act19side

3:56 P.M. \ Overcast

Main District of Trimounts

This is the third time you've paged through Ptilopsis's personal log, Doctor.

Any new discoveries?

Ptilopsis keeps some detail-rich records.;Pioneer Team leader had a good education.;Elena's coffee ought to be pretty good.

Ptilopsis has a kind of special chip implanted in her brain.

'Device #9'—Mayer calls it. Guessing that's Rhine Lab's internal codename for that tech.

It's plugged up there directly into her nervous system. Functions as a regular part of her mind, and logs data on neural activity in each region and lobe all the while.

Which means you've just been looking at every last thing Ptilopsis's visual processors—her own two eyes—have been seeing.

Columbia's Pioneer Team members come from all backgrounds.

Youth dissatisfied with their lives, middle-aged couples drowning in debt, petty criminals who don't want to end up behind bars—

And of course, Infected powerless to cough up exorbitant insurance, who don't resign themselves to being shut away in quarantine zones for 'treatment.'

I'm more interested in the agrypnotic Franks has been using, personally.

I love a drink after work as much as the next, but all that fluid intake on the job's bound to cut up your train of thought.

From the logs Ptilopsis keeps synchronized with us, we can tell that along with her, there's our other Rhodes Island-partnered operator, Elena in Rhine Lab's Energy Section...

Along with Rhine Lab Originium Art Section's Director, Dorothy Franks. That's everyone caught up in this abduction by the Pioneers.

And practically simultaneously, Saria informed us Rhine Lab Ecological Section's Director Muelsyse went missing after she sent out an SOS, and there's no telling if she's currently alive or dead.

Think there's an issue at Rhine Lab?;......;Are research jobs seriously this high-risk?

At present, looks like it.

Welcome to Columbia.

Sky-high odds Rhine Lab is already in crisis, if things are pushing Saria to ask Rhodes Island for help.

Lucky the landship's nearby, or else we'd be hard-pressed to make an expeditious response.

The kidnapping's gone down at a new site about a hundred or so klicks out from Trimounts, but Kal'tsit's concerned this has something to do with the experiments that got shut down a while back.

What do they do at that site?;Originium mutation experimentation...;Tell me some more about Trimounts.

The stuff they show to outsiders indicates it's your typical testing grounds, currently in the middle of construction.

Kal'tsit's cleared us to access all relevant files before we enter Trimounts.

The city's the beating heart of Columbian science and technology. Hundreds of tech companies are headquartered in Trimounts.

The 'Diαbolic Crisis,' 'Loken Watertank,' the 'Lumberyard.'

Each name means something to one of our Rhodes Island operators, and behind their fronts, ties to hundreds of similar experiments.

Most of these experiments have involved Originium's mutative effects on living beings' cells, and each one has been incredibly dangerous.

In Columbia, more often than not, tech giants like Rhine Lab aren't going to participate directly in such high-risk experiments.

They'll have smaller-scale organizations carry them out on their behalf, hire a Pioneer Team, construct a suitable site out in the wasteland fringes of the city to execute their experimental work.

In this case, Ptilopsis is at Site 359, which is one of those.

I remember your previous work experience...;Have you done work at similar sites before?

Work? I'm not gracing my time there with the word 'work.'

Those megacorps 'plagiarized' what I created, and applied it all in places it wasn't meant to be.

See that billboard, about fifty meters out? 'Volvort Kochinski's Automatic Popcorn-a-Tron for the home—faster, sweeter, every time.'

I still have the prototype sketch for its energy core on my terminal.

It was supposed to be used in automatic wasteland road-cleaners at first, but my manager decided it'd never sell as a product.

He says, what kind of HR company's spending on better equipment for Pioneers?

Brought my mind to Rhodes Island after that. Our course-clearer team in Engineering's using the very latest model.

I've long seen it coming. Be it Volvort Kochinski or Rhine Lab, in the end, all these so-called tech firms are going to be destroyed by their own creations—

Because they've never respected the creations themselves.

What if Muelsyse got killed by her very own experiments?;It's not some horrific test subject holding Ptilopsis hostage, right?!

Was that a laugh line, Doctor?

Because what you said isn't sci-fi flick material, or a dumb joke.

Chances are it's tomorrow's news.

Now I get why Closure admires AND fears you...;......;No wonder you and Logos make a good team.

You mean her occasional stints as target practice for my new weapons?

She can stop interrupting my work with her ridiculous ideas, and then she won't need to fear me.

As a partner, Logos is pretty good.

But can you give him a reminder, Doctor?

If he could cut some of his speechcraft, mission times would go down by at least 30%, and I could spend more time on my actual job.

Done processing the intel, Doctor.

This is as much useful info as we have for now. I've already set the most important files to top priority on lookup. You can read them via PRTS at any time.

Any more news?

Ptilopsis's logs haven't been updated past this point.

Device #9's data transmission should be more stable ever since Mayer adjusted it.

So unless something physically happened to Ptilopsis...

I'm getting concerned for her.;Fingers crossed Silence and Greyy find her ASAP.

Silence will notify us of any developments at the site as they happen.

Saria's copied the info. She'll be rendezvousing with us in an hour.

Doctor, any other proposals for the time we have left?

Go to where Muelsyse hit trouble, take a look.

I'm a mechanist. I'm no detective's assistant.

But it's all we can do right now.;And I'm just an Originium researcher.

You're the only one I can count on, Mechanist.

Alright, Doctor. In that case, we move now.

Here's hoping I'm back on the landship by tomorrow, at my beloved workbench.

6:47 P.M. \ Overcast

Test Site 359 Observation Station, Trimounts Outskirts

Anything new with the people on-site?

Nothing, officer.

You shot word to your Director Clooney or whatever at Rhine, right? When exactly will he be here?

Director Clooney's in a... meeting right now.

Meeting? You're telling me he's still in a meeting? What kind of meeting's more important than his employees' lives?

Dammit!

Give me those binoculars.

Uh... okay.

You don't think those Pioneers are gonna follow through, do you?

Let me tell you—they will.

Push them enough, and they'll do any fricking thing.

So you mean our colleagues at the site could be in mortal danger?

Who are you?

Olivia Silence, Rhine Lab researcher, and Rhodes Island Pharmaceuticals-partnered Medic Operator.

This is my colleague from Rhodes Island, Mr. Greyy with the Engineering Department.

H-Hello! I'm a Rhodes Island electrical engineer... but I'm still interning!

Rhodes Island? What kind of useless crap does that company do?

Er...

Forget it, save the explanation. One day passes in Trimounts and a barge of fresh company names unloads out of the sewers.

You're Rhine Lab, right? Got any pull in the office?

Pull? Ma'am, I'm not too sure what you mean...

Forget it, I knew you wouldn't be in charge.

You strike me as one of those... eggheads-swimming-in-books types, like the hostages they've got.

You guys and those guys might as well live on different planets.

I heard they were the Pioneers working at this site...

Pioneers.

The name rings too nice for anything except billboards.

And I know better than anyone what kind of people they are. Convicts, gamblers, Infected who can't stick the medical fees... Nothing to lose by the time they went out to the wastes.

Excuse me... could we try and talk to them?