Laboratory complex X-18, first level, a few minutes later.
Having completely devoured the cold meatballs with rice and washed it down with water, I prepare for further exploration of the laboratory. I put on my suit, turn on the SZD, grab my bag with belongings and the assault rifle. Although there shouldn't be any dangers for me there, but... it somehow makes me feel calmer with a weapon. However, I'll have company, right? Haha, who didn't dream of playing stalker with a friend in childhood... Only instead of a best friend, I'll have a Bloodsucker, and this is not a game.
I check the condition of my newfound friend and conclude that he's doing more or less okay, but he needs an urgent replenishment of nutrients. I'm not a zoologist, not a biologist, and not even a cryptologist, but based on my knowledge of this species – such shortness of breath as the puffing Bloodsucker demonstrates is abnormal for them. I should carry donor bags with me...
After checking myself, my equipment, and the Bloodsucker again, I begin my descent. I'd like to say so, but as soon as I step onto the landing, I notice that it, namely its upper part, is partially collapsed. I somehow forgot that the stairs led not only down... I hand the bag with my belongings to the Bloodsucker, and carefully grab the edge of the top step and pull myself up. Then, I grab the iron pipes of the railing, the railings themselves, and finally, I stand on the very top step. I turn around to see the confused look of the Bloodsucker, who clearly had no idea what I was doing.
"Wait here, I'll be right back," I tell him, starting to climb the stairs.
I had to climb only two flights of stairs up to see a closed metal door there without any identifying signs. Not like the entrance to the laboratory itself, but a completely ordinary one. I wrap my palm around the handle, turning it with noticeable effort, and pull the door in both directions. It didn't even budge. Apparently, it's locked... I crouch down and take out the lock picks I had prepared for this case, and start picking the lock. The mechanism, without proper maintenance for a long time, had rusted and refused to yield, and I almost broke my tools, but I finally opened the door.
I stand up, grasp the handle again, turn it, and push the door forward. It opens with a terrible creak, scratching my eardrums, but not completely. It's hitting something... I push harder, even hit the mysterious object with a few sweeping blows with the door, so that the kinetic energy moves it, and finally, I open it completely. It turned out that all this time I was being blocked by an iron barrel... Someone had thoughtfully placed it there. If the door was locked and "barricaded" from the inside, then someone from the staff must have stayed here. Just in case, I take my pistol in hand; the Fort fits in my palm like it's meant to be.
The room turns out to be standard. Small, only a few meters long and wide, with the same elevator shaft in the center. To the left, right, and in front of me were passages. Now I had to decide where to go first. Ta-ak. I point my finger at the left branch and quietly recite a children's counting rhyme.
"Shyshly myshly," at each word, my finger moves to the next corridor. "Sopli vyshli... I should have just gone left, instead of like a fool... Haha."
Alas, the counting rhyme led me to the restroom. Besides the toilets separated by gender, there was also a utility room with mops, old household chemicals, and other items. Nothing interesting, and in the toilets themselves, besides the Snorks in the urinal in the men's room and jelly in the toilet in the women's, there was nothing remarkable. I hope there will be something in the other corridors.
I go to the branch located directly opposite the entrance door on this floor, and out of the corner of my eye, I notice the light still on in the elevator itself, which had been stuck here for many years. The person who locked
himself in here was so afraid of what might come for him that he even blocked the elevator with a crowbar. But I didn't remove it; I definitely won't use the elevator, and if there's really something that can use it, let it stay there, on the lower floors, and not scare me with a sudden appearance.
So, this corridor turned out to be nothing more than a dining room... A spacious room compared to the others, long tables swollen with time and moisture, benches, trays piled on the ground, a serving area, and a lot of mold, which was practically everywhere. In the corners, on the ceiling, on the floor... I didn't feel like going further; what would I see there? Kitchen equipment? I turn on my heels, leaving the dining room, and immediately head to the last corridor I haven't explored.
And there, I am immediately met by another locked door, which opens without the slightest problem, and I find myself in a small and cozy lounge. Cabinets filled with books are spread along the walls, paintings, in the center – a large, yellow-green carpet, with a couple of sofas on it and a coffee table in between. Slightly to the side, there is a larger table with several chairs pushed into it. And the entire idyllic rest was spoiled by a long-decayed corpse in a grubby gray robe. The last moments of his life this man spent on the floor, huddled in a corner and covered with books, as if that could save him.
I walk further into the room and notice a long-playing voice recorder on the sofa. Its owner clearly loved to record his musings in voice format, pacing around his office or laboratory, walking importantly. I turn on the first recording. It was so. A measured and confident voice mused, occasionally faltering, about his dissertation. But there was nothing useful or, at least, interesting there. Perhaps Sakharov or someone else among the scientists would appreciate it. The next recording is exactly the same, the third, the fourth... And only the eighth was different.
"It... it happened!" All former confidence was gone, a faltering and trembling voice, sobs... And some words were swallowed either by the recorder or by its owner. "A surge... of activity led to... them breaking out of the capsules, and the rest of the biomaterial revolted! I-I s-saw Sergei Grigoryevich... the guard, torn to pieces! And an earthquake, something very bad is happening..."
The eighth recording ends there. I turn on the next one.
"Screams... Their screams..." followed by unintelligible but highly emotional and expressive speech. The scientist literally screamed, then whispered, and so on, in a loop. "He locked himself... in... I don't want to die... God, forgive me, forgive us for going against..."
The tenth, and several subsequent recordings, were full of gasps, moans, and sobs. Whatever actually happened, this man quickly went mad, alone, suffering from hunger, thirst, and fear, lacking the moral strength to leave the room... I move closer to look at his badge.
"Head of the laboratory, Petr Ilyich Kalugin..." I read aloud. "Wow, you're quite important, it turns out. Let's see, let's see, maybe you have something useful on you..."
The only useful thing was a notebook filled with his handwritten notes. And if the first pages were written in neat, ornate handwriting, the last ones were full of chaos, the lines constantly going up and down, words overlapping words, the text as a whole becoming unreadable. I skim through it and learn that the laboratory was conducting experiments on the influence of psi-waves on living organisms, which included not only animals but also humans. There were plenty of his reflections on what might happen if psi-activity increased or decreased... And there were also concerns that the laboratory was located directly above a large underground cave of unknown extent, and the main group, apparently the C-Consciousness, was in no hurry to do anything.
I put the notebook and the dictaphone in my chest pocket – the information there is more than interesting and would be worth a lot in the right hands. And coupled with the documents stored here... Ha, I think Sakharov will agree to help one particularly lucky stalker to legalize and restore his documents, and then... Well, enough thinking about that now, first I need to find the documentation, and then dream about what can be done with it.
"Bye, Kalugin," I say as I leave the room and return to the stairwell, where the Bloodsucker was still standing, clearly waiting for me.
Seeing me, it stirred and even wiggled its tentacles somewhat joyfully. As soon as I jumped onto a solid section of the stairs, it immediately handed me the bag with my things. I raise my right hand and with a wave of my wrist invite the mutant to follow me, and we descend the stairs a couple of flights, ending up in what I thought was a typical room with several passages. Before I could even look around, the Bloodsucker darted off and disappeared into a dark corridor, clearly pursuing some prey. A loud hiss and the thunderous roar of several Snorks are heard, immediately replaced by the roar of the Bloodsucker. Judging by the noise, a serious fight is brewing. So, I'm not going down that corridor for now...
I go around the elevator shaft and stand facing three passages ahead. To my right is a thick, locked metal door with an electronic lock. The Bloodsucker disappeared into the leftmost passage, and the sounds of the scuffle there haven't died down yet, so I decide to go into the right doorway. Unfortunately, there's nothing interesting there except a row of huge, but cracked flasks, entwined with a bunch of wires and hoses, and an anomalous jelly that has spread across most of the room. By the way, the hoses led to some control panel and came out of another part of its casing, going into a kind of concrete bath where a chemical anomaly was also bubbling. Nothing is clear, but it's very interesting.
At the same time, the sounds of fighting subside, and a thunderous cry of victory is heard, trumpeted by the Bloodsucker's throat as it begins to feast on still-warm mutants. And I return to the main room. Suddenly, a jerboa runs out of a dark recess in the lower wall and falls right into a funnel hidden in the corner of this small room. A second, and a scattering of bloody drops adorns the third floor of the laboratory.
Well. Okay, I won't disturb the Bloodsucker's meal and enter the middle passage. A rather spacious room with a high ceiling, curved and forming an "L" shape into the next. Shabby walls, remnants of green tiles on the walls, and a single emergency light bulb that has been working for many years above the doorway. I don't linger here, moving on, and find myself in a long corridor littered with Burners. In one of the walls, a recess for long red pipes is visible, covered by a metal grate. A strange decision, but whatever.
Step by step, I carefully bypass the Burners and reach another door leading into a spacious room, where a fire comet flies, illuminating the dark space with flashes. Very beautiful, if you ignore the many burnt bones that literally carpeted the floor. Several narrow columns, thick pipes running under the ceiling, and... nothing else. A thought flashes through my mind: should I check this place for artifacts?
Easier said than done, I take out the detector, which instantly detects an anomalous formation in this room. I spin around, scanning the rest of the laboratory. But no, there was only one artifact here. And, according to the scanner, it was hidden behind one of the columns. I wait a bit and, seizing a good moment, cross the room in a few wide strides, grab the spherical art, and return just as quickly, barely missing the comet. I step back a bit into the dark corridor so as not to be blinded by the fiery anomaly and turn on the night vision to get a better look at the artifact I found.
A sphere covered with a rough and uneven stone crust all over, which was riddled with deep grooves, periodically flashing with scarlet sparks. A beautiful artifact... I didn't bother to check the database now, but simply put it in a container and continued my way through this laboratory.
Another dark little room, illuminated only by the dim yellowish light coming from the ceiling ventilation. On the right wall, right at the entrance, there is a row of green boxes, in which, however, there was nothing. To the left, a passage is visible, in which, hunched over the corpse of one of the Snorks, the Bloodsucker stands with its back to me. Now it looked much more energetic and alive than before, as if its body had been infused with life. And there was no trace of the previous wreck. The mutant straightens its powerful back and turns towards me, taking silent steps, from which wet and blood-stained tentacles sway from side to side.
Hmm, if I remember correctly, there should be a corpse somewhere here that holds the code for the door to the next level of the laboratory. And indeed, in one of the nooks of this little room, there is a corpse. Some scientist, whose body had long since rotted, was unlucky enough to meet his end sitting on the toilet with his pants down. The cause of death cannot be determined, the bones are practically untouched... I start rummaging through his pockets and find an old model PDA, even older than the one I used a couple of months ago.
Predictably, the battery, after such a long time without a charge, completely died. I just hope the whole device doesn't die with it... I reach into my bag for a spare battery, insert it, and... Miraculously, it works. I wait for the device to fully turn on and start studying it. Unfortunately, most of the files were formatted, or something else... But nothing valuable or interesting was saved except for one audio message. I turn it on and hear the familiar, languid voice.
"Excellent, colleague! I am glad that you have finally received
second-level access and will now be able to learn what our laboratory truly does," smugness oozes from him. "Your access code is one-two-four-three. With the deepest respect, Head of the Laboratory Petr Ilyich Kalugin."
I remove the battery, and the de-energized device returns to its owner. Now I can pack up and go to the next level, but first I'll quickly check the remaining rooms. Alas, apart from another room with unknown scientific equipment and several anomalies of different types, I found nothing else. I can go down further.
Laboratory complex X-18, third level, same time.
They felt the uninvited guests, sensed that they would soon be in their power, they just needed to find a way to open the doors... The warriors raged, trying to manually open the long-closed gates to the outside world, but their efforts led to nothing. The Great Shaman remained silent, as if sensing that it was not for them to open these gates, as if knowing that they would open without their help. But they had to run away from them and hide in the shadows as soon as they felt that the intruders had descended to the floor below.
They could already taste blood on their rotten teeth and scabby tongues. Soon... Very soon they will taste blood, fresh blood and flesh. They just have to wait... Sinful creatures will never stop halfway, drawn by mysterious treasures and discoveries. This truth was one of those that they managed to preserve since their transformation.
Laboratory complex X-18, second level, same time.
"So, one-two-four-three," with each keystroke, a piercing but short sound was emitted. And as soon as the correct code was entered, the mechanism started to move. After just a minute, the passage to the next level was opened. "Shall we go, Sosych?"