>>4568615
(cont.)
>Guttman gave you the multi spectrum goggles earlier, put those on, and look at this place through the different settings.(2)
>”I’m just as confused as you are Kirchoff.” Cautiously enter, and approach the marine. “What did you see on the liga?”(3)
>Quickly move in, and check on Dr. Saulson. Try and investigate for any new, or reopened injuries.(2)

As you stare out at what has to be an alien world, the “border worlds” Dr. Isaac Kleiner described to you, you have to quickly calm yourself. The migraine is pounding into the side of your head, cracking you in the skull with a hammer every thirty seconds, while instinct tells you to quickly tend to the heavily wounded man currently laying face down in a pool of glowing alien fluid. Meanwhile, the Marine corps sniper you’ve allied yourself is glancing around the massive, cracked alien pit, and looking to you for some sort of answers.

You won’t be able to do much to help the anomalous repeat of Dr. Saulson even if he needs it, and you sure as hell don’t want to go through the portal if it’s somehow dangerous. Sure, two already walked through, but for all you know it’s a ticking time bomb. You stay put for a moment, and look around the edges of the now wide open portal, where the blue gas from earlier still floats around seeming to spin around it like the clouds around a hurricane's eye before being slingshot out on the other end. Wanting to know more, you quickly pull off your goggles, hooking them onto your belt before pulling the pair of multi spectrum goggles on, while also asking Kirchoff, “What did you see on the liga?”

Immediately your eyes are hit by a black and white haze of infrared readings. Quickly realizing that the only things visible in this spectrum is the bright heat of living creatures and the soft glow of warmed material. Quickly, you flick through the microwave spectrum, then swap to radio after spotting nothing. While you still see nothing coming from the portal itself, the distant tents are alight with spots of radio-waves. Small dots glare in the lens of the advanced camera, perhaps the source of low-power transmitters among the tents. Noting it, you flick through ultraviolet potting nothing but a slight ultraviolet glow on the glowing blue gasses.
(cont.)

>>4568617
(cont.)
“Gravity started moving in circles.” Kirchoff begins to explain, as you swap over to Gamma. As he speaks, you see him holding up the device, which is glowing white from absorbed radiation. “I noticed it was givin’ all sorts of crazy directions, so I started moving the thing around and saw the pattern. It was pointing in, and away from us. It was almost like a…. A whirlpool?” He stares at the portal you’re still standing at the other side of for a moment, “And… this must be why. Another hole in the universe.”

In this wavelength, the portal, and the ground are all dim, like a night only illuminated by stars. Curious, you look up towards the sky, seeing a massive black and grey painted above you. It arches all around you, permeating this entire world with dim gamma rays. Hoping for some sort of comparison, you look back to the radioactive chamber behind you, an oven for radiation. The walls of the tunnel you’re standing in glow a bright white, in comparison to the very dim grey of the background radiation on the other side of the portal. The other side of that portal is probably safer than where you are now.

You keep expecting each change of wavelength to reveal some sort of truth about the portal you’re currently, but every time the hole in the very universe still sits before you, just as real as a doorway to another room. X-ray however is what finally reveals something. In the waterfalls, and plumes of exotic gas, x-rays bounce and refract. At first glance, the spots seem random, and scattered, but the more you look, the quicker you notice a pattern between them all. The scattered spots, and even occasional dashes of refracted x-ray radiation all center towards the dead xen Controller, who sits with his brain open and pointing towards the portal. Tracing the lines of x-rays, you then realize they draw a cone from the creature’s head, to the portal.

Having gathered your data, you begin to move in. Quickly, you drop off the ledge of the portal with the goggles still showing you the glow of gamma rays. There’s no sudden change as you move through, no odd feeling or slight moment when the illusion breaks. The only oddity as you move through the portal is a small, high pitched warbling sound that shudders as you move through, repeating itself as your three vortal friends follow after. Making a quick splash in the gooey liquid, you begin to run through the ankle deep fluid towards Saulson. As you run, you respond to Kirchoff.
(cont.)

>>4568619
(cont.)
“Good work with the LIGA, keep an eye on the thing to make sure this stuff doesn’t take us by surprise again.” You say to Kirchoff as you run. “Help me check on Saulson.” You quickly add.

“The guy with the head wound?” Kirchoff responds, suddenly realizing who’s currently laid face down on the ground. “Shit, here.” He begins to run towards the temporal anomaly. Despite not being in the same point in time as you, the effects of the resonance cascade close to ground zero has caused time to fold back in on itself, and you’re able to interact with the scientist until he next fades, probably in a few minutes judging by the rate at which the tight pain inside the migraine is releasing.

By the time you approach the scientist, Kirchoff has already kneeled down next to him, and is currently looking under the head, which he’s holding above the water to prevent him from downing. “Visor’s broke open, he might’ve broken his head open more. This place still radioactive?”

“It’s a lot safer here,” you respond, “But keep the LIGA away from him, it’s glowing right now. Help me carry him out of the water.”

Kirchoff nods, drops the LIGA a few meters away, then puts his arms under the scientists shoulders, while you grab the legs, rolling him over, then after counting down from three, you lift the scientist up. For twenty meters of carrying, the gooey liquid splashes around your ankles. Everytime the liquid settles, a small hum carries through the short silence from below, until you climb up out of the water and onto the mycelium covered rocks. Gently lowering him down onto the alien covered rocks, crushing small specimens of alien fauna below him. You quickly move around to his broken visor, getting a look at his blurry, translucent face below. He’s still unconscious, and the coolant pack has fallen off of his head. What’s odd however is that, even accounting for the blurriness, you can’t see any indication of his old injuries. What you can see are the gashes and cuts of broken glass across his face, which is still covered in the blue glowing fluid of the lake.

“Kirchoff do you see his headwound anywhere?” You ask the marine.

“No, it’s too blurry.” He responds.

“The bruise should be huge.” You take a closer look at his face. As the liquid glows on his face, you notice that the gashes in his face are slowly but surely getting smaller before your eyes. You quickly look to the vortigaunts “What’s going on? Is this because of the anomalies?”
(cont.)

>>4568621
(cont.)
https://pastebin.com/Lte0sgmY

“A fluid medicine.” Vorty responds. “An interversal remedy. Administer cautiously.”

You take another glance at the scientist's face, which is still healing before your eyes. Even through a gas-mask, you can see that he's suspicious of a miraculous healing liquid. “That can’t be safe, can it?”

He is clearly breathing, and you’re watching the stuff heal him, but you have no idea what this stuff might do to him. Not to mention, he’s now freely exposed to the air of this place. You’re no doctor, but you know that when cells grow faster than usual, it can be a major risk for cancer and other genetic issues. While normally that’s a few years down the line, not only is this a lot quicker, but it’s totally alien. For all you know, he might start growing an extra hand out of the spot of his former headwound in a few hours.

>”I’m already sterile from the radiation yesterday, and we’ve been exposed to chernobyl for the last few hours.The side effects of this stuff can’t be worse than the gunshot wounds.” Keeping away from any sources of radiation, pull off parts of your suit, and expose your wounds to the liquid.
>”No, cells don’t even grow that fast for cancer. It can’t be safe in the long term. See if we can’t wipe the stuff off.” Try and use pieces of the guys clothes from his own time to soak up the material off his wounds.
>”If it heals him, that’s good, but we got more important things to investigate.” Pull out your radio, see if you can’t pick up those radio signals you saw from the tents and turn it into something audible.
>”I don’t know, I’m gonna keep an eye on him, but we’ve got bigger things to worry about. You see those tents? Take a look at them through your rifle scope. Is anything still alive over there?”
>”I don’t know, but he’s gonna fade in a few minutes so there isn’t much we can do about it anyway. There’s something going on with that Xen Controller, I’m gonna check it out.” Move over to the tents and the body of the Xen Controller.
>Try and use the blue liquid to write a message on the rocks for Saulson to see when he wakes up.”
>Write in.

>>4568628
If we buy 3 years of life after this shitshow, it'll be a miracle. May as well take our short term advantages

>>4568628
>Test the liquid on your biological guns first, then...
>”I’m already sterile from the radiation yesterday, and we’ve been exposed to chernobyl for the last few hours.The side effects of this stuff can’t be worse than the gunshot wounds.” Keeping away from any sources of radiation, pull off parts of your suit, and expose your wounds to the liquid.

>>4569467
So we take the alien slime shot?

>>4569560
This first, then we can check out the tents, signals, and controller.

>>4569467
>>4569560
>>4569565
>>4569996
It's good to be back, but I still do have some remaining stuff to finish up before the end of this semester, I'll probably still use one or two of my normal off-days this week.

“Kirchoff, It’d be a medical miracle if I get three years of life after this shitstorm.” You respond, looking down at the pool of alien liquid gathering around your ankle. “MIght as well take our short term advantages.”

“And if it kills you in a few hours?” Kirchoff says, as you hear a slightly relieved groan from the unconscious repeat of Dr. Saulson. The marine takes another look at the scientist suspiciously. “Or turns you into some sort of mutant.”

“A grim paradox.” One of the vortigaunts suggests from behind you, getting closer to the scientist. “Coterminous violated.” Kirchoff glares at the creature, then looks back to the scientist.

“Just don’t kill yourself. Stuff like this is too good to be true.” Kirchoff respoonds, then looks up and around. “And I don’t want to stay here for very long. Place doesn’t feel right.” He glances around the visibly decrepit area, where the larger plant life has been killed by fungal infection, and even the fuana lies dead on the ground. “Where even is this?” He looks to the vortigaunts.

“Kirchoff, you’re already wearing an alien insect as a gun.” You retort, “This stuff can’t be any worse.” As you say that, watching him get a long look at the alien world around him, and idea pops into your head. “Speaking of, I got an idea that might help.” You say, pulling your knife out of your pocket. “I’m gonna put a gash in the hivehand and use this stuff to heal it up. The thing’s a lot smaller, it’ll get sick quicker.”
(cont.)

File: healingpool.jpg (54 KB, 480x480)

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>>4570016
(cont.)
Kirchoff shrugs as you flick open your swiss army knife. Pulling the hive-hand over your shoulder, you look over the creature, trying to spot a position that doesn’t seem to hold any blood vessels. Finding a piece of thick, leathery skin on the chitinous invertebrate, you swipe a quick gash right under the creature’s eye. The hivehand immediately starts squealing like a scared pig, and gnashing its three bony mandibles threateningly, before you rapidly lower the creature into waist high liquid. The creature suddenly calms its aggression, quieting down a second after it dips into the water, and becoming still. Once again, the cut gradually closes over the course of thirty seconds. Seeing it, you place the hivehand over your back, and sit down in the goop. With your body covered in spots of pain, from fractured ribs to bullet wounds, you strategically open up pieces of your hazmat suit, gathering small pieces of the stuff on your hands, before to rub it on pieces of the skin, or simply rubbing it over the spots where your suit has been torn open.

As you apply the strange extra-terrestrial fluid to your wounds, the pain spread throughout your body quickly subsidies in these locations. Large gashes rapidly clot, and small cuts seal closed, and the bruises sitting above fractures lose their broken purple color. More than that though, for the first time in a while, the constant thumping pain of the migraine stops feeling so agonizing. For the few moments while your covered in the water, your thoughts become sharp, in spite of the impossible situation you’re in, you suddenly able to focus.

You’re thankful for the painkiller, because you’re sure the migraine would’ve attempted to kill you again when a massive alien groan roared through the air, coming from all directions. From every point in space around you, vibrating even your newly healed bones, a long guttural cry rips through the alien world.

”The last... I am... the last…”

“Shit!” Kirchoff shouts, with his gun quickly in his hand, being waved around the area. “What the hell is that? Are we spotted?”

You look to the vortiguants, hopping to hear some sort of answer from them, no matter how cryptic, but instead, they’ve all begun to duck down, as though the sound could spot them. As they take cover, they hold a panicked conversation in their guttural alien language.

While Kirchoff and the vortigaunts are spooked, Dr. Saulson begins to stir, barely sitting up, and examining his surroundings.
(cont.)

>>4570017
(cont.)
>Take a quick look around to make sure there’s no source tp that sound, and then move over to those tents.
>”Knowing our luck, it’s god. Let’s focus on the things we can deal with.” Pull out your radio, and try to pick up those signals.
>”Vorts. Calm down,” Move in to reassure the creatures, and get some information from them, “You’ll be fine, just tell me what that voice is.”
>There’s gotta be a source you’re not seeing here, quickly turn on the goggles once again and have a look
>The universe is taunting you, taunt it back. Shout out towards the sky, “Well hopefully you’re tasty as the damn dodos!”
>Write in.

>>4570018
>There’s gotta be a source you’re not seeing here, quickly turn on the goggles once again and have a look
Is Dr. Saulson physically with us, or a repeat that's very close to the present?

>>4570018
>There’s gotta be a source you’re not seeing here, quickly turn on the goggles once again and have a look
No rest for the weary.

>>4570023
He's a recent repeat, solid enough for you to move around and carry.

I think I am gonna have to take that off day today just to put the finishing touches on a final assignment. Apologies for doing so so soon after a long hiatus, but hopefully we'll run smoother afterwards.

>>4570852
Consider this quest OVER if you don't finish the semester with an A.
We don't tolerate academic failures in this club.
for real good luck tho

>>4570023
>>4570026
>There’s gotta be a source you’re not seeing here, quickly turn on the goggles once again and have a look

The slow, grumbling voice lingers in the air, vibrating your chest and skull for more than long enough for you to flick your head, dropping the goggles back over your eyes. HIt once again by a haze of white and black energy readings, you quickly glance around the area, without any time to swap between different wavelengths. Thankfully, the convenient option happened to be the right one. Looking at the falls of alien goo where you first saw rays beaming towards the portal from the skull of the creature, millions of small beams pierce through the bioluminescent liquid, far brighter than the others. A few connect with the brain of the dead xen controller, but many others simply pass through. Hoping for a point where they converge, you follow their direction through fungal growth, dead animals, and even your own vortal allies.


Tracking the fading x-rays, you notice a bright point in the distance, through the porous mycelium infested rocks of alien rock. The fading spots of a defused x-ray beam grow far more common around these point, before they all suddenly stop. However, despite the lack of rays, the are is still bright, with a star’s worth of x-ray energy coming from the theoretical spot of convergence of every beem. You keep your goggles on the point as it fades, ensuring that the techs have good footage to look back on.

“What the hell…” You hear Dr. Saulson mutter from below. “Where…”

Before it fully snuffs out, your roll through every wavelength on the goggles. The area is a total dark spot, except for a single spot of radio waves. You almost click past the radio setting, before catching yourself, and getting a good long look at the dim radio wave. Despite being far more distant, the frequency incredibly close to those you saw in the tents. It stays constant in it’s intensity, although with the slight magnification available to these optics, you can just barely make out some slight movement. The spark of radio-waves stills for a movement, then in an instant, disappears.

”Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemmaaaaaaann....” The grumbling voice roars once again. With the painkilling effects of the alien water wearing off, this time the migraine splits in tune with the sound. You quickly flick the controls of the goggles back to x-ray, and see once again that the rays have erupted in intensity, glaring into your eyes.

“The final stroke.” One of the vortigaunts proclaims, sounding panicked. “Supersymmetry must remain.”

“Agreed.” Vorty says. “Haste is necessity.”

You begin to glance around once again, hoping to look for further hints about the source. As you look at the dashed of line x-rays dotting the sky as the beams tear through translucent materials, you notice that some of the rays stop, then divert, connecting to others in a web of beams.
(cont.)

>>4572680
(cont.)
“Is this real?” You hear From below. As you look down to Dr. Sualson, you’re suddenly flashed with a blinding glare of x-ray’s converted into visible light. On your chest, one of the rays cuts by through the residual gas from the portal, then hits you on the chest. Covered in leadlining, you don’t feel a thing. The beam just reflects, and fills your vision with white. You step to the right, and the beam lags behind. Rather than following you like a rope around your waist, it seems to be following. You look down as it fades, not sure what it’s doing. When it dies off, you click your goggles back over to radio to see if the signal by the point of convergence has returned, seeing nothing.

More confused than when you started, you pull the multi-spectrum goggles off your eyes, taking a quick look at the ghostly image of Saulson from the past glancing around the area. He glances back to the portal he came from, but is quickly beginning to fade. You glance towards he’s looking, and see that as the anomaly fades, the portal suddenly starts to collapse, and where once gaped open, and orange orb takes its place. The gas disperses in tune with the migraine.

Both you and Kirchoff quickly begin to glance around. The portal you just came through shut, and a sudden fear that you will be trapped here shakes through your core.

“Negative energy dissipates.” A vortigaunt mutters from behind, drawing your attention backwards. “The breach will reopen. Asymmetry approaches. Haste.”

“What?” Kirchoff asks, then glances to you. “What the hell are they talking about?” He looks to the vortigaunts once again and asks, “You know how to get back? What was that voice? The hell are we?”

“A submersive detour.” Vorty explains, before two of his kin begin to move towards the tent. “Supersymmetry must be maintained.” He adds, before turning to follow the creatures, running through the xenian healing pools towards the tents.

“Shit.” Kirchoff exclaims. “What the hell is going on? Where are they going now?”
(cont.)

>>4570935
Thank you man, you don't know how good it feels to here that, I'll do you proud.
>>4572683
(cont.)
>You and Kirchoff cover the Vortigaunts as they move in with rifles, but don’t move in yourselves.
>Tell Kirchoff to cover the vortigaunts, while you find the signals you saw on your radio.
>It’s a longshot, but pull out that piece of alien spine you pulled out, and see if it interacts with the x-ray’s you saw coming from the dead controller.
>Run after the vortigaunts, towards the tents, and ask them to explain what’s going on as you move.
>Shout at the vortigaunts to slow down, if they listen, scout out the tents yourself, quietly.
>Write in.
(Optionally, respond to Kirchoff.)
>”In the infirmary, Kleiner told me about a space between universes. We’re definitely not in our own universe.”
>”Wherever we are, Freeman’s here too. Still not sure if that’s good or bad.”
>”The vortigaunts seem to know where we’re going, and they’ve said they’ve made the trek before. I trust them.”
>”At this point I’m convinced that there are no aliens. We’re probably just walked through a portal to hell.”
>”I think what matters more than where we are is how we got here. Where did the portal itself come from?
>Write in.

>>4572693
>Run after the vortigaunts, towards the tents, and ask them to explain what’s going on as you move.
seems important, best get a move on.
>"Wherever they're going, it's going to be our ticket out of here. Give me a heads-up if you see any orange suits around here - I think Freeman might be wherever this is too."

I need to catch up, then I should be able to join back in.

>>4572736
Idk what we're doing anymore because I've not been keeping up and everything lacks context to me.

>>4572768
read up then, brother

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453 KB PNG

I really do apologize guys, because I wanted it to be smooth sailing after the hiatus, but I do need to push the update back one final day. After this thought, the semester is thankfully totally over, and we can get things back on track.

>>4572736
>>4572768
Take as much time as you guys need to catch up, lord knows the update rate is slow anyway. I'd rather have you guys not voting and enjoying yourselves over voting and not enjoying things.

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>>4572732
>>4572736
>>4572768
>>4572799
Apologies for the delay.
>Run after the vortigaunts, towards the tents, and ask them to explain what’s going on as you move.
>"Wherever they're going, it's going to be our ticket out of here. Give me a heads-up if you see any orange suits around here - I think Freeman might be wherever this is too."

“Wherever they’re going, it’s going to be our ticket out of here.” You explain to Kirchoff, gesturing to follow them, before adding, “Come on, let’s move.”

“They look scared shitless to me.” Kirchoff responds, as the two of you start to chase after them.

“They’re fugitives, not trained soldiers,” You say, hopping over the old roots and fungal growths that have thrived in the bioluminescent liquid below. “Speaking of, tell me if you see any orange suits around here.” You say, struggling to push your breaths through your gas mask as you run. “Sounds like Freeman is here too.”

“A final stroke.” One of the vortigaunts shouts as you catch up to the malnourished creatures. “We see it clearly.”

“I don’t think this place is too happy about it.” Kirchoff shouts, falling behind with the heavy LIGA placed on his back. You and the vorts begin to slow as you approach the forest of large bony spikes sticking out of the ground, glancing around the area. The tents themselves are nested deep within the numerous bony spires that reach up into the sky, using that floating rocks that they skewer as protection from the elements. By now, all the tents have long been torn open, with the exposed wires of broken floodlights and testing equipment leading through the flaps and torn holes, where pools of mostly alien blood have made fertile ground for xenian plantlife. In the tents whose sides still sit alive, a black mesa still stands clearly, but it’s far less stylized and schematic than the Black Mesa logo you know, featuring rounded edges and ridges into its design. As well, just below the logo, the words “New Mexico Atomic Research,” stand boldly, instead of “Black Mesa Research Facility.”

“Vorts, what is going on here?” You ask as you slowly step closer to the camp, beginning to hear some sort of strange synthetic sound among the tents. “What was that voice?”

“Nihilanth. Liberation approaches.” Vorts says from behind you cryptically.

“Alright.” You say, not sure what that means. “What is this camp?”

“A xenian relay.” One of the vortigaunts explains. “A grave monument to resourcefulness.”

As you dwell on what that could mean, you continue to slow approach the camp, pulling your pistol off your hip for fear of encroaching aliens, you begin to make out more and more of the electronic sound. Some sort of synthetic voice, muffled but barely audible, plays somewhere from within the tents.
“Ne-neuro-neurotoxin de- warning, warning, warning u- u- user death- neurotoxin detected.”
(cont.)

>>4574925
(cont.)
The voice is so muffled and janky that it’s hard to tell if there’s one, two or three of them, and even harder to pinpoint a specific tent its coming from. Not sure of its source, you keep light on your feet as you move into the camp, keeping a close eye on the dead body of the xenian controller. From a distance, it initially looked like some sort of satellite dish. Up close you can still see the resemblance rather clearly. Marked around the creature’s open head, a set of four small plagues surround the creature. All four of them read “Home: Secure,” alongside an angle in degrees. The angles on the plagues read 0 degrees, where you came from, which has been crossed out with marker to now read: “POSITRON LENS! DANGEROUS,” while the other three simply state “37 degrees”, 192 degrees”, and “321 degrees.”

You glance back to the “south”, where you came from, seeing that the orb where the portal was is still closed up. Does this creature affect that somehow?

Not wanting to alert any xenian creatures nearby, you quietly ask the vortiguants, “Well, where is this camp? Is this another world? Your world?”

“No.” Vorts says from behind, not intent on staying as quiet as you. “A border between worlds. A forgotten variable.”

“A refuge and prison.” Another vortigaunt adds.

Still confused as hell about this place, you take one last look around, peaking in the bursted open tents where documents and pieces of electronics still sit like an old war encampment, then begin to look beyond, towards the bony spires that surround the camp, around which are falls of the gooey xenian healing liquid. On one of the spires is a rope ladder, climbing up to the seemingly non-newtonian rocks above you that have been skewed by these spikes.

“Hey, Gabby.” Kirchoff whispers, treading slowly up to you from behind. “Orange suit in the trees.” He says, pointing towards a section of the bony spires that you would not describe as trees. Nodding slightly, you glare towards where he points and do notice an orange gloved hand sticking between the slim gap the spire trunks created, but immediately realize it’s not a part of an HEV suit. Having spied on the anomalous materials labs, you remember what those suits look like, with their metal plating and grey arms. This orange arm is closer to your current suit, baggy and rubber.

>Start poking around in the tents, looking for any left behind documents, or the source of that voice.
>See what happens when you move the body of the xenian controller. Flick your goggles back on, and turn it to one of the other plaques, then wait for the portal to reopen.
>Climb up that rope ladder above, and see what’s up top, or perhaps just get a better idea of where the hell you are.
>Approach the orange suit and investigate.Hopefully it’s occupant is alive and has some answers.
>Write in.

>>4574927
>Climb up that rope ladder above, and see what’s up top, or perhaps just get a better idea of where the hell you are.
Always a good idea to recon the area from a relatively safe position. We can see if that orange suit is crabbed or not from there, maybe...and with all the holes in the tents, we might be able to spot the voice or the black headcrab that bit it.

>>4574927
>Approach the orange suit and investigate.Hopefully it’s occupant is alive and has some answers.
Dead check!

>>4574927
>Climb up that rope ladder above, and see what’s up top, or perhaps just get a better idea of where the hell you are.
Along with our surroundings, perhaps we can discern the state of the orange suit and its occupant.

>>4574954
I don’t think poison headcrabs exist yet.
Could be some other form of dangerous flora or fauna, best to be careful

>>4574954
>>4575339
>>4575439
>>4575465
>Climb up that rope ladder above, and see what’s up top, or perhaps just get a better idea of where the hell you are.

“Stay down here and down let the vorts make too much noise.” You say to Kirchoff, looking back over your shoulder as you approach the rope ladder. The marine nods, then starts glancing around himself, throwing small marine-corps hand gestures around to herd the creatures into the center of the camp. “I’m gonna go up and get a better view.”

As you walk towards the gap between tents, at the other end of which sits a kevlar and steel rope ladder, you can’t shake an odd surreal feeling as the latter practically floats before you. Instincts in the back of your mind tell you that if you were to grab the ladder it would put the bony spires over their limit, and the boulder above you would finally fall to crush you. This entire place seems to be fundamentally impossible. You remember Magnusson and his team mentioned the shifting laws of physics, but this seems to be beyond even that.

You slip between two of the tents, flanked on either side by torn apart tarp. You carefully peer through the gashes in the tents, seeing hints of stacked documents, portable lab equipment, and heaps of floral life growing on something decrepit.

Ignoring the tents, you reach the ladder, pushing it to the side and slipping around. Looking up to the boulder ahead, you do feel uneasy. This particular rock is held up only by a single spire skewering through one of the edges, although others nearby seem to stay suspended above the ground without needing any sort of support. You grab the rungs of the ladder and pull them down with a firm tug. The ladder shift by a fraction of an inch, and you panic, jumping away from it as dust and pebbles crash near the bottom rungs. You watch the ladder cautiously for a moment as the debris settles, seeing it stay sturdy despite the falling rocks. Once again, you move in and tug it, this time feeling no give. Carefully, you grip the ladder, lift one foot onto a rung, then lean you weight on it. The ladder doesn’t budge. Satisfied, you pull your other foot up, and begin to climb up the rope ladder, keeping your eyes to the ledge before you.

As you ascend the twenty or so feet above the ladder, you try to listen in to the area around you, still hearing that synthetic voice in the distance. With the wide acoustics of this pit, the sound echoes off every surrounding cliff face, making a location difficult to track. Still, you hear the computer’s voice faintly groaning in the distance. You don’t get an idea of a source, until you move above the massive echo-dish of a pit. Pulling yourself over the rocky ledge, with the roaring of the viscous fluid dripping off from either side, the sounds from below are suddenly drowned out, while one distinctive sound still stands out clearly above the pouring fluid.
(cont.)

>>4576328
(cont.)
“Neu-Neu-Neurotoxin- antido- neuro- user… death- antidote depleted.”

Before you track down the source of the sounds, you quickly glance around the rocks your currently standing on. A pool of the alien healing liquid bubbles in the center of the floating island, spilling off the lower edges to the pit below. You don’t know how, but somewhere in the center of the porous rock is a source of this liquid that’s not running out. A few other islands are suspended a decent distance away from you. Just far enough that jumping the gap would leave you uncomfortable. On a few of them, small crates likely filled with scientific or survival equipment are scattered around, along with floodlights and even occasionally telescopes whose lenses have long been shattered. On one of these rocks, way too far to jump, is at least one of the sources of the synthetic sound.

A shambling orange figure dressed in an orange HEV suit seems to glare at you from across the large gap, despite the lack of any visible eyes on the headcrab that has grabbed onto the poor explorer’s head. The eerie electronic voice apparently plays from its suit as the creatures stands there, occasionally rocking back and forth, and lowering its body to a sort of awkward crouching position before rocking back up. It’s hard to tell from a distance, but the creature also seems to have something on its back as well. With the creature way too far to get close to you, you ignore it for a second, keeping your magnum on hand in case you need the extra armor penetration, instead using your position to look over the massive ditch… or more aptly, floating island.

Looking around, the edges of the ditch don’t continue on to reveal a distant landscape beyond, instead you just see vast open space, with the only things between the asteroids are flocks of flying creatures gliding through the apparent void. This entire area is simply floating on nothing, despite the gravity that clearly affects you, the asteroids you stand on simply stay in place, like Saint Exupéry’s lovecraftian nightmare.
(cont.)

>>4576330
(cont.)
Your gaze wanders out into the distant space, where the various gasses and distant primordial reactions turn the radioactive sky into an abstract mural. As you look out, you do notice other asteroids well in the distance, probably miles out. Sliding you gaze around the small dots, your interest suddenly peaks where you see a red glare around the same spot you saw the x-rays converge. The light itself is like a very dim, red sun. Hoping to get more detail however, you pull out your ballistic optics, seeing the red dwarf as a big red lens glare in the distance. With magnification designed for long distance shooting however, you immediately see that the light is no stellar object. Stars, planets, and suns don’t get larger under ballistic magnification, they’re much too large, and way too distant to have any significant effect. This object does. Not enough to get a clear idea of what it is, but just enough to make out a few… odd shadows in the light. Like great talons, or claws holding the circular light, small spikes seem to cut through the glare, only visible with magnification. The longer and closer you look however, the more you notice the pounding pain of the migraine bashing the side of your head over and over again, getting harder and harder to ignore.

When a massive pulse of pain bursts through your head, you finally pull your eyes away from the strange glowing red light. Instead, you take one last glance around the rockfaces that surround the massive floating island that the encampment sits on. The ditch is surrounded on all sides by cracked and broken rocks, but in some places, the fungal infections and dust gives way to a muted marble material. As you glance between all four white patches of stone, you notice that there’s only four, all in positions that would be visible from the center of the encampment.

As you push your optics up to your forehead to investigate closer however, you suddenly hear a slight hissing pneumatic sound, followed by a rapidly approaching moan through the distance.

“Vital signs… user- user -user” The sound flings towards you, and you immediately flick your head to the right, to see the HEV clad zombie tumbling through the air towards you at high velocity. Instantly, your entire body is hit with a shock of adrenaline, and you have a split second to make a decision.

>Play it safe, jump out of the way, and climb down that ladder as quick as you can. They can fly now?!
>Stand your ground, take aim with your magnum, and try to hit it while it’s still in the air like shooting a charging animal.
>Wait for it to come to you, then try to push it right off the edge. Apparently it can fly, but can it land?
>Dodge quickly, then when it lands on the rock, hold it down to try and study the damn thing. (Roll 3d6, pass on a 13.)
>Write in any clever ideas.

>>4576331
>Play it safe, jump out of the way, and climb down that ladder as quick as you can. They can fly now?!
>Shout out to your companions that you have an incoming zed wearing one hell of an armor rig.

>>4576331
What grenades, if any, do we have left?

>>4576331
>Wait for it to come to you, then try to push it right off the edge. Apparently it can fly, but can it land?

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>>4576588
1 frag grenade, 3 flashbangs, 5 smoke grenades, 3 concussion grenades, and 2 anti-tank mines. Kirchoff also has a frag grenade, 2 flashbangs, and a concussion grenade. There's an inventory/stats pastebin here: https://pastebin.com/Lte0sgmY , which I keep forgetting to post with the updates.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>4576348 (1)
>Play it safe, jump out of the way, and climb down that ladder as quick as you can. They can fly now?!
>Shout out to your companions that you have an incoming zed wearing one hell of an armor rig.
>>4576671 (2)
>Wait for it to come to you, then try to push it right off the edge. Apparently it can fly, but can it land?
Just gonna do a quick tiebreaker roll. If anyone would like to throw in a vote to break the tie, I'll throw out the roll, and use that instead.

>>4576348
>>4576671
>>4576957
>Wait for it to come to you, then try to push it right off the edge. Apparently it can fly, but can it land?

Immediately you stiffen up, clearing your head of everything except the orange tumbling mass of human and parasite flung at you. Keeping your revolver in your hand, but spinning it around to use the grip as a blunt object. You quickly take a stance, hoping that the uncontrolled, flailing mass will give you an opportunity to put your martial arts training to use. Of course, you were never trained to grapple circus performers fresh out of a cannon.

In a fraction of a second, the creature is right before you. You grapple at its flailing body with one hand, and smack the butt of your gun towards the armored creature with the other hand. Keeping your feet planted firmly on the ground, you try to wrap your elbow around the creatures body or neck. Instead, the mass of the creature and its suit tears you off your feet. With your shoulder nearly yanked out of its socket, your pulled straight to the ground beneath you, splashing into the puddle of alien healing fluids, and smacking your head into the ground underneath. The zombie, pulled into the floor with you, tumbles limply through the water.

Adrenaline already flooding your system, you gather your senses quickly, pushing yourself off the ground while barely noticing the thump of the migraine and the new dull pain on your skull. Standing up and regaining your footing, you wipe the bioluminescent water from your gasmasks lenses. With your vision clear, you see the creature already pushing itself off the ground. Not wanting to risk it lunging again, you dash towards the creature once again, then lift up your knee while inertia still pulls your body forwards. The creature releases an agonized moan and begins to swipe at you before you kick your heel directly into the lambda logo at the center of the creature’s chest. Clawed talons scratch deep into your leg as you kick the parasitic host towards the ledge. Just as it hooks one of it’s large bony nails into your kneecap, the creature loses its weak footing, falling right off the edge, still intent on clawing away at you.

For a short second as the creature slips, you feel your leg dragged with it. Once again the surprising mass of the zombie pulls you down, to the ground as its claws tear through your lead lined suit and skin. As your dragged closer and closer to the edge, you shake your cut up leg, then kick the creature in the clavicle. With its hands firmly planted in your leg, you feel a massive stinging pain as the claws are only pulled deeper. Once again you throw another kick from your prone position, this time at the creatures arm. Finally the zombies sharpened bone is knocked loose with one last agonizing scratch at your free leg from the other arm.
(cont.)

>>4577437
(cont.)
The armored zombie drops like a stone, flailing its arms and screeching in confusion as the suit’s synthetic voice crackles and glitches. Scrambling away from the ledge, you don’t see it hit the ground. Below you hear a loud crash echo even over the roaring sound of the waterfall.

“What the fuck?!” Kirchoff shouts from down below alongside the sound of a few small bees, then finally a long slow ringing, like the sound of a heart monitor flatlining.

Still seething over the pain of your leg, thankfully healing slowly with the help of the alien healing liquid you’re currently drenched in, you finally peak over the ledge. Below, the armored zombie has fallen on a tent full of scientific equipment. While the suit seems to have protected the body, numerous shards of metal have torn through both the parasite, and what little remained of the unfortunate scientist’s head. The creature is certainly dead, but it tore your suit, and the leg below open in the process.

While you look over the ledge, you see Kirchoff emerge from under the floating boulder you’re sitting on, looking at the creature, then soon looking up at you.

“Could’ve warned me!” He shouts, before distantly you hear more agonized groans for a moment. Then a second later, everything goes quiet once again. Kirchoff looks around to the area around him, then shouts up to you, “This Freeman?”

As you wonder about the answer to that question, you look out and around in the distance. Despite the noises, you don’t see any more of the creatures.

From below, you barely hear Kirchoff say “Stop pokin’ it?” Once again Kirchoff shouts, “Hey the Vorts are messing with the dead alien? You know anything about that?”

>Move down the ladder, and study the creature. How the hell did it jump like that? Is the suit still viable? While you’re there see if there’s anything salvageable from the tent as well.
>Better safe than sorry. Fire a few glock rounds into the air to make any zombies angry. If they don’t come out, use their groans to find them.
>Get down there and see what the vorts are doing with the dead controller, you ought to make sure they don’t actually grab the alien’s attention.
>Write in.
(Optionally, respond to Kirchoff.)
>Shout down, “I don’t know, do you see a nametag? Any identifying features? Lambda team was bidding a lot on that guy. Wouldn’t they at least give him a helmet?”
>”No way in hell. Judging by the body trail Freeman leads he’s six-foot two and kills people with glares. There’s no way a headcrab got the guy.”
>”Don’t let the Vorts touch anything for now. It’s bad enough that I never understand what they’re saying, I’d like to understand what they’re doing for once.”
>”The vorts are fine, probably just celebrating it’s death. Can’t blame them.”
>”Keep your gun up there might be more. That thing just leaped a good twenty meters at me.”
>Write in.

>>4577438
>Move down the ladder, and study the creature. How the hell did it jump like that? Is the suit still viable? While you’re there see if there’s anything salvageable from the tent as well.
>”Keep your gun up there might be more. That thing just leaped a good twenty meters at me.”

>>4577438
>Move down the ladder, and study the creature. How the hell did it jump like that? Is the suit still viable? While you’re there see if there’s anything salvageable from the tent as well.
>”No way in hell. Judging by the body trail Freeman leads he’s six-foot two and kills people with glares. There’s no way a headcrab got the guy. Still, there might be more of them. Stay alert."

>Move down the ladder, and study the creature. How the hell did it jump like that? Is the suit still viable? While you’re thervne see if there’s anything salvageable from the tent as well.
>”Keep your gun up there might be more. That thing just leaped a good twenty meters at me.”
>”No way in hell. Judging by the body trail Freeman leads he’s six-foot two and kills people with glares. There’s no way a headcrab got the guy. Still, there might be more of them. Stay alert."

“Don’t put your gun down, there might be more.” You shout back down immediately. “The thing jumped probably…” You look to your right, to the floating island where the zombie was once standing. “Twenty meters towards me. Took me by surprise.”

You watch Kirchoff give the creature a long look, then add, “Maybe it is Freeman. Explain a lot if the guy was superman.”

“No way in hell. I’ve seen the body trail that guy leaves.” You respond. “Judging by that alone, he kills people with his glare. No way a headcrab got the guy. Besides, he’s around six foot.” As you collect your thoughts about the shambling creature, you do remember it being around your height when you kicked it off the ledge. Working the night shifts in anomalous material’s security, you occasionally saw the physicist, and he was about a head above your short stature. Odds are good that the host was a woman given the zombie’s height.

“So there's a lot of these suits then?” Kirchoff asks.

“There’s more than one, definitely.” You respond as you begin to crawl back down the ladder, feeling the torn muscle and skin protest with every movement of your leg. The jagged cuts that those things leave are especially painful, making it worse the bloody talons sunk in like meat hooks. Even with the painkilling effects of the xenian water, and the slow healing from the drops still left on you, you wince with every rung you decide. “Don’t touch that one yet, I wanna take a look at it.” You call out, looking down to the ruined tent below you as Kirchoff gets closer.
(cont.)

>>4578409
>>4577453
>>4577606
(cont.)
When you reach the bottom of the ladder, your leg is already feeling slightly better. Not giving it anymore than is necessary, you quickly drop off, wincing as weight strains the still tender muscle. The tent the zombie fell on completely collapsed when the zombie crashed atop it. The alluminum frame bent, then snapped, tearing apart the tarp covering it. One of the thicker beams skewered straight through the head and parasite of the poor explorer. The headcrab was yanked off by the force, leaving it a foot above the bloody and deformed human head with a piece of aluminum skewered through what was once an eye. The torn open tarp gives way to reveal pieces of scientific equipment. An electron microscope has collapsed and now falls over to the side after the crash, and an expensive looking laptop was reduced to a pile of plastic and wires after it was thrown out by the force of the crash. Drawers containing samples of god knows what have been crushed and scattered open.

Despite all of this however, the suit is still in workable condition. While the gloves were clearly torn open by the zombie’s transformation, and many of the metal plates have dented, it seems to have taken the fall rather well. However, harnessed to the chest of the orange and grey is some sort of device filled with tanks, pipes, and electronics. You remember seeing something on the creature’s back before it leaped at you. Curious, you begin to step into the ruins of the scientific equipment and tent. “Kirchoff, help me move this.” He nods, and begins to step in. The both of you step over heaps of ruined equipment, Kirchoff going to one end, while you go to the other.

While the both of you are moving through the ruins of the tent. The vortiguants are fiddling with the dead Xen Controller. They don’t seem to be experimenting, defiling, or anything like that. Rather, they simply seem interested in turning it, doing so incredibly gently, turning the open, satellite dish like head towards the gap between tents, in roughly the angle one of the plagues lists.
(cont.)

>>4578413
(cont.)
As you move in, you begin to notice that once again, the twisting pain of the migraine is returning, signifying a coming anomaly. From one end, Kirchoff pulls the creature towards himself, while you lift the arm, and the side of the zombie. Below, like the guts of roadkill as it’s pulled off the street, the remains of some advanced device, with tubes, tanks, electronics, and god knows what spill out where the frame of the device was destroyed. With the exterior plating crunched and cracked open, you have to reach into the parts and dig around for any indication of what this device was. After rustling through the bundle of broken equipment, you find a crushed piece of casing with the words, “LAMBDA LONG-JUMP-MODULE MK-2 AP463215, alongside a small schematic, made impossible to read by the warping of the metal. Slightly annoyed, you pocket the shard for later information. That was probably how the creature leaped, and when you knocked the zombie off the side, the fall destroyed the device.

“Find anything?” Kirchoff asks.

“Yeah. Something called a long jump module. Broke in the fall.” You explain to the marine.

“Suit still looks fine.” The marine responds. “Not gonna take it?”

It would be pretty gross on the inside, but some work and the alien goo that surrounds this place could probably fix that. From what you know about these suits, they’re pretty formidable, advanced stuff, although the one on this creature seems a little broken. If it can keep an untrained physicist alive, it could be useful to you. On the other hand, it’s a hazard suit, meaning it’s not only conspicuous, it’s designed to be as visible as possible for rescue teams.

>Take the suit off the dead zombie, clean it up a bit, and put it on. It’s about your size.
>Leave the zombie for now, check on the other orange body while you’re poking dead things. How’d they die, and why are they wearing a different suit?
>Leave the body of the zombie alone, and watch what the vortigaunts are doing with that xen controller. See if it affects the x-rays you saw coming off the creature earlier.
>It’s a longshot, but pull out that piece of alien spine you pulled out, and see if it interacts with the x-ray’s you saw coming from the dead controller.
>Start looking through the intact tents. Maybe some of the research will help you understand what this place is.
>Write in.

>>4578414
>Take the suit off the dead zombie, clean it up a bit, and put it on. It’s about your size.
Our HAZMAT suit has been severely compromised by those claws shredding it. We'll see if we can find some black paint or something like that later on...if need be we can use a blackboard marker and just slowly draw on the suit while we walk.

>>4578414
>Take the suit off the dead zombie, clean it up a bit, and put it on. It’s about your size.
Not like our current suit will protect us very well, with all the damage its taken. We'll try and fix the color situation when we can.

>>4578589
>>4578422
ITS HAPPENING

AAAAAAAA

The suits require some hazardous environment training tho dont it? :^)

>>4578414
>Take the suit off the dead zombie, clean it up a bit, and put it on. It’s about your size.
You cannot dangle something like this in front of us and expect us to not take it

I apologize for doing this so late, but I'm not gonna be able to put out another update today. I was hoping that the rate of updates would be faster over the break but I've been occupied by family what with Christmas coming up. The next update should still come out tomorrow. Sorry for only letting you guys know so late in the day as well.
>>4579113
I kind of did expect you guys to take it.

>>4579796
It helps that a functioning HEV suit is one hell of a bargaining chip in the CIA. Can you imagine them creating and distributing a modified version to CIA killteams? They'd be unstoppable.

>>4579855
Maybe kirchoff should use it. He isn't using healing juice

>>4580534
Kirchoff is guaranteed to not be our size, unless he's the most hilarious marine ever.

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>>4578422
>>4578589
>>4578890
>>4579113
>Take the suit off the dead zombie, clean it up a bit, and put it on. It’s about your size.

“I think I am.” You respond to Kirchoff, taking a quick glance down to all the torn holes in your suits leadlining. “My suit’s compromised. Help me get this thing down.” You command, looking back up to Kirchoff and the dead creature, putting your arms underneath the creature’s armored back and legs.

Kirchoff nods, does the same, then asks, “Got it? On three.” After you reply with a quick thumbs up, he counts down, “One, two, three,” at which the both of you have the dead weight of a mutated human body covered in plate metal, calcifying fabrics, and all sorts of advanced electronics. You struggle to maintain steady breaths through the thick filter of your gas mask as you haul the bloody corpse over piles of broken electronics. The both of you haul it towards the pack of vortigaunts as the hunchback creatures fiddle with the position of the dead Xen Controller.

“Put it down right here.” You say to Kirchoff, before the both of you lower the creature onto the porous rocky ground. With the creature laid out, you glaze it over with your eyes. With the exceptional seals, it’s hard to tell how one is expected to ever take these suits off. With the exception of the straps still dangling to the body from the Long-Jump device, you don’t see any sort of connective systems. As you stare at the thing, you occasionally glance towards the face of the parasites host, which despite its gaunt features and mutations, still holds a disturbing expression of fear. The sound of the heart monitor still pierces its irritating tone through the air. Pushing the thought back into your mind, you crouch down next to the creature, and begin to feel across the metal plates for any sort of clip, latch, buckle, or button. Feeling across, you notice small buttons across at the seems where the orange plates meet the grey, and upon pushing them in, feel something unbuckle. The suit separates apart into six separate pieces, the arms and shoulders, a vetlike midsection, and the legs, with two shoes attached to them. Carefully, you peel them of the disgusting bloodied flesh of the zombie, leaving the body in only a torn set of white fatigues. As the pieces peel off, you feel the pain of the migraine growing heavier and heavier.

Pearing to the insides of the suit pieces, you’re once again grateful to be wearing a gas mask. When the host’s chest tore open, it wasn’t able to break the hev suit. Instead, the crack that ran down the rib cage simply leaked blood and scraps of organs that decayed inside the rotten suit. Not wanting to feel anything squish on the inside of this suit, you tell Kirchoff, “I gotta clean this thing out if I’m gonna make any use of it.” You explain.
(cont.)

>>4580840
(cont.)
“Don’t take too long with the laundry.” Kirchoff quips, then adds, “Don’t want the other team to get a tan waiting for us.”

“I’ll be quick, I don’t need to sterilize the whole thing.” You respond, then pointing down to your scratch as you walk away. “If there’s any diseases on this thing, I’ve already got them.”

“The Oppenheimer must hasten.” Vorty shouts out louder than you’d like, causing inhuman groans to roar out. It’s still hard to hear their location, but as you move you notice they’re definitely coming from one of the tents. You nod to the creatures as you move towards the falling alien healing liquid, before placing the stack of HEV suit parts on the ground. One by one, you hold them under the falling alien fluid, noticing that, as it hits you, it feels a lot closer to water pouring atop you than the thicker, goo-like consistency you’re used to. Occasionally, small drops settle in the seams of the armor’s metal plates, congealing for a second as the rather gooey liquid you recognize. You go through each one, letting the alien water spill through suit pieces. As you do, you hear the suit speaking, “Warni- warn- unknown chem- warn- breach detect- user...,” repeating and stuttering at random.

When you’re convinced the suit is free of human tissue, you unzip your old lead-lined hazmat suit, glad to feel a bit less restricted, even if just for a moment.

As you pull the individual pieces back over yourself, starting with the chestplate, then sealing the arms with their tubelike shoulders, you note the migraine’s twisting pain is starting to plateau. By the time you’re pulling the plated leggings around yourself, slowly feeling more and more like an astronaut, the pain in your head is twisting hard.

As you reassemble the suit around you, the voice begins to change its stuttering messages. “Use- use- user mark 4- welcome- welcome- for use in- VWOOM.” Interrupting the corrupted voice, the loud sound of an error bursts in your ears. Something small whirs in the back of the suit during the silence, then a moment later you hear the breathy voice once again.

“Welcome to the HEV Mark FOUR protective system. For use in hazardous environment conditions. High Impact Reactive armor… activated. Atmospheric contaminant sensors engaged. Vital sign monitoring activated. Automatic medical systems engage. Warning! Integrated display not found. Warning! Reactive cranial protection not found. Warning! Neurological monitoring not found. Warning! Atmospheric filtration not found. Warning! Pain response detected! Morphine administered.”
(cont.)

>>4580842
(cont.)
You look down, confused at the suit, not feeling any pain relief from this supposed morphine, nor any needles it would be injected through. A few seconds later, you notice a dampness in your fatigue sleeves. Still relying on the lead-lined rubber gloves of the Hazmat suit, along with the old gas mask, you quickly bring your hand up, to see a loose IV needle dripping morphine onto your wrist. You didn’t realize it even had a feature like that.

“A window approaches.” One of the vortigaunts shouts from a distance, eliciting more angered cries from the zombies, yet none of them seem intent on coming out. “Worlds blend.”

>Check on the other orange body while you’re poking dead things. How’d they die, and why are they wearing a different suit?
>Take a look at what the vorts did with the Xen Controller through x-rays, ask them what they’re trying to do, while waiting for the next anomaly.
>It’s a longshot, but pull out that piece of alien spine you pulled out, and see if it interacts with the x-ray’s you saw coming from the dead controller.
>Start looking through the intact tents. Maybe some of the research will help you understand what this place is.
>Find those damned zombies that keep screeching. Why aren’t they coming out?
>Write in.
(Optionally, make any adjustments to the suit.)
>Attach the automated IV drip, let the suit administer painkillers as it sees fit.
>Turn off the automated systems, you’re not a fan of that voice.
>Plug your suit into the ballistic optics, see if the heads up displays are compatible.
>Leave the suit as is, no configurations necessary.
>Write in.

>>4580846
>It’s a longshot, but pull out that piece of alien spine you pulled out, and see if it interacts with the x-ray’s you saw coming from the dead controller.
>Attach the automated IV drip, let the suit administer painkillers as it sees fit.
>Plug your suit into the ballistic optics, see if the heads up displays are compatible.

You know, they call it morphine, but Gordon is never negatively impacted by it despite morphine hitting your system like a truck. Weird, right?

>>4580846
>Check on the other orange body while you’re poking dead things. How’d they die, and why are they wearing a different suit?
>Take a look at what the vorts did with the Xen Controller through x-rays, ask them what they’re trying to do, while waiting for the next anomaly.
>Attach the automated IV drip, let the suit administer painkillers as it sees fit.
>Plug your suit into the ballistic optics, see if the heads up displays are compatible.
Given how many government contracts Black Mesa had, I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to improve morphine to remove the negative effects, or if the ballistic optics are compatible.

>>4580846
>Check on the other orange body while you’re poking dead things. How’d they die, and why are they wearing a different suit?
>It’s a longshot, but pull out that piece of alien spine you pulled out, and see if it interacts with the x-ray’s you saw coming from the dead controller.
Let's not die like them so we can do Science.
>Plug your suit into the ballistic optics, see if the heads up displays are compatible.

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>>4580863
>>4581105
>>4581544
>Check on the other orange body while you’re poking dead things. How’d they die, and why are they wearing a different suit?
>It’s a longshot, but pull out that piece of alien spine you pulled out, and see if it interacts with the x-ray’s you saw coming from the dead controller.
>Attach the automated IV drip, let the suit administer painkillers as it sees fit.
>Plug your suit into the ballistic optics, see if the heads up displays are compatible

Seeing the painkiller drip across your wrist and palm, you bend your wrist back, pulling some of the veins outside the covering of the suit’s armored sleeve With your other hand, you grab the IV needle, looking for a sizable vein you can reach. Hoping that the alien goo has disinfectant properties as well as healing properties, you grit your teeth for a second as you shove the needle deep into a long blue vein.

With the medicine no longer spilling out, you kneel down and reach into your bag, feeling for the small cable you brought with the laptop. Pulling it out with one hand, you pull your advanced goggles off your head with the other. You quickly plug the cord into your goggles, then reach around the neck of the suit, looking for some sort of place where the suit would plug into the helmet, or other external devices. Finding a small slot, you plug the cord in, then pull the goggles over your eyes.

“Reading attachment.” The suit’s voice says in its breathy, high pitched voice. Before you, the usual digital image spat back at you behind the advanced goggles flickers off into darkness, with only the backlight providing a dim but harsh light. A moment later, the suit says, “Third Party Attachment detected. Acquiring metadata.” Suddenly, the hard drive you heard in the back of the suit grows a lot louder. The quiet sound is all the suit makes, before suddenly both of your eyes are flashed by two large circles made up of numerous scalene triangles with rounded undersides. Your suit suddenly pipes, “Warning! System read error detected!”

The apparent logo blinks rapidly before you for a second, then suddenly is replaced with two bold white words on each screen. “NICE TRY.” The image hangs just long enough for you to read it, before it’s suddenly replaced by the words “BLACK MESA.”

“Warning! System security error detected!” The suit adds once again, the second before you quickly pull the cord out of its socket.

What the hell, you think to yourself as you watch your goggles reboot. It’s just your luck that whoever made your goggles apparently hates Black Mesa. Not sure how something like that could get past the CIA, or why it would even be put in your optic’s firmware in the first place, you just hope that none of your data was corrupted by that nonsense.
(cont.)

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>>4582013
(cont.)
You hold your head for a second, slightly baffled by what just happened, and suddenly notice that you can’t make out the migraine anymore, or make out the twisting pain of the coming anomaly from the regular pain in your head. Under the morphine, it’s all blurring together into a dull background of pain that’s easy to ignore.

Finally done with the suit, and actually feeling a little sharper under the morphine in comparison to the constant pain of the migraine, you start walking back towards the ruined camp, where you see Kirchoff has himself begun to investigate the body stuck between two pires. Pointing his flashlight equipped gun into the crevice where the man’s hand sticks out, he slowly leans closer to the body. Having wanted to investigate it yourself, you ask the marine, “See anything Kirchoff?”


“A damn spaceman.” Kirchoff reports as he pokes the muzzle of his gun and gasmask through the inosculation. “His suit looks like something on an astronaut.” The marine steps back away from the hole, then says, “Take a look.”

You nod, then peak through the crack yourself. Attached to the rest of the hand is a body covered in an orange, baggy environment suit, not unlike the suits one would see on a shuttle crew, as opposed to the sleek alloy and fiber HEV suits you know Black Mesa for. The suit is bulky, making its user seem chubby and obtuse. On the shoulder an american flag is still proudly displayed by the old suit, however, the chest patch you would expect to display the NASA sigil shows instead the same odd Black Mesa sigil, with extra detail on the symbolized mesa.

The helmet seems to have been smashed in at some point in time, alongside many pieces of the suit being torn open, the visor was shattered open, and the helmet caved in along its seals. Below the body, there seems to be a rather large oxygen tank that at some point burst open, either due to time rusting it away, or something actively puncturing it. At some point, blood poured out of those holes, but by now, the blood has long since turned black and crusted over. Covering much of the bloodstains, mycelium has grown through it, feeding off the organic parts, leaving the corpse unidentifiable.

You step back out of the crevice between the two spikes, and say, “Weird that he wasn’t wearing one of these,” while tapping the suit on your own body.

“Could’ve been an older suit.” Kirchoff quips. “Explain the weird logo too.”

“Could be.” You say stepping away from the body. “The body’s definitely old. Vorts, how much more do you have to mess with that thing?” You ask as an idea pops into your head.

“We await.” Vorts responds. “The indicator is muffled.” The vortigaunt says, tapping on the left side of his head, where on your head, the migraine is dulled into nothing by morphine.
(cont.)

>>4582014
(cont.)
“Alright. Let me know when you’re done.” You respond, swinging your bag of kit around your shoulder, and reaching into it, fishing around your bag for the piece of alien spine. When you pull the specimen out, you pull off your hostile designed ballistic optics and swap them out for the multi-spectrum goggles, flicking the power on, having left them set to x-ray. Pulling them back down over your face, you once again spot the various rays spilling through the waterfalls, or pieces of life, most converging on a single spot in the far distance. The ray that meets the dead creature in the center of the camp seems to scatter into a circle, projected onto one of the marble like stone faces in the distance.

Pulling the alien spine out of the protective bag you placed it in, you move back over to the fall alien liquid, where you can clearly see the x-rays forming a large cone before the soon to be location of the portal. However, you also suddenly notice that the reflection of x-rays scattering on your suit is suddenly gone. Ignoring it for now, you move the alien spinal cord in your hand, and notice that, scattering in the water, a beam of x-rays are following it exactly like they followed you a few minutes ago, when the spinal cord was in a bag on your back.

Wanting to experiment further, you take the spinal cord towards the center of the cone, pulling it back a bit so you can watch if the scatter changes. However, among the varying shades of white and grey, you suddenly notice that new rays are refracting in the roaring water, following the same conical pattern as the existing rays. Playing with it some more, you also notice that wherever the rays overlap, they simply disappear.

“The Oppenheimer must use caution.” One of the vortigaunts says from behind.

Hearing that, you push your goggles up to your forehead, look back, and ask, “What’s the problem?” When you turn back around, you see the issue. The anomalies have begun again, and in the distance, you can see the still image of a suited Dr. Saulson, sitting on the ground for some reason. It’s hard to tell at a distance, but he’s either writing something, or reading it.

Far more pressing however is that the portals have begun to reopen. A large green orb sits against the marble like rock like before, however now that the vortigaunts have moved the Xen Controller’s body, which now points to the 192 angle, the orb has moved with it. It sits on a different rockface, 192 degrees away from the original spot. Even stranger is that up and to the left is a smaller orb. Staring at it, you begin to lower the alien’s spinal cord, then watch it lower at the same time.
(cont.)

>>4582018
(cont.)
“Expediency demands.” Vorty exclaims, still not keeping any control on the volume of his voice. The zombies once again roar out in agony.

Kirchoff, who is still enamoured with the ancient body of the explorer in the old sui, mutters “Why the hell would anyone put a camp here?”

>Don’t check out the new anomalies just yet, start to look through the tents. Try to find documents explaining what was going on here, or the source of those zombies.
>Start searching through the tents, but don’t focus on information, look for ammunition, medical supplies, or anything practical.
>Wade through the lagoon of alien liquid towards Dr. Saulson, see what he’s doing before this portal opens up.
>While you’ve got a spare on hand, see how the four types of exotic matter in your possession affect the way the alien spinal cord messes with the portal.
>Write in.
(Optionaly, respond to Kirchoff.)
>”What was it JFK said? Because it’s hard, not easy? I guess Black Mesa managed to one up that.”
>”Why does Black Mesa do anything? Research and government contracts. I’m sure something here can answer questions about the universe, or at least be sold to the DoD.”
>”Some people don’t understand when they’re not welcome. I don’t think Black Mesa’s research was welcome in our world either though.”
>”Science isn’t about why, Kirchoff.”
>”You’re telling me you don’t want to learn more about this place?”
>Write in.

>>4582020
>Wade through the lagoon of alien liquid towards Dr. Saulson, see what he’s doing before this portal opens up.
>Resources, Kirchoff. I'm betting the Administrator recognized just how much he could make by colonizing a section of this place and harvesting resources so rare that they practically don't exist in our universe. At the end of the day, Black Mesa is a for-profit organization, despite what many of the scientists would claim.

Can we see if the multi-spectrum goggles can hook up to the suit? They're a more scientifically-purposed headgear, so it might not have the same problems...

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It being christmas eve, my day is gonna be taken up by extended family, so the chances of a finished update today are low. I wanna wish all you guys a Merry Christmas though. Thank you guys for reading, and have a happy holiday. I'd also love to hear any feedback as always. Have a good one guys.

>>4582457
Merry Christmas.

>>4582457
Happy holidays ya filthy animal

Hope you guys had happy holidays.
>>4582052
>Wade through the lagoon of alien liquid towards Dr. Saulson, see what he’s doing before this portal opens up.
>Resources, Kirchoff. I'm betting the Administrator recognized just how much he could make by colonizing a section of this place and harvesting resources so rare that they practically don't exist in our universe. At the end of the day, Black Mesa is a for-profit organization, despite what many of the scientists would claim.
>Can we see if the multi-spectrum goggles can hook up to the suit? They're a more scientifically-purposed headgear, so it might not have the same problems…

“Resources, Kirchoff.” You say, taking a look at your multi-spectrum optics. Bad luck would have it that whoever manufactured your ballistic optics seems to hate Black Mesa with a criminal passion, to the point where they’re willing to takes risks with CIA acquisition to send insults to a technology team. “I’d bet Breen realized just how much money he could make colonizing a part of this place. There are natural resources out here that are so rare in our world they might as well not exist.” As you say this, you continue to fiddle with the multispectrum goggles. All of your equipment is deliberately left with few identifying markings, spy gear is designed not to be tracked. As you walk and talk with Kirchoff, you pull the cord out of your ballistic goggles, and plug one end back into the suit, before connecting it to the optics.

“Reading attachment.” The suit pipes. You keep a close eye on the goggle’s dual screen, watching for flashing. It’s rather insane that someone would tamper with military and scientific hardware in such a way, but if you were to guess as to why, it seems they don’t like Black Mesa very much, and as such have put in some sort of system to prevent either corporate espionage, or compatibility.

“It’s a laboratory.” Kirchoff responds as you look over the device, pulling out a small side panel to search for identifying information. “Don’t need a whole village to bring back rocks and plants.”

“Black Mesa’s a for profit organization. The physicists might say otherwise, but they’re their to fulfill government contracts.” You explain, as you wade through the alien lagoon, glancing once again at the goggle’s screens, still seeing no change. “If they’re willing to sell weapon platforms to the US government, they can see the money in exotic matter…:” for a moment, you glance down to the water around your feet, then continue, “...or whatever the hell else you can find out here.”
(cont.)

>>4583343
(cont.)
Looking up ahead towards the still image of Dr. Saulson as you walk forwards, and distracted by the conversation with Kirchoff, you don’t notice anything happening with your goggles for a few seconds, making the voice of your new HEV suit a shocker. “Warning! System security error detected!” The breathy voice once again warns, immediately drawing your attention to the now flashing screens of your multi-spectrum goggles. You pull them up to your face once again, and see the very same logo flashing before your eyes. Knowing what’s gonna happen next, you immediately pull out the cord, preventing whatever anti-competitor system was built into this suit. No dice, whoever made your ballistic optics also made the multi-spectrum optics. You’re not particularly surprised, they both have the same sleek look, and seem to use the same tech. Regardless, heads will roll for a “feature” like that. You ought to find out whose logo that is when this is all over.

You quietly swear to yourself, shaking the thing in frustration before you place your old ballistic goggles onto your forehead, leaving it all unconnected from the HEV suit.

As you continue to wade through the lagoon, you look up towards the growing eye of various colors in the center of the orb. Those blue, exotic gasses from earlier are building up around the edge of the portal. Because of the morphine drip, your constant indication of coming anomalies is gone, so you failed to notice how soon the coming anomaly was.

Approaching the scientist from behind, you see that at some point during his time since you last saw him, he’s acquired a notebook, along with a pen. With his hazmat suit still broken open, the man is keeping his distance from the coming portal. Although… you’re not sure if he’s actually near the same portal he's near in your time.

Regardless, you approach the repeat of Dr. Saulson, telling Kirchoff, “Keep an eye on the portal.”

Kirchoff nods, then points his gun at it like it was the door to a potential terrorist safehouse.

Looking over the scientists shoulder, most of the writings on his notebook are far too blurry to make out individual. However, judging by the general structure of the writings, and the geometric shapes scattered around as well, it seems to be some sort of mathematic equation. However on the right page, where he hasn’t done much calculating, he’s begun to write something else out.
(cont.)

>>4583344
(cont.)
“Any-” is the only visible word from your angle on the paper, however suddenly, without the usual warning of the twisting migraine reaching a breaking point, then releasing, his hand begins to move, continually scribbling over the slightly torn and decrepit notebook. In the same moment, you hear pebbles, dust, and small chunk of fungi get thrown around as the portal pulse one last time. The hole of distorted color suddenly tears open ten meters away from you, causing Kirchoff to shift in his stance as spacetime opens up.

The space beyond the portal is dark, just like the anomalous materials labs. However, just glancing beyond it, it certainly doesn’t seem anymore normal than this place. Beyond the portal, globs of some sort of fluid floating like it were in space. It seems to levitate in a short mechanical corridor, which itself ends with a massive broken window, connecting to another hallway.

Glancing back down to Saulson, you see he’s written a lot more, until suddenly he stands up, displaying the notebook to no-one.

“Anyone?” The right page of the book reads, held along the crease. His other hand holds a pen out. He’s looking around, turning in different directions, but seeing his facial expressions, you can tell he doesn’t expect anything at this point, although he’s definitely intending for someone to grab the book. He wants someone to talk to him from the future, whether or not that will work is another question entirely in his mind.

From experience with these anomalies, you know you don’t have much time for a long conversation through text. You should be careful with your questions.

>”Don’t touch him, let’s just get a move on.” Move through the portal.
>Grab the pen and notebook, and write “What are you doing here?”
>Write out, “What is this place?”
>Write out, “Where’s the others?”
>Write out, “How did we get here?”
>Write out, “What are you calculating?”
>Write out, “Stay here, CIA.”
>Write out, “Stay here, friends.”
>Write in.

>>4583345
>Write out, “Stay here, friends.”
Time to meet Saulson.
...Hopefully he's smart enough to know to hide in a place like this, rather than wait around openly.

>>4583345
>Write out, “Stay here, friends.”
I wonder how he got separated from the rest of the team.

>>4583548
>>4584031
>Write out, “Stay here, friends.”

Seeing the scientist spin around with the book in his hands and a worried look in his eyes as the portal idly spits exotic gasses around him and the group, you reach out as he turns the book towards you. At first, you just grasp it gently, before giving it a tug just solid enough for him to notice. You see a moment of confusion, then surprise flush through his expressions as he lets go of the book, then the pen as you snatch at it. With the dulling effects of the migraine, the objects almost feel slimy as their surface is slightly less corporeal than the rest of it. Your fingers dig millimeters into the plastic of the ancient, cracked pen, despite the pen not deforming an inch.

“Now that's…” Kirchoff mutters to himself, seeing you pull the book, “That’s gotta look weird from his angle.” The marine chuckles from under his gas mask.

You hold the book at an awkward angle in front of your chest to ensure the physicist can see it, even as he steps back concerned. Carefully, you start by writing out the word, “Stay,” in big, bold letters.

When you’re halfway through the word “Here,” he suddenly, asks, “Do you have any radiation equipment?”

Finishing the word “Here,” you add a slightly smaller “Y” to your message. Getting the message, you see a wave of relief wash over the scientists face. The physicist then asks, “Are you with the government, the people helping us?”

To your right, with his gun still pointed towards the portal, you hear Kirchoff shift awkwardly, probably remembering the orders he was made to carry out before joining up with your squad. A moment later, he suddenly mutters, “Wait…”

You know Saulson knows the marine’s out to kill him. You saw them shooting at him through an anomaly earlier. Judging by how solid the anomaly is, there’s no way these events are happening before that either. He’s feigning ignorance, hoping any potential marines reading will see an easy target, and answer honestly. Realizing this, you write down the word, “Friends,” before drawing a small lambda symbol next to it.

After writing your message, you glance to Kirchoff, and say, “He knows. Feigning ignorance.”

“Huh…” Kirchoff responds. “Good for him.”

Reading what you scribbled in between the lines of mathematical equations, you don’t see any tensions clear from the scientists face. “Okay.” He responds. He seems a little too confident in his trick. “I’ve got people waiting on me in the test chamber. If you want me to wait here, I’d rather not sit around. Anything you need me to do? And you’re sure you’re not with the government?” Asking that last question, he sounds like he’s expecting the government.
(cont.)

>>4584165
(cont.)
“You’re having him stay in this place?” Kirchoff asks suddenly. “For how long?”


“Only until we arrive.” You respond.

“You sure that’s safe?” Kirchoff responds. “You heard that voice right? It sounded like it was everywhere. Could be watching us now.”

“A distraction presents.” Vorty says from behind. “We see clearly.”

The physicists suit is currently broken, he’s gonna need to find a new one if you want to move out with him. While on one hand, instinct tells you that the civilians need to hide, the fate of the country rests on you being quick. It might be better to have him look for anything you might need to move out. At the same time, Kirchoff brings up a point that does incite some fear

>Take a gamble, see if he recognizes these names, “With Agent Poskanzer, and Captain Wells. Familiar?”
>Just tell him, “Hide, will meet you here,” then wait for the timeline to change. Don’t take any risks.
>Write out, ”Find replacement suit,” hopefully he’ll have something by the time you arrive.
>On second thought, write ”Go through portal, wait there.” Hopefully he’s more afraid of aliens than radiation.
>You’re curious what he’s calculating. Ask him, “What are you calculating? Keep brief!”
>Write out, “Collect documents from camp.” You wanna know what this camp was about.
>Write in.
(Optionally, respond to Kirchoff and the vorts.)
>”Kirchoff, are you suggesting the voice we heard was a god? The CIA can provide psychological therapy when this is over if you need.”
>”Something’s watching us Kirchoff, I can tell you that for sure, but the question is whether it’s watching Saulson.”
>”Kirchoff, look around you. We’re probably tiny little blips in this world. If that voice was omniscient, it’s big enough not to care about us.”
>”This whole trip has been horrifying Kirchoff, you’re probably right.”
>”Honestly Kirchoff, I think the aliens are as scared as we are.”
>”A final stroke? The voice said Freeman? What is that orange bastard doing?”
>Write in.

>>4584166
>Write out, ”Find replacement suit,” hopefully he’ll have something by the time you arrive.
>Append "2 using gov. equip; im gabby. 3 friendly xenos" so that he, hopefully, knows not to shoot based on appearances. Who knows, he might recognize your name too.
>”A final stroke? The voice said Freeman? What is that orange bastard doing?”

>>4584166
>Write out, ”Find replacement suit,” hopefully he’ll have something by the time you arrive.
>”A final stroke? The voice said Freeman? What is that orange bastard doing?”

I really hate doing this because I wanted winter break to be faster than when I had college, but I need to take another break today, sorry guys. I got some personal shit going on at the moment, I just can't focus on writing. Apologies.

>>4584180
>>4584503
>Write out, ”Find replacement suit,” hopefully he’ll have something by the time you arrive. (2)
>”A final stroke? The voice said Freeman? What is that orange bastard doing?” (2)
>Append "2 using gov. equip; im gabby. 3 friendly xenos" so that he, hopefully, knows not to shoot based on appearances. Who knows, he might recognize your name too. (1)

You quickly begin to write out the words “Find replacement suit,” onto the notebook, ignoring Kirchoff’s protests. Instead, you idly ask the vortigaunts, “What do you mean a final stroke? Does it have something to do with Freeman?” As you write and talk at the same time, you’re beginning to enjoy the presence of the suit’s morphine, or more aptly, the lacking presence of the migraine. “The voice mentioned him, what’s the orange bastard doing?”

“The Freeman liberates.” One of the vortigaunts responds.

“Liberation may destroy.” Vorty suddenly adds from behind. “This one suggests haste.”

Your ever suspicious mind finds it interesting how your old vortal friend says, “This one suggests,” instead of his usual manner of presenting every statement as fact. Finishing up your message, you ask, “He’s liberating you? How’s he doing that?”

“Masters challenged.” A vortigaunt replies, still not fully explaining. “The nihilanth’s chamber.”

“Freeman’s killing your master?” You ask, and watch the vortigaunts nod yes.

Saulson, reading over your message from the past, looks nervously over to the tents, takes a breath, then responds, “Alright, yeah, this old place has to have one or two left over. I’m gonna flash my flashlight when the anomaly ends. What should I look for?”

“Using gov equip,” you write out, not wanting to scare the man off, you see a small amount of concern build in his blurry facial expressions before you get to adding the words, “Friendly Xenos.

“I see.” He responds, oddly sounding even more trusting than before, before reaching towards. He holds it, doesn’t take it, giving a protective eye to every place you’re writing has overlapped his old calculations. “Damnit.” The physicist exclaims. “I need this back, I’ll explain it to you when we meet.”

You “nod” the scientific journal once, before you let Saulson have his book back. The scientist gives you a nod, then says, “I better get looking you can’t be far off.”

The scientist begins to move out, towards the camp, nervously wading through the alien water towards the abandoned old place. From his slow, awkwards gait moving towards the collection of tents and floating boulders, it’s as if he’s scared of it. You’d think that after running from marines, and threatening aliens at gunpoint, he wouldn’t be scared of an abandoned camp, occupied only by the threat of zombies.
(cont.)

>>4586339
(cont.)
Without the presence of the migraine giving you an advanced warning of the anomalous events, it’s odd watching him begin to fade. However, after he disappears towards the camp you begin to feel that familiar pain in your skull trickle in again. The twisting pain of the migraine pushes through the suit’s painkillers, and you feel that familiar tightening grip on your temple once again. From behind you, you hear one of the vortigaunts chanting, before the suit fills your ears.

“Neurological trauma detected. Morphine administered. Seek medical attention.” In a second, your focus blurs as the anodyne is pumped into your system once again. Your hit by a wave of confusion for a second, as euphoria washes over you. When your focus returns, you don’t feel much less sharper than before, but still have a smile on your face. The vortigaunt’s chants have stopped, and Saulson’s repeat is gone.

“Kirchoff, you see a flashlight anywhere?” You ask immediately, looking around the camps, the floating boulders, atop the rocks, and the crevices around.

The marine stays silent for a moment, as the both of you begin to look around for the scientists signal. Glancing around, there’s no flashing lights, no hands being thrown in the air, nor does he call out to you. Concerned, you flick night vision on, and use your optics to get a magnified look around the place. Pan around the kinds of places a civilian would know where to look, however as you pass between spots, you spot an orange figure darting his head around the place, with baffled body language.

“Saulson?” You say loudly to the suited figure, causing his bubbled helmet to dart in your direction. He’s not suited in the same advanced HEV suit as you. Rather, he’s dressed in one of the old space-suit designs you saw on a damn near ancient corpse. “Saulson?” You call out again.

“What the hell?” He responds. “You were right over here you just… you feel alright?”

“What?” Kirchoff responds, as the both of you begin to move closer, instinctively leaving hands near your holsters, “We just told you to find a suit and suit tight. Then you appeared?”

Saulson is totally silent for a moment, and at this distance, through the helmet, you can’t even make out his face, let alone try to read his expressions. “You just… you just messed with the book just now? Do you… remember the conversation we just had?”

“No.” You respond.

“You were just over here… and you-”
(cont.)

Apologies for the delay.
>>4586341
(cont.)
>-were letting him know you work for the Central Intelligence Agency, and asking him if he had met the other half of your team.
>-were trying to find out why Saulson was here, separated from Magnusson’s team.
>-was asking him all sorts of scientific questions, about what was going on with the test chamber, the anomalies, and supersymmetry.
>-were hoping to know if he had any sort of knowledge about this old camp.
>Interrupt Saulson. “Okay, slow down. You’re a physicist. I don’t know what’s going on.”
>Interrupt Saulson, “Whatever happened, it’s another scientific anomaly to make my headache worse. Whoever you talked to wasn’t me.”
>Write in.

>>4586344
>Interrupt Saulson, and tell him that you don't have much time. Hand him the rad-suite and tell him we've got to get a move on, since this place might destabilize soon...we can explain things to each other as we move.

>>4586344
>-were letting him know you work for the Central Intelligence Agency, and trying to figure out why Saulson was here, separated from Magnusson's team.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>4586475(1)
>>4587266(2)
Tiebreaker roll.

>>4586475
>>4587266
>-were letting him know you work for the Central Intelligence Agency, and trying to figure out why Saulson was here, separated from Magnusson's team.

“-were telling me that you work for the central intelligence agency.” He explains. “I met one of your colleagues in the test chamber.” He begins to hold his hands up and in front of him, as if just now reminded of the fact that you’re armed. “You remember any of that at all?”

“I don’t remember any of that.” You respond, keeping a stern tone, but moving your hand away from your gun. Instead, you move your hand over to your bag, where the anti-radiation medication you gave the man is sitting safely. “What else did we talk about. Are you sure that was really me?”

“Portals starting to act weird again.” Kirchoff responds. “Lot quicker than last time.”

“We haven’t observed any pattern whatsoever. If there is one it’s been convenient.” Saulson comments, while looking to Kirchoff, before looking back to you, “Well... “ He shakes his head for a moment, clearly baffled by what just happened before him. “He looks the same.” Saulson responds, pointing over to the marine next to you, in the same baggy uniform he’s been in since you arrived in the laboratory, “And you sound the same? Where’d you get the suit?”

“From the camp.” You respond, keeping the answer as minimal as possible. Reaching into your bag, you repeat, “What else did we talk about before I… disappeared, as you said?”

“Uhm… You wanted to know why I was separated from the rest of the physicists.” He responds. “I got to telling you that the anti-mass spectrometer was split in two parts, then you disappeared. Just faded, like the anomalies do. I thought you were dead until you started calling me.”

“Fascinating?” Kirchoff suddenly pipes, sounding ever so slightly like one of the many Einstein types that occupy Black Mesa.

“No. Horrifying.” The physicist responds. “Do you feel any different?”

“No.” You respond. “I didn’t experience anything. What else were you gonna say before I faded? We’ve got some time before the portal opens again.” As you say that, you get to reach into your bag, “I promised I’d provide medication for radiation sickness when we met.” Pulling out a small container of assorted pills, you toss them over to the scientist as he wades through the water, who grabs them with a fumbling catch.

When he looks back up to you, he says, “Nothing? That is fascinating…” He glances at the pills for a moment, then says, “Right... I was gonna tell you that the entire test chamber is completely flooded with some sort of exotic ionized gas. “
(cont.)

>>4587616
(cont.)
“Huh?” Kirchoff responds.

“Native conditions.” One of the vortigaunts mutters. “We are unharmed.”

“Sorry. A gas that’s dissolving everything. It will break down your air filter, then your lungs. Someone needed to go down to the bottom half of the system and manually vent it all to the surface if we’re gonna get a good look inside.” He explains. “I volunteered.” He begins to pull at the cap to the medicine you got him, before saying, “Portals almost open… I don’t remember one being there…” As he pulls his helmet up slightly, you see his eyes darting around the place fascinated. When he puts it back down, he says, “This is…” Trailing off, baffled by everything around him, and what he apparently saw.

“The Oppenheimer must show haste.” One of the vortigaunts responds from behind. Drawing your attention back. Once again, the portal is nearly torn open. With one last pulse, the small eye in the center of the green orb growing with blue gas suddenly being spit out in a swirling funnel. Beyond the hole in spacetime, you can see the same space as before. A fluid lervitates in a corridor, seemingly above some sort of pit or pool. Beyond it, glass is shattered turning where the space splits into a hallway. Occasionally, old emergency lights flicker, and the red lights glare off millions of small shards of glass floating through the air.

>No more delay. Poke your head through to feel the gravity, then dive right in.
>Take out the alien spine from earlier, point it around. See how it affects an already opened portal.
>”Saulson, you’re wearing the space suit, why don’t you step into zero gravity first?”
>Don’t move forwards just yet. Take some time to ask more questions.
>Ask if the vorts if there are any other options. There were two other plagues, weren’t there?
>Write in.
(Optionally, ask Saulson any questions.)
>”You mentioned there was some sort of ion gas you needed to vent? Tell me more about that. How do we detect it, what does it look like?”
>”Do you know anything about this place? The camp, the… whole universe we’re in right now? Are we in the same universe? Is this place safe.”
>”How much can you explain about these time anomalies, the portals. The vorts have been mentioning something called metastability, do you know what that means?”
>”What did you do in Black Mesa? Were you in the anomalous materials team?”
>”You said I was here, then disappeared? What happened? From the top. When did you first see me?
>Write in.

>>4587618
>No more delay. Poke your head through to feel the gravity, then dive right in.
>”How much can you explain about these time anomalies, the portals. The vorts have been mentioning something called metastability, do you know what that means?”
>"Does the science team have any good plans for closing it up yet? If not, the xenos with us seem to have some ideas, but they're not the best at explaining things."

>>4587618
>No more delay. Poke your head through to feel the gravity, then dive right in.
>”How much can you explain about these time anomalies, the portals. The vorts have been mentioning something called metastability, do you know what that means?”
Hopefully we're done mukkin' about with the timey-wimey ball, so no more disappearing.

>>4587705
>>4588245
>No more delay. Poke your head through to feel the gravity, then dive right in.
>”How much can you explain about these time anomalies, the portals. The vorts have been mentioning something called metastability, do you know what that means?”

“Kirchoff, I’m gonna get closer, I want you to hold my suit by the back of the collar, I don’t know what the gravity is gonna be like on the other side, need to make sure I don’t fall.” You command to your marine ally, who nods, before asking Saulson, “Before I poke my head in, do you know anything about these things? Are they connected to the anomalies?”

“Probably. Yes. We haven’t had the time to experiment, but the base of the mesa has noticed some similar effects on the subatomic scale.” He explains. “They were finding particles after they had ceased to exist, along with an extra dose of radiation. There was a working hypothesis from the lambda that… the anomalies are..” he holds his hands in front of himself for a moment trying to convert whatever he’s trying to say in layman’s terms, “essentially holes in time. Have you ever heard of wormholes?”

“Is this one?” Kirchoff asks, glancing to the portal.

“Probably.” The scientist responds.

“Probably?” The marine responds.

“Probably.” Saulson states confidently, before continuing, “The anomalies, I think, are the effect of space-time being more malleable than it should be. What you’re seeing in the anomalies is most likely an incomplete wormhole, made partially useful through quantum tunneling.”

As you walk closer to the anomaly, you turn around, giving the physicist a curious look. “What does that mean?”

“When a particle approaches a barrier, there’s a certain chance that it will be able to bass that barrier, even if it doesn’t have enough energy.” He begins to explain, getting closer to the portal himself.

As he explains this, you’re right up next to the portal. Not wanting to interrupt the physics lesson, you give Kirchoff a thumbs up, and then feel his hand on the back of your suit’s collar. You begin to slowly lean forwards, focusing on your sense of gravity hoping to feel how gravity shift.

“I think that the four dimensional wormholes we’re seeing out here aren’t complete, but close enough that when you reach your hand towards it, there’s a decent chance that particles on either side will interact. Across millions of molecules, this dampens any force that affects it.”

“How sure are you about this theory?” You ask, as you poke your bringing a small warbling sound, as though you broke through some kind of threshold.

“I’m not.” Saulson responds. “I’d need a team of mathematicians to even call it a theory.”
(cont.)

>>4588734
(cont.)
“This is a wormhole too right?” You ask, glancing around the space beyond the portal. Now up close, and all around you, you see small droplets of whatever liquid is collected into large blobs floating freely. Some drift towards the portal, eventually crossing the threshold, bending slightly, before being pulled to the ground. As more and more of your body feels weightless, you tell Kirchoff, “You can let me go.”

He lets go of your suit, and despite leaning way to far into the portal to stay balanced, you have no trouble remaining balanced. From the waist up, where your body enters the portal, you’re totally weightless somehow. You’d be baffled if this entire day hadn’t been one physical impossibility after another.

“Yeah.” Saulson responds affirmatively to your earlier question, as you pull your whole body through the portal, gripping to small pieces of piping on the other side, needing to reach your hand slightly into the incredibly cold liquid on the other side.

Saulson continues explaining, “Whatever energy is allowing the anomalies are overloading them, making them large enough for a human to come through, and enough to create…” he looks around his legs, where the glowing light blue gas spills past, “whatever this gas is. Ionized or… radioactive something.”

“Alright, the portal’s safe.” You announce to your team. “No more hanging around, get through.” You begin to command them in, despite being incredibly uneasy with the lack of any weight or any knowledge of what direction is up.You’re not sure what this place was originally, but at some point, globs of sticky, ice cold liquid came to float around it. As the creature’s move through, you ask Saulson, “These things have been asking a lot about something called metastability and supersymmetry. That have anything to do with these portals?”

“Probably. Although I don’t think they know that.” The physicist responds. “We’re in a metastable state right now, with an excess of fermions. That typically makes things like quantum tunneling and wormholes a lot easier. Normally it would boil the universe, but something is preventing that.”

“A temporary solution.” Vorty suddenly grumbles. “Temporal venting.”

“What?” Saulson replies through his black, bubble helmet.

Two pylons tower through the tunnel, filled with electrical equipment you don’t recognize for a second. Oddly enough, the device never seems to touch neither the ground, nor the ceiling, rather, connected to what you think are the walls of this oblong tunnel by struts placed periodically.
(cont.)

>>4588736
(cont.)
From within the place however, you’re able to make out a little more of his “corridor,” or rather some piece of a massive electrical machine. “Below” you, it descends like a long tube, where the liquid grows more common, often sticking to the walls in little splodges. Where the splodges of cold gray liquid grow the most common, holes have been dug, clearly by the same thing that dug the holes near the locker rooms.

Where there was once glass opposite the portal, there’s now only shards that hang in the air. Up ahead, you swear you hear the sound of talons against concrete and steel, then, in the distance, you hear an odd insectoid hiss, muffled by layers of concrete and steel.

As the vortigaunts file through behind you, stepping haphazardly through the portal, only to squirm in midair as they suddenly find themselves no longer in contact with any surface.

“I need you guys to take me to the emergency ventilation controls. No one’s getting in the test chamber for more than a few minutes if you don’t.” You hear Saulson ask from behind you. “I think I can find them out here.”

As you consider your next move, one of the vortigaunts gets a grasp on one of the large pylons, before pushing himself down towards the organic holes below.

>Fear not aliens, nor broken glass. Push through the floating shards of broken glass, through the hallway.
>Set your optics to thermal, and bang your gun against the metal. Make some noise, look for a response.
>Get a closer look at the electronic devices, poking through it where you can to see if you can determine what this place is.
>Kick yourself down towards the bottom of the oblong tunnel, and get a close look at those organic burrows. What’s inside? What made them?
>Write in.
(Optionally, talk to your team.)
>”Vorty, recognize that sound?”
>Respond to Saulson, ”Depends. You said it would vent an exotic gas to the surface. How much? How far will it spread?”
>Respond to Saulson, “We’ve gotta get in there too, so unless there’s another way I guess we have too.”
>Respond to Saulson, with a bit of a bluff, “Cut you a deal, we’ll help you get in, but you need to think of a good way to fix all of this.”
>”CIA never trained me for this shit. Kirchoff, you know how to fight in zero gravity? Saulson? Any tips?”
>"Saulson, you sure you don’t have any idea what that vortigaunt is saying? I think he’s trying to suggest a solution."
>Write in.

>>4588737
>Get a closer look at the electronic devices, poking through it where you can to see if you can determine what this place is.
Knowing where we are will help us find the ventilation.
>Respond to Saulson, “We’ve gotta get in there too, so unless there’s another way I guess we have to.”

I apologize guys, but there's not gonna be an update today. I've got family plans for new years eve, so I don't think I'm gonna have time. I'd love to hear any feedback in the meantime, and have a happy new year guys.

>>4588747
>Get a closer look at the electronic devices, poking through it where you can to see if you can determine what this place is.
>Respond to Saulson, “We’ve gotta get in there too, so unless there’s another way I guess we have to.”

Beginning to get your bearings on this zero-gravity environment, you push up against the pipe you were clinging onto, rolling your entire body around before kicking gently off the wall towards the center of the corridor, grasping at one of the ruined pillar of electronics that sits suspending in the center of the oblong corridor. Using the light from the blue, luminous fog slung out of the portal, you look over one half of the massive electronic device. With frayed wires sticking out of busted panels, you’re careful to keep the metal plates of your HEV a hand’s length away from the device, slowly floating around it, looking for any sort of identification. Some of the panels have buckled out of their positions, pushing out on rails to reveal drawers full of small golden tubes. Occasionally, small amounts of text are readable at the bulk of the shelves, occasionally reading off codes, all containing starting with the string “24QUBIT.”

“We don’t have much of a choice.” Pushing yourself lower, to the midsection of the twin machine, where each pylon’s many rows of drawers is bisected by bold text. “We’ve gotta get in the test chamber as well, so unless there’s another way then I guess we have to.”

“Well… with the HEV suit, you’d have… maybe five minutes for each charge?” Saulson responds as you read out the text, wiping away dust, glass shards, and coolant from the machine, revealing the scratched words, “UPPER RAW DATA PROCESSING.” Looking to your left, you only the see the words “LOWER RA-” before the sentence disappears behind the curve of the machine. You don’t have to move to know that it says, “LOWER RAW DATA PROCESSING.”

As you look over it, Saulson continues on, “You might be able to still get something done in the chamber without venting it. It’d be insane but it’s still an option.”

“The Oppenheimer wishes secrecy.” Vorty responds.

You had never been in this part of the Anomalous Materials labs, but after spying on the place under the cover of a security guard, you remember seeing the words, “RAW DATA PROCESSING,” inside of a area color coded light blue to stand for, “COMPUTATION.” Depending on which way is currently not being covered by the portal, the broken window right next to you will either bring you to “MONITORING AND SECONDARY CONTROLS,” or “APPROXIMATION”

“What?” You hear Saulson ask in response to Vorty.

“Grand dispersal.” Vorty responds. “A beacon.”
(cont.)

(cont.)
Interrupting their conversation, you quickly ask Saulson, “What section of the labs were the vent controls?”

“The control computers are connected to the inner workings through maintenance tunnels. Right past Keller’s monitoring room is a big sort of supercomputer bank that processes commands. Needs to be cooled so it’s not worth even trying the digital controls.” The scientist explains.

Still, you have a vague idea of how to get there, you remember the secondary controls aren’t too far away from here. If what Saulson is saying about the manual controls, you should be able to get there. Wanting to confirm it, you ask, “Should we just move for the secondary controls?”

“With all the radiation they’d be locked off. You’d have to tear the door down. I think we should go to the Approximation computers. They’re all cooled the same so they’re connected by air vents.” You begin to notice as Saulson speaks, he sounds a lot more calm than the last time you met him, now that he’s gotten over the initial confusion of the anomaly. You remember when he first met the vortigaunts, or was collecting the LIGA, he was the most paranoid of the science team’s bunch, holding that glock like a child holds their teddy bear in a stressful situation. In fact, you don’t even see the glock on him anymore.

Distantly, you hear the alien hissing once again, this time, sounding slightly closer.

As the portal behind you begins to close, the alien gas dispersing down black mesa’s dark corridors, you suddenly hear one of the vortigaunts down below begin to scramble. Looking down, you catch the creature's two hooves pushing into the vent. It’s body disappears, then it’s head pops right back out of the alien burrough. “Come.” The vortigaunt says. “Livestock finds its way.”

Even without being able to see Saulson or Kirchoff’s faces, the sheer stillness of their body language as they stare down at the smooth, yellow glowing hole shows their confusion well enough.

>Don’t trust Saulson. Try to find Keller’s monitoring room, and get to the manual controls from there.
>Go Saulson’s route, find the approximation computers, and move through the maintenance ducts to get to the vent controls.
>Vorts have never lead you wrong, go with the wildcard and follow the vortigaunt into the small alien tunnel.
>Don’t go anywhere just yet.
>Write in.
(Optionally, talk to your party.)
>”Saulson, you didn’t come into contact with any aliens while you were looking for your suit, did you?”
>”Saulson, what’s gonna happen to these gasses after they’re vented? It have anything to do with ‘grand dispersal’?”
>”Vorts, that tunnel wouldn’t have been built by the same thing hissing at us, would it?”
>”Saulson, does 24QUBIT mean anything to you? What kind of data is this stuff processing?”
>Write in.

>>4590664
>Vorts have never lead you wrong, go with the wildcard and follow the vortigaunt into the small alien tunnel.
>”Saulson, you didn’t come into contact with any aliens while you were looking for your suit, did you? Or maybe a bureaucrat that vaguely looks and acts like something wearing a human suit?"

>>4590664
>Vorts have never lead you wrong, go with the wildcard and follow the vortigaunt into the small alien tunnel.
>”Saulson, you didn’t come into contact with any aliens while you were looking for your suit, did you? Or maybe a bureaucrat that vaguely looks and acts like something wearing a human suit?"
Spread the paranoia

>>4590678
>>4591063
>Vorts have never lead you wrong, go with the wildcard and follow the vortigaunt into the small alien tunnel.
>”Saulson, you didn’t come into contact with any aliens while you were looking for your suit, did you? Or maybe a bureaucrat that vaguely looks and acts like something wearing a human suit?"

You push yourself off the massive, unorthodox dual computers, floating downwards and occasionally scraping through the massive blobs of ice cold industrial liquid. “Saulson, you didn’t come into contact with aliens while you were looking for a new suit, did you?”

“No.” He responds confidently. “Are we… going in there?” All of a sudden, he does sound a little worried.

Not yet answering his question, you ask, “Are you sure? Maybe a bureaucracy that looked and acted vaguely like something wearing a human suit?”

“What?” the scientist responds confused, but also with yet another quiver in his voice. “What do you mean… like… bodysnatchers?”

“Anything that didn’t seem fully human?” Kirchoff asks, supporting your line of questioning as he begins to sound suspicious himself.

“I didn’t see anything out there.” He responds.

“What happened to your gun, Saulson?” You ask, as you peer into the hole the vortigaunt crawled into, watching him scramble ahead. The concrete has been glossed by whatever dug the hole, leaving a yellow shine and a smooth surface in the hole, alone with small bundles of tangled silky material clinging to the many uneven divots littering the tunnel wall. “I didn’t see it on you.”

Behind you, you hear the sounds of Saulson’s suit being slapped and patted. Glancing over your shoulder and up the tunnel, you see the man free floating as he pats down parts of his suit, feeling for his old gun somewhere beneath. He searches over his own body for a minute, muttering to himself before he sighs in annoyance. “Lost it. Damn it.”

“Do you remember how you might’ve lost it?” You ask, as you start to climb into the alien’s tunnel, seeing the vortigaunt at the other end ahead, blocking off any vision as to what’s on the other end of the tunnel with its massive cyclopean eye, occasionally reaching a hand inside to beckon you forwards.

“Errhmmm... “ Saulson pauses to think for a moment, starting to sound more worried again. “I was more focused on the world. Probably fell out of my pocket when I was putting the suit on.”

From behind, you hear Kirchoff say, “Probably? So you don’t remember when you lost it?”

“It probably just fell out of my pocket, I didn’t have a holster.” Saulson responds defensively.

Kirchoff doesn’t say anything, but as you crawl into the alien tunnel, you hear Saulson quickly shuffling in behind you, as though urged ahead. Behind him, you hear Kirchoff groan as he crawls through the zero gravity into the tunnel.
(cont.)

>>4591982
(cont.)
As you slide through the slick alien tunnel, you begin to feel gravity pressure against your back, and start to realize that gravity has begun to push you towards the ceiling. Before you’re left in a tight space like a flipped over turtle, you push slightly off the ceiling, and roll your body, to leave your elbows facing away from where you think is the center of the earth as you crawl forwards.

Ahead, the Vortigaunt that had moved through the corridor moves out of the way, revealing a small cubby behind him illuminated by an orange-yellow light source you can’t see. At the end of the tunnel, you poke your head out to find the place absolutely coated in the same silky material that dotted the tunnel. Flicking your night vision back on, it still takes a second for you to realize this cubby is not as organic as the chemically dug hole behind you. As you crawl out, you notice a grate below the silk covering underneath you, buckled and broken above the corridor. While the grate doesn’t complain from the weight of Saulson, Kirchoff dropping into the meter high, six by ten maintenance cubby causes what was once a grate in the floor to groan as anomalous gravity pulls you to the ceiling of the corridor below.

Ignoring the grate’s protests, two more vortigaunts, including vorty, continue in behind your human allies, leaving you all packed into the spot like sardines, and causing the grate to bend below you, likely only held up by the silky material lining this place.

“Why the hell did we come here?” Saulson mutters, sounding irritated more than nervous.

Worried the place might be about to fall, you start to look around for ways out. Other than the way you came, the path splits as a pipe once ram through this small maintenance cubby, now bursted open, with the shards nestled in the webbing of alien silk. Looking down one end, you just see darkness, but the other is clearly illuminated. Down the opposite end you can see the center of one of the same orange orbs you saw earlier, hovering slightly, but not yet opening to any sort of portal. You don’t yet know if that fact will totally prevent you from using it to teleport.

Looking aroudn elsewhere, you begin to see small, dim lights glaring in your night-vision, nestled deep into the silky webbing. Pulling the goggles off for better clarity, you tell Kirchoff, “Flashlight.”

Quickly, the man scrambles as you spot red lights shining through, trying to catch a glimpse of their source. In the distance, you hear an alien hiss once more, muffled by the walls, but definitely louder than before.

“Why did we listen to these things?” Saulson suddenly exclaims.
(cont.)

>>4591983
(cont.)
A second later, Kirchoff flicks a flashlight on, and you’re able to make out some strange objects nestled in the alien webs. Around, or attached to the red light is some black metal, alongside an amorphous lump of yellow-green flesh. As you try to get a closer look, you suddenly hear the alien hissing once again, louder, and clearer than before. It’s not a distinct hiss like anything else you’ve heard, it’s shaky, and shares some quality’s with a beast’s roar with a slight synthetic undertone cutting through the sound, echoing out of the pipe opposite to the glowing orange orb.

>Dig through the webs to examine and grab the source of the glowing red lights, defusing it if it’s dangerous.
>Pull out your revolver, and head into the side of the pipe you heard the alien hissing come from. The CIA didn’t train you in predator defense for nothing.
>Help Kirchoff set up his machine gun aiming down the pipe you heard the alien hissing come from. Overkill is better than underkill down here.
>Tell everyone to leverage themselves between the floor and the grate below you, then push until it comes free. You’d rather not stay in this cramped cubby.
>Tell everyone to get moving out of the cubby towards the orange orb at the pipe.No portal seems to have opened yet, but you can try to mess with it?
>Hand Saulson your old glock, tell him to keep an eye out. Can’t be lugging people around unarmed, especially if trouble is coming.
>Pull out some of the zip-ties standard in the CIA and bind Saulson’s hands. Something might’ve messed with his head.
>Write in.
(Optionally, talk to your team.)
>”Vorts, recognize that sound?”
>”Vorty, where were you all planning to go from here?”
>”God if you hear me, I know you’re more original than sending giant spiders. If that’s what’s coming, I’m disappointed in you.”
>”Saulson, stop complaining. We’re in spacetime’s gaping wound, this place isn’t much worse than anywhere else.”
>”We listen to these things Saulson because the docs say they know the future, and I’m convinced too. They know where we’re going.”
>Write in.

>>4591985
>Help Kirchoff set up his machine gun aiming down the pipe you heard the alien hissing come from. Overkill is better than underkill down here.
>Have Kirchoff hand the LIGA off to Saulson. The scientist is bound to be the most familiar with its use and knowledgeable about the properties of the canisters for it.
>"Saulson, I'm going to be honest with you. I believe that one of the slaver-type aliens - the ones that look like a flying fetus - encountered you, altered your memories, and erased all memories of you meeting it...it's something we've seen before. You need to be critical of your own memories from now on - don't make any excuses for strange gaps or inconsistencies, don't try to rationalize it away. Are you CERTAIN the plan you've told me is actually the right thing to do?"

>>4591985
>Help Kirchoff set up his machine gun aiming down the pipe you heard the alien hissing come from. Overkill is better than underkill down here.
Can we shoot some bees down the pipe to see what happens and draw out any hostile in there?
+comment from >>4592239

>>4592539
>Can we shoot some bees down the pipe to see what happens and draw out any hostile in there?
You can certainly try.

>>4592239
>>4592539
>Help Kirchoff set up his machine gun aiming down the pipe you heard the alien hissing come from. Overkill is better than underkill down here.
>"Saulson, I'm going to be honest with you. I believe that one of the slaver-type aliens - the ones that look like a flying fetus - encountered you, altered your memories, and erased all memories of you meeting it...it's something we've seen before. You need to be critical of your own memories from now on - don't make any excuses for strange gaps or inconsistencies, don't try to rationalize it away. Are you CERTAIN the plan you've told me is actually the right thing to do?"

“Kirchoff, start getting that gun setup, now. Something’s getting close.” You say, pointing to the pipe. The marine nods, then begins to struggle with the tight corridors, barely able to reach around his shoulder to the tight place, especially while weighed down by both the LIGA and the machine gun. Seeing him struggle to pull it off without dropping it hard onto the unstable grate below, quickly crawl over, and begin to pull at the gun yourself. “I”m gonna be honest with you Saulson,” You start quickly as you help Kirchoff with the cumbersome gun, “I don’t think you can trust your memories. Remember those slaver-type aliens that knocked out Magnusson’s team? The ones that look like a floating fetus?”

“What are you talking about?” The scientist responds, now beginning to sound nervous once again. It pretty much confirms your suspicions. If he doesn’t remember his last encounter with the creatures, it’s probably been forcibly removed.

“One of the more intelligent species of aliens encountered you, altered your memories, and removed any recollection of the meeting.” You explain, pulling your attention away from the stubborn machine gun for a second to get as close as you can get to eye contact while both of your faces are covered by radio-protective equipment. “It’s something we’ve seen before.” You add, before finally freeing the light machine gun from Kirchoff’s shoulder without rubbing his face in the grate below.

Kirchoff, moving quickly, turns around, pulls the gun from your hand, and quickly gets to setting it up, knocking the bipod down, and pulling up the top cover and pulling a belt into position.

“Ah-are you saying you can’t trust me?” Saulson stutters.

“I’m saying you need to be critical of your own memories.” You reply, glancing over your shoulders as another roaring alien hiss echoes out from the pipe. “From now on, you can’t excuse any gaps or inconsistencies. Don’t try to rationalize any of it.”
(cont.)

>>4593356
(cont.)
The physicist stutters for a moment as you hear Kirchoff behind you racking the belt. The sound of something firm but padded tapping across the metal begins to echo across the pipe. Wanting to ask before gunfire deafens all of you, you ask Saulson, “Are you absolutely certain the plan you’ve told me is actually the right thing to do?”

“I… uh… probably?” He stutters. “There’s scientific… unless…” He suddenly goes quiet for a moment, lost in thought before your ears are pounded with the reverberating sound of the M60’s trigger being held down. The first two booms overpower all other sounds, letting you only hear yet another hissing alien scream for a second. Then, the ringing of your ears distorts and muddles the sounds, leaving you to rely on what you can see of Kirchoff as your only quage of the situation. He spits off repeated controlled bursts, confidently turning the pipe into his killzone.

In a second, that confidence dies. You see Kirchoff’s entire body flinch with nowhere to go in the confined space, before suddenly a cluster of green glowing alien liquid interlaced with splatters across him and the gun. Reacting quickly, the marine stays on his soaked gun, and floods the pipe with lead, holding the trigger down until the barrel dimly glows, only stopped because a corroded piece of the belt slipped and jammed the gun.

While your ears still ring, the marine takes one last look through the smoke of the gun barrel to ensure nothing is left out there, before he quickly begins to wipe the stuff off his body, ficking the material off his corrosion-resistant onto the silky webs, that are unaffected by the sizzling acid. By the time your ears stop ringing you just hear a bitter chuckle from the marine, then a few quiet swears, and another alien hiss, this one so distant and muffled, it’s not yet a worry.

While the liquid leaves Kirchoff’s protective suit in relatively good shape, it’s eaten through the edges of the pipe, turning sharp edges into smooth luminescent yellow mineral. Kirchoff’s gun suffered from some of the same fate. The well oiled polymer and metal of the m60e4 have been left corroded by the alien acid, burning at the hinge of the top cover, dissolving away the tips of the teeth on the rotary bolt, and leaving multiple bullets in the current belt sripped of their copper.

When Kirchoff sees the state his gun is left in, he swears even louder, realizing that the gun sure as hell won’t be as reliable as it once was. Still grumbling about the alien acid, he quickly gets to replacing the belt, and cleaning off whatever corrosion he can manage. From your experience, the gun will still work, but the m60 was never a reliable weapon on good days, it’s not gonna be as reliable as it once was.
(cont.)

>>4593358
(cont.)
Saulson’s stopped stuttering, but through the way he holds his arms close, his helmet flicking around in different directions, you can tell he’s become his paranoid self once again.

“A saddening existence.” One of the vortigaunts says behind you. “Mistreated livestock.”

“What were those damn things?” Says Kirchoff, still doing what he can to unjam the gun. Runnin’ over there dead. Jesus.”

“Enslaved beasts.” Vorty responds.

You take a quick glance down both of the pipes. The orange orb you can see at the end of the right pipe is beginning to pulse with a portal at the center, and small amounts of blue gasses are starting to spill into whatever cubby the portal sits in. Those red flashing lights you spotted amongst the silk webbing are still dimly blinking.

>Crawl into the pipe Kirchoff just filled with 7.62. Make sure none of them are still alive, and get a good look at what remains.
>Scout out the pipe with the orange orb. See what else is at the other end while waiting for the portal.
>Start digging through the alien silk webs to see what the source of those small red lights are.
>Have the team leverage themselves between the grate beneath you and the ceiling, then push, so you can enter the hallway below.
>Hand Saulson your old glock, so you don’t have to escort the physicist unarmed.
>Write in.
(Optionally, talk to your team.)
>”Saulson, why don’t you tell us what you do remember? Tell it exactly as you remember it, nothing else. I’ll let you know if anything stands out.”
>”Kirchoff, fix that gun up good. It’s our most valuable team member.”
>”Kirchoff, leave the m60. It’s not worth it if it’ll jam up on you.”
>”Livestock? Vorts was that… you’re livestock? From your home? The bugs?”
>Write in.

>>4593361
>Start digging through the alien silk webs to see what the source of those small red lights are.
>Hand Saulson the LIGA and your old glock, so you don’t have to escort the physicist unarmed.
Saulson would be able to understand the LIGA's readings better than we could.
>”Saulson, why don’t you tell us what you do remember? Tell it exactly as you remember it, nothing else. I’ll let you know if anything stands out.”
>”Livestock? Vorts was that… your livestock? From your home? The bugs?”
So many questions to ask, I love it.

>>4593361
>>4593643
seconding this

I trust kirchoff to decide what to do with the m60. He knows a fair deal more about them than we do, I reckon.

I really apologize guys, but some issues with my class registration for the upcoming semester at college just came up, I don't think I'm gonna have time to finish today's update. It'll have to be delayed until tomorrow. Apologies.

>>4594553
life first buddi

>>4593643
>>4593735
>Start digging through the alien silk webs to see what the source of those small red lights are.
>Hand Saulson the LIGA and your old glock, so you don’t have to escort the physicist unarmed.
>”Saulson, why don’t you tell us what you do remember? Tell it exactly as you remember it, nothing else. I’ll let you know if anything stands out.”
>”Livestock? Vorts was that… your livestock? From your home? The bugs?”

“Kirchoff,” start, grabbing his attention away from the corroded light machine gun, “Why don’t you let Saulson hold onto the LIGA for now. He’ll understand it better.”

“Gladly.” Kirchoff says, starting to shrug the heavy piece of scientific equipment off, where it gets caught up in the alien webbing. He tries to nudge it loose himself, but you give Saulson a quick waving hand signal. He stares at you dumbfounded for a second, before realizing what the signal means.

The physicist nods, then begins to crawl around you towards the marine. He grabs at one of the small buckles, unclips it, and pull the bulky scientific device off of the marine’s shoulders, holding it as though it were made of glass. “Thank god that stuff didn’t get on this.” The physicist responds. “We never got funding for corrosive coating.” A small piece of alien acid slips off the casing of the LIGA as he says that, sliding across like rain on a windshield without a single sizzle or marking left behind. Whatever messed with his head, scrambled a lot, it seems.

“Saulson,” you say, reaching for the holster on your belt. You draw your glock, drop the magazine, then eject the chambered round into your hand, before handing the gun over to the physicist, with a few spare magazines. “Keep the safety on unless you’re in danger, never point it at anything you don’t wanna kill, and keep your finger off the trigger until your shooting, alright?”

The physicist just nods, then takes the gun, putting it into his pocket. With a little more confidence in his voice, he says, “Thanks.”

You keep one eye on the physicist for a moment, watching as he puts a magazine in, flicks the safety on, then puts it in his belt, leaving it unchambered. Satisfied that he isn’t planning a manchurian assination just yet, you turn to the vortiguants comfortably packed around the pipe. “Vorty, what do you mean by livestock? Was that… your livestock? From your home? Those bug things?”

The alien ponders for a moment, then says “A grotesque hybrid. Cattle predators.” In the distance, you hear more alien hissing, and roaring. That time, it seemed as though there were multiple.

“They prey on your cattle?” You ask the vortigaunts.


“They prey on the liberated.” The creature responds.
(cont.)

>>4595755
(cont.)
Throughout the small maintenance cubby, you count three sets of dim red lights just barely shining through the bundles of alien webbing, like shining a flashlight through your hand. Reaching for your belt, you grab your swiss army knife, beginning to cut through bundles of the packed stuff. “Why don’t you tell me what you do remember Saulson?” You say as you struggle to pull your knife through the alien material. “Exactly as you remember it. I’ll let you know if anything stands out.”

“Uhh…” From behind you, you hear him stutter for a moment. “I… uhh… I remember we made it to the primary control room.” The physicist responds. “Marine’s nearly killed us on the way in but… something saved us. It was probably someone at the other end of an anomaly.”

“How’d they do it?” Kirchoff asks, as he tears some corroded piece of polymer off the m60, cracking it away and only leaving the softened screw holes.

“Something hit their sergeant. All of a sudden the guy went down like a brick. Looked almost like he was punched by something invisible.” Saulson explains. “We started running.” From your experiences with the grunts, you’d imagine the first thing they’d do would be to shoot the first possible threat in front of them. Still, it wouldn’t be impossible for them to get away in all the confusion. “When we got to the primary controls, we realized the entire chamber was flooded with an exotic gas. It took a minute to even realize what it was. Mags noticed a weird smell coming from his air-filter.”

“So… what did you do after that?” You ask, still sawing away at the alien silk, now beginning to uncover some sort of squishy, fleshy material below, glowing yellow ever so slightly. In the distance, you hear yet another alien hiss, a little closer than before.

“One person went back in to see if the electronic controls worked. We got thirty seconds to try before we moved back in. I don’t think anyone even got close. Systems were probably fried during the experiment.”

As Saulson explains, you uncover more of the red lights source, the alien silk now peeling away like a spool of yarn with every cut. Dark grey metal with sharp, boxy edges connects to the alien flesh. The alien flesh itself is bloody, and decrepit, like a patient suffering from severe necrosis.

“When we realized there was no venting the chamber from the upper end, we were about to draw straws for who went down to the underside. I volunteered. I took a bad dose of radiation, probably gonna get a tumor in a few years. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

Awfully brave for a civilian, you think. Not unheard of in these kinds of situations though. You cut another bundle of alien silk apart, revealing more of what’s below. Some sort of long, sausage shaped organism sits in the silk, connected to a machine.
(cont.)

>>4595757
(cont.)
“I volunteered, backtracked through the labs without too much trouble but uh… ended up getting thrown into… what I think might’ve been intraversal space. Space between different universes. In theory it’s supposed to be just… dark matter but somehow...”

“Keep it focused.” Kirchoff interjects. As you listen, you finally manage to free the object stuck in the silk webs. You reach your hand around the strange grub organism, trying to pull it gently as possible as not to crush it before figuring out what it is. The further you pull, the more it begins to wriggle in your hands, and the red light begins to blink.

“Right.” The physicist responds, stuttering for a moment. “The shift in gravity threw me through the portal. I got knocked out for some time, don’t know how long. I uh... looked around the place. I remember some.. Headcrab hosts over there. Zombies. It was.. Disturbing… they had had their hands zip tied up at one point. I moved a good distance away from the camp to get some quiet. Out there… something came over me.” The physicists sighs. “Started realizing I shouldn’t a volunteered. You saw me trying to… leave a message for the future.” He stays silent for a moment. “Real glad it worked. Thanks. You contacted me… told me to look for a suit, dug through the camp, and found this old thing.” He taps his suit once.

As Saulson tells his story, your attention is fixated on the alien grub in your hands. It’s some sort of large wormlike creature, like an oversized maggot. However, where you would expect a head is just some sort of large mechanical box, with a small antenna outfitted with a light. The box itself is made from a gunmetal black alloy with occasional hints of blue where it’s become slightly oxidized. As you pick it up, it’s wriggling becomes more and more panicked, and suddenly, you hear a chorus of alien hisses and roars, all with that same synthetic undertone.

“That’s… I think that’s about it.” Saulson responds. “Does anything… seem out of place or missing?”
(cont.)

>>4595761
(cont.)
>Kill the augmented alien grubs, it might be dangerous.
>Stow one of the augmented alien grubs. Take it as a sample for the CIA.
>Leave the alien maggot alone, don’t risk touching it anymore than you have to.
>Crawl into the pipes of whatever is remaining of the alien Kirchoff killed, get a look at it.
>Crawl into pipe with the glowing orange orb. Scout out the area around it, and look into the portal when it opens.
>Push the grate out from below you, drop into the hallway below.
>Write in.
(Respond to Saulson.)
>Write in any things that seem strange or missing about Saulson’s story.
>”That’s a brave move volunteering like that Saulson. Commendable.”
>”The zombies hands were tied up? Where in the camp was this? Were they being experimented on?”
>”What were you attempting to calculate earlier?”
>”Did you come into any trouble on your way to the portal?”
>”Did the marines attempt to question you? Did they just shoot on sight?”
>Write in.

>>4595763
>Stow one of the augmented alien grubs. Take it as a sample for the CIA.
[Grub acquired]
>"Seems like you don't remember the incident where you got your head wound. They had to take your helmet off and strap coolant to reduce the swelling - you definitely got a dose of radiation there. They probably erased that part of your memories because it involved some newer xenos that only started showing up recently. Also, how did Magnussun smell through an air filter?

I'm not as good as spotting discrepancies as Gabbie would be, I feel...that's the only thing I really noticed. I think they made up the bit about Saulson volunteering to give an excuse for why his body was soaking in radiation.

>>4595763
>Stow one of the augmented alien grubs. Take it as a sample for the CIA.
Can we try and find a metal box for it asap? I don't trust that transmitter.
>Crawl into pipe with the glowing orange orb. Scout out the area around it, and look into the portal when it opens.
>>4595838
My memory's a bit fuzzy but I don't think he was in the reactor room alone, was he?

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>4595838(1)
>>4595873(2)
Just gonna do a quick tiebreaker roll.

>>4596338
If it were me I’d compile them together.

>>4596450
The discrepancies, not the choices, I mean.

>>4596450
this

>>4596450
Oh yeah, add the comments together

>>4596450
>>4596453
>>4596456
>>4596457
I was mainly just rolling for whether or not you go into the orange pipe or stay in the cubby at the end of everything else, compiling all the comments sounds like a good idea.

>>4595838
>>4595873
>>4596338
>Stow one of the augmented alien grubs. Take it as a sample for the CIA.
>Can we try and find a metal box for it asap? I don't trust that transmitter.
>Crawl into pipe with the glowing orange orb. Scout out the area around it, and look into the portal when it opens.
>"Seems like you don't remember the incident where you got your head wound. They had to take your helmet off and strap coolant to reduce the swelling - you definitely got a dose of radiation there. They probably erased that part of your memories because it involved some newer xenos that only started showing up recently. Also, how did Magnussun smell through an air filter?
>My memory's a bit fuzzy but I don't think he was in the reactor room alone, was he?

With the alien grub wiggling inside of your hands, its large transmitter like box on its face blinking slowly, you take a moment to question if the creature’s worth carrying with you. You definitely want to take it in as an alien sample. It’s not like any of the creature’s you’ve seen before. As you look at it, you suddenly hear the HEV suit chime, “Neurological pain detected. Administering morphine.”

You’ve gotta take it with you, but you’re not yet sure how. You could just stow it in the same bags you’ve been using for any other possible biohazards, but that transmitter looking faceplate scares you. As you hear aliens hissing in the distance, you wonder if it might be some sort of alien silent alarm. Best you can tell, the suit doesn’t have any hidden compartments, so your duffle bag will have to do. What you’d really like is a container for it that would stop any inbound or outbound electromagnetic signals. The only one of those you have at the moment, is holding your laptop so it’s advanced and fragile tech doesn’t get affected by any of the oddities around you. If you fear that antenna faceplate, you could leave your laptop exposed to cover it.

Beginning to look around for your options of getting out of this damn tight cubby, you begin to pick apart Saulson’s story in your head. “Seems like you don’t remember the incident where you got your head wound.”

“Head wound?” Saulson responds. “I don’t remember it specifically… I blacked out, but Magnusson told me about it.” The scientist responds. “I remember having a stick of coolant on my head, and Mags telling me I took a bad dose of radiation.”

Not wanting to skew his memory, you ask, “Did Magnusson tell you how it happened?”

“Uhmm…” The physicist hesitates for a moment. “The marines knocked me out. Grenade.”

“Would you know what kind of grenade?” You ask. You haven’t seen any marine carrying concussion grenades.

“I wouldn’t know.” He responds. Given that he’s a civilian with very little understanding of military equipment, specific details would’ve been stranger.
(cont.)

>>4596908
(cont.)
“That’s not how you got your head wound.” You respond. “It involved some newer aliens that only started showing up recently.”

“Wait… I was... knocked out by new aliens?” He pauses for a moment, occasionally starting a new sentence, before immediately stopping it with a stutter. “You saw this?”

“I saw you get thrown.” You respond, deliberately leaving out the anti-tank mine you placed that caused it. From behind, you hear Kirchoff chuckle. “Those aliens were involved. You got thrown by an explosion, and took a bad hit to the head.”

“Huh…” The physicist responds, beginning to reconsider his own memories. Giving Saulson a moment to process things, or at least get a grip on what’s real or not, you begin considering getting out of this damn cubby. Peering down the pipes, on one end, you see the remaining bodies of the alien creatures from earlier, and hear the echoing screams of more coming this way. The hairs on the back of your neck suddenly stand on end. This time, you might not be able to rely on the m60 to save you from fighting these creatures in their element. Realizing this, you turn around, staring down the pipe that once displayed a glowing orange orb at the other end.

“We’re gonna have to get moving soon.” You announce to your team in a loud whisper. “I’m gonna scout ahead. See where that portal leads.”

“We’re going back there?” Saulson says nervously.

“An unforgotten prison.” One of the vortigaunts suddenly explains from behind as you pull yourself into the pipe. “Grim memories.”

“Before I go in there, I got one more question for you, Saulson.” You say quickly. “How did Magnusson smell the gas through an air filter?”

Saulson chuckles lightly. “That’s what tipped him off.” He explains, sounding uncharacteristically confident in his answer. “Had us dart out the moment he smelt anything. Something burnt through the filter for that to happen. Probably wasn’t even smelling the gas. Place was... just painted with…” He just lets out a long breath, then solemnly adds, “The science team.”

You nod, sympathetically saying “I understand,” not making any specific judgement on his memory just yet, knowing that he’s falling on some heavy thoughts. “I’m gonna scout out ahead. Kirchoff, you keep an eye on that pipe. Saulson, why don’t you come with me so we can keep talking. Stick behind me.”

“Okay.” The physicist says, being pulled away from his thoughts.

Moving up ahead, you see that the portal in the orb has opened up without you noticing. The suit’s morphine has removed your painful indicator of the anomaly’s irregular intervals, although you can hardly complain.
(cont.)

>>4596909
(cont.)
Moving further into the pipe, it starts to expand the further you crawl, like a warped funnel on its side. The pipe’s edges never seem blown out, the metal never separates or shows signs of getting thinner. It's as though the pipe had been molded into a new shape like a poorly made clay pot. From behind you, you hear Saulson following after you, a lot louder than you are, and clearly struggling to move in the tight space.

As the edges of the pipe show the further you get in, you realize that the pipe has been contorted to perfectly fit the edges of the oblong wormhole, funneling the light blue alien gas directly into your face. With the constant spew of the stuff, you can barely get a view of what’s beyond the portal. You have to crawl through the fog until the pipe opens up enough that you can push yourself off the ground, keeping your head above the thick luminescent gas.

The only light filling the alien room is the dim luminescence of the gas, showing the silhouettes of skinny vortal bodies. They’re all slumped over, against the walls, like prisoners of war. None of their bodies move to breathe or twitch. From where you’re sitting you count three, but there’s probably more outside of the portal’s field of view.

At the center of the room, directly through the portal, and pointed towards you is some sort of relay. Even in the darkness, you can see that it’s not the industrial equipment of Black Mesa, nor the organic bio-constructs of the aliens natural terraforming. No, this device was patched together, like the homemade weapons of middle-eastern insurgents. It’s uneven, and shaky. The only part of the dish sitting on a large entangled web of machine and carved gears is the dish itself, which is a white polymer material covered in dirt and grime in such a way that it oddly reminds you of an insane asylum. Surrounding the dish is some sort of circle, or circle of vortle markings. They glow dimly in the low light environment, letting you see clearly that the circle is not styled in the typical vortal style, sleek lines with only slight curves and sharp angles, but the symbols that occasionally dot it’s circumference are the typical thin curved lines you would expect.

Looking finally at the room itself, it’s circular, and totally enclosed, made of the same marble-like material you saw the portals projected on near the alien camps. From your current position, there’s only one door, and it seems to have been blockaded by stacked up alien artifacts.

Your attention is taking away from the strange vortal resting place, as Saulson bumps against the pipe behind you, then into you as he tries to get a look. He becomes still for a moment, then just mutters… “Thats… fascinating…. Horrifying.”
(cont.)

>>4596910
(cont.)
>Bring the whole team through the pipe and into the portal, and then investigate the makeshift relay, and the odd symbology surrounding it.
>Bring the whole team forward, then begin to investigate the large quantity of vortal corpses. Look for cause of death, check for survivors, etc.
>Bring the team forward, and have Kirchoff help you with that barrier covering the rooms only door. See what’s on the other side.
>You and Saulson backtrack, don’t go this way. Instead, backtrack and try the pipe the alien’s came from.
>You and Saulson backtrack, don’t go this way. Instead try to break open that grate, and fall into the corridor below.
>Before doing anything else, remove your laptop from it’s EM proofed case, and place the transmitter bug inside.
>Write in.
(Optionally, respond to Saulson. Pick as many as you’d like.)
>”I’ve seen stuff like this before in humans Saulson. Never would’ve called it fascinating. Sickening might be the word you’re looking for. I hope the CIA finds some good torture methods to use on those floating fetuses.”
>”I really hope this doesn’t shake up the trio of vortigaunts back their. We need there heads clear, even if they only give us riddles.”
>”That is fascinating… I don’t think these creatures view death the same way we do. Makes me wonder what the hell was going on here. Could they have done this to themselves?.”
>”Realize this isn’t the most convenient time for a heart to heart Saulson, but I just wanna say, don’t blame yourself for what happened in these labs. Knowing what I know, you couldn’t have stopped it.”
>”So if Magnusson smelled things because his gas mask was failing, is he still walking around with a faulty gas mask?”
>”Why don’t you go over your encounter with the marines in a little more detail if you can. You said you remember someone on the other side of an anomaly helping you?
>”Do you remember what happened to Dr. Forbes at all?”
>”What were you attempting to calculate earlier? Do you remember that?”
>Write in.

>>4596911
>Bring the whole team forward, then begin to investigate the large quantity of vortal corpses. Look for cause of death, check for survivors, etc.
>Have Kirchoff sweep the immediate area for threats and remain alert.
>”I’ve seen stuff like this before in humans Saulson. Never would’ve called it fascinating. Sickening might be the word you’re looking for. I hope the CIA finds some good torture methods to use on those floating fetuses.”

I'm gonna have to delay the next update until tomorrow again, apologies. The same damn issue with registration boiled back up again after I thought I had fixed it. Sorry again guys.

>>4596911
>Bring the whole team forward, then begin to investigate the large quantity of vortal corpses. Look for cause of death, check for survivors, etc.
>”Do you remember what happened to Dr. Forbes at all?”
>”What were you attempting to calculate earlier? Do you remember that?”
thought of the day: we haven't had an opportunity to kick a zombie in the nuts for a while.

>>4597752
Backing this plus Kirchhoff sweeping

>>4596947
>>4597752
>>4598698
>Have Kirchoff sweep the immediate area for threats and remain alert.
>Bring the whole team forward, then begin to investigate the large quantity of vortal corpses. Look for cause of death, check for survivors, etc.
>”Do you remember what happened to Dr. Forbes at all?”
>”What were you attempting to calculate earlier? Do you remember that?”

A small tick in the back of your head wants to respond to Saulson calling the vortal resting place “fascinating,” but you hold your tongue, telling yourself that he probably just landed on the wrong word. Instead of expressing your disgust at the action of the vortigaunt’s overlords, you signal the man forwards, out of the pipe while you yourself pull yourself to your feet in the widening mouth of the tunnel. “Keep the pipe clear so they can get through.” You tell the physicist as he clumsily pulls himself out, nearly sliding down the mouth of the pipe and into the alien chamber before catching himself.


“Kirchoff.” You shout down the pipe, hearing it echo. “Need you to help sweep the area. Move up and have the vorts follow. Need you to help check the area.”

“Oscar Mike.” You hear Kirchoff say, the sound of him packing his gear echoes down the tunnel, before you hear the large marine bumping against the edges of the pipe. You hold your position while you wait, keeping a close eye on the portal and what’s behind it, looking for any sort of movement in the dark space before you. After a minute, the sound of gear shifting on a uniform draws your attention behind you, seeing Kirchoff pull himself out of the vent.

When the marine’s on his feet, you signal forward, then explain, “Back in the aliens world Kirchoff, make sure nothing creeps up on us.”

The marine nods, slinging his rifle around his shoulder as you all begin to walk forward. He pokes his thermal scope through the portal first, scanning the room before he announces, “Place is cold.”

Hearing the vortigaunts crawl out behind you, the three of you start moving forward into the room, joining Kirchoff with your USP and it’s inbuilt flashlight scanning the room. The area seems to be devoid of life, the dead vortigaunts and now you being the only organic things in here. “Keep a look out behind us Kirchoff. If the portal closes, keep an eye on the door. It might be blocked, but there are things out here that can step on tanks.”

Seeing Kirchoff nod once, you quickly move past him, looking at the group of vortigaunt bodies huddled against the wall. Keeping your gun’s flashlight pointed at them, both in fear of hostile alien wildlife burrowed underneath their bodies, and to keep them illuminated. You carefully approach, tap the bodies with your foot once, then relax when nothing seems to scurry. You take one hand off your gun, leaving it for the flashlight as you begin to examine the corpses.
(cont.)

>>4599319
(cont.)
As you crouch down to examine the vortigaunts, you try to think of something else to test the physicists memory that you can ask about. “Saulson, that book you used to contact us through the anomalies… what were you attempting to calculate?” As you talk, you take note of the vortigaunts gaunt bodies. Your initial instinct said starvation, but the creature’s having such alien biology, it’s hard to tell with your limited forensic training wether it was really starvation, or this is just the natural decay process of their species. It’s clear however that all of them are well beyond saving. The bodies are as cold as the rest of the room, and there’s no sign of breathing, or any internal organ activity. You can’t help but feel sorry for the creatures, with how much their species has helped you, and what you’ve learned about them.

You’re so focused on trying to decipher the alien corpses, you don’t notice that Saulson is taking a rather long time to answer you for a solid few minutes. When you do, you glance over your shoulder, seeing Saulson pat his suit down the same way he did in search of his pistol.

“Damnit.” He sighs. “Bastards stole my fucking book. God damnit.” He sighs, looks around, sees you glaring, then begins to explain. “I was aa… trying to figure out where these portals would take me. We’ve done a lot of theoretical work with teleportation… energy requirements, predicting positions, optimization... I was hoping I could use some rough estimates to see if I could get anywhere other than what was obvious.

Knowing the alien’s already have teleportation down naturally, you quickly ask, “Was there anything else in the book?”

“A 2-dimensional approximation of a Rosenberg Expansion we did based off of some of our readings from the LIGA, basically aaa… on large scales and in a vacuum, zero-point energy is very predictable, matter not in extreme conditions tends not to have a significant effect. We took some readings, and applied some basic geometric templates to predict the epicenter. Predictably, we found it to be in the test chamber. The closer we got thought, the weirder the readings looked. We began to notice that the entire… laboratory was pulsing. It was like the place was breathing.”

“A temporary solution.” One of the vortigaunts chimes.
(cont.)

>>4599320
(cont.)
As the physicist gives his lecture, you return some of your attention to the vortigaunts. You begin to move their bodies, picking up limbs and feeling them. Not surprisingly, you don’t feel much besides bone. However what you do notice is that much of the creature's bones are broken, or even pulverized, as though it was killed by some sort of heavy impact rather than malnourishment or dehydration. Peering around the bodies, you notice that their backs, wich are up against the walls, are discolored with large, uniform and decayed buisese. It’s as though each of these creatures was thrown against the wall before they died. What you initially thought was death by neglect may have been some sort of execution by one of those large grunts, or a concussive blast that threw them into the wall.

“It also carried some of the calculations I did with Dr. Forbes that led us to believe that zero-point energy might be a problem down here.” He adds. “I’d bet the aliens knew all of that anyway, with how much they’ve been teleporting.”

“I saw that Dr. Forbes was separated from your team at one point.” You add, changing the course of the conversation to further probe the physicists altered memories. “Do you remember what happened to her?”

With a slight worried shake in his voice, he explains, “I remember… she got separated after the marines attacked…”

“I thought you blacked out when the marines tried to kill you?” Kirchoff suddenly interjects.

“Well… must’ve happened before that.” The physicist responds, before nervously adding ”Why do you ask? Is she alright?”

>Take a look at the makeshift relay in the center of the floor. See if you recognize any of the surrounding symbols, or if there’s any hints at what caused the death of the vortigaunts?
>Take a look at the whole room with the multi-spectrum goggles, and see if there’s anything you’re missing, or anything visible outside.
>Have Kirchoff help you pull the relics barricading the alien door, see what’s outside this damn room, or if there’s anything interesting in the pile.
>Write in.
(Optionally, respond to Saulson or the team.)
>Break the news about what happened to Forbes lightly, but leave out the fact that Guttman might’ve been able to save her.
>Be honest as possible with Saulson, you find Forbes alive but dying, and she died of her injuries.
>Claim you haven’t seen forbes at all, and was just testing his memory.
>Tell Saulson that she made her way back to the infirmary after he left, and is currently being evacuated.
>Change the topic. You have a laptop that he could use for his calculations, if you can trust him not to use it for anything else.
>Change the topic. Ask the vorts what they know of their fallen kin. They don’t seem particularly distressed by it.
>Write in.

>>4599323
>Take a look at the whole room with the multi-spectrum goggles, and see if there’s anything you’re missing, or anything visible outside.
>Break the news about what happened to Forbes lightly, but leave out the fact that Guttman might’ve been able to save her.
>Change the topic. Ask the vorts what they know of their fallen kin. They don’t seem particularly distressed by it.

I really apologize for how slow this week has been, but life's been screwing me around a lot, and on top of that, I've been feeling a little tired of writing in general lately. I apologize guys, but I'm gonna have to take one last day off, and I think when I get back I'm gonna start a new thread.

>>4600565
How many times to we have to beat the message into your skull, old man?!
We're perfectly fine with you taking breaks, especially to sort out real life priorities or even just to cool off after a lot of questing. Hell, one of the best QM's on here only runs once a week.

>>4602139
Genuinely thanks, I think I did need that message beaten into my skull.
The new thread is up here >>4604812.