The area is well lit and clean, though a strange mixture of scents, mainly mold and bleach, permeate the air.
Immediately to the right is a lobby area where scientists put on lab coats and wash their hands in a large circular sink. A large workspace is equipped with both scientific and medical tools. The rest of the basement is either clear or taken up with metal framed cells, each about six and a half feet tall, all covered with curtains. On the work area are a number of vivisected creatures that first you take for rats before you realise they are Zoogs. A human corpse lies on one table, wired up to medical equipment. It takes a moment to recognise the face, but you realise this is John Jeffrey, the Geology student that disappeared on the first expedition to Vermont.
On another table are the remains of the huge tentacled frog-like creature you fought in the woods, again, cut up for inspection.
As you are led past all this, you see three cells where the curtains are partially open. In the first sits a steel examination table, fitted with several leather restaints. An electrical generator sits on the floor nearby. The second cell contains people who appear to be studying two mummified bodies. Behind the scientists, who are gingerly removing dehydrated organs from the two corpses, lie eight (as yet untouched ) mummified bodies, each submerged in a tank of water. Matherson reaches to close the curtains and block them from your sight.