Mission 1.2: Sinister Trail

Matsuki tore apart the cluster with her bullet. Her gun now on the edge of needing repair before it stops functioning.

As the cluster gets struck at the weakest point, red smoke blows out from the stem opening before turning black and stopping with the organic rope falling lifelessly.

Zakk moves in to next to Matsuki, near the underground entrance. He sees that their friend is now shambling over and gurgling. Zakk just stares in shock as he tries to calm himself with thinking about a verse about friends becoming zombies.

---

Enemy turn:

The KOed face sleeps.

Tariq drags himself over, arms outstretched. "Glllrgk, Ghaaalp Meeee!.... Guhh, Staaahp Meeee!"
He begins grip his throat, as if fighting against himself. While the situation is already unpleasant and horrifying, this scene close up makes it worse. "Oh fuck! What do we do, Matsuki?" He shouts in growing panic.

---

End of turn:

The metal pillars that stands tall over the basin that have red runes glowing on them now begin to pulse.

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Players turn!

(Sorry, intense training and writers block got me putting off posting here. I'll see to continue.

Compensation:
Nikolai now have 6/8 Dex, and 3/11 Wil.
---
Matsuki gets 1 Wil damage from closely witnessing the choking zombie friend. 1/12 Wil now.)

Matsuki watch as the head-blasted body of tariq still stands for a moment before it falls over. Its fingers twitches a little as black blood flows out.

Zakk fires his gun at the twitching body. He doesn't try to give a second glance as he begins to make his way inside the entrance chamber, and climbing down the stairs. "Come on! Tariq should be properly dead now. Let's quickly find Nikolai!"

As he descends, Zakk flinched as lights come on. The lamp outside the entrance chamber, the ring of lights lighting up the small lockers inside the chamber, and the lobby of level -1 are visibly lit up. Matsuki can see under the light, the shredded corpse is now unmoving.

The red runes on the pillars are still steadily pulsing. Though, it seems like they are getting weaker.

What will Matsuki now do?
---

Nikolai identifies and flips on all the lights. He can't find icons of faces, but there are a few that might be look like it if he look at it unfocused. Some looks like weapons. The L shape looks like a rifle. He could flip them all on, what is the worst that could happen?

(If nikolai choose to randomly turn on switches, roll Dex Save at advantage to not accidently turn on something he feels is bad.
---
Alright. I'll consider that combat is over. My strictness on turn actions and turn order is loosened. However, there is still a hidden time limit, so don't hang around too long.)

Nikolai steps out into the main room of level -2. It is well lit, allowing him to see into the other rooms.

The door with the black stains are shut close. Which is strange, because earlier he saw that they were partially opened.

The rest are also closed, except for the cable room.

1 of the closed have a large panel in the way.

Nikolai can tell that the construction of this underground building is modular. Even the stairs to different floors seems to be broken up into separate doorways. He can tell he can now easily open up the closed doors by pressing the button that is lit up near the doors.

There are small patches of black stains on some of the surfaces. No reed growths are visible though.

Map of the place

Nikolai opens up all the doors.

The door to the south west is a similar stairswell that leads down. The black patches are slightly more common inside.

To the East, the stained door slides open, revealing a nasty looking mess of a room. The floor, walls and cubicles are covered in the black stuff. The lights in the room shows that there are growths on a few surfaces, but shorter than the ones at the surface level outside. There are 2 or 3 filthy cubicles inside. One door is shut, and the other is ajar, but less dirty.

The north east door leads to a room with a long table. Some thin glass bottles are seen lying about, some shattered on the floor. The floor is stained with colours of yellow or red.

When the north west door opens, the panel in the way will fall over. Nikolai would likely not want to make too make too much noise, so he gently brings it down first. This doorway leads to an unlit corridor. Black stained scratches can be seen running along the floor. It looks like the lights of this place have been smashed, as pieces of glass is scattered on the floor. The end of the corridor is too dark to see with the lights from the main room of level -2.

The west door opens up to a room with what looks like tables and chairs, and a few person-tall machines.

Meanwhile, foot steps can now be heard coming from above...
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Matsuki and Zakk will notice that the air inside is more irritating than the outside. And when they try to approach the stairs down, it gets worse. (Would you want to wear your vac suit, or brave going down without it?)

Matsuki and Zakk take their time to put on their suit before going down the stairs.

Nikolai will see that his companions have reached him at last, but they have a bad news to share about what happened to their veterinarian friend, Tariq.

While these three may talk with one another, a subtle knocking sound can be heard coming from a cubicle in the East door....

Nikolai approaches the room full of the black filth. He is fortunately wearing his vacsuit, and can't breath the immediate air right now. He tries his best not to step on the stains anyways. Now that he is inside, he can see that there are 3 cubicle doors. 2 are unlocked, and 1 is closed and locked. There are mirrors and basins on one wall that are almost fully covered in the mold.

Since he is near, he can hear the noise clearer, even through the material of the vacsuit. It sounds like a random series of knocking, like someone or something is persistently trying to open the locked door. Something like laboured breathing can also be barely heard...