Play@YSDC

Cael re-enters the top floor landing. The light overhead buzzes and flickers, giving the stairwell's shadows a sense of movement that distracts his gaze. Instinctively peering down the middle of the stairwell, he sees a smear of blood and can glimpse a human hand, though not the owner. Moving further down the landing gains no greater perspective. The door to the next landing down in slightly ajar.

Cael sighed, "Should have known this wasn't going to be a cake walk." He said to himself as he headed to the door. He thumbed on his mic and said, "Alright, I'm at the door to the landing. There's fresh blood here and I saw a hand but not the owner. Seems there's hostiles here already. I'm going to leave my mic on so that the moment I get ripped to shreds you all will know and can get the hell out of here." With his weapon ready, he opened the door fully and peered inside.

The corridor was sterile and vacant with a number of wooden doors, painted white, on either side of the corridor, their labels bespeaking the administrative nature of this floor.

"There's a hallway with administrative labels on the doors, where to?" Cael asked.

"Cael, Dahlia's run off!" Sarah says into her radio. "I think she's trying to go with you, so you if you hear the pitter-patter of little feet behind you, that'll be her. I'm chasing after her to try to bring her back."

"There should be one on the right that will give you access to a map, if you break the glass frame holding it, you could take it with you. That place is like a maze, you'll need it," says Blaize, over the radio.

"What? Damn that kid!" Cael yelled. He was furious, 'How the hell can I trust that kid if she never listens? If she gets herself killed it's not my fault. I did everything I could to ensure her safety.' He looked at the walls for the map, once found he says, "Affirmative, map acquired."

He can hear Blaize smiling over the radio. "If it's the room I think he's talking about, you should be after ESK Storage. It's somewhere on that floor..."

Cael looked at the map and began to hunt down the room. "Moving out."

The map is large and cumbersome but it does make tracking down ESK a lot easier. He has to take the third right, then the fourth left, then the second right and he should be there. As he makes his way to toward the third right, he notices that one of the doors are ajar. This is apparently Dr. Malcolm's Office (or so says the brass name tag on the door). The light flickers inside as though the neon light were on the fritz and there's some stains on the floor. It doesn't appear to be blood. It looks more like ink stains.

Cael rolls up the map and stands it by the door and grips the rifle with both hands. Using the muzzle of the weapon he pushes the door open further and calls out, "Anyone alive inside?" He then counts to ten, if no answer is given he quickly peeks inside, if the room appears clear he grabs the map and moves inside.

There is a body slumped over Dr. Malcolm's desk. It is a man wearing a white lab coat, a key card between his stiffened fingers, his face appears to have been crushed in. The office seems to have the typical set up: computer, filing cabinet, book case.

Cael stepped into the room, slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled his pistol, in a whisper he said into the mic, "I'm in an office that belonged to a Dr. Malcolm. There's a body slumped over the desk that had it's face bashed in, there's a keycard in the corpse's hand that I'll going for." That said Cael moved closer, his pistol trained on the corpse's head. If it moved it was getting shot. Once he got to the desk he quickly grabs the keycard, moves around to the side of the desk where the doctor is and uses his foot to push the body out of the way. Once all is clear he checks the desk for anything useful, including a bottle of brandy.

The corpse remains deathly still, even as he takes the key card, and pushes the body out of the way. In the top drawer of the desk is a clipboard that has a number of strange diagrams drawn upon it - they seem to depict some sort of pyramidal object made up of smaller pyramids.

"Dr. Malcolm?" asks Blaize. "Yeah, I remember him. He was a physicist of some description. His body's been there since the start of things. He was killed by one of his own men who went mad shortly before we broke out of our cells. If I remember rightly from what we managed to read in one man's personnel files was that he was examining some kind of artefact, code-named 'Sleeper Device'."

There seems to be a lot more paperwork in the drawers but it would take time to examine them.

"Daddy does remember some things about the Sleeper Device," says Sarah on the radio, then repeats what he had told her. "It has immense scientific potential and seems capable of holding certain objects in a state of flux that resembles static and recombining or holding other objects in a separate state of being from itself, creating multiples that both exist and don't exist, yet couldn't be brought near each other. The effects it had in the room were immense, and it was only because the metal used to shield the room had both a positive and negative charge that it kept the effects from branching outward. The police seized the device from a cultist's home, and the metal was taken from a semi-submerged tunnel beneath London, but that's all I know about it. I wonder...could that explain what's happening to us, and to the world? Three parallel realities that can't coexist, but people move between them. Multiple copies of each of us in other realities. Maybe the shielding failed somehow, and that's how it happened. There'd be nothing to stop the effects from expanding to cover the entire world! Maybe the Sleeper Device is the thing Daddy left in the commander's room."

"So the plot thickens." Cael stated mostly to himself. He grabbed the paper on the clipboard and folded it, putting it in his pocket. He looked at the files but shook his head, they didn't have that kind of time. Placing the keycard in the same pocket as the folded up paper, Cael grabbed his weapon and headed out the door, grabbing the map on the way out he opened it to rexamine where he needed to go. "I'm on the move again." He stated.

He has to take the third right, then the fourth left, then the second right and he should be there. The third right is the very corner after this one so he makes his way there with ease. Pausing at the corner, he peers around the edge, rifle and flashlight at the ready as he quickly sweeps the corridor but sees nothing.

Seeing nothing Cael heads on.

He follows the map carefully, making sure to scan down each corridor. The other doors are all closed with no signs of life or death behind them. No tell-tale bloody streaks. No bullet holes. Nothing to mark any one door from another. Until he reaches ESK... The door is wide open. The room is cast in shadow, then light, as a fluroescent light flickers on and off. Bloody smears begin halfway down the corridor and then curl around into the room. There is the buzzing of flies and the stink of carrion, mouldy books and ... sex?

"Alright." Cael whispers over the radio. "I'm at ESK and wouldn't ya know it. Every room is fine except this one. I'm not going to describe what I see due to the sensitive nature of this program but I do suggest that if you don't want to hear very disturbing sounds then turn the radio off now." That said Cael lights his flashlight, readies his weapon and steps into the room.