Scene 2: Let's move like we got a purpose

Macwhirr is dragged through the door by Holroyd, and the door is slammed behind her by Sigg.

Holroyd pulls Macwhirr with him, and you all make your way to the end of the corridor, to the locked door that would open into the Command Crew Quarters (including the armoury) in Block B2.

As you move towards the locked door you hear a thud from the office you've just left, the one with Reynold's body in it.

Sigg focuses down on hacking his way through the Command Crew Quarters door - the security on it is decent. However, after several tries - tension and impatience growing with each failure - there is a satisfying quiet sound of the lock disengaging, and the door slides open.

The lighting in Block B2 is the same as in Block C2 that you're leaving - low, dim, red, frequent flickering. The group makes its way forward down the corridor until it comes to a T junction

Turning left at this junction, the corridor leads to an elevator and doors to several offices.

Turning right at this junction, the corridor leads directly ahead to a door to Block E2 (and the MedLab where you hope Dr Komiskey is with her shuttle key-card.) There is a door on the right side of this branch of the corridor that leads to the armoury, and a door on the left to a meeting room.

As you get to the T junction you all hear what sounds like heavy footsteps on metal echoing through the corridors. It sounds like it's coming from the right fork of the corridor i.e. from the direction leading to the MedLab.

Macwhirr peers around the corner, low to the ground, exposing as little of herself as possible to whatever might be making these noises.

What she sees is hard to understand. The light levels are low, red, and the lamps frequently, yet unpredictably, flash on and off, sometimes being off for as much as a second before coming back on again. So making out shapes and textures is a challenge.

What she does see is a hunched-down figure, moving maybe on all fours away from her, perhaps a metre or so high off the ground. Its shape is irregular, projections coming off it at strange angles. The red light of the corridor shines off it.

She sees the figure moving towards the room opposite the door that leads to the armooury.

As the figure moves towards the room opposite the door that leads to the armoury, the door opens - this one seems to have some kind of proximity-activated opening mechanism - and the figure enters the room, the door closing behind it.

Your party turns around, Holroyd keeping a close watch on the T-junction you are retreating from, and make your way back the way you came.

You make your way to the elevator just to your right when you pass through the door opened earlier by Sigg. There is an agonising wait of 20 seconds or so, as the elevator reaches your floor (it makes some noise, but it's relatively quiet).

Your group move into the elevator, it descends to the level below, and opens in the airlock. To leave the buildings, you would exit the lock here through the external door to your left (i.e. to the east).

No problem with the lighting down here - normal white lights switch on in the lock as you arrive there.

There's no sounds here apart from the background drone of the ventilation system, and the occasional clank of the heating.

You move out, as a group, heading towards the South Lock. Your eyes, and nose, and skin, are again assaulted by the foul-smelling air blowing hard against you, laced with oily raindrops that almost instantly soak your clothing.

It's night - not that night is so much darker than day here, with the faint sun and the almost-constant cloud cover - so your route to the South Lock is nervy as hell. Flapping tarps, creaking debris, so many things around you that feel like they might be about to pounce on you at any moment.

As you make your way to the South Lock, Macwhirr becomes overwhelmed by the oppressive sense of dread and desperation that has settled upon you all. She starts trembling uncontrollably, looking like she might even drop her weapon when the shakes are particularly strong.

And...

You make it safely to the South Lock, which opens without any problems. You are all able to step inside it, escaping the rain, and the wind, and to seal the door behind yourselves. In front of you is a second door, the one that will take you back into the building complex.

Lighting is, again, an issue here - the back-up red lighting is in place, although more stable, although with fewer flickers than in blocks C2 and B2. Light levels are low, however.

EDIT (based on results of Holroyd's OBSERVATION rolls) - you don't notice anything trying to sneak up on you either outside, or in the South Lock.

You make your way towards elevator Elev 03, press the call button, and can hear the elevator moving. After 15 seconds of waiting you hear a door opening and closing behind you.

Then you notice that Sigg is no longer with your group.

And then you hear another door opening and closing behind you.

The elevator arrives, you all get inside it and travel to Level 2.

Lighting in this section is back to normal. The corridor that the elevator opens into turns right after a few metres.

After that turn, there is first a door on the left to the Command Centre i.e. Ops or Operations, which is the nerve centre of the colony, monitoring vital functions and security.

After that, a door opens on the right to the Morgue, and on the left to the MedLab.

Holroyd steps into the Command Room (also known as Ops).

This room is the nerve centre of the colony, where vital functions and security are monitored, including access to the CCTV cameras distributed across Hadley's Hope. The intercom is on, but hisses static. One of the CRT monitor screens flickers.

Usually it would be busy, but now there's no one in here (apart from you).

As far as Singleton can tell, she successfully sends her message to the launch pad. There is, however, no response from the shuttle over the intercom.

Holroyd doesn't find anything useful as he searches the room.

For the five minutes he spends searching the room, there continues to be no response or reply from the shuttle. It seems there has been a fight in this room, with firearms - lots of the monitors and computer terminals have been damaged by bullets. There is no sign of blood, however.

One terminal and screen does appear to be functional, however.

As Singleton sits down at the terminal, she finds that it give her access to the network of CCTV cameras distributed across Hadley's Hope.

Many cameras are reporting only static - something has either damaged the cameras or the wiring that leads to them.

As Hannah flicks through the views from the cameras, she sees:

- a single view of the carnage they have all already seen in the Sub-Level 1 Mass Housing - nothing is moving there, apart from the smoke rising from the few smouldering fires.

- a deserted corridor in Block A1. In the distance, there’s movement. Zooming in, Singleton catches sight of the bloodied remains of a person being dragged slowly out of view. Singleton can't make out what is dragging the body, however.

- a view of the shuttle launch pad. A shuttle is landed there, no movement or lights can be seen from it or around it.

- a view of the South Lock, where they re-entered the building to come up here to Block E2. Here, Singleton sees movement. As Singleton looks more closely, and zooms in on the movement, she sees a nightmare in shiny black. A figure, more than two metres tall. Covered in bumps and appendages, a long curved head, many many very-sharp-looking teeth. Huge claws. The figure's eyeless head is raised, scanning the area, its whip of a tail languidly carving the air.

Macwhirr joins Singleton as she flicks through the available CCTV feeds. She sees all the images Singleton already saw, but no additional working views.

She gasps in horror when the view switches to the swaying figure forged from nightmare and murder.

All four of you move on, carefully and quietly, to the MedLab. You open the door, move inside.

The place is in shambles, empty cabinets flung open and over-turned in what you assume was a furious scramble for medical supplies.

On desks in the middle of the of the main examination room are several liquid-filled glass canisters. These contain floating crab-like creatures with whip-like tails.

As you move past these, you can see through a large window into the quarantine room.

Dr Komiskey is in the room, where you can also see the dead body of a man on an examination table, another specimen tube containing one of the floating creatures you also see here in the examination room, and one of those creatures lying, apparently dead, on the floor.

Dr Komiskey is leaning against the viewing window, old tear tracks on her cheeks, as she waves towards you, tries to get your attention.

Holroyd moves to look amongst the chaos on the floors in the examination room, at the notes and terminals.

By several of the canisters, he finds flip-charts that have notes written on them. These seem to be describing the provenance of the creatures inside the tubes.

Several of them were apparently bottled "after implantation". Others are described as having been removed from a subject - in all such cases, the subject is described as having died in the process.

After looking at these, on one of the terminals someone has made speculative notes about what they call "facehuggers", "chestbursters", and "stalkers". In these notes, the idea is that the facehuggers implant something, maybe an egg, inside their hosts. And that after a typically short, but also highly variable, timeframe, what has been implanted grows inside the host and explodes out from their chest, killing the host. And that these snake-like chestbursters then grow extremely rapidly to become stalkers - huge, lethal, black, killing beasts.

As Holroyd ignores her, Dr Komiskey bangs on the window - it's some kind of plastic - and then moves over to the door. She doesn't try and open it, but instead activates an intercom, so her voice can be heard by everyone in the examination room.

"Please! Please! Help me! Get me out of here!"

She stops talking and starts sobbing uncontrollably.

After ten seconds or so of sobbing she is able to talk again.

"Please!!! I have to get out of here! WE have to get out of here!! We have to get to the shuttle!! I have the keycard that will operate it!!!"

She waves the card, on a lanyard around her neck, at you through the window.

"OK, OK, yes, yes, I'll do it. I'll do it..."

Dr Komiskey moves back to the far side of the quarantine room, bends down, and readies the card to slide it towards you when you open the door.

The door is locked, however, both from the inside AND the outside. It seems to have gone into some kind of lockdown protocol when the base itself went into lockdown mode.

Holroyd and Macwhirr set to working on the door panel, trying to convince it to open.

But it defeats them. Worse - in the process of trying to get it open, something short-circuits, and the panel goes dead. It doesn't look like there's any way of getting this door open without forcing it physically, or maybe shooting in the observation window...

Dr Komiskey sees the door going dead and she starts to hyperventilate in panic

"Please! Please! You have GOT to get me out of here!!!!!!"

She's getting louder and louder as she starts to panic in earnest.

Holroyd tries to push the door open - puts his back into it - but is unable to make it budge an inch, or even a fraction of an inch.

You see two vents emerging from the quarantine room that pass through the examination room you're currently standing in. They don't have any openings into the examination room - presumably they are set up so the air coming out of them can be scrubbed before being vented to the outside - and are getting their air input from some unique source too.

If you wanted to try and access these vents - which are large enough for one of you to crawl through - you'd need to find a way to get inside one of them. Maybe using Hirsch's Cutting Torch, or ripping or shooting the metal open somehow.

Hirsch takes out his cutting torch.

The metal in the overhead piping that lead into the quarantine room is much thinner than the metal of the door. They are considerably smaller, however, than the main base ventilation system - as they serve only the quarantine room. Going down the pipe would involve crawling, and it would be hard to get someone up and into the space without others around to help them in - making getting out of the quarantine room again a challenge.

The door is thick, as are the walls - thicker than elsewhere on the base, to protect the quarantine room against damage in case there are pathogens in the quarantine room. The challenge will be making a hole big enough to get through, given the torch is only half-full.

Going through the window will be much quicker - and will smell awful, it's made of some kind of plastic polymer that will melt fairly quickly, but will give off strong toxic fumes, which would make breathing difficult and perhaps set off alarms.

It's hard to know what to do.

In the end, Hirsch decides to go through the metal pipe - making it less likely that the torch will run out before making a big enough hole - and if things get desperate, if they can't get out of the room, then in the worst case they can shoot the window in and get out that way.With the help of the others, Hirsch is able to haul himself up into the pipe - glad for the heavy overalls he's wearing, as he has to clamber over the sharp edge cut into the pipe. It takes him then about a minute to crawl through to the quarantine room, several minutes to calm Dr Komiskey down enough to be able to help her up and into the pipe, five more minutes for the doctor to get through and, with the help of moving examining tables and so on, lever himself up in behind her.

Komiskey and Hirsch are helped out of the pipe by the others, so all are together with Komiskey in the examination room.

Komiskey is overwhelmed by the experience of her escape, and starts to talk louder and louder - she's confused, panicking, and keeps saying

"We didn't know this would happen! Happen so quickly! It's not my fault!!"

With no warning at all, Holroyd moves up to Komiskey, takes her head in both hands, and twists it around so as to break her neck. Komiskey lets out her last breath, slumps to the floor, looks around in shock, and almost instantly looses consciousness.

From one of the overhead ventilation ducts, something suddenly starts hammering at it from inside.

Dents start appearing in the vent, it starts to buckle. Whatever is in there looks like it's going to be out of there very very soon...

The lighting in the room suddenly completely cuts out. The room is lit only by a few red lights shining from pieces of gear in the room.

The banging at the vent, its crumpling and ripping, continues in almost pitch black...

A second later the lights come back on again.

Jesus, but this base is going to shit...

Everyone is outside of the MedLab door now, Hirsch hurrying the last of them out of it, and you shut that door behind you. Sounds of something ripping its way out of the ventilation duct can be heard behind the door, with the sound of, you guess, something landing heavily on the floor after the last sound of buckling metal.

The motion detector shows two blips. One from the room you just left - presumably whatever came out of the ventilation duct. The other directly north of you, just behind the door to the Command Crew Quarters, between you and the armory (which is the bottom left corner of Block B2 just north of you. You remember that the range of the tracker is such that the blip to your north could be either on this floor, on the roof of the base, or on the floor below yours (i.e. Block E1).

The elevator door opens, you all rush inside it, start urgently pressing the "close door" button.

Down the corridor you just left you can hear the sounds of something battering away at the door you just exited through - and the sound of another door sliding open and heavy steps down the corridor moving in your direction.

The elevator door closes before you get to see what is moving towards you, and carries you down to Level 1.

The party having stepped outside the elevator, looking towards the South Lock, Singleton draws her pistol and shoots at Holroyd...

Holroyd is hit in the leg, and the force of the blast drops him to the floor.