[MINGLE] PLOT: Down the Tubes: Alarm

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: The bunker & elsewhere
WHEN: 1 September 2018
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn on threads
NOTES: Plot Details | Bunker Details | Bunker Map & Key
Threads may take place ANYTIME during the plot, including before, during and after the tubes have been opened, just please do not godmod tube arrivals without explicit permission. Related threads not in the bunker are welcomed, as are general bunker exploration/reaction threads that have nothing to do with the arrivals. Please reference the bunker key doc for what is and isn't available to explore at present.

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Deep under the mountain, tucked away in the newly-discovered bunker complex, there is a room where everyone begins. It is filled with equipment — Computer consoles, monitors — but the point of it all resides within ten vertical stasis tubes lined neatly along a far wall.

One of them has been cracked and lies dormant, dry. In six of the remaining are bodies, unconscious and floating in their familiar vari-colored scrubs, vital signs ticking calmly off on their respective readouts.

In the corner, near the cracked tube, the ceiling has shattered and tumbled inward, across the floor and over the largest console in the room — The one flashing 24 HOURS UNTIL STASIS FAILURE.

Comments

[nifties]

What Cael says is true, but true doesn't mean relevant, especially not to him at this moment.

"Well, no one's around to protect this place so let's bank on the latter, shall we?" And if they were, he's betting on some type of spell. Something to lock them into the Observer's whims. "A binding spell requires blood. And it's obvious they want to keep us here for whatever reason."

[cannily]

There's something--cocksure, a little flippant--to the man. Cael spares him another glance, just for that snatch of red fabric. Pulled through worlds and unconcerned. In death or life, that sits right, with the red on his chest. The red next to his initials on the vial.

But Vermidis sat on its wealth, and they're stragglers here. Useless, is the estimation Cael hovers his judgment above. Too soon, but the scale tips. "Powerful enough to bring us here," he thinks aloud. He isn't sure what it is, and John doesn't seem like much of a listener. "I imagine they don't need to guard their things. There's no telling how much of this they have, and there's certainly more where it came from."

The seeds are the curious thing, when he moves deeper into the room. One of the samples, despite its strange language, looks familiar enough: he pockets it for later.

[nifties]

"Exactly," he agrees, surprising them both no doubt. He plucks up another vial and looks inside. "They abandoned this place because it doesn't matter to them. Or perhaps it was only constructed to scramble our minds anyway, they want to see what our conclusion about them will be. Arrogant bastards, aren't they?"

[cannily]

"I suppose I'll trust your estimation of that," Cael rejoins, testing the dust on a shelf with his finger. Certainly abandoned, but the only good assumptions with so few variables are the ones that keep him safe, and keep him looking for more information.

"There's always the bigger fish," he cautions. "Something worse may have forced them to move on."

[nifties]

"As you should. I'm an expert." Because he's one of them. He looks up at the rest of the man's commentary. "Interesting. You think there might be something higher on the food chain?"

[cannily]

Yes, dear and simple stranger: that was the joke. Cael swallows the pettier reaction with a last slip of water, likely as not dripped down from his hair. He should change, he should find--solitude in which to think, but the room is wide and the labels many.

"Power is precarious. There's always something higher, or something below you on the cusp of revolt."

[nifties]

"Not always," John is quick to argue, though he tips his head a second later in concession. "As a general rule, though, you're not wrong. Especially in places like these."