Stardust Rhapsody: Anthem | Ep. 18 | White Room: Part 1

Welcome to Legends of Avantris. I'm Pike and you're listening to Stardust Rhapsody. Last time on Stardust Rhapsody, the crew finally confronts Rex, putting the screws to him. He gives them all the information he has on the Don, his connections, and a secret research facility buried in the mountainous area of Silph. As Rex is telling the party about Cinnabar Springs, they're interrupted by a crew of Bloodfleet pirates. Captain Sawtooth announces there's a contract out on Rhett and the crew of the Rhapsody and it's open season. Pike races to the spare-owned, bursts out, ready to take the fight straight to the enemy. The Bloodfleet engages with Ramoura, sending a boarding team while Starfighters trade blows with Pike. It's not long before it becomes apparent how outmatched the Sawtooth pirates are as Pike, Rhett, and Ziggy light up the night sky while Co and Pixel give the boarding pirates a shockingly warm welcome. Capturing the captain in one of his fiercest warriors, the party throws them in the brig. That was so good. I'm sorry. That's your fault. That was your fault, mate. That is bait. That is your fault. That is entrapment. We were all kidding. That is entrapment. That was so good. I was an oak. Oh, so good. I was an oak. And one of their fiercest warriors. That is entrapment, sir. Ship mouth shit, John. Ship mouth shit, John. Ship mouth shit, John. Okay. This can't be. It's ruined. All right, one more back. Start us. Start us. What's the synonym of Brantum? Doge. Synonym. Synonym. Him. Carol. Ballad. The party throws them in the brig. Confronting sawtooth, they find out the scarlet eye has video of them and has put a hit out. The party decides to head to the secret research lab, now knowing that they need something to put the dawn on the back foot. Bringing wrecks to the town to get them to the facility without raising issue, they find the place totally and completely devoid of life. An eerie silence marks their ride to the lab, interrupted only by the roar of their bus's engine. It isn't long before they find what they were looking for and more. Coming upon site Omicron, they find massive blast doors built into the hill burst off the hinge, not inwards, but out. That's concerning. The bus pulls up at the end of the dirt path. You see a guard tower outside, the metal bent and twisted forward, a gun turret hang lazily off the edge, pointing downwards at a 45-degree angle. You see what looks like clearly massive metal reinforced blast doors bent and bowed outwards. They lay 20 feet from the mouth of what you now see is site Omicron, almost buried into a tree as you open into this clearing. Well, it definitely didn't look like this the last time I was here. By the gods, I would own none. Did anything you ever take out of here...was it that big? Could it have done something like that? We killed one of them, Ziggy. We saw them kill each other. They absolutely could have fucking done that. I just meant here. There are procedures in place for this kind of thing, though. I mean, those creatures can't just run rampant inside. I've known it all my time coming here. I've never seen one break free, let alone out. Whatever it was or is is now out here, so I'm going inside. Yeah, look at this place. Site Omicron, no Chimera logo, no branding, highly plausible deniability. Concrete and steel. How big is the guard tower that's bent at a 45-degree angle? Is it very clear that something gigantic had to have done that? It doesn't pierce the canopy of the trees. It doesn't extend super far up into the sky, drawing attention around. But it is a sizeable, reinforced steel-metal structure that you give it a quick inspection, and you would draw the conclusion that something of... really almost obscene brute strength would have had to bend the metal in this kind of way. And not just that, but roll an investigation check for me. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. My D20. Oh, pretty good. That's going to be a 26. Not just that, but you look a little bit closer and you see this bent, warp-twisted metal that looks destroyed just by absolute, just brutish force. But you may notice something, a residue, and not a bend in the metal, but an eating of it. And it almost looks like a corrosive element on this present on the metal that weakened it as someone, something stormed out of here. All right, check the metal on the door. Sure. And I'll... Everybody out. Get a little closer and take a look and give my character sheet here. I would love to also, while this is happening, look at the ground and see if there are obvious feet marks or tracks leading in any direction. If it looks like this was one animal, or if one animal did this and then multiple creatures broke out, like, does this look like a stampede action or something along those lines? You may both... You may both roll independent investigation checks. While they're doing that, I'm going to make a three-point turn and just leave the bus pointing the road. Oh, with the bus. Oh, nice. That's with the bus. That's fucking smart. Just in case we need to jump in and get out for any reason, it's pointing in the right direction. I got a 16. With a 16, you find a similar scene at the doors. Rhett, having explained a little bit of what he's found at the guard tower. You look at the sheer thickness of the metal of this blast door. Probably at least 10 inches, not a full foot of thick metal. And it is bent outwards, clearly blasted off the... But not blasted, clearly burst off the hinges. And you see similar evidence of a strange kind of corrosion to it. Well, Rhett, let's hope two things. Yeah, that this one doesn't come back and that it's the biggest one. That's a good fucking point. I want to... Like realizing that this is out here and we haven't heard anything. No branches snapping, no roars, no stomping around. Like, can... I want to like just peer through the woods and see are there broken branches? Are there like any evidence of like anything washing us? Because you mentioned that we sort of felt washing us, Esk? Roll an investigation check. I want to kind of feel that. Ziggy, what did you get? I got an eight. So, either the tracks have been washed away or Ziggy just ain't doing that good. It's almost like a clear... Like this is kind of like a destruction pad. There's kind of a lot here. The doors burst forward. There's a lot of scuff. But you also kind of like, even from the town, from Rex's description of when last he was here, from you think about the town and the rottenness of the food, it would seem if those two things are potentially linked, it would seem as though probably a lot of time has gone by. And to find any kind of like evidence in the ground, you just can't quite find something that points you in a strong direction. I'll look at the ground and I'm making this assessment, but I'm immediately distracted by Rhett's eyes following the tree line. And I watch him as he seeks what he's looking for. And I'll say, it doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't. If everything's gone, where did these things that escape gone to? Did they take the insects? Did they take the birds? Did they take the people? And then where are they? What was your role? 23. 23. With a 23, you start with the woods, the forest around you. And you walk up to the trees, you really try and take stock of the situation. Things have started to almost grow back and fix itself around the area. But with a slightly more weathered eye and that extreme attention to detail, you start to see the evidence. It becomes very clear to you that almost in all directions, but focused a little more in one above others. Almost in all directions, you can find evidence of cracked branches, shrubs that were torn out, leaves that had hit the ground, dirt torn up. It looks kind of like with the metal and the bursting. And this is almost kind of a hard scene to read right in front of the lab. But as you kind of expand, you look out into the forest, you start to find a lot of evidence of what looks like entities sent off into the woods. Look, in every direction, it was a stampede. That's good news, right? I mean, if all these tracks lead out, the facility will be empty, right? Let's hope. It's not good news for all those fucking people in that town. I just mean it's less dangerous for us. God's help them at this point. But as much as I hate to say it, y'all are right. Let's get the fucking side. If we can find the information we need and get out before this shit comes back here. I mean, the good part is that it's at least quiet. If there were these big things in there, there'd be a lot more noise than we even know. Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you? So they most likely left the planet altogether. Well, and maybe they didn't even get to the town. I mean, the town seemed abandoned. Yeah. What you're pointing out here looks destroyed. Maybe everyone's fine. There wasn't evidence of destruction in the town. You're right about that. What in the hell? I grab racks by his velour smug. Oh, my velour smug! What are you doing? Look here, you fucking shit. If you let us into a trap, all of the pervert sex shit that he has is going to leak everywhere. It's going to lead to your fucking problems. You understand me? Go please. I'll never get these wrinkles out. And this is proof. Everything I've told you so far has been true. The lab, like I said, I brought you here. We're going, I don't know what's happening here, okay? I've been here many times before. I'm just as confused as you are. No idea what the fuck you've gotten yourself into. I thought you were fucking cool. I just... Fine! Have your velour ruffles. I'm just... I know we're in the middle of nowhere. Does anybody have an iron? Oh, yeah, right here. No, I'm going to pull out my grid boy and I'm going to try to type into it. Can I try to search to see if there was any news about this planet or broadcast or anything along these lines? Or am I even connected to the hyper grid out in the middle of the remote like this? I would say... Roll a computer's check. Ooh. I rolled a natural one. Ah! There's one of two things. So I'm going to have an eight on that, which means that once again, Ziggy's eating shit. You... You try and make this connection to the hyper grid. And you're in such a remote area that your connection to it feels weaker. You basically have the power of the effect of trying to get out some extremely baseline search to find any information. Any information you can about Sylph, Cinnabar Springs, maybe you even searched Site Omicron, but nothing... Nothing... I'm not a lived. 100%. Nothing flag is quite right for you getting hits like, did you mean Cinnabons? The fact that I'm getting any results, it's like loading really, really slow. It's like a classic GeoCities website where the images aren't even coming in. They're showing up with little question marks. That was me this last week. Yeah, I... If it's all just superficial, then I'll close my hyper grid and put it in my pack. There's no... There's no hyper grid out here almost. It's like, we're totally alone. Not just the beasts and the critters, but... No internet. Well, we do it the old-fashioned way. Go in. Take a look around and we get out. Well, that means I can't reset my timer, so we gotta get in and out real fast. Oh, well, I mean, just reset it right now before we go in. No, no, no, I'm telling you. I only have 37 bars. I can't do it from here. Well, how much time is on the timer? Probably like 14 or 15 hours left now. We better fucking hurry. We gotta be quick, yeah, after you. And Ziggy, remember... Yeah? You're a killer. All of us are killers. If there's something in there that's a problem, we'll just kill him. That's exactly right. Rex Maxim, real space killer. Are you gonna kill anything? What do you mean? Do one push-up. I have to prove my physical strength. Of course I can do a push-up. It's just offensive. You can do a push-up. Yeah, you can do a push-up. Yeah, you can do a push-up. Yeah, well, I know. Do one. I'm wearing my best velour front. I can't wait for this ground, the state of it. I'll never get those stains out. I'll give you 100,000 notes if you can do a single push-up. You don't have a whole dollar. No, Mike, what are you doing? We don't have that. You can't use your knees, though. You gotta do a real one. We don't have time for this. Well, yeah, exactly right. The man speaks sense. We have to get into this dark room. There's always time, baby. We eat wrecks maximum. Exactly right, Mike. All right, come on. Let's shake it away. We'll go first. And I'm going to put my cigarette out on the dirt just outside of this giant hole in the facility, and I'll look to Rhett and I'll say, after you. All right. And I'll have my grav cannon on me and we're about ready to go. Hey, I can't believe I'm going to suggest this. Should we give this guy a fucking gun? Yeah. I'm an expert marksman. You point and pull the trigger. I mean, I only have mine. You don't care about your guns? I mean, I mainly use the one. I have a sidearm. Well, I'll take that. You don't understand how any of his technology works, do you? No. Why would I? Nobody can just pick it up and use it. I hadn't really been to space until a couple months ago. I'm sorry, the transports. Fair understood. And prison ships. That's on me. Look, I'm my apologies. I could give it to him, but it wouldn't even work. Look. You just have like a simple blaster? I got it. I got it. Yeah, I got it. It's taken with the point yet? Hold on. I bet this is just like that movie. It's just like that movie that we watched. Which one are you talking about? I can't remember. I can't remember. Like Mesozoic 300 foot tall crustacean from the Mesozoic era. I just call it tree fitting. I want to go and look into the trucks that have been flipped. And I wanted to see if these are like the fucking mooks of a go-no, the fucking dinos around. Oh yeah. Would they have been trying to get in and then they got like, you know. Shoot how? Yeah, yeah. Shoot how? Oh no. I would say absolutely. Like even a quick search of like around the guard tower, around the other kind of like jeep-like vehicles right out front. You definitely find what looks like guard equipment. Blasters, stuff like that. Standard fare. Nothing like extremely. Aside from the turret attached to the tower, nothing extremely heavy artillery. Yeah. Right. It's just like the movie. Oh yeah. Good thinking. Yeah. We can give him one of these and he can carry my snacks. What was the name of that movie, Ziggy? What was the name of that movie? I don't know about that. Right. Back at it again. So just so I understand, anyone says, yeah, what is this weapon actually? Pew, pew, pew. I'm imagining it to be, I don't know, Dan can help us out, but like a simple blaster. Yeah, like a simple laser blaster. Or both baseline blasters. D6 radian damage. I think it's D6 radian? Yeah, plus decks. Yeah. I'm only asking because if shit goes sideways and I have to disarm this motherfucker, I want to know what I'm up against. I'm pretty sure. You've handed Rax Gary Oldman's gun from the fifth element. Yeah. Okay. You have no idea. No. You can try. Oh, like crustacean rifle. It shoots like all this kind of needler blow up stuff and it has a rocking launcher. You don't find that. You're trolling us. Yeah, it was a normal laser pistol. Okay, he's got a pistol. Got it. All right. Are we ready? Yeah. We're ready. I have a bad feeling about this. Let's just try to keep the noise down, okay? I'm as quiet as can be. Shut up, Rex. How long have we spent in this town? Oh, just the town? Could we have taken the equivalent of a short rest? You had a long rest on the trip here. Well, I have something I can do during a short rest that I feel like if Pixel could have had time to do, she would do. Oh, I think so. Just to give us temporary HP. Between you landing, being in the town, taking the bus here and finding this point, absolutely. Investigating, driving up to the area. Yeah, you definitely had 10 HP. 10 HP. 10 HP. Yeah, so... 10 HP. 10 HP. Shut up, Rex. You don't get any. What? I'm a part of the gang. I can't wait to say shut up, Rex. 16,000 more times over the next adventure. Pixel will sing her version of Rex's Girl Again and do a little performance and six allies. So, one, two, three, four, and myself. That's five, which is probably good enough. Got it, Beth. Pixel is going to give temporary HP up to her level. And it says, plus the modifier of the ability you increased with this feat, but I didn't increase an ability. So, I don't know what that means. No, it should come with a stat increase. It just says, after a shorter long rest, give performance. When you do up to six allies, which can include yourself within 30 feet of you, gain 10 HP, equal to your character level, plus the modifier of the ability you increased with this feat. Me and Chrisma. Oh, Chrisma. Yeah. Okay. We're nine. Eight. Nine. Oh, nine. Four, that's right. That's good. That's really good. That should let it 10 HP. Yeah. Let's fucking go. That's like, the pixels. A quarter of my HP. Yeah. We're useful than Jericho. We all have to think about our lives. As we walk through the destroyed gates and start to approach the facility, I will whisper, I will whisper, welcome to Paleo Playground. That's what it was. Oh, Paleo Playground. Yeah, it's like the movie. I had something else in mind, but chat with me. Wait, like, just blew me out of the water. I'm really craving gelatinous spheres. Ew, that, no, that's just, that's gross. You step into the research facility. You begin to make your way down a slight decline as you walk down a set of steps, surrounded on either side by completely solid gray walls of cement. The stairway eventually opens out a very short walk, but you know that you're descending. It opens out in, and you see a ruined lobby. Smashed furniture and technology are scattered everywhere. The facility in front of you seems to be in a lockdown mode. The entire space is shrouded in darkness, faintly illuminated by a dim red light that turns all colors to black and crimson. Another internal blast door to your left as you enter the lobby is smashed open with other locked doors leading deeper into the research site. Shit. Is that where you got your beasties, Rex? Yeah, it's down that way. Yeah. This is totally destroyed, though. I mean, this is a decimation. It must be that something got out, but I mean, like I said, they have fail safes for this. I don't know how this could have happened. Does the red glow remind me of anything from the canning factory? Oh. When we passed the nalari cook and his crazy, like... So that's a very, very interesting parallel. However, this is almost akin to the emergency lights at the rest. Okay, so it's more like the power saving emergency. It's like a low warbling power save, like red light that casts this. That's what it says on the table. This is red line magic. No, no, you get no sense that this is some kind of like red line magic thing. We're talking backup generators. Exactly. This is backup generator emergency shut down low power thrum mode. And around you, you see many sections of those same kind of like big blast doors closed and shut. Amongst the rubble in front of you and the destruction, computers that you may have wanted to connect to, shattered and decimated into thousands of pieces, papers torn to shreds. Amidst the wreckage, you find one thing that kind of catches your eye. Who has just the highest passive perception? Probably me. I can tell you what it is in one moment. It's almost certainly Pike. 11. Mine's 14. Oh, who just said 15? I did. My passive insight is 16. That's fucking strange. Oh, because you're... Are you number 15? You think he's a perception? Yeah, it's bigger than my picture. You gotta be. Pixel you. I'm 14. I wonder if that's a leftover from... We'll have to look into that. Something catches your eye. The faint... Something about that. As the light warbles, something kind of reflects almost glints in the destruction that covers the ground. I am messing with my goggle setting. And I turn the gamma way up to cheat. Repo style. Exactly right. Immediately, hey everyone, what's this? I pointed out. You do so. Oh, let me turn my gamma up. And my eye will be bright. And I'm sort of pirate like eye patching. I can see much better out of my right eye. You start to zoom in on it. And you see the edge of what looks like almost an ID card sticking out from under some rubble. The corner. And as you look in at it, not the silhouette, but actually almost the shoulder of a person. On the card. Not like the shoulder of a person in the rubble. Oh, oh. On the ID card. On the ID card. You see a headshot. Like a headshot. Kind of like almost like... It's covered. If you go pick it up, you'll see what it looks like. But you see what looks kind of like a presumably an ID card. Go on. I can get it. I will... Knowing that Rhett has my back, scurry forward and I will retrieve the key card and take a look. You pull this simple key card out of the rubble. Picture of a human scientist with this kind of like blondish hair that tussles about her shoulders. A... bangs hang over her forehead. Doctor... Doctor Roa Zimpano. Roa... Roa Zimpano? Roa Z-A-M-P-A-N-O. Zimpano. Zimpano. Zimpano. Zimpano. This looks like someone who worked here. It's like a badge. Oh, it's Access One. That the lowest are the highest. Well, it really depends on the facility. This could get us access to everything or just one thing. We can try it. I think Johto had like five? Oh, so this is the lowest. Well, it depends. Was Johto a big cheese or a research system? I don't know. He's who I interfaced with most frequently. I think he was the... I think he led the teams here. Alright, one's the lowest. This is just like a video game. Alright. How is it like a video game? Well, because in a video game you always like... Haven't you ever played like a game where you have to get to the next level? But first you have to get the item that lets you jump to the high. Oh, fuck no. And then you get the... It's like a rocket that allows you to break through the breach. Try it on a door. Hmm. Oh. Access One. Wait, wait. I look around. So we know that on the left was a big like blast door style. Are there any like golden eyes style, like you know, just single person doors that go deeper that might have a key card? Oh, sorry. Yes. So on the left there is a large blast door, once more caved out into the room you're in. And then in front of you there is like almost like a frosted glass door with a keypad that seems like it would... it goes deeper. Try that one. It's great over. I swipe it. The light as you swipe the pad flicks green. And the glass... Oh, okay. It automatically opens. The door slides open as you scan it. That did it. Nice. Well, we just got to find Control-Toe. Right, that's why we're here? Anything with Control-Toe? Yeah, I don't even fuck about anything else. We just need evidence, that's all. Alright. Let's go. Hey, make sure Ziggy you're ready to record, capture anything that we might see that could tie the dawn of this place, alright? Should we record our presence here or just collect evidence? No, the ladder. We should be on our guard because it's dark in here and I don't like these red lights very much. It's going to be okay, Pix. We're going to get in and out. Yeah, you promise? I promise. Okay. I promise. We're walking through. You make your way through this glass door. In front of you opens a massive sprawling, what feels almost like labyrinthine honeycomb of these glass, these broken out glass, like frosted glass boxes as you stretch forward. You see a pathway that leads ahead. As you walk between them, you see pathways that go down right, left, lining all around room on either side of this large side you're in. You see similar bigger, like big bay blast doors with that thrumming red light all shut and sealed closed. Yeah, man. Everything seems like it's locked down. I don't like it in here. It's going to be okay, Pix. Cole, I'm scared. Don't be scared. I'm all out of glimmer. You don't need glimmer. You don't need fucking glimmer. You don't need that shit. Yeah, I do. Look, I mean it's the kind of, all these people that are like making shit like glimmer. And look what fucking happened here, okay? Anyway, Pike, you're not scared, right? Nah, this is just a Tuesday. Yeah, exactly, but I... You're putting love, even. We should only get scared. My rule is don't get scared unless Pike gets scared. And look, that doesn't mean that you should be fucking scared. It doesn't mean that you should let your guard down. We all need to be on our toes here. Anything could happen, but look. And wear heels. I'm always on my toes. Great. None of us are going to let anything happen to any of each other, alright? That's exactly right. Hey, man, keep your finger off the trigger. Have some discipline, jeez. What the fuck is going on? You dumb dumb, what are you doing? Don't point that thing unless you intend to kill somebody with it. You can't have it. I'm putting it up in the air. The guy who was very safe. Get your finger off the trigger, man. This is what they taught me on set, okay? Put the safety back on. You can do this plenty. Can you believe this? Nothing bad happens. Geez, he's going to shoot somebody in the ass. No, I'm pointing directly up. I mean, worst case scenario, I start to think... Oh, oh, oh, accident, accident. I promise not again. Yeah, worst case scenario, it's like to the head for starters, not the ass. That's worst case though. We should probably stay together, but in pairs like buddy system style, if we're going to investigate, I don't think we should just go room by room, all of us, we've got to move fast. Well, maybe try a couple of these spots. I mean, I think probably we want to find the head office. If there's anything that you want to find on the Don or deeper information, it would be there. Do you know where the fuck that is? Yeah, lead the way. I've never been in this section, but I can try. Normally I always went to the side there. It opens up in this crazy zoo, all these pens and just creatures of massive size and teeth and claws. Did they have so many pens, did they do a lot of writing? Yeah, they did a lot of writing. And when you were here, did you sleep with the Don's wife? Not here specifically. Because I was hoping that could jog your memory if you thought about the places you did it. It was all in town. Yeah, it was probably in the hot springs, wasn't it? Is that what this house was? I thought it was Philadelphia. I would not go in the third hot spring from the top on the right side. That water is ruined. It's probably already ruined it for a lot of different fucking reasons. I bet it's fucking. All right, you tell us where the fuck to go. He hasn't fucking been here. Yeah, but you know this place? Where do you think? Or should we just start checking every single fucking door? Well, I think maybe not every door, but we go deeper. And let's check a couple of them just to see. If you weren't a bumbling buffoon, where would you start? Hmm. We're going this way. If I just start, I go down and check the doors. I follow Rhett. Do you try any of the doors? I would be checking doors, at least a few of them. If it feels like I can check a door and stay with an earshot and be close, like I would want to, presuming that the facility is as elaborate as I'm visioning in my brain, I would want to go to other doors and at least peek in or glance through the actual door threshold to see what's going on while we're all making our way deeper into the facility. As you're exploring, so there are these large, almost like glass boxes, and they're huge. And they create these kind of, this almost like system network of routes that run deeper into the facility. And it stretches to the top of the ceiling. And as you go and you try certain doors, everything is locked. However, a couple using the key card will open as you push into it. Each time I pass a key card access point, I'm swiping. Let's find out what Roa has to show us. You go up to the first large glass section. And you scan and the door opens wide. You step in and you see what looks like a mechanized section of laboratory experimentation in front of you. On the other side of the wall, the ground is white as you were to walk across it. And the blinking red lights cast this terribly eerie glow across every surface. The stainless metal countertops, the only things that kind of feel pristine in this area. On the other side of the room, you see behind a second piece of glass as you look in, you see these two vials in this helix format. One yellow and one green. I will kind of like, given that this is like, does it seem ruined or does it seem almost abandoned? Like what we had seen was a stampede. Is this just like dark and untouched? There are like, ruinations throughout the honeycomb in the actual like skilled labs. This portion feels abandoned. Got it. This feels like left almost untouched for some time. But there's still kind of like, in all areas outside of where the locks are, you see evidence of kind of like crashing things scattered across the ground. I, throughout this, I think I would have probably like lapsed meeting this crew and this whole team and like almost losing a little bit of my individuality a little bit. Not needing to be so self-reliant. I've kind of like put it a lot on Rhett and the rest of the team. But kind of being back here is starting to kind of activate the flashes of like when I was exclusively like a solo vigilante and kind of breaking in and investigating and like doing my own piecing together. And so I think I'm like kind of right up there with Rhett like asking what he thinks about stuff. Asking Ziggy like, Pipe, what do you think? Like, you know, Pixel, could you, you know, what do you think? You know, basically trying to piece together and investigate it. Given the sense that something feels just deeply unsettling wrong, given everything else we've experienced thus far. Roll a group investigation check. As you enter this room. That's good money. That is very good money. That's actually really good money. Holy shit. Oh, not me. I got a six. 25. 20. Nice guys. Wow. Now you, Pixel. I'm really bringing the average down. Five. Seven's a pink. I got six. You all start to kind of explore this room. You're looking in through these kind of vials, looking at all these strange things. You see these kind of like liquids forming under these like almost scientific looking glasses. Ziggy, you're the first one who finds a section of paperwork. And it talks a little bit about an experimentation and one thing they developed. And it looks like they have developed a cure to an extremely deadly disease. Hey, I'm seeing records of some sort of cure to the deadly diseases. They may have been doing some legitimate research here. This is like something out of the just like something out of the episode of the Y records. Oh, yeah. See, there are elements here of good. This place isn't all bad. I mean, you know, everywhere has kind of two sides. They're saving people. They're solving things. This is a good thing, right? Go. You find another piece of paper that dictates some of the items they're trying to cure. You pass it over to Rhett. Nobody is necessarily a biochemist, right? So you see all these kind of like elements, all these things linking together. It becomes extremely difficult to make heads or tails of this kind of stuff. But Rhett, you are you read the news every morning. You're you're you're you're well read. I got the paper. You get the you get the paper. You're a well read guy. Some of the diseases that they're curing for stand out to you as odd because you have never heard of it. Because you have never heard of any of them. Not a one. What are these diseases? These really rare? What do you mean? Are you saying that they're made up? I'm not. I mean, not necessarily as possible. I just haven't heard of them, but I mean, I read the paper. I never heard of any of these. Okay, so we found evidence of cures for diseases that may or may not exist or that you've never heard of or any of us. I suppose maybe they're just incredibly rare and you just don't hear about it because it happens so infrequently. But maybe it's made up. Why? Why would you take the time to work on a cure for a disease that's so incredibly rare when there's so many that are not rare killing people all the time? Great question. You know, if they're all about making money, that's that's not going to make them money, right? No, it won't. Well, you know what? Maybe they have like a charity wing. And that's what this is. Oh, maybe. Strange, the two vials. Oh, do we not look at the two vials? Well, the papers, the evidence you're finding dictate what look like strains and chemical breakdowns of the contents of both vials. It's incredibly hard to make heads or tails of what it is. But I would say that you're able to suss that the green one looks like a virus. Looks like a bottled virus. And the yellow one looks like it's cure. I read the name. I mean, I don't know if I can read the name of the virus, but like, is it one of the names here of like, oh, like, is there evidence that they are creating an engine? Creating and engineering the virus. That is very much the the feel that you get from what you're saying. How large are these vials? They're like, like, like, are they the size of the ooze canisters from Triniage Mutant Ninja Turtles? To, uh, short. Yeah, they're about that. They're about that size, the ooze canisters. You said one of them is green, one of them is yellow. One is yellow, and it seems as though that is the cure from the other canister, which is green. And that seems like you would, you would maybe start to draw the conclusion that it seems as though it's a synthetic virus. I, while we're having this conversation, I would have probably been drawn to the colors of these things. And we've walked over and kind of like picked up the green one. And while red is looking through the paper, I'm like, kind of like tapping it on the desk. Like, wait, put that down. Why? Carefully, Pike. I take back everything I fucking said. What? They're engineering cures to diseases that they're also fucking engineering. Those fucks. They're just like fucking Keogen. They're creating the problem and settling you the fucking solution. Which one's this? Which one are you holding, green? The green one. That's the virus, put it down. Just really, really carefully. Like, don't drop it. Fine, we'll all turn into things that'll rampage out of here, you know, three months later. Everything's fine, just calm down. And I just set it gently back down. You have to lean it upward, like on the side it's gonna be. That's how I found it. Just nobody look at it, it's fine. Maybe we should just leave. Yeah, well, fucking film that. I don't want to be in this room with that thing. Get all of it. Here, in this stand. I start taking photographic evidence. Here? I'm making sure that none of us are in the shops, including Rex. I am purely taking these... Oh, you know, this filter makes it look a little grainier and cooler. I am purely taking photos of... You're snapping photos of the paper. Every piece of the documentation. I make sure that I get the side of the ooze that shows the ID on the side. You're getting the ID shots, you're getting the chemical compound mixtures of some of what this is. You're capturing the information that you have to capture, with a limited still idea of what it is you're seeing in front of you, but you're able to get several shots of different elements of this place. Oh, these fucking megacarps. They think they can do whatever the fuck they want, and they can look at what the fuck they're doing. Well, they can until they can't. I mean, they... Presumably, they're all dead. Good. They all fucking deserve it. Oh, hey, some of these were pretty decent people. You think anyone that's working on this deserves to live? We don't know that they're synthesizing superviruses and building the cure to make mass profit. Right here, synthesizing superviruses. And then right here to make a cure for mass profit. Oh. Okay, well, this room's not great. Maybe another one, though. All right, let's go to the other one. Which door does the key card work on? I'll walk up and I'll try it. I will try all the doors. You try as you go, you'll fail. You're going deeper and deeper into the lab. You find the next one that opens up for you, it's interesting. You almost get hit with this kind of like the barometric pressure of the room rises. It's almost this kind of like mist as you walk in and this beautiful kind of like greenery stretches out in front of you. And just the absolute simplest function still operating is this kind of like misting of what looks like a ton of vegetation. Or you see these kind of like exotic fruits, vegetables, look like being manufactured and grown in front of you. You see tables that have piping laced at the back of this cement potting with the plants growing out of it. The whole back wall just has this eerie illumination of that same red light in this dark room as the wall top to bottom is almost like this hanging moss with sections of solid food growing off. These are massive rooms that we're walking in. These are huge labs. Like full laboratory sized sections. Think of your college laboratory times like two or three. Like big spaces. So it's almost like, you know, it's not like you walk in and it's like a closet, you know, it's not like a little doctor's office room. No, no, no. These are these are big actual like experimental what feel like R&D labs. Very cool. Roll a group investigation check. This is not where I'm going to get that looking again. Finally. I got a 12. 17. 11. I'm going to enjoy investigation. I'm going to get a 21. Nice. 21. You spend a little bit of time exploring this room. Maybe even pluck some of the fruits, the vegetation off the wall. You see these like orbs of deep purple that hang heavy in the hand, almost backening you to take a bite and their large creations of food. Right. And the you find once again kind of a series of information about the work that's going on here. Project. Project SATD. And it seems as though you'll first kind of start to explore into it. This looks like a true attempt at cracking kind of like GMO food to solve for hunger issues in areas that can't grow food to sustain a populace. How to take the simplest, smallest bit, synthesizing serums to add to legitimate growth to dramatically increase crop yields. This doesn't seem so bad. I mean, it looks like they're just trying to increase food production. There's a fucking catch. There's always a catch. There's always a catch. Maybe the food's like a dick thing or something and then you can only eat it. Otherwise you die. Yeah, I'm what are they going to do sell more fucking fruit? I bet they fucking force fed this this food to somebody who's got to be reports of what it did to people. They had to have trials for that shit, right? I mean, take a look. I try to like get a sense of like, is there any record of people actually eating this shit? You do find the trial reports. Oh, Larry. You find a series of reports that dictate a 600% yield increase to growth. It looks like extreme, like very positive scrawled notes that they've cracked it and they've really, they've unveiled something extremely positive here. They start testing the crop on like wildlife at first. They do testing not on humanoids to consume and all of the initial testing shows extremely positive. And then you find later batches where they bring in, they evolve to human testing, humanoid testing. And it looks positive and positive reports of delicious food sated for longer after eating less. And then there are cliff notes in the margins of those reports, updated evidence from animal testing, resulting in long term permanent health issues. Leading to extreme dietary like failure and sometimes death. What about names, references, anything? I don't see, I don't see control to, presumably control to a lot of this. I don't see control to anywhere here. Dammit. Still, yeah, yeah. There's gotta be some connection. They're fucking keeping, they're solving their hunger issues and keeping them sick so they have to rely on their fucking bullshit. I mean, it's a fucking, an old care company. So they're going to clinics and facilities and they're in the fucking hospital? All right, great. More evidence of evil. That's what we came here for. We're building the case, right? We gotta find something that connects any of this to the dawn. Just keep moving. Let's keep looking, all right? We haven't found anything yet at all. Nothing looks like the dawn's mark on it. Well, if we haven't found any of this Rubato shit, nothing's right. This isn't even seen, nothing's been Rubato. Nothing yet. Okay. Just keep going. You move to the next room. I don't like this place. I mean, the door opens. This room, you see slightly more, you see like computer layouts on the side, all powered down. In the dead center of the room, you see what looks like, almost like a large flame turret. Just across from it, you see a giant panel of fused glass suspended in the air. You see on the other side, basically elements of computers on either end. This room seems relatively sparse. It looks as though there are no blemishes on the glass at all, but there are like plaster battery, pistol battery cell casings on the ground as if they were like firing blasting at this glass to see how defensive it was. This is the first lab you've been in where there looks like there's a second room behind it. This is just protective tech, right? Look at all the shells on the ground. It's testing. Yeah, just testing. Does this look like the same glass that was in the facility where they found me? Oh, no fucking way. It does look exactly like... Roll history check. Oh, it's a donkey. That's gonna be pretty cool. To anyone, it looks exactly like the glass that laid out in front of the room you were in in the D'donganite mining facility where you had hold up and you had your server farm palace. This is the Esper-proof blast resistant... Can't even be penetrated by magical force glass. Right at it. It looks like a testing site for it. I'm just saying we shouldn't take the fruit. We should leave the diseases. But if we can take one thing from this facility, we should take that. I can get out of here. I'm just saying that's nearly indestructible. We can take all the applications. That thing is massive. Who's gonna carry that? You? I mean, to be fair, you did say you could do a push-up, so... Well, I mean, I could carry it. I'm just saying, I mean, who are my hands full the whole time? What is something that attacks? I'm in my blaster. Indestructible. Well, nearly indestructible. If it's anything like the glass that you were protected by. Remember my disintegration reign? Oh, you told me about the disintegration reign. That's so fucking cool. What's behind the wear exception of the ether tech? Yeah, what's behind the glass? Behind the glass, you would have to open the second door. Swipe. It's the smell that hits you first as the door zoops open. The horrid stench of decay on the other side of this door. As you step in, this room is extremely dark. Not even the red warning light pierces here. It's shrouded almost entirely in darkness. There it is. Finally. I hate to fucking say it. What is this? Can you get some light? Yeah, yeah, I can. I'm going to cast Dancing Lights and let them float around the room. My spotlights go all of it. This almost beautiful, technicolored, Arcadian light dances through the room and casts its glow upon what first presents to you almost like a morgue. You see a series of tables lined out in front of you, all a white sheet covered over top of it, with what looks to be the form of some flat, some seem to be covering humanoid shapes. Under the ones that are, you see a series of, not piping, but kind of like a, almost like a woven plastic tubing that runs across the ceiling, drops down and looks like it goes up under the blankets and disappears beneath the white sheets. And the stench is of heavy decay. Oh, God. But it's not like, oh, go ahead. I'm going to take off both of my leg warmers and I'm going to put one around my face. It's kind of like a mask and I'm going to have the other one to go. I'll grab it. I don't, I'm so focused. I'll grab it. I'll still wait for Pixel to hand it to me. But I'm like getting more and more to use a, anachronistic meta term. I'm getting more and more until like my Rorschach headspace. And it's like the stench is, I don't even sure if I'm like, just stirring it as I'm stirring the piece together. It's present, but it doesn't stop. Yeah, it's present and I'm holding it. It doesn't even slow you down. I'm ripping it in my fist. You see like, and I realize, remember that it's yours and I'm trying not to damage it. I'll walk over and I'm just going to pull the tarps off. Concurrently. You walked in the room first? I opened the door, but when the stench occurred, I'm just staying at the door while all of this action is happening. And I will bring my camera up for the tarp reveal as I start to piece together what's happening in this room. I think as soon as there was light, at the very least, Rhett's been trying to go in first and then let people go investigate. So like, I think Rhett would have stepped in and go behind him to go actually pull the sheet off. Pixel would have gone in with Co just to keep things illuminated because the dancing lights are around her. I'm at the door. So she would have dropped those in very hesitantly and not happy about it. You pull the sheet off and as that light dances through the room and it illuminates a section, something catches your eye, Rhett. As a small folder with the... almost like a stamp across the top that says Experimental Weapons Testing. And as you pull the sheet off, Co, what you see underneath as you pull it down is a completely stripped nematohan. And it becomes very apparent with the stenches coming from because its skull is cut open, it's cracked apart, the skin is pulled down and there is a knife and what look like... Forceps. Forceps that look as if it was reaching into the brain in the middle of a form of experimentation. What is it, Co? What do you see up there? Is it bad? No, don't get any closer, Picks. Okay. Don't get any closer. Are there any other bodies? I want to kind of like see if there's... if the same thing has been done, if there are other species. Yes, you will go through several of the tables. There are six forms in total. You see a very familiar or very similar site in each one in different sections of status. One untouched. All one nematohan? Not all of them nematohan. Three of them are nematohan. One of them with its brain completely removed from its skull, its skull open over the table with almost like a dried film at the top and the brain in an open like petri dish to its side and a collection of other species as well, but the dominant seems to be nematohan. I'm flipping through this folder. You would, in the time you would flip through the folder, what you find are a bionetic weapons experimentation with the goal of sourcing a physical... the goal of finding a physical source to espror destructive power and to explore whether or not it could be removed and implanted in another subject. What do you got? Someone who's played a nematohan. Does Code know kind of generally about... this is all just as an out of character. Knowing Meta, Mikey knows that they're not natural espers, but knowing that there is a sort of like a blue mage consuming equals power, to nematohans as co-know that. And like thinking about like them being force fed or them eating each other and eating brains, that's kind of where I'm trying to think of what would co-piece together. I want to make sure. I think... I think combined with what Rhett is finding in the folder as you kind of combine those elements together, I think it's fair for you to come to those conclusions and find that they're not normally genetically predisposed to espror energies, but to feed into them some form of source you may be able to grow it. They're trying to find a way to make espers. Not just being born with it or unlocking it, but like I don't know putting it into a fucking pill. Once I see that things are relatively safe, I'll walk in from the door entrance and start to continue to document. I'll take photos of the nematone bodies and of the others. I'll give you the whole folder. I will take the folder and I will fold through and I'll start collecting that evidence as well. You know, we don't have to read all of this. No. There may be more. I mean this is a lot of text. We can analyze it when we get out of here. There may be connections that we're not seeing to the dawn. So this is still nothing related to the dawn here? No, nothing obvious. That's... does anyone else find in that a little worrisome? There's so many rooms. Look, Adam... No, he would have done what he could to hide things. Yeah, a guy like the dawn. He's been doing this a long time. He's a professional. They're careful. This is a brain. Even if we get to a room that has anything to do with red lines, there's no way for us to link it to him. Well, cross that bridge when we get there. Let's just get out of here. We don't need to spend any more time in this room. They forced him to eat Asper's brains. This is... Is that how... Glove got his powers? Let's not think about it too deeply. Oh, fucking hell. One thing at a time. One thing at a time. You're in pixels right. Pixels right. We gotta be in a fucking horror boris or eating. I can't... So right, the dawn's not involved. Let's go. It is for a moment almost reminiscent of your walk to the Dodonganite mining facility where Glup was behind you, interacting with creatures. And as he would reach out, they would become consumed. He would like, shloop their brain power. And he would glow with... he would almost glow with a power. Come on. Let's keep moving. Well, he's dead. You poor fucking souls. I'm gonna close this door. Once everyone's out. I'm gonna cover them back up. There's nothing... nothing more to be done. You make your way to the next room. And this one, right as you open the door, there's a series of papers scattered across the ground, and the side that almost like falls forward. You go to pick them up. And it's... it's... What it is, these aren't scientific. These are financial. This seems to document a large endowment to the Omicron site. And the injection of funds, which seem to almost exclusively be filtered to the experiment that is simply referred to as RDXL7. RDXL7. I don't know what RDXL7 is, but I feel like financial documents are on the right track. Where's it coming from? Anything about where it's coming from? Who... who gave all the money? I'm gonna look as closely as I can. Do I see any information about the source of these funds or anything that could tie this to the dawn? You gather a couple sheets together, and for a moment you have to backtrack a series of companies as it's outlined, it comes from kind of different... a different collection of spaces. But eventually, after a couple moments, you see the... one of the prime donators to be named as Nido Contralto. There it is! Nido Contralto's name right here! Look! Get it! Get all of it! So he was giving money to this... this... this RD... RD something, rather? Is that the code name? RDXL7? Is that what you said? RDXL7, I don't know what that means, but his name's here on financial papers! But we got something! That means he does have a link to this place, so we didn't waste that time. No, you're right. No, no, no, it's good, but all we know is that he gave money. Okay, but if we could find anything, like if there's a sign or anything that could point to a room that has something to do with this RDXL7, then we're more likely to find stuff about him, right? Right, it's a start. It means that we're on the right track. We know what to look for now! If we can pair that with some fucked up shit that it's tied to RDXL7, then we have a case. I'm gonna keep these particular papers in particular, I'm putting them in my pack, but also I have the photo evidence on my grid, boy, we're good. Something about all this is just... I don't know, let's keep moving. We're getting closer, this is good. What we need is we need to connect the knowledge that he knew he was giving money for this evil. Not just, oh, here's a grant or whatever, and then they went and did evil stuff with it, but that he knew he was investing in the abuse that happened here, and the manipulative technologies that were developed. That might be the fucking codename of this drug. So that confirms that this is the place. RDXL7. Yeah, they're not gonna call it Rubedo in here most likely. Everybody memorized it. That's all marketing. It's all the street names of the drug. Just think that real hard, so if you see it anywhere. RDXL7. On pieces of paper, if it's a cell name, if it's a... you know, it could be any clue. There's one other in the excitement of finding this paper, discovering the lettering RDXL7. You almost turn and leave before the rest of the contents of this room catch your eye. This one is almost cooler as you walk into it. And these large encapsulated pods line the edge of the room with these heavy thick piping that comes out of the wall and injects directly into the top. I'll walk forward and look closer at these... these pods? Like a... I'll see if there's anything inside. If it's just like clear water, or if it's more like chemicals or diseasey agents. I'll look around as well. You see a... A group investigation check. A group investigation check. Nobody walks in the room. Yeah, I'm definitely walking in. I am rolling like fire. You're rolling there. 17! Let's go! I also got a 17. Nice! Finally! Nice! 11. Dirty 20. Hi everyone. Derek Hudson here and I have huge news. Our next Kickstarter campaign is coming and it's called Neon Odyssey. It's a 1400 page space opera trilogy for Dungeons & Dragons 5.5e. It has tons of options for players, NGMs alike including an entire galaxy to explore, 30 plus species, 40 plus subclasses, a brand new space combat system and so much more. It's taken us three whole books to fit it all in. You can become a VIP at neonrpg.com to unlock a free set of Neon Knights sharp edge resin dice and more. It's only a dollar. Become a VIP now at neonrpg.com. I'm a little hot for the investigation folks. Who was, who's next, you're 20. We both got 17s. Yeah. 11. So I'm walking right up. They're right behind me because we were just all talking about the financials there in the room. Um, this is a colder room. The, the first thing you two see with the 17s is as you walk in, you see a temperature gauge on the wall. Kind of a needle that bounces up. And though this room is colder, the needle is currently by degrees exceeding a level of which it says, do not exceed. Basically like keep frozen. And, and you get the sense that though the room is cool, very possibly because of the power mode that this facility is in, this room's not drawing enough energy to cool it to the level that it is meant to be. That's not good. Ziggy. Yeah. As you move towards the pods, you find these pods are filled with this liquid. And as you kind of give that frosted glass, like a wipe, a quick squeegee, you look into the first one and you see this tear amalgamation of flesh and bone, which looks almost like a facsimile of a humanoid that has melted away. And no longer is retaining its form. Perfect. Guys, there's some weird shit in these pod things. I got it. I know why this all feels so familiar. What? It reminds me of the sci-fi comics I read. This is literally Perfect Jackson, the ultimate life form. It was from the best run, actually. You read Perfect Jackson? I did. Oh my God, of course. Yes. That's exactly why they think of that. It's like they read it right out of the box. You guys don't know Perfect Jackson? Oh, they're the best. I have the OmniBus. Books one through four. Oh yeah, this is exactly the same. It's like those labs on that asteroid or the meteor or whatever. This could have been a panel right from the comic. Yeah, this is so cool. This is real fucking life, guys. This isn't a fucking comic book. Oh, trust me, I get it. I step into the glass. Oh my God. What the fuck? You're saying that was in a comic book? Yeah. You read those things? Willingly? The temperature. That's probably what happened. They were supposed to keep them on ice. It's a horrific sight to behold. It looks almost like clay face, but more real. I'm making a serious clay face. Yeah, I'm making an animated series clay face. Oh yeah. This horror of deformed bone that never set right. These sprouts of terrible hair that are coming from all different sections of this. This terrible mass of unformed organic matter. When Pike says something about the temperature, if there's a temperature gauge, I want to go through and see if any have managed to stay cold enough where I can see if any potentially non-melted ones exist. I want to see what it looks like. As he's looking around, I'll just kind of look at Ziggy's direction, look at your direction as you're looking. I'll say, you know, I always felt like those comics were cautionary tales and these assholes went ahead and did it. Yeah, it's supposed to be really obvious when you read it. Dr. Maze, he's supposed to be this mega genius, but then he's super corrupt and doesn't see the evil of his own ways, right? It's like we're living in the comics right now. God, I hope not. We'll roll one more investigation check. Please. 15. That's good. Yeah. 15. With a 15, you look around this room and you find one pod that seems as though it has remained. It's frozenness. You walk up to it, you see the glass extend up and you kind of wipe away the frost and you look inside and you're taking it back almost for a moment. You see a perfect physical replication of Zadamax. Oh my god. Andy's surprised. Five God-survivales. Is that who I think it is? No way. He's dead? No, it's like a... It's just like the comics. It's just like a duplicate, right? It's a clone. It's like for parts. If Zadamax needs another kidney, they just come in here. No, you don't think they're harvesting this? They're trying to make someone who can sing and perform better than Zadamax so they can have a monopoly on the entertainment industry and start taking business away from Gemini Group? Maybe they could replace Zadamax with their own agent. Oh, replace super famous people? Oh, one of these was probably me. They probably only have like eight-less celebrities here. I'm trying to see it. What a stupid idea that. Clearly, it's just fucking Zadamax. Doesn't make any sense. So is Zadamax not real? I don't... I want to dig through. I'm like speechless. I'm like, what the fuck am I looking at? I'm going to try to rip through information to see if I can find like any kind of information on why they're doing this. I look for like movie stars. I look for entertainment professionals, famous anchor, news anchors, that sort of stuff. I'm taking pictures of every single time we wipe the condensation clear. I'm taking pictures of the contents. I'm finding celebrities. I'm finding weird amorphous blobs that are the thing style. I'm taking a picture of the Zadamax facsimile. And I'm also whispering very sinisteringly to Rex as he... Maybe you're a clone. Maybe you're not the original after all. Have you ever thought about that? I mean, it would make sense. It would make sense that they'd want a replacement, retain my talent and ability for generations to come. Just more evidence to help us out, you know? Pixel just sits down in front of the Zadamax and she's like rocking. She's almost like losing it at this point. This is like a house of horrors so far that has some furrowing. You see her pull out her compact and this is a compact you guys would all have seen before. She uses it most of the time but it's got a little etching in it that says to Baby Doll from Mr. W. And it's where she keeps her glimmer and there's basically nothing left. And she's like shaking as she's trying to get enough to help in any way and there just isn't. And she maybe even see her reach into her pocket and she's got like two fragments of notes left. And you can tell she's really... she's freaking out. I would... I... would I know this is? Yeah, easy. I'd walk over and just like without too much fanfare, super low key just be like... Do you want a cigarette? Yeah, you got an extra? Of course. And I'll just pop one out and I'll hand it to you and I'll offer you a light. Who does this kind of stuff? Just take a deep breath, alright? Yeah. Try to breathe. Corpos, pics. These megacorps, every single fucking one of them. She's really nice. Yeah. They're all... they're all working together but they're trying to stab each other in the back. They're all fucking blood sucking monsters. Do I recognize it? Wait, wait, wait. Santa Max is probably okay, right? Like you know he's my favorite. I have all of his albums and then and I even have his torch and I go to that tour but someone brought it back for me and and I think it was signed with someone. It really sends a... anyways it's on there and it's... Pics, it's okay. Pike, I don't know if this is like your comics but the real Zeta Max is out there probably doing a concert right now. This is a copy of him. This is exactly like the stories. Hey, it's almost like they took the idea and they just decided to fucking do it. Well, maybe those stories were inspired with the fact that this place was already here. Well, it doesn't matter where it started. The point is this is real and we're gonna make the people who did this pay, alright? Yeah, I think we gotta keep going cause... I mean... I mean it's empty, right? So it's not like this can hurt anyone anymore cause it's already... it's already ruined, it's already dilapidated. We don't even know if that thing's live. It might just be a fucking skin soup. Oh, I'm watching. It might be waxed. We don't know. Okay, well you guys find what you can find. I'm gonna watch it and make sure it doesn't move. Just have... yeah, keep giving him more of that stuff. Yeah, yep, I'm on it. Yeah, thanks buddy. We just need one connection. We gotta find the Roberto, alright? We're close. Red, as you flip through the papers, you find a sheet after sheet that details and evidences the experimentation in search of perfect genetic cloning. It attempts to get it right. Attempts to solidify. Attempts to be a true one-to-one match to another figure. But this is all extremely scientific. As to find the ultimate purpose of what they're driving towards, it finds difficult to suss that out from the documentation at hand. Just what they were trying to replicate. Co, you do find lists of the intended creations in the tubes, and you see a laundry list of A-list celebrities, extremely prime people. The head anchor of INN shows up on the list as you look. Yeah, thanks. Sorry Rex, only A-list. Let me see that. Uh huh, uh huh, schmuck. Uh huh, uh huh, talentless. Uh huh, uh huh. For what it's worth Rex, Mrs. Ume always said that you were better than D-list, no matter what all the hyper grid lists said you were. Well, I mean this is just simply, you know, presumably you're looking right, they probably just needed DNA to begin, and they just couldn't get it from me, you know? Please, you left your DNA everywhere. They should have asked Anatra. You know what I mean? I don't have any. I'm getting one of these tubes right now. I just leave them hanging. Come on up top. Yeah, come on, right up here. Okay, I can see, you're a little nervous. It's okay, it's a tense moment. Uh... It's cloning. They're trying to make genetic duplicates, perfect genetic duplicates. Nothing in here says whether it's fucking willing or not. Shhhhhh. But they're fucking with people's genomes. Pixel put her hand on the glass, so he's okay? The real Zeta Max is out there somewhere? Is this just a... Yeah, he is. Is it Gooby Double? Yeah, and he might not even know this exists. Take a step back, Pix. Okay. Are you sure about this? Are you sure, Rat? I don't give a fuck. I'm just gonna go out in the hallway. Yeah, yeah, that might be the best. I'm gonna go. Right, take a few steps back. And I'm gonna put my hand on Rex's chest and force him to take a few steps back. Wait, wait, wait, what are you doing? Are you sure? You're clanking from my pack and whirring and sloshing through the tubes as the singularity uncovers sliding doors on the cannon. You'll start to spin as I will use my alternate fire disintegration beam at this pod to make sure that it ceases to exist. No, no, you're right. I should go outside. I'm gonna go outside. No, you're not going outside, Pix. No, I don't want to watch this. I don't want to watch this. Just turn away! Turn away! Turn away! Come on. I will, like, get an alcohol-grad pixel. It's okay. We're gonna... We're helping. We're helping. We're the good guys, Pix. Remember, your disintegration... Disruptor beam, sorry. Your disruptor beam connects with Zeta Max's pod. It starts to completely dismantle this thing in front of you. At first, it takes a minute. This seems to be not the same level of, like, combat-ready, full-blown, S-Burne glass, but... Cold start. But this is like hard Chimera bienetics, like true pod construction. It takes a minute, but you start to disintegrate the section of pod. At first, the liquid gushes out onto the floor. And as it hits your shoes, your beam connects with Zeta Max's torso. As the disruptor beam starts to eat away at his form in both directions. As you see the, like, his... The contents of his pod disintegrate completely. And the pod itself in blasted shambles as it almost starts to, like, eat away and split in half. It's done. Let's get the fuck out of here. Pix is over. Okay, look. See? See? We're helping. We're the good guys. There's no way that was loud enough to bring, like, nightmare monsters here, right? I, like, actually will, like, kinda cock my ear up and see if I can hear anything. Um... Once again, you go to listen, and it is, it is eerily... There's, like, the faint warbing of the low red light as it casts that crimson glow all over this room. But no other sound pierces the quiet. I still don't hear anything. For better or for worse, it seems like we're very much alone. Uh... Does, does that feel interesting to go? The fact that Rhett was so willing, didn't want to touch anything else, and then for this he just said, I don't give a fuck and just blabbered, anyway he started blasting. Is that, is that odd? I'll let it rip. I'm following. I mean, it's pretty odd. I mean, it's definitely not a character for Rhett. I'm gonna, like, as soon as the quiet returns. Yeah. And I imagine he's like fucking House of Waxing starring, uh, was that, uh, Paris Hilton? Oh! You know? Yeah. We're like, the, the, the, the, the clone is getting melted, and then like, blasts away like perfect cell. I mean, he's like disintegrating, and you see the, you see the face start to droop, uh, as an eye leaves the socket, and almost runs down this like molasses waterfall. Yeah. As the skin just starts to fall away from bone, um, and it's, it, as he gets. Go get, get Pixel out of here. We're, we're right behind you. It's, it's consumed. Come on. Come on. Let's get out of here. Is he okay? My heels are ruined. How are they ruined? What do you mean? All the liquid from the thing got all over my heels. They're ruined. Did they? Yeah. You, you got her all over her feet, right? Yeah. Well, how close, how close are you standing? Pretty close. Okay, yeah, they're pretty bad. They're in pretty bad shape. We'll get the, we'll get you new heels. Yeah. We'll get you new heels. Unlike the red light, unlike this place. Feels weird here. It's, it's, it's bad, Pix. Feels evil here. This is real bad. Red, are you okay? I'll be fine. Let's keep going. He didn't blast anything else in this place. You heard the big guy. Let's move. And I'll just give Pike a nod, but like with the understanding look of like this isn't over. Come on. I'm going to lead the way and find the next access door that I can find that doesn't go. You lead the way and you find the next, you find the next room. And in this one, you see a large amount of vials, beakers, crates, those spiral, the spiral, like sharp glass tubes, as they seem to be moving, synthesizing, sourcing some form of liquid. As you look towards the back, you see one station against the wall that is kind of this like almost looks like a, like a, like a very, a very large version of it, but the cuts are very small, almost like an egg carton with kind of a press. And in it, you see these like half, half shells sitting in the bottom and the top look like the top portion of shells. The liquid that runs through these vials is almost a crimson red. Is it a red line? Does it look familiar to me as a Dungeon and Dragons character? The doors all open and I'll just sort of... How much red is in this room? So everything in this entire area is bathed in an eerie red glow because of the emergency lights that are wriggling on and off. This room, almost for the first time when the lights fade away for a brief moment, instead of the light dimming and fading away, this room retains a kind of reddish glow. And there's a, there's a very, there's a lot of red in this room. Roll a, roll a group investigation check. This is it. Okay, could be worse. Come on. I was rolling so hot. Yeah. I can't stop rolling 15s. I got a dirty 20 with my plus one to investigation. Dirty 20? Yeah. I kind of, I kind of love that Pixel's horrible in investigation. I got an age. No, I'm usually terrible. I ate the first three. I got like single digits. Now I'm killing it. 14. Several different points of confirmation hit, hit almost all at once. Co, you move to the, you move to the vials and you are convinced that this is some form of synthesization of red line. Another series of papers, Ziggy fall out in front of you. Dixie's the chemical compound of RDXL7 as the experimentation that's happening in this room. Who else rolled a time? I got a 20. 20? Who's yet? 14. That was a bad one. Yeah, I rolled a, no, 12. I got 12. Pike, you find a series of papers that talk about lab experiments that once again dictate the kind of evolution of testing on non humanoid testing. Looks like animal creature testing. It started with, with very positive results. It then dictates that it begins human testing, humanoid testing. It references a testing focus group all referred to as CS3. The moment that I find a stack of papers as like the thing that I find, I just give them all to Rhett. And I immediately go see if I can find like. Rhett, you find that information. No, no, I just pass it to him. Like I just, I looked through this. No, no, I mean you glean that information. It perfects you the paper. And then I continue to look to see if I can find like a small vial that seems, you know, safe, secure, not so fragile. That's relatively slippable into a pocket. Yeah, I'd say you find like a, like a classic chemists vial with a stopper. Looks like there was in a, in a tray that looks like purified red line. I take one. Rhett, you notice something on the papers and you've noticed something in each room before on any of the research you've read. Every paper though I've neglected to mention it is signed by the researching scientist. Oh. You have seen names before like Dr. Nomara, Dr. Zandra, Dr. Blaine's. You've even seen Rose Ompano's name in certain places. All of the papers here are signed by Dr. Joto. Oh. The head honcho, the big cheese. Why don't you say that Dr's name was Rex? Dr. Joto. This is his research. He oversaw a lot of stuff. I mean, he had his hands in a lot of experiments all the scientists reported to him, I think. Does it have a title on his signature or is it a signature or does it say what his title in this facility is? Oh. Oh, yes. You're signing a contract. Yeah, that's yeah. I was thinking. Director of operations. Yep. Director of operations. So he was the big guy. He's responsible for all this shit. Everything that happened here. We know that Don was funding it and we know that now this is what a fucking is. What the fuck's the source? There's, we were testing it on some group called CS3. Look for mention of CS3. I get ready to start just tearing apart the place. I'm no longer being careful, especially seeing Rhett just absolutely fucking disintegrate a pod with a A tier galactic celebrities clone. I'm like, I'm pulling shit. I don't care if I break stuff. I am. I want to get to the bottom of this. I have been working backwards from the many different vials and flasks and tubings and everything. What I'm trying to find are raw sources, right? I'm trying to find what the raw components are that go into this elaborate lattice of experiment technology in front of me. I just want to make sure before Kogo's hammer I'm able to swipe one of these vials. You can do so. I'm not smashing them. I'm just looking. Your tear boxes are on. I just don't want you to get destroyed. Yeah. I'm quick. Quicker than I am. Pixel still has the lights going around, the dancing lights to give illumination, but that's about as helpful as she is. She is kind of backed up towards the wall and she's got her compact open and she's mumbling to herself. No one's close enough to hear. But she's got her compact turned almost as if she's looking at someone in it and having a conversation with them. That's probably good. That's concerning. So this is the DM? The GM? Uh-oh. That's what the... Yeah, not exactly what they look like. Just little spotlights. Co, you start tearing into the place and you're not delicate. You are uplifting tables. You're throwing boxes around. You're ripping drawers out. You're looking for anything that will give you direction and identification of more about what this is, about RedLock, about RVXL7. Why? Ziggy, the two of you almost together, you'll find it in different sections of the world. Yeah, basically like you're capturing photos. I'm working backwards and I'm trying to find what... If this is the place where RedLine is made or where RedLine is synthesized into something else, where does it start in the building block? What is it? Yeah. What the fuck is RedLine? We don't know. What is RedLine? You start to find boxes and boxes and empty crates of... You've seen it used before in syringe form. And the syringe with that dual injector often plunged into the neck contained this kind of like... Didn't Red get one of these? You had one. Oh yeah. You smashed that leaf. Oh well, the same kind of injector was in the venom that I gave to our poison that I gave you. It was the same thing. Was it also a dual injector? There's a dual injector. You start to find empty boxes and boxes like just used to... Of used injectors? Of not of the injectors, but of the vials that the injectors housed. And it's all empty. All empty. All the boxes are totally empty. Red, CS3, you catch a couple of familiar names. You, as you look at the human testing section, you see there are 300 names on this list. Holy! All under the category CS3. Probably like 200. Somewhere between like 180, 200 names. Three are familiar to you. Martel. Dolcetta. And Ulchi. No! Three names that Rex said when you were walking to Cinnabar Springs. Cinnabar Hot Springs. As townsfolk that he had interacted with before on his trips, on his visits. I almost like, I'll take the list of names those pass it to Rex. What? What's this? Uh huh. Hey, Dolcettas. Oh, and Ulchi. And uh, wait a second. Martel. Wait, these are uh, these are the town, these are Cinnabar Hot Springs. Yeah, and it's also the list of... human fucking test subjects. Not a good sign for your buddies there Rex. Or humanoid test subjects. You're saying that uh, you're saying they were testing red line on the town? Guess we know where they all fucking went. Or at least whatever this Rubedo shit is. Is that what it is? Just a red line in a pill? So all the fucking housewives and wine aunts and football players and all the junkies on the street can just go to their doctor, get overprescribed and mellow out. You find one other thing in the sheets of papers, Rhett, as you look. Um, almost what looks like an inventory flow. Uh, and uh, a cliff note. Presumably in the penmanship of Dr. Jodo. Um, inventory extremely inefficient to keep up pace of experimentation. Require, uh, require direct source. They ran out of it. Not only did they run out of it, from that you would gain that the rate at which they could bring red line in to do the experiment. Holy shit! Was getting far outpaced by how quickly they were experimenting on it. And the note, the cliff note, is him noting that they will need more than just the red line, but the actual material components of it. Did a couple things. Does it literally say red line in the notes? Or is it just a micro-siege in that? Red line are even street names. Yeah, it doesn't say red line in the notes, but that's very much. Like the substance, the compound. It is talking about like this chemical compound that is, uh, that is resulting in, uh, RDXL7. But as you're looking at this testing, as they had moved into human stages, you can see that they started with RDXL, humanoid. You can see that they started with RDXL3. One more thing that I want to glean before I say anything is, can I get a sense of, did they bring everyone in and test them? Or were they like coming to the town and being like, water supply. Or like, hey, look, we're coming down to help you, like take these pills. It's got to be the latter. It's got to be. It's fucking. Maybe both. Toilet green. It looks as though they were almost in like clinical trials. They were offering compensation for people to test. Ah! Classic. And you can see once, uh, once they had begun, uh, it almost looks like from the second the humanoid trials begins, uh, the rate at which people sign up for them, uh, almost exponentially increases. You would presume as word gets out of its effect. Damn! They were fucking signing up for this. Humanoid trials and started at RDXL3. Well, if it's as addictive as we know it to be, I mean, that makes sense. I mean, this shit is the entire town. This is everyone I've ever met. And they obviously. No one is here. Everyone is missing. At a certain point, they hit seven and they just fucking vanished. I mean, they, were they done? They were making so much that they couldn't fucking keep up. They needed to find some source. It doesn't say what the fucking source is. What? Is there, is there any chance that Dr. Jotu is still fucking alive? He's the one, the one who knows, knows what's going on. We, we, we have to find someone, right? Any, any person on this planet? They, they, they, they were there, they either they ran on a supply and they all went fucking crazy with them with Raul Or they took too much and they all went fucking crazy from taking too much? You said the office. We gotta get to his fucking office. I think we're almost there. All right. Keep that fucking gun on you. I don't care about anything else. Let's get to the fucking office and let's get the fuck out of here. Lea, lee, lee, lee, lee. You got pictures of all this, right, Ziggs? I'm keeping this too. And I take photos. Picks, we gotta keep going. It's gonna be okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, get ready. It's gonna be... I know. You want another cigarette? I know. You told me not to get involved. What are you talking about, you pigs? What? No, nothing. Nothing. No one's... No one's... No one's watching you. Yeah, no, I know. I know. It's been a long time since I had glimmer and... And the red lights, they just won't stop blinking in my head. And it's just everywhere. Just red lights everywhere. Anyway, we're fine. We're fine. Yeah. Where are we going? Where are we going, Co? We're gonna find Dr. Jotos. He's the director. We're gonna clear this up, and we're gonna get the fuck out of here. Yeah, no, we got this. We got this, yeah. You got it? And we're gonna save all the townsfolk because... We're gonna find them, and we're gonna save them. We're gonna find all of them, and we're gonna save every single S to one of them. So no big deal. No big deal. I mean, what bounty hunt is that's what bounty hunting is do, right? I guess Zeta Max is on stage right now. Okay. We gotta pick up the lights. I got this. Hold on, my lights. I gotta get my lights again, and I'm gonna cast Dancing Lights one more time. You're doing great, Pix. Yeah, I would have like booked it out, but probably before you did. I'm leading the way. I'm finding things to swipe this access card out. You're now almost to the back of this large, labyrinthium honeycomb of research, R&D development labs. You come to a back wall that flanks this whole section. And as you walk up, you see another section of frosted double glass doors. This, you don't even have to scan to get in. As you approach, it slides open. In front of you, the same dark room with that eerie red glow. Blblblblblblblblbl Cast over almost what feels like a bullpen. This is like a room of research notes where the scientists you would think might come to actually document, update, maybe even have discussions, just like mind connection moments to meet. But this, nothing around you here says lab. It's stations. And at the far end of this, once again, not massive, very much not the room you were just in, but larger room, you see a clear glass wall at the other side. And from where you are, you can see the back of a leather chair facing the door. Nice office, nice chair. It's got to be it, right? It's got to be it. Oh, and there's one, as you look over there, in the room is the only spot so far. You have seen one almost like dancing white light. What the fuck? Do you want to do the honors or should I? That's all you pack. I'll take a few steps forward as I get closer to where we see this chair. Is this like a, is there, is this like all glass or is it just open? Like, can I just like... It's a glass facade. So the whole office in front of you, not massive, but it is the only one that's sectioned off in its own space. It's not huge by any means, but both sides lined with books, the style of which look like, like the kind of tomes that are like old, scientific, like research that you would stay apprised of. And as you make your way towards it, you can see, actually, for the first time since you've landed on this planet, you see in the chair, ears, furry pointed ears that poke just over, just over from the other side of the chair. The back of it to you, though. Hey! Do we know what species Dr. Jodo is? You've never written down, but Rex, I would have mentioned that he is a Clawdaren. Gotcha. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey! Hey, can you hear me? There's no way. Doctor, is that you? He's been here this whole time? Weeks, no way. Dr. Jodo! Hey! Rex Maxim here. There's no way. I'm going to get a little closer. Love what you've done with the place. And I'm going to put my hand on the back of the chair. As you enter the room and you approach, you move past the desk, you see a scattering of papers once more. What looks almost like handwritten scroll on notepad, you go to put your hand on the back of the chair, and for a moment your eyes flick up, and the top of the ceiling, very briefly, as you spin the chair, you see a scarred and black. And as you turn around, as you spin the chair around, I'm ready for anything. I'm ready for anything. You step into the darkened room, and you see a nicely furnished but simple office fit for the director of operations for this facility. A plush leather-like chair is turned away from you. And despite having seen no other soul in this place, you see the cauderan ears of Dr. Jodo poking up as he sits facing a blackened console screen. Sorry, a white illuminated console screen on the opposite wall. The chair swivels around in what faces you as a corpse. Dr. Jodo's withered form leans back in his chair with a simple blaster in his right hand, tightened grim. Clutch to his chest seems to be a recording tape. The right side of his head is ruined and scorched with a terrible laser burn. The dark terminal hums behind him with occasional flickers of static, a rectangular slot beneath the screen. As you look down, written over top of the papers in that same handwriting that signed all of the labs, you see a simple note. I am become death. I'm sorry. He's dead. Looks like he might have seen the writing on the wall and took the easy way out. He sure did. Come on over, it's all right. I start picking up the handwriting and the scribbles and I start going through. And I want to see if I can find out if there's any information on what happened to these townsfolk once they entered these trials. If there's any record or was there all a single big calamity that happened but everything was fine at that point? Does he show any kind of notes of like progress? You see the personal notes of the evolution of Dr. Jodo's experiments. Something towards the top sticks out another element that's almost completely unrecognizable. Almost as if he didn't know how to articulate it on the paper. And RDXL7, trial perfected and complete, moved offsite to mass production. Now that I see this guy is very clearly dead and there's like nothing to be scared of, I'm just going to take a tape recorder out of his hand. Out of his corpsis. It's not a tape recorder. It is almost what is the equivalent of a VHS tape. Okay, some sort of data device. I'm just going to take it from him. I'm not going to be careful. I'm just not scared of his corpse. You do so. His arm falls limply away as you move the recorder. What you got there? I'll toss it to Z. Don't fucking drop that. Nice catch. Thanks. Wow. I haven't seen one of these in a while. We might be able to find something to play this in here, but at the very least we'll be able to play this in the rap set. I can't play this right now. What about that? Sitting right in front of his desk is the like a snowy screen of a terminal that illuminates his dead face. Just beneath it, a slot that looks like you could insert the tape. Like I said, we could only do this at the... No, I mean, I hop up and I can't read the letters. I'll punch it into the slot and hit the play button. C'funk. And then I'll adjust the tracking to make sure that it hits the monitor properly. You spend several moments watching the following footage. Good morning, future me. This is a large collection of... Largely scientific collections of the experiments of this facility. You find interviews with other scientists as he interviews and tracks their progress on different reports. You find the things about the GMO plant more about the Esper development. But that's not what you're looking for and you scroll past it. Almost like recorded over on the back half of this tape. You see what looks like... Almost like security camera footage. But as far as you've been in this lab so far, you haven't seen security cameras anywhere. This looks almost like captured hidden camera footage. You see the image of the Don. You see scarlet eye thugs bringing in cases and cases of what you know to be red line. You see Dr. Jodo and the Don shaking hands as they go through iterations of this. You see exchanges as they have conversations around what looks like the experimentation process. As it goes through, you see almost like an increase in delivery of red line. As over months as the experimentations evolve. And there's clearly a moment in the tape where you feel the information that you gathered before. Where the deliveries feel as though they just can't keep up. You see a conversation between Dr. Jodo and the Don. The explanation being very much the red line we're being provided does not have an amount of chemical component that can keep up with our experimentation. We need the direct source. Can you get us the key components of red line? So it's not good enough that they have this compound. They need those building blocks that I was looking for in the lab. They need the source of red line. Once it becomes obvious that this tape has conversations with the Don on it at the facility. This is a massive spike of information and evidence. I will have pulled out a cable and I will have hooked into this player. I'm going to endeavor to record while the playthrough is happening, if I can, to try and capture that information so that not just that physical copy is the only... As you plug in to this terminal, you do start to download the series of videos when you're capturing it down. You also grab a section of files with research papers, but with what looks like zipped data chips attached. There's a monocoded data in here. You find three zipped data chips as the scene continues. You see and you hear once more the familiar voice of the Don. You wanted the direct source, Dr. Jodo. I can bring it to you. How many scientists do you need to move the experimentation forward? Well, I'd say in line with myself, probably no more than three others. If you can get us the direct source, not this synthesized compound, not this red line. If you can get us the direct source, then three more. I think we can solve it. I think we can move past the negative effects, the bursts of energy, the crashes, the horrors of the drug. I think we can synthesize truly the benefits of the removal of pain, both physical, emotional. We can get there. Just the direct compound, however we can. Tomorrow, you'll have what you need. Your team has asked many questions about the origins in the work we're doing with RDX-6. We will give a demonstration of the origin compound so that everyone can be a part of this advancement together. That's... That's excellent. They would love that. There's nothing they love more. Excellent. We'll have them... Yes. Somewhere that can house the team. Great news! Tomorrow then! The tape skips forward to the next frame. You see the Don and Dr. Jodo walking down a hall. They are walking... This looks like the entire scientific body of the lab walking with them. This is a ton of people. There's probably 80 scientists with them. You almost didn't catch it at first. There's this weird effect on the screen currently. It has this hazy snow to it. But there's almost this strange black spot on the screen. It's not super prevalent. But as you continue to watch, you watch Dr. Jodo excitedly walking with the Don. You see a figure to the Don's right. The Don as he walks forward, as Dr. Jodo walks forward, there's this bounce to him. This other figure almost glides. It looks as though the camera is almost having a hard time capturing the figure. Do we all see that? It'll be here that I will start to adjust the tracking and continue to turn that knob. I'm going to point at it and look at you and be like, what did you do? Did you break this? No, no, no, no, no, no. This is an artifact. This is on the tape, but it's not. I swear, if you broke the tape. I didn't do anything. You think I broke the tape? I don't know. You're pretty clumsy. It's not about dexterity. It's about the zeros and ones. This look, look at the look of the shape of this thing. It's defying the tape itself. How is that possible? Is it even real thing? Is he making shit up? In the video, they reach this extremely large door, almost like a blast door, but it doesn't have that same kind of like kind of like blast shut component. This is just the construction of this door. Dr. Jodo turns for a moment. Good news, everyone. The Don has brought his friend, the direct line to the elements that builds red line. We're going to experience it all here together. Oh, no. As we know, science is not perfect. Things can happen in the exploration of doing good, but we try and we evolve and we don't give up. And what we do here, it doesn't always go our way, but we never stop. Red line is an imperfect system, but I believe that we can develop RDX7 to cure the pain of the people. Please, this way. And you'll see the figure. It's back kind of to the camera. And you'll hear the Don will speak as well. He'll say something to the doctor. I'll show everybody into the room and we'll develop, we'll demonstrate shortly. You see this figure for a moment turn slowly as it a hood comes over it and you catch almost the slightest sliver of the bottom of its face as the hood casts the shadow across it. It then begins to speak, but even as the sound erupts, the only thing that comes out is this eerie, terrible static. And as that sound comes across the mic, Pixel, you feel this terrible resonance within you. This doesn't affect you emotionally, but it affects you at a deep core of yourself. You know in your heart of hearts that this is the same figure from the hotel room that Weedlevox sent you to entertain. Is that the guy that you sent me to entertain? What's he doing here? Cole, Cole, Cole, Cole, Cole, Cole, that's him. That's the guy. That's the guy that tried to kill me. I know, don't worry. He saved you. You're safe. He's not here. He's not here. So what's that noise? That's not what he sounded like. I was there. I heard him talking. He didn't sound like that. It's not picking him up. What the fuck is it? Hey, just, just, just, uh, hold on. Make it work, Ziggy. Hold on. I gotta record this. I gotta record this. Be kind to me, mind, be kind to me, mind. I will. You attempt to move the tape, and your efforts are meaningless. It almost at this point doesn't seem to respond to your conflicts. Oh, fuck. The tape's got ghost sound. Come in, Dr. Jodo. Excellent, everyone. Please, we'll, we'll experience this together. No. Not you. Not your team. You have to prep the lab. This begins with them, then you will gain the information. He looks, uh, visibly deflated on camera, thinking that they were gonna experience this, uh, together. Um, uh, but, Don, to, to, to know, to experience it together, the scientific community, please. The lab must be prepared. We have to start synthesization immediately. Uh, the, Dr. Jodo dejectedly looks as if he's gonna go to speak. Um, he pauses. He takes the other three science members he, he had mentioned needing. Uh, no one you recognize, but they, uh, all walk off back down, uh, this, this hallway, back towards the lab. Um, and, uh, the tape continues. There's, there's a pause for a moment as the Don and this figure stand outside of the room. And then, uh, the Don, uh, turns his back to the door. The figure, once again, glides forward, turns, and the door shut. The last thing you hear on the tape is blood curdling screams before it cuts to black. Did we get a look at the face, or is it still like a shadowy light? The camera almost failed to capture the, like, you never, like, it can't, like, it, like, whatever the, whatever the, the elements of how it captures light, how it, how it bends light to create, uh, replication of image, uh, it couldn't do when faced with this creature. You get this almost like dark, hazy outline. Why? That, that, that, that, that, that, that's it. That's the end of, that's the end of the tape. I, I, I, I, I got all, I got all of it. I got all of it. Dude, did you think that he did to all of those people what he was gonna do to me? Do you think he did it? Hey, it's, it's, I don't know if that's important right now. What do you mean? That's, that's, that's the source of, of red line, right? Was he gonna turn me into red line? What does he mean? I don't know, Picks. We, we barely saw the fucking guy on the, it's like the, the technology couldn't pick him up. I'm gonna look, I'm gonna try to root around to see if I can find any kind of explanation to what happened to the patients that were tested on. I'm trying to find, is there anything more identifying on this Dr. Jodo, what happened after this? And just, I start tearing apart the office again. I'm done with this. I'm gonna take the tape, store it in addition to the copy that I made, and I'm going to take photos. As anything that, that co, or anyone else puts down, I'm going to take a photo. I'm not even looking at it at this point. We've gotten so much of what we're looking, we, we came here for, but I'm going to try and capture any information that I can, uh... This is the most important thing, right? To, to find what we're looking for? To find where that was. Yeah. Yeah, Picks. Then I recast my dancing lights and you're gonna see the, the yellow of my, um, my skin kind of, um, illuminating almost. Yeah, you only got a little bit of juice left and then I'm gonna let it burst out as everyone feels like they're a little bit more perceptive. Um, they're feeling a little bit more intelligent. Um, things are becoming a little more clear. This beautiful, this beautiful technicolor light illuminates this, uh, this room of darkness. Uh, the first thing that the light dances off of, uh, is his badge still strapped to his coat. Um, security clearance level, uh, five. Oh. Um, Dr. Jodah. Um... There it is. And next thing... And no, honey, you said not to go through people's stuff, but we gotta do this through one. Picks, who are you talking to? Oh, it's Mr. J. It's fine. I, I, I, I, I, I, Mr. W. It's fine. Mr. You killed Mr. W. Oh, no, it's fine. You killed Weedle Fox. Picks. It's fine. Picks. No, you're not. You're losing it, Picks. He's not gone. He's not gone. He is gone. You killed him and he fucking deserved to die. We got, we got stuff to do, so... You need to pull your shit together. Okay, fine. Okay, fine. I gotta load the ass. Pull it together. And she'll, she'll snort the last of her, her glimmer. This is no time to be losing your cool. Sorry, I'm sorry. You lose some good asshole. I'm sorry. I just, I, I didn't know bounty honey was gonna be like this, Cole. You said we were gonna fly around in ships and we were gonna get bounties. You didn't say anything about tons of people dying and stuff. Give her a cigarette, Pike. Please, just one more. Now, I'm feeling better now. I'm feeling better now. But I don't, I don't gotta be left. I got plenty of them. Settle down. Right. And as I hand you the cigarette, and I'll light it for you again, give you a light, and give you your space, I'm just gonna turn to Rhett and say, we gotta do something big, guy, we're losing them. Rhett, Rhett, just, just a, just a couple of notes, just for the next time we're at the mall, okay? Yeah. No, we're, we're, we're gonna get through this. I'm gonna walk up and rip the badge off of this fucking, You're so fucking jacket. Oh, good, oh good. Almost tears his pocket, that falls now wimfully just beneath it as you rip the badge off. Yeah, even if it like, makes him slump over, like fall out of the chair, like I don't give a fuck. Yeah, I have no. There was body falls to the ground. Yeah, oh my god. Glatters. Um, Ziggy. The first attached data chip to the records you find references, trials of genetic experimentation. You find a grid script that emboldens your grid boy with the following. What? What? I'm not gonna love it. You'll notice, you'll notice it's the one I tore in half. Oh shit. Oh shit. Spells, spells, spells. Spells, spells, spells. Why is he reading through that? I'm gonna take a minute, like I'm kind of observing how like our newbies are doing, and like I'm watching all this unfold and I'm trying to keep my cool, but I'm just gonna kind of like sidle up next to Rhett and like quietly doesn't aside say, uh, alright, what do you make of all this? What are we gonna do? You tell me, Pike. You should know better than any of the fucking rest of us. I mean, there's gotta be... some place that all that took place, right? We gotta find it. You sit down at the desk after Dr. Jodo's body has fallen to the floor, Rhett, and you look at his personal documentation. Yeah, I'll read through everything. Uh, it evolves, uh, it takes you through the process of the experimentation development from RDXL3 to 7. Um, the strong belief that 7 sold it. It's perfected, it's ready, move it to mass production. We have, uh, we have eliminated pain, we have cured pain. Um, the largest, most influential scientific breakthrough of the millennium. Uh, the millennium. Uh, then some far more hastily jotted script afterwards, after the final experimentation development. Addendums to, uh, the human trial report. Trial patients becoming sick, condition worsening, skin growing shallow, move to quarantine. All the records after that moment seem to be lost. And that, the final note, was probably, uh, just after the last time Rex was here. Hey, it's all fucking connected. Those things that we killed in the hotel, in that abandoned fucking motel. Silent? Yeah, that's what they're called. It sounds like that's what this fucking is. The living dead. They were getting sick, they were turning shallow, they were fucking quarantined. That's awful. The living dead are silent. Anything that's a fucking corpse that's still trying to kill us. If that's silent, what the fuck is the vice-run? Because that guy wasn't dead. No, that, that, that's definitely not the same thing. Now, what is he? He, he could talk and stuff. You said, it felt familiar, that it was like chuckles. It's, yeah, yeah, it felt familiar. Worse. I don't know what it is. Worse than silent? Worse than the living fucking dead? Much worse. Then what the fuck are we supposed to do about that? This is evil. We have what we need. Right, right, right, right, right now, all, all, all we need to do is stay safe. Keep all this data. Get the fuck out of here. We're not getting the fuck out of here. What do you mean? We should, we should, we should, we could, we needed to go, and then we could go back to the ship now, and then we could, we could send, send it wherever it's, like he thinks that we need to send it to, and then, and then, and then, and then, we've got our, our, our bounty, step two. And then, and then we can, we can, we can recover and then we can save on the rhapsody. Yeah, and we could save so many people's lives if we're gonna stop to this right now, we just gotta get out. There's one more unanswered question. Yeah. And I hate to even bring it up, but it's the fucking source. What is in that fucking room? We've come this far, it seems foolish to just walk away. We, we could just, we, we don't have to, we don't have to stay long. We could just look and see if we can find out what it is and then leave. No, we cannot look. Why are we gonna, we can just leave right now. How are you, got all this stuff? If we leave right now, some other asshole who's some mid-level executive looking for a fucking promotion is gonna find this place on a silver fucking platter, and he's gonna take it over, and even though everyone here is dead, he's gonna bring all sorts of fucking people here, and the cycle's gonna continue again until all those assholes die, and then some other mid-level manager, pencil-pushing asshole, is gonna come looking for another fucking promotion, and it's gonna go on and on and on, and who the fuck knows how many communities, neighborhoods, worlds are gonna turn to fucking rot in decay. I changed my mind. As soon as he said we should go, I realized that we should probably stay and figure out what's in this room, because I, I'm not gonna be as scared as Rex. Let's, let's fucking go. We'll never get this chance again. I agree. If we can get any kind of evidence, and really pin the deaths of those dozens of fucking scientists on the dawn, it's over. You're right. We gotta find where the fuck that was. Not even fucking Chimera can stand behind him after that. He'll be alone. He'll just have his fucking goons, and their stupid fucking belts. Alright. We can do this. I know we're all just bounty hunters, but we can do this. Where do we go? We got his card. What, what was it on there? What, what, what fucking room was that? We didn't pass through it, did we? Do you, do you know where it is? Rex, my chance. Have you ever, have you ever seen any place like that before? I've never seen that room. In all my time here, you would catch a glimpse in the video, um, uh, Laboratory Level B. Uh, referencing the basement. It's downstairs. That would make sense. Let's go. Let's look for stairs. That's the place that could, you know, where else are you gonna put a room big enough for all those people? I'll turn and I'll start walking out. I'm with you big guy. Let's go. Watch your back. You leave the office immediately to the right. Uh, is this, uh, eerie gray, it's a very slight hallway before it takes a sharp left turn. Uh, and it's in that eerie gray cement illuminated by that warbling red light that haunts you every step. Um, it looks, you can see as you look straight down it, you're close, as you look straight down this hallway, um, you can see very briefly what looks like the top step descending down below.