, then nudges the cat and gestures at the turrets. "You're up first, Slunch. Those turrets gotta go, so keep us covered with one of those!" With the order issued, the Snorlax ambles over to one of the fire trucks and digs its meaty paws in to hoist the thing up entirely, then starts approaching the turrets steadily with its improvised shield. As it does that, Selene follows closely behind it while the Torracat's bell starts to glow, waiting until it's close enough to start launching explosive fireballs at the turrets from under the cover of fire truck. The entire time this is going on, Selene's face has an excited grin plastered right onto it. She seems to only get more excitable when the turrets start firing and the cat starts blasting.
Samhain	Chemical fires. Slagging buildings. Turrets pointed inwards, tearing office workers apart. A welder, complete with mask, seven feet tall and made of muscle, suddenly appears on the second story, inside the tightly-packed office. He doesn't move to stop anyone from falling into the sinkhole from fright. No, he has already decided his approach. "Humans. I am Samhain of the Slaughter. Tonight, I will not save you, for you may or may not have been part of this crime. But...I will give you the chance to save yourselves." Samhain's been given a new toy by Someone Special. And the request to 'please, go actually do something, not just steal school supplies'. So, he's going to create some monsters. But not in the normal Fearsframe way. A new way. "I am overflowing with Dark Power. I will give you the chance to save yourselves, if you are willing to fight..." He looks at a poster. "Mondial." He forgot their name. "Make a deal to avenge the test subjects, and you will survive. Your skin will be tougher than steel, and those turrets will not harm you. Refuse, and I will leave you here to die as the building caves in and the turrets blow you apart." He holds out a pitch black photo frame. "Whoever will take the deal to become a monster, make your choice."
James Bond	OHMSS CLASSIFIED Mission: Mondial Recovery Background: A pharmaceutical on the rise is on the verge of collapse following accusations from whistleblowers. Local sources predict a government raid is imminent. MI6 reports that Q Division's biochem corpus could benefit from asset retrieval ahead of the raid, or of efforts on Mondial's part to destroy evidence beforehand. Recommend a senior agent. MONDIAL, NEVADA The facility's been under surveillance, of late. The agent sent to retrieve the information assumes the fire was set by the company or someone in it--perhaps, he assumes, precisely because of that surveillance. When the walls are closing in, a slight increase in seemingly civilian air traffic can arouse suspicions. At least that air traffic provided something useful; details about the comings and goings of those busfuls of employees, the makes and models of those trucks carrying the exciting mix of chemicals, the outfits of the drivers. Dressed as one such hazardous-material driver, 007 realizes fairly quickly that his disguise won't hold up--not because of any detail that's been missed, but because no sane driver with a tank full of highly explosive chemicals would get any closer to that inferno than was absolutely necessary. Not only that, but the turrets seem to be set to fire inwards; perhaps even set to fire on employees. Or perhaps just anyone who's inside. His brow furrows, most of his face concealed by the branded baseball cap he wears. The sight of those office workers jumping only to be killed before they reach the fence just confirms his suspicions. Fine. The truck comes to a stop. The empty dummy tank is unhitched, the cab pulls forward. The seatbelt is tied around the steering wheel, then around the headrest of the driver's seat, locking it in position. The accelerator is held down, glued to the floor of the cabin with super-strong adhesive administered from a nodule on Bond's watch. The objective is in that basement. The cab plows through the gate, but Bond isn't inside of it. Rather, he's clinging to the undercarriage, dropping only once the truck is as close as it can be to the building. He rolls and gets to his feet with the speed of an Olympic athlete, and immediately he breaks into a sprint, unwilling to trust that someone else may handle the turrets, and entirely aware of the ticking time bomb that is the inferno. Bond takes the most direct route, braving not only flames and fumes, but falling rubble from the cave-in. He's looking for the fastest way down, in the most dangerous possible way.
Starbound Flotilla	!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALERT! ALERT! CONCORD TASK RECEIVED! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PEACEKEEPER MONITORING ISSUED A RESCUE TASK! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A card-locked locker is shoved open, and a hefty shotgun, reliable pistol, and a cherry-red-and-black hardsuit bearing hefty sparking gloves are yanked out. A manic, grinning man scrambles and dashes madly through hallways. Samurai-style armor is taken from its display site in a meditaiton room, alongside a gleaming, perfect powered katana and its energized sheath. A proud, calm Hylotl strides to his chosen place. Wooden armor is yanked down from a tree, adorned with electronics and bone. Two sharp blades are sheathed at its sides before a heavy bow is procured. A Floran pounces and bounds through a window. Plated golden robe-armor is pulled from the altar of a shrine, and a matching set of three floating gold spheres follows almost as quick as the scimitar. Airboost armor sends an Avian blasting in a high arc to her destination. A young auto-squire runs with an armful of heavy techno-armor, joining another carrying a hefty axe, meeting at a royal arming room. Soon, a Glitch battle-princess strides purposefully to her steed of sorts. A figure runs through a wide armory, pulling a rocket launcher and a half-dozen rifles into hardpoints on his shining gray field-scientist gear. An Apex battle-scientist rockets his way straight to his destination. One man stands in front of the ramp up to the Rapacity III Rapid Response Ship, sheathed katana raised high. He calls out. "Starbound Flotilla!" "SORTIE!" "SORTIE!" "SORTIE!" "SORTIE!" "SORTIE!" "SORTIE!" Six fists crash together in a hexa-bro-pound. The Rapacity III slams into local space out of FTL. The upper atmosphere sounds like an explosion went on in it. Almost as fast, heavy bolts of light descend, beamed from the ship high above (to stay out of range of those turrets). Like drop pods, the bolts impact the ground dramatically and burst into a captain each. "Fire like this ain't workin' the usual chems!" George calls out. "It's chemical-infused! Maybe a sterilization system!" "We need the biosamples. Star Six, Star Four, get me a path. Star Three, keep back." "Don't have to tell floran twice!" "Get me something for the fire. Star Two, Star Five, blades out. You see a code-white target, strike at will." "Ahhh, this would be a sore point for you, hmmm?" "I've no problems smiting uppity science-men." George and Seft get to work on scanning the building, its interiors, as much as the sensors can. Biteblade is at work on trying to get fire extinguishing chemistry figured for what comes ahead using her chemistry know-how, since who knows what chemicals are involved. And Albert, Pavo, and Moonfin are all readying up their weapons for a trek to where samples are stored; the data there will be invaluable to efforts to absolutely fuck up the corporation on all levels and replace it with something Concord-backed, and there's a chance that a number of the samples are people -- George would rather save them. The scientists, security guards, and office workers, though? All shoot-on-sight for Flotilla types.
The Janitor	The EMS workers are a peculiar mixture of tensely horrified and jadedly professional- they've seen bad things, but none quite this bad, and it's getting to them. One of them, a portly middle-aged man who's just finished lecturing a fresher-faced EMT about "MCIs" and "scene unsafe protocols", gives her and her Pokemon a deeply skeptical and wary look. "Ma'am, we're setting up a disaster response tent and proper chain of command. If you want to take things up with the- hey! Hey!!" He starts to chase after the fire-truck-toting Snorlax, but reconsiders as soon as the guns start firing. The turrets' AI is mercifully rudimentary. They target the closest moving thing first, and they aim for center mass. That combination of factors allows the Snorlax to get remarkably close while using the fire truck as a shield- their firepower's pretty impressive, but not enough to shred through an entire vehicle like that. Being chunky pieces of military tech, they take a fair few fireballs each to bring down, but that can be done at Selene's leisure. Only once the scene is absolutely safe, and the last turret on that face of the fence is reduced to smoking metal, do the EMTs and paramedics move forward and start setting up for mass-casualty incident treatment and triage. They can't go into the flames, nor do they have enough ambulances to transport everyone who's hurt, but they can stabilize basic injuries and stanch bleeding for anyone who manages to make it out of the building alive.
The Janitor	Samhain's abrupt materialization is met, of course, with immediate mass panic- screaming, fleeing, hiding under tables, the whole bit. As he explains himself rather than attacking, though, some of the cubicle-dwellers start to nervously peek over their desks or around corners at him. After all, what do they have to lose? Still, none of them can quite overcome their trepidation, until- "I'll do it." One man walks towards the seven-foot-tall slasher, his hand outstretched and his lanyard fluttering in the ash-speckled breeze. The man's face is grim and his dark eyes are utterly set. This is a human being who knows no fear of death. This man is an unpaid intern. "Just tell me who I have to kill, man." In his wake, two other workers manage to summon up the courage to take Samhain's offer- a middle-aged woman in a business outfit and a stubbly guy in a white button-down shirt. They've got a similarly lifeless look to their eyes, though neither of them can quite muster the total bleak equanimity that an intern can.
The Janitor	The cab of Bond's truck is, predictably, absolutely perforated by the turrets as he approaches and crashes through the gate. Good that he had the foresight to not be in it when it got thoroughly ventilated. A path through the fire and rubble is difficult to trailblaze, especially without inhaling lethal amounts of smoke, but he manages nonetheless- even if it's disturbingly easy to trip over dead bodies in the process. The quickest path down into the basement-labs happens to be via a nearby elevator, but the elevator itself is gone- fire ate through the cables somewhere, leaving only an empty shaft behind. It plunges down into the darkness easily fifty feet, with a chrome doorway every ten. The underground portion of Mondial Nevada is extensive, though it's easy to intuit that they'd hide the top-secret stuff on the deepest floors. Before he can climb down, though, he's met with someone climbing up. A pallid test subject in a blood-flecked white jumpsuit hauls herself up to the ground floor in an inelegant scrabble, stumbles to her feet, and squints at him with her good right eye. The left half of her face, eye socket and all, has been swallowed by a gray web of ugly scar tissue. There's a piece of sharp bloody metal clenched in her left hand. "Come on, bastard," she rasps feebly, holding up the shrapnel-razor in a shaky 'en garde' position. "I've been waiting." Oh, right. He's still disguised as an employee.
The Janitor	George and Seft's scans reveal that the top three floors of the main building are fairly standard office fare, but there are five basement levels underneath the facility. Of those, B1 through B3 are largely unremarkable, but the fourth underground floor is fitted with extensive cryogenic infrastructure and the fifth is designed for high-volume secure liquid storage. It's not hard to infer that the former is for samples/test subjects and the latter is for drugs or chemical precursors. Incidentally, the generator building out back is a medium-small nuclear reactor designed for low and steady output. Biteblade gleans that what's going on here is an absolutely horrible and elaborate cascade of varied and energetic chemical reactions, none of which can be effectively extinguished with traditional techniques. This stuff would eat through concrete, and in fact, that looks to be basically what's happening. The only effective solution is to completely smother it with sand, which is- fortunately- in high supply in an arid environment like this. Albert, Pavo, and Moonfin find plenty of contemptible employees to shoot amidst the first-floor inferno (though it's almost a mercy), and also- eventually- a staircase down that's choked with rubble and sealed with access-locks. Neither of those problems are likely to impede them for long. What is likely to impede them is a knucklehead security guard lying in a stairwell, his leg trapped under a chunk of concrete rubble and a fragile canister of some horrible glowing chemical held in his hand like a dead man's switch. "And here's the Deathsquad," he says with a resigned chuckle. "Get me out of here and I won't blow us all to hell. Sound like a fair deal to you goons?"
James Bond	Bond stumbles through the smoke with nothing but his force of will and his subtly superhuman endurance to carry him. Even then, it is grueling, his eyes watering, lungs burning from the smoke and the heat alike. Every surface seems searing hot, with sturdy handholds in precious short supply. When he finally reaches the quickest way down, his path is blocked. By a woman with a heavily scarred face. She's been... waiting? Stifling a cough, Bond shakes his head. That isn't what he's here to do. Moreover... he's not certain that he could, even if he had to. This woman clearly expects to be killed, but she's no enemy combatant. She's not in the Game. ...God damn it. This is exactly the kind of thing the system he's upholding claims to prevent. Of course it doesn't. Of course it wouldn't be as simple as putting on horse blinders and blitzing this place. Of course he'd be presented with... this. Up front. Perhaps that's his punishment for ignoring the people getting gunned down. Bond scowls. Fine. The name tag on his uniform, designating him in 'friendly' red cursive as 'JIMMY' is torn off, thrown aside. "I never saw you," calls Bond over the creaking of the building's melting supports, in a convincing southwestern American drawl. "You never saw me. Better hurry if you wanna make it out." Advice isn't all he offers her. Against his better judgment, Bond helps her up and hands her his PPK. Now all he's got to defend himself with (besides CQC training) is a knife. The compact pistol should give the escaping subject a better chance against any employees still foolish enough to think there's any salvaging this. "Move." His wristwatch is pointed past her, into the elevator shaft, angled upwards. With a loud crack, a metal-tipped dart with a polyfiber weave is fired into the upper portion of the shaft's wall, digging in, barbs locking it int position a half-second later. Bond rappels down the shaft, bouncing a steady rhythm into the darkness until he finds what he's looking for--a level computers. Computers with the Good Stuff. A sample may not survive the trip back to London. Underneath his hat, hidden behind a velcro patch, there lies a flat, palm-sized camera. Microfilm needs a special device to read, and conventional photocopiers don't work on it. For the average consumer those are disadvantages, but in this line of work they're just the opposite, for the added secrecy provided by the medium's limitations. Normally, it also must be shot with a camera typically built into the room as a fixture--but Q Division are known to be miracle workers when it comes to compact gadgets. However deep he needs to go in order to put that camera to use, he will--but he's already been greeted with an unexpected sight once. What awaits him now, he approaches with only a knife and his bare hands to defend him.
Samhain	Three people choose to take the power. Samhain ignores the others utterly, as he steps over to them, takes their hands (whether they stretch them out or by force), and places their hand against the photo frame. "Take this dark power. After you have fulfilled your mission, it will subside, and we will likely never meet again." The photo frame suddenly surges in energy, as darkness pours out of it and into the three people. They're consumed entirely. You'd think they were being killed... ...if afterwards, they hadn't been still there, in complete control of their faculties. But they look different, while this power is in their system. Grey, black, and red paints across, as they form non-descript 'helmet' like heads and metal scales of armor. It's distinctly 'natural-looking' despite the metal. They can 'remove' this aesthetic choice at will, or just remove the helmets, or whatever, but this is currently part of them. Out of a giant photo frame, perfectly ordinary hammers drop down. They have their choice of claw or sledge - they're not physically stronger, after all, just superhumanly tough. "Let us enact justice. Take out every scientist, security guard, or corporate bigwig you can get to." He looks for the nearest way Down, and directs the three that way. Otherwise, Samhain's hands off. This is their choice. They're going to murder corporate fatcats. He's innocent of anything except allowing them to avenge the subjects, right? He's just watching, after all. They might just end up running straight into the Flotilla, if there's not an alternative path to go cause chaos.
Starbound Flotilla	"Code White on the stairs, damocles scenario." "Fucker." "Let us remember the nature of this. We should not take so personally one or two escapes. There were bound to be plenty anyway." "You want concesssion to bad guy?" "Pained. I don't like it, but... We have to move quick, we can't afford to go depth-first. We have more good to do here. I still want to rescue those test subjects." "And we have some cash to make too. Let him run. But we're not giving him a ride out." "What's up, rent-a-cop? You want out? Fine." George has followed the gang on their path down, and he's the one who begrudgingly starts the lift. "Bitey, gimmie a hand." She moves forward to help at the angle he's defined, and shift the concrete. Can't use a mining beam so close to someone's body, you know? "Clever stuff! I did one'a these things too once. It's great* when you don't got an arms superiority. You want a cig?" George pops open his helmet, taking a cigarette box from his Matter Manipulator and getting out a fresh one for himself before offering one to the man. The box isn't like his usual ones: It's marked with a weird three-headed snake. "You get goin'. We don't have our exit yet anyway. See ya, guy." Ideally this "concession" will solve the encounter, albeit at a loss. Once the whole thing's wrapped, George immediately tosses his own cigarette into a nearby fire, where it explodes with skull-splitting force. Hopefully the gang can continue the path.
Selene	Neutralizing the flames is not a thing Selene is particularly concerned with, unfortunately. She seems to be having a bit too much fun starting them, but the turrets are eventually handled to the point that she actually has to go inside with her team of Pokemon after spraying them up with homemade potions and slapping colorful bandages over the rawer-looking wounds. Once inside, Selene's priorities shift from clearing a path to... No, she's still trying to clear a path. "Keep it going, Slunch! The bigger the entrance is, the more people and stuff we can get out!" She shouts to her trusty bearcat, the latter setting down the busted up firetruck to barrel right into the nearest wall with its mighty girth to add another it-sized entrances to the already messed up building. "Now don't any of you go saying you can't fit anyone out if he can!" She shouts back to the emergency workers, whirling around as she takes note of Bond's vehicle crashing through the gate. She opts to follow him for a while in the hopes that he's got a better idea of where the good stuff is, and his movement down the elevator shaft gives her as much of a clue as any where to get the good stuff. "Stairs. Maybe we'll find some stuff before everyone else does!" With that, the Snorlax starts jogging through the halls at Selene's direction, looking for convenient stairways or locked doors to break open in her quest to find something that looks like it might be a treasure trove of data, chemicals, or test subjects.
The Janitor	The sickly test subject stares at the PPK in her hands in bafflement, her tense posture slumping instantly to something disarmed. Unspoken questions flicker across her half-face- "who are you?", "why are you helping me?"- and are bitten short as pointless as quickly as they bubble up. She fumbles with the gun before managing to flip the safety off and finally gives her mysterious benefactor a shaky nod. "Thank you," she finally says, stepping to the side to let him through to the elevator shaft. "I'll be okay." What else do you say to someone like that? His grim mien and murky motives connect with something in her adrenaline-soaked brain. As Bond rappels down the elevator shaft, he can hear her parting words: "You're doing something good today. I promise." Floors one through three hold little interest for him, precisely because they're now a madhouse of ongoing subject-versus-researcher violence. Containment has been completely and horribly blown, and anything delicate has been ruined in the crossfire. The fourth floor, despite being where most of the test subjects were housed, is more intact on account of its violence having been abrupt, concentrated, and one-sidedly overwhelming. Chances are good of finding some useful databanks here.
The Janitor	The knuckleheaded security guard howls in pain as the piece of rubble's removed, but just barely manages not to drop the chemical container or squeeze it to fracturing. He can still walk, as confirmed with a grimace. "Yeah, yeah. Butter me up more, jackass," he mutters darkly, but takes George's cigarette anyway. "Don't thank me for not dropping this thing," he says after a long drag, looking back over his shoulder on his way back up the stairs. "What's down there, maybe you'll wish I had." What a real stand-up guy. Twenty seconds after he leaves view and exits the stairwell, there's a muffled pop sound from his general direction as the cigarette paints four walls with his head. The Starbound gang's path, too, ends at the fourth floor. Blood is oozing from under the door there, and that means it's absolutely the right place to be.
The Janitor	Bond and the Flotilla are both treated to long hallways lined with ruptured and intact liquid stasis tubes, full of glowing blue liquid or oozing it onto the floor to commingle with the blood and shattered glass. The intact tubes still contain human test subjects, but the only ones that haven't been freed already are those with mutations or injuries obviously incompatible with life. Some of them are simply missing vital parts, though how a human could grow to adult size without a spinal cord or heart isn't obvious. Others are wrapped in that webbed gray scar tissue, constricted by it to the point that they wouldn't be able to move or breathe. Still others have been trimmed down to just a handful of organs floating in liquid. All are mercifully unconscious. The hallways lead to rooms with bleakly obvious functions. Padded tables with restraints and medical equipment. Prison-like furnished cells with one-way mirrors for observation. It's easy to imagine what happened here, and hard not to. Scattered throughout is evidence of the subjects' recent revenge; security guards mobbed and executed with their own guns, researchers lynched in viscerally cathartic fashion. But there's no danger here; no opposition. All the active conflict has moved to the floors above. Bond's and the Flotilla's paths cross in a large atrium in the center of the fourth floor, where all its winding corridors inevitably lead. Its walls are lined with further "samples", but the centerpiece of the room is a large stasis-tube with needly robotic arms inside, paused in the middle of 3D-printing an entire human being- it'd gotten as far as the skeletal system and half the circulatory before being paused by the power brown-outs. More resilient to the flickering electricity is a large computer built into the back wall, displaying detailed information on the cloning process and offering further data-dense entries on the horrible tests they've been conducting. How to divvy up the spoils is something they'll have to settle between themselves.
The Janitor	Selene's rampage does an exemplary job of letting more folks escape to safety and medical care- even if only because it collapses whole chunks of the second floor into the first, providing convenient ramps. Unfortunately, the surface has been so thoroughly ruined that it's difficult to recover anything of value; some mundane handguns or snazzy labcoats are about all she'll find up there. She'll run into an additional problem in the process of trying to find a way down. The stairwells and elevator shafts just aren't big enough for her Snorlax to fit through, but even so, the only one she can find that isn't caved in or totally clogged with rubble is experiencing dangerous electrical issues. Wires have been torn from the walls by some prior skirmish, draping across the metal staircase downwards and making it crackle-coruscate in erratic pulses timed with the flickering of the fluorescent lights overhead. If she can't safely traverse that sparking pit, she'll have to concentrate her efforts on the reactor building for now instead. If she can, of course, the fourth floor awaits ahead.
The Janitor	The Intern unhesitatingly takes the sledgehammer that Samhain offers, and immediately gives his new armor a test by lifting the hammer up and swinging it down on his own foot. It bounces off without evident pain. "Well, I'll be damned," he says brightly. (The other two employees are much more hesitant in grabbing a claw hammer each, and aren't inclined to test their new durability at all.) "You know, I wonder if Dirty Eddie's bit it yet. Kathy, John, you wanna go find Eddie? I'm feelin' like it's payback time." The two other newly-minted toku villains stare at the intern like he's grown a second head. He just shrugs. "More for me." Still too timid for their own good, the two lesser minion-employees stick close to Samhain's side. The intern, meanwhile, heads off to the ground floor with a spring in his step, and cracks a researcher's ribs before he's even reached the stairs. "Heya Jim," he says cheerily, winding back for another hit on the groaning, floored scientist. "Remember that time you microwaved fish?"
Samhain	Samhain just watches The Intern. He makes a mental note, but does not stop the sledge from coming down. Instead... "If you like this that much, perhaps you and I will make another arrangement in the future." He doesn't comment on the other two, they're just in it for survival. Samhain moves downwards, allowing the three to clear his path for him. He's heading deep - he wants any evidence he can get, not to give it to authorities, but to use it against Mondial, and most importantly, he's hoping to find something specific in the basements levels. Information on more Mondial sites. Not public office buildings, but anything that deserves some good old fashioned terrorism.
Selene	Handguns and labcoats go right into the little fanny pack Selene's wearing on her person at all times. Does she need any of them? No. Does it look like they should even fit into that bag? No. Will they make for fun Christmas gifts or testing materials? Yes. Somehow, they fit, and she's thorough about nabbing them. Once she's finally satisfied with ill-gotten gains, she comes across her next obstacle in the form of tricky downstairs navigation. The logical side of Selene's mind tells her she should just put the Snorlax back into its ball while she makes her way down through the safe path. The excitable side of her has to be pulled back when she, in her haste to go down a path the giant bearcat can actually fit, nearly throws herself right into the crackling staircase until said bearcat grabs her in mid-dash. "Aw, come on. I totally could made that jump!" She complains, grumbling for a few moments while the groggy giant grumbles lightly, only setting her back down after she settles down. In doing so, however, Selene notices two things: Weird building out back, and Intern with a sledgehammer. "Hey! Hey, you!" She shouts at the Intern, almost sounding threatening as sizes him up and eyes the scientist on the floor. The Snorlax, looking rather wary, looks ready to pull her back even as she breaks into a (rather slow) run towards the two. The Torracat, meanwhile, scurries along beside her, although its bell remains a steady dull gold in color as it prepares absolutely nothing for the time being. "Did he even cover it with a napkin or anything? Did the eyes blow up in there, too?" Should she be free to pass, her next stop is the reactor building. Her goal, as with before: Looking for flashing control panels and buttons to start messing with to see just how much damage she can do to this place. That, and things to bring back home for experimentation.
James Bond	> You're doing something good today. I promise. Those words cut him. She actually believed it. Wanted him to believe it. Once, he might have--but his thoughts keep returning to a dream he had, some time ago. In that dream, he faced the same choice he has many a time: stop the doomsday weapon, or save someone close to him. He had chosen 'neither.' He had chosen to brutalize the one giving the choice, instead, simply because he wanted someone else to hurt for a change. As he stops at each concurrent floor, he's unable to push those words from his mind. He isn't the person that woman thought he is. The fourth floor stretches out before him. The sight of it--of those people mangled to the point of being unable to live without assistance--drives the knife deeper in. This isn't good work. It isn't noble. It protects nothing but the leavings of monsters. What will he have to show, for having picked through the bones of this place? Nothing but a pat on the back. And when he's too old, too broken to do this anymore, hollow and pointless retirement with, at best, some bloody plaque or talkpiece he can hang on the wall, commemorating his 'service' in the vaguest possible way. He arrives at the atrium with his fists clenched, dressed like one of the truck drivers to this moment, the only clue that he isn't one being the absent nametag, torn off intentionally, and the removal of his hat to retrieve that hidden palm-camera. He sees the Flotilla, but doesn't acknowledge them with more than a passing comment. "Do what you want with this place. I just want to be done with it." It's the truth, for what it's worth, and it's spoken without any attempt to disguise his natural English accent. Unless they attempt to stop him, he accesses the computer terminal at the human-printing machine, adjusting the contrast to better suit the readouts for photography. He snaps pictures of the readouts.
Starbound Flotilla	BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM! From the stairwell, a symphony of violence can be heard, throughout many floors but not the least of which the fourth-floor sample area. "Three white twelve at one hundred units. Open fire." "Floran hasss two, two and half, arrowsss going!" "Urgent. Seeing more at ten, twelve and half, three..." "Swappin' mag, lemme chill behind ya?" "Smiting goin' down at two to five hundred, watch the range Bitey!" "First Sea Hylotl Style: Icebreaker's Bow!" The Flotilla rattle off tactical chatter during their deathsquad march down the stairs, between floors one through three down to four. "Breach!" Calls out a voice as the stairwell door crashes open and the six spread out in a careful, practiced pattern. When Bond speaks to them, Albert draws the gun dramatically, a trucker doesn't provoke the same rage as the scientists, office workers, and security staff -- especially with the changes to the look and behavior.. "Code White--! Cancel. Non-associate, don't terminate." He pulls his heavy rifle closer and speaks into his radio. "Hemlock Protocol, I'm seeing no recoverables." "Anxious. Is there no way to help them? Couldn't we..." "Floran thinksss, can't heal from thisss. Broken at the root..." "Sad. Still, isn't there some way to...?" Albert glances at James Bond, his expression, and his demeanor. The monkey cocks a big furry eyebrow, hesitates a moment as his radio, and then grasps it firmly. "Adjust Helmlock Protocol. Find sedative stockpiles, surge them. Zero-pain disposal." "You find a heart here?" "Shut up." "'Cause I found a heart. It's over here in this tube." "Moron." Albert mutters. He moves to start the looting that the crew need: The 3D printer and its hardware, containment and biostasis for the remaining flesh, and other suchlike. The others are at work on digging up the chems and pumping the zero-survival clones with "enough sedatives to make them see god and then meet her", as Pavo says in idle passing. The remains are to be confiscated as evidence. George works on drilling an escape tunnel. This place is gonna fall apart and burn down, maybe explode. Best to just tunnel out. They don't have a time sensitivity.
James Bond	> You're going to do something good here. I promise. It isn't true. But... what if he could make it true? Bond hasn't taken a picture of what the machine is actually doing. He isn't going to. Instead... he walks back to the failed exhibits. Microfilm isn't great at capturing detail in color. But that's fine. He photographs only those subjects who have failed in particularly gruesome and spectacular fashion. He's done what he was ordered to do. There was no order against misrepresenting the available information. With a film roll full of evidence which paints the picture that Mondial's work has largely been a failure, Bond stows the camera and rejoins with the Flotilla.
The Janitor	The Intern looks up from enacting his excessive revenge on the battered scientist, his shoulders tensing instinctively at Selene's accusation. When she puts the questions to him, though, he laughs and plants his foot on "Jim's" stomach, looking back down at the groaning man. "Look, Jimmy, we got an unbiased third party here. You wanna tell her how you eat your sushi hot, you freak? You wanna tell her about how you never once refilled the coffee-pot? That's just fucking subhuman, Jim." Jimmy wheezes: "I cut people open, and that's what you care about?" "Yes," the Intern replies cheerily. Later, as Samhain and the two lesser minions are moving downwards through the facility, the Intern seriously contemplates Samhain's implicit offer of further employment. "Big guy, I used to work retail," he says while twirling his sledgehammer to flick the blood off. "I have absolutely got more homicidal rage to work off. Listen, do you think we can hit up the Alaska complex next? Mondial had me working there- real piece of shit boss named..." Looks like Samhain might not need that data after all.
Selene	There's a moment when Selene looks like she might actually flinch at the potential for violence being inflicted upon "Jim". That moment passes quickly once the Intern starts giving her more information about his transgressions, and "Jim" fills her in a bit more himself about what he's done. "Yeah, we know about the cutting thing already. Do you eat the middle nachos from the shared plate, too?" She's already made her decision on who to help in this region long before arriving, but hearing about his food crimes only solidifies her resolve. She slows down in her haste to get to the reactor building, but only to watch! ... Or at least, she would if not for the fact that the Snorlax just starts dragging her along, keeping one meaty arm over her eyes despite her protests. "Wha.. Hey! Come on, just one head explosion!"
The Janitor	Selene arrives at the reactor building intending to "do some damage", but the damage has already been done. The doors are jammed shut with a crowbar wedged into the hinges, but that's easy enough to muscle past with brute force. On the other side is a small, functional area full of icily professional carnage. Nothing like the cathartic mayhem of the liberated test subjects or the panicked brutality of the rent-a-cops, this is exacting and gruesomely neat. Every technician and worker here has been killed with a single blow from a foreign object, usually one still lodged in their bodies. Shard of glass to the neck. Screwdriver to the eye. Drill to the heart. Worse, the heavy steel pipes on the walls are groaning, sparks are arcing from the wires on the walls, and the control rods are visibly starting to glow a dull red. There's a metallic taste in the air. The core's cooling has somehow become terribly insufficient, and total meltdown is imminent if it's not happening already. 4:01 PM: A nondescript maintenance technician walks into reactor building A, sets down her toolbox, and gets to work. She knows how to use her tools. Humans have secret flaws; little places you can stick a bit of metal to cause catastrophic failures. Reactors are the same way. It is extremely difficult to make a modern nuclear reactor explode unless you're doing it on purpose. Unless. Of course. Fire and turrets were never going to destroy all the evidence. This is the finisher. Unless Selene knows how to "disarm" a melting nuclear reactor, running is the best option.
The Janitor	The Flotilla's euthanasia project goes smoothly- well, mostly smoothly. In the process of finding enough sedatives to do the job, they discover that half the chemical tanks on the fifth floor have been deliberately ruptured and mixed together in some kind of hellburn slurry that's actively chewing through Mondial Nevada's foundations. Whole place is likely to come down in a few minutes- but with their tunnel escape scheme, soon enough that won't be their problem anymore. A handful of escaped test subjects who've survived the scrimmage on the floors above, in various degrees of long-term disfigurement and short-term injury, end up filtering down in hopes of taking the Flotilla's tunnel too. They're understandably cagey around the Multiversals, but simultaneously desperately hopeful that these strangers might be on their side for once. The half-faced woman with the PPK isn't among their number, though. Hopefully that means she made it out to the surface. Bond has absolutely no trouble finding suitably horrifying subjects for his photographs, fit to make anyone's stomach turn. Whatever "successes" Mondial's methods might have produced for stockholders, it's hard to imagine that they were worth failures like these.
Selene	Alas, Selene's education doesn't extend to nuclear anything, and she only has enough time to really look at the bodies while marveling at the professional efficiency of it all. With the sheer number of bodies, the Snorlax does't even bother shielding her eyes, although it certainly looks tempted to a few times. The Torracat, meanwhile, seems content to chew on one of the corpses briefly. Selene has to pick it up soon after, though, as she notices all the warning signs that something is severely wrong with the entire place. "Okay, time to get outta here. Mom and dad would be pretty mad if they found out I was here, huh?" She laughs, she throws up, she loots one of the technician's pockets, and then she slumps over the Snorlax as it, once again, begins barrelling through walls and the like on its way out of the soon-to-meltdown facility. At least she's got enough sense to warn the emergency workers as they get closer to the exit. "Clear your butts outta here! The reactor room's making funky noises, so make sure you got your goggles on if you're gonna watch!" She's certainly loud enough to shout from atop her exhausted-looking ride, holding up her red phone-thing up to snap a few pictures of the facility on the way.
Starbound Flotilla	"Y'all want smokes?" George offers to share with the test subjects. The normal kind he has, the fancy medical ones. He doesn't stop them, and while Albert and Moonfin are wary around them, they're treated with respect. Least the Flotilla can do is get them somewhere safe, though it's rather unlikely they'll get a job with the fleet or anything, as mangled that they are. Biteblade sticks to the rear, ready to seal up the tunnel when the wave of heat and pressure comes down from the facility collapse. Pavo refers to the clones as "samples" exactly one time. Seft lays her out with a swift right hook for the word.
The Janitor	For the most part, this group of test subjects look mostly physically functional- though there's almost certainly an element of survivorship bias in that. One has a left arm mummified with gray scar tissue, fingers tapering to clawlike points; another has recessed scar-holes tracing up his collarbone and neck, allowing a soft whistling sound when he breathes; that sort of thing. Hole-neck accepts one of the cigarettes, takes a drag, and exhales the smoke through his perforated throat while grinning wryly at George. Tension slowly resolves to an uneasy, traumatized camaraderie. Five minutes after the emergency responders have pulled back, the underground Elites have absconded through their tunnel, and everyone still living has been salvaged from the burning wreckage of Mondial Nevada, the reactor blows in a dirty hydrogen explosion, painting the area in hideously radioactive lava. If not for the witnesses and evidence you've retrieved, Mondial's misdeeds could have perfectly disappeared in that sea of fire.