Adventure Gamers - Forums

The door doesn’t close? Mmm
Did we take the lockpick?

>take lockpick

>take lockpick
You can’t see any such thing.

>e

Outside Laboratory
The corridor from the east ends here, and a single door looms to the west. It’s no larger than the doors you’ve seen elsewhere; but it somehow looks… heavy. Unyielding. Reinforcing struts cross the door’s face, and the surface is sheathed with some black coating.

The laboratory door stands open.

The end of the hallway is still well-lit.

The lockpick is clinging to the black plate by the door.

>get lockpick
The pick comes free with a faint magnetic snap.

The door begins to swing shut as soon as the pick loses its link.

“Here we go,” you hear.

>w
You duck through the closing door, keeping the lockpick firmly in hand.

The Laboratory
There is no question what this place is. The room is high, brightly lit, and filled with arcane, half-built, and unlabelled machinery. The heavy door stands open to the east; there is a small white pad and an access panel beside it.

At the center of the chaos, and its focus, is a great silver platform which is wrapped in a glittering cage of scan-web. A control console stands next to it. Cables run out across the floor, from the platform to the console, from the console to the walls, and tangle around a low cabinet off to one side.

Much paper and clutter rests on a long wooden table against one wall. The table also supports a notably large black device. By the other wall is a clear space ringed with red, with some sort of mat inside it. A steel cube sits on the mat.

The door booms shut.

*Note to security operatives or trainees: I’m pretty sure it’s not standard practice to let the enemy down the hallway hear your tactics and when you’re about to throw a grenade.

Oscar - 14 September 2016 09:20 PM

*Note to security operatives or trainees: I’m pretty sure it’s not standard practice to let the enemy down the hallway hear your tactics and when you’re about to throw a grenade.

Lol, even with an advantage of 100-to-1 they decided to just stop to throw a grenade

Now bust the access panel, maybe that will keep them out…

>open access panel
>shoot panel

And now I’m off to bed

>open access panel
You pull the panel open, revealing a layer of subcircuitry.

>shoot panel
(with the gun)
The layer of subcircuitry showers a corona of sparks. Blue light crackles along the subcircuit paths.

You hear voices outside. “Well?”

>switch on black device
The tiny switch begins to glow red as you turn it on.

>take cube
Taken.

“The lock circuitry is knotted,” comes a mumble from outside the door. “...must have done something…”

>take mat
The mat seems to be fastened down.

“We’ve got shock grenades. Should we blast?” There is a pause, and someone replies, “No, wait on that. Whatever’s in the lab, the tech crowd will burst themselves if we fill it full of shrapnel.”

You smell something burning.

>x papers
You quickly sort through the papers, as best you can from your briefing lectures. In a few moments, you have piled up a single stack of the most critical diagrams, tables, formulae, and notes. Everything else is left scattered across the table in more disarray than when you started.

While sorting, you discovered a logic plate buried under a spread of scribbled diagrams.

An oily, burning odor fills the room, although you cannot see any smoke.

You’ve got a lot of time, don’t worry about it. Figure out what you want to do and we can restore and repeat it quickly.

>read papers
(the stack of important papers)
You have no notion what any of it means, but it all matches the profile you were given of material relevant to the work done here.

A voice says, “Someone ask around for a gas cutter.”

>take papers
(the stack of important papers)
Taken.

>take plate
Taken.

>x vents
You can’t see any such thing.

>x alcove
The black device doesn’t have the half-built, rigged quality of the other machinery nearby. It is curved, polished, and sleek. It has faired vents along the top. There is a round alcove in its front, which contains a glass pot. The only control is a tiny black switch.

>x glass pot
It’s a fat glass pot with a spout and a close-fitting lid, which leaves the spout open. There is a wooden handle on one side. The pot is empty; but the inside bottom surface seems to be crusted with some burnt substance.
 
>x console
There is a free-standing console next to the cage, facing it, with a view off to the side of the padded mat. On the console are two buttons, a grey oval of contact-pad substrate, a small rectangular display above the oval, and a readout strip. Hand-written labels are marked by each control.

The readout strip says, “Shut down for logic adjustment.”


>push buttons
You’ll have to say exactly what you want to push.
 
>x display
The display is blank.

>x buttons
Scribbled between the grey oval and the display is the phrase “Destination waveform.” The upper button says “Ready,” and the lower button is labelled “Light the fire.”

“Got anywhere with the lock?” you hear. There is an irritated mutter in reply.

>push upper button
The console readout blinks; it now says, “Cannot initialize: unit NZ73 not connected.”

>push lower button
The console readout blinks; it now says, “Central systems are not active.”

Oscar - 15 September 2016 06:26 AM

“Got anywhere with the lock?” you hear. There is an irritated mutter in reply.

It sounds more like someone forgot the key to the lab, rather than a spy infiltrated and sabotaged their compound and killed 3 guards.