No fewer than twenty charred humanoid forms in 
varying stages of destruction are pushed up 
against the bottom of the gate. Several arms are 
pushed through the grate and are reaching out 
towards the tunnel. 


T-5 Nanku: These look... very burned. Where do 
you think they came from? 


T-5 lrantu: Hard to say. | can’t imagine they 
would’ve made it far in this condition. 


T-5 Munru: There’s an incinerator near here, 
right? Near that body pit we keep hearing about? 
Maybe they came from there. 


T-5 Nanku: An incinerator? 


T-5 Irantu: As good a place to start as any. Let's 
get into those pipes there. 


T-5 team cuts through the gate and scales the wall 
behind it to the largest of three drainage pipes. 
Team continues on for a short time. 


T-5 Onru: The temperature is rising. 


T-5 lIrantu: | noticed it, as well. We must be getting 
close. 


T-5 Munru: We're descending right now, too. 
(Pauses) This is strange. Shouldn’t a drainage pipe 
run out, not in? 


T-5 Nanku: Maybe. Maybe it's affected by the 
topographical abnormalities. 


T-5 lrantu: Likely. 


T-5 Onru: Irantu, the wall is weak here. | can hear 
echoing on the other side of it. 


T-5 Irantu: What’s over there? 
T-5 Onru: Hang on. (Pauses) A hallway, | think. 


T-5 lrantu: | see. (Pauses) Alright. We'll split up 
here. Munru, you and Nanku see where this tunnel 
lets out. Onru and | will go through this wall and 
see what’s on the other side. 


T-5 Nanku: And if we get killed? 
T-5 lrantu: Don’t get killed. 
T-5 Nanku: Understood. 


T-5 team splits up, with T-5 Nanku and Munru 
following the drainage pipe towards the source of 
the heat, and T-5 Irantu and Onru going through 
the thin wall to the hallway beyond. 


Irantu and Onru manage to break down the 
concrete wall between the drainage pipe and the 
hallway beyond. Within the hallway are several 
bare offices, barely lit by dim overhead lights. The 
entire area appears to have been abandoned for 
some time. Irantu and Onru look for an elevator or 
stair access, but find nothing. 


After a short time, Onru finds a door that opens 
into a control room. A large glass observation 
window is obscured by some dark material. Many 
of the controls in this room have been destroyed. 


T-5 Onru: This is the control room for the 
incinerator, see? It says “Incinerator #1” over there. 
And below it, it says... “body pit access below”. 


T-5 Irantu: I’ve never heard of a furnace that 
needed its own control room. What’s blocking the 
window there? Blast shields? 


T-5 Onru: No. (Pauses) No. (Approaches the 


window) These are bodies. And garbage. Refuse. 
Congealed and coagulated. Look, you can see 
faces. 


T-5 lIrantu: | see it. (Pauses) Our intel said that 
one of the engineers had blocked up the drainage 
pipes out of here. Nanku and Munru are probably 
going to run into that. (Pauses) | wonder if there’s 
another way down from here. | thought we’d be 
able to go down through the incinerator. 


T-5 Onru: Hang on. 


Onru proceeds to look over the controls on a 
relatively undamaged controller near the 
observation window. As she does, Nanku and 
Munru appear at the door. 


T-5 Munru: It’s blocked. Something has turned the 
end of that pipe into slag. We tried to punch 
through it, but it’s pretty thick. 


T-5 Nanku: | broke my hand on it, look. (Ho/ds up 
her hand, which is undamaged.) |t was broken, | 
mean. 


T-5 Irantu: Quiet. Onru is looking for someth— 
T-5 Onru: Got it. 


Onru throws a large switch and turns several 
nearby knobs. There is an immense groaning 
sound, and the mass in front of the window begins 
to spin slowly. 


T-5 Nanku: Interesting. 


There is a jolt, as if something has broken free, 
and the mass begins to spin rapidly and slowly 
descend. There is the distinct sound of a turbine 
spooling up. The team’s internal temperature 
gauges begin to register a steady increase in heat. 


T-5 Munru: It’s dropping. Look down there, see? 


The mass has cleared the window, revealing a 
massive cylindrical chamber on the other side, at 
least 300m in diameter and roughly 400m deep. At 
the center of the chamber is a massive shaft, 
extending the full height of the chamber, attached 
to several large turbines. As the turbines spin, the 
matter within the chamber is turned into a slurry. 
Near the top of the chamber are several pilot lights. 
Large holes are present around the outside of the 
chamber. 


T-5 Onru: Alright, and then... 


Onru throws another switch, and the pilot lights are 
ignited. Enormous streaks of fire cascade down 
from the ceiling of the chamber, scorching the 
mass below. Additional jets of flame begin to emit 
from the walls of the chamber. 


T-5 Irantu: Look, down near the bottom. There’s a 
sluice gate that looks like it’s leading away from 
here. Over there, see? Can you get that door 
open? 


T-5 Onru: Yes. (Pauses) Got it. 


A large circular door opens near the bottom of the 
pit, above the level of the matter within. 


T-5 Munru: Excellent, though | still don’t know how 
you think we're going to get in there, the pipe is 
block— 


Nanku extends her arm, and fires several rounds 
from a wrist-mounted projectile weapon at the 
glass window in front of them. The glass cracks 
and shatters, exposing the room around them to 
the heat of the chamber. 


T-5 Munru: Straightforward. 
T-5 Nanku: One does, what one can. 


The team enters the incinerator and jumps down 
onto a ledge below, near another drainage pipe. 
They make their way through the vast chamber, 
avoiding the spinning blades and ever descending 
biological slurry around them. 


T-5 Munru: Something unpleasant took place 
here. 


T-5 Nanku: Oh? 


T-5 Munru: Yes, in fact. (Shoots a glance at 
Nanku) All of this has to be draining somewhere, 
likely out below us, through one of these fissures. 


T-5 Irantu: We don’t have time to find out. We'll 
follow this pipe down and see where it goes. 


Team enters the open door and descends down 
the drainage pipe a short distance, before it 
empties into a large cistern. The team enters the 
cistern, which is lit from above by a large, glowing, 
plant-like structure. 


T-5 Nanku: Interesting. What do you think that is? 
T-5 Onru: I— (pauses) | don’t know. 


At the sound of their voices, the glowing structure 
begins to shake slowly, and thousands of glowing, 
spinning pods are released from its body. As they 
fall, they brightly illuminate the entire chamber. 


T-5 Munru: Look. The shadows. 


The glowing pods create vaguely humanoid 
shadows on the walls of the cistern, which act in an 
anomalous manner. These shadows appear to 


reach their hands up or forward, as if towards the 
team. As the pods reach the slurry below, they 
extinguish, and the shadows disappear. 


T-5 Irantu: Alright. Which way do we go? 


T-5 Munru: This is a drainage pipe, leading away 
from the incinerator. The incinerator is underneath 
the power station, which is to the east of the 
compound. So far as we can tell, we need to go 
northwest from there, so... (pauses) hang on. Look 
over there. 


T-5 Nanku: At what? 


T-5 Munru: At the wall. Something is seeping 
through it. Was that there before? 


T-5 Onru: No. 


T-5 Irantu: (Approaches the wall) It’s black, and 
shiny and definitely seeping. Something is pushing 
through. 


T-5 Nanku: What does that mean? What is it? 
Drainage? 


T-5 Munru: Unlikely. It’s probably runoff from the 
reactor, or— 


T-5 Onru: (Approaches the wall) No, it’s blood. It’s 
leeches. 


T-5 lrantu: What? 
T-5 Onru: Look. 


Onru points at a spot on the wall, illuminated by 
their shoulder mounted lamps. At that spot, a thick 
flow of black fluid is seeping between a crack in the 
wall, and something small is wriggling within the 
crack. The team zooms in on the spot, revealing a 


small, writhing leech pushing its way through the 
spot. It breaks through, and falls to the ground. 


T-5 Nanku: Huh. It’s a leech. What does that 
mean? 


T-5 Munru: Nothing good. 


The small leech moves towards the biological 
slurry at their feet, and begins to ingest it. As it 
does, the leech slowly begins to grow in size. 


T-5 Onru: More of them. In the wall, there, pushing 
through. 


The team looks back towards the wall, where 
several spouts of black fluid are beginning to pour 
through various cracks along its surface. Several 
more small leeches are squirming through these 
cracks. 


T-5 Irantu: Onru, what do you see? 


T-5 Onru: (Pauses) There’s something below us. 
It’s huge. Covered in other people's blood. 
Reaching up towards us. These are like fingers, 
they all communicate back to the host, the— 
(pauses) Bring me a leech. 


T-5 Munru: What? 
T-5 Nanku: You're kidding. 


T-5 Onru: No, bring me one. They’re telepathic, 
they’re communicating that way. | need a leech. 


lrantu moves across the room before grabbing a 
leech off of the ground. As he pulls it away from 
the liquid, it struggles and squirm, biting several 
large chunks out of his hand. 


T-5 lrantu: Peculiar. (Pauses to look at the leech) 


Here. 
T-5 Onru: Alright, one moment. 


Onru extends her left hand towards the leech, 
which opens up to reveal a series of long, delicate, 
metallic rods with pointed tips. She maneuvers the 
rods into the flesh of the creature, near the base of 
the brain. 


T-5 Onru: There. Let’s see. (Pauses) They heard 
the incinerator activate. They're hungry. They’re 
coming up here to eat, a lot of them. The host is 
down below us, but | can’t see that far down. 
(Pauses) If | look at the neural activity of the entire 
network of entities, | can map out the areas they’re 
in. Let me see if | can do something with that. 
(Pauses) There we go. You should all have it on 
your retinas now. 


T-5 lrantu: Clever. 


T-5 Nanku: So we’re looking at a map? It seems 
too distorted to be a map. 


T-5 Onru: Ongoing topographical changes. Means 
that, despite the changes in the structure of the 
site, it’s all still located within our local reality. It’s 
just unstable. 


T-5 Munru: Do we know where this Thresher 
device is? 


T-5 Onru: Probably something to do with this 
section, here. If you follow a logical structural 
design plan based on the evidence provided in this 
map, there should be a whole extra wing here, but 
there aren't any of the leeches down that way. 
(Pauses) Yes, | can see conduit running to that 
area. That’s where the Thresher machine is. 


Silence. 
T-5 Irantu: What about our recovery? 


T-5 Onru: This area, here. Several corridors lead 
to a large research wing, but most of them have 
been blocked off. Every now and then, one of the 
ends of the network goes dark here. (Pauses) The 
survivors are in there. 


T-5 Irantu: What's the fastest way in from where 
we're at now? 


T-5 Onru: One moment. (Pauses) Three paths to 
choose from, each with different potential hazards. 
The first takes us further down this pipeline, until 
we reach a waste treatment facility within the plant. 
This is the longest route, but from that facility it’s a 
fairly direct shot towards the survivors. The second 
path drops us into another cistern below this, which 
leads directly to this large chamber here. (Pauses) 
The leech is in there. | can hear it right now, it’s 
wondering why this one hasn't come back. 


T-5 Irantu: And the third? 


T-5 Onru: The third route takes us through this 
area here, which... is queer. | can hear the leeches 
as they move around the site. They’re noisy, 
uncoordinated, acting on impulse and without 
much... finesse. But in this area, they’re all very 
quiet. They go in and out for... something... but 
they do it very, very quietly. 


T-5 Nanku: (Motions towards the ground at her 
feet) Look at this leech. It’s the size of a cat 
already. 


T-5 Munru: Are there any other entities in there? 


T-5 Onru: | can’t tell. The leeches follow a single 


path in, and a single path out. They don’t stray 
from it, and— (pauses) they don’t look around. 


T-5 Irantu: Which is the fastest path? 


T-5 Onru: The last one is the fastest. We follow 
this tunnel towards a service door, and follow a 
staircase towards the bottom. Once we're there, 
there’s another hallway off to the left that takes us 
past that area, or through it, maybe, and on the 
other side is the back entrance to our research 
wing. 


T-5 Irantu: Alright. (Pauses) That’s the one we'll 
take, then. 


T-5 Nanku: A shame. Here | thought we’d be 
shooting leeches. 


T-5 Irantu: You'll have plenty of chances to on our 
way out, I’m sure. We need to get these people out 
quickly. Onru, does it feel to you like the leeches 
are trying to get into the wing where the survivors 
are? 


T-5 Onru: Yes. There is plenty of blood in this site, 
but not all of it is still warm. They’ll be coming for 
them soon. 


Team leaves cistern and follows drainage pipe 
west. Eventually the team reaches a service door, 
lit by a single flickering lamp. 


T-5 Munru: There’s something written on this door. 
“Blood”. 


T-5 Nanku: Here on the wall, too. Look. What’s it 
written in? 


T-5 Irantu: Wait. 


T-5 Onru: Look. 


Onru amplifies her shoulder mounted spotlight, 
illuminating the entire wall of the tunnel. The word 
“blood” is repeated over and over, scrawled across 
the surface of the wall in a thick, black substance. 
Onru turns left, illuminating several dessicated 
corpses in a corner at the end of the tunnel, all of 
which are covered in and seeping the same fluid. 


T-5 Nanku: Unsettling. 
T-5 Irantu: Come on. Don’t waste time. 


The team enters the service door, revealing a 
partial staircase. The stairs above them are intact, 
but the stairs below have been destroyed. The 
walls of the stairwell are coated in cracks, through 
which seeps the black fluid. Munru lights a flare 
and drops it, and the team watches it fall. After a 
short time, the flare lands with a slight splash, 
revealing the floor below. 


T-5 Nanku: How large is this site? 


T-5 Onru: (Pauses) Site-19 has at least 50 
underground floors, and no fewer than 80 
individual wings. Considering what we know about 
Site-13, it’s likely that there are at least twice as 
many of each, if not more. The Euclid-Class 
containment cells alone are as large as the entirety 
of Site-81. 


T-5 Munru: Which means there could be worse 
things down there nobody has seen yet. 


T-5 lrantu: It’s almost a certainty. 


lrantu leaps from the landing and lands near the 
flare, his implants absorbing the majority of the 
impact. The rest of the team follows suit. At the 
bottom of the stairwell is another door into a 
hallway, and the team enters it. 


T-5 Irantu: Where to now? 


T-5 Onru: About 200m down this hallway, on the 
right. There are several security doors, but | think 
they've all been disabled. Through there is... | 
think it’s a data storage center. It’s big, and lined 
with vents that lead to the cooling towers at the 
surface. 


T-5 Munru: Where do the leeches start acting 
strange? 


T-5 Onru: In there. 
T-5 Munru: Wondertul.. 


Team moves down the hallway, Nanku at point, 
flanked by Onru and Manru, and Irantu watching 
the rear. As they pass, they check each door to 
see if they are locked. Most doors lead to network 
maintenance areas, though notably one door leads 
to the telecommunications room previously visited 
by the AP-3 team. One screen on the far wall 
appears to have been busted from the inside out. 


T-5 Nanku: Look here. This is the door to the 
server area. 


T-5 Munru: What’s that door there? 


T-5 Irantu: It’s marked as “Stairs to Cryonics”. 
(Pauses) If | had to guess, I’d say it probably goes 
up to the next levels, and it’s seated right on top of 
this room. Acts as insulation for the data center. 


T-5 Munru: Can we go through it? 
T-5 Irantu: Which way is faster, Onru?