Assault on the White Room

## Casualties

*“It’s the biohazard alarm. It means the computers have detected hazardous material entering the air. Not my free-floating stuff either!”*— Lucy Danvers, *Esoterrorism*
**The Assault on the White Room** was a crucial part of The Wazir's plan to cripple The House before he began his assaults around the world. It was led by Dr. Edward Strickland, the head of the White Room who was in truth working with the Wazir from the inside, in his attempt to simultaneously fake his death, cripple Division One's resources, and give the Sons of Mars the chance to damage their internal servers. It was opposed by Derek Hawthorne and Shannon O'Reily,

## Background

As part of the Wazir's campaign to expose the House and reveal the supernatural to the world, Karl attended a routine handoff mission from some of his men and was intercepted by Derek and Penny Hawthorne. As Derek attempted to bring the Wazir in, Karl instigated a bio-attack on the Thompson City Mall. At its conclusion, Karl lost one of his homunculi and Derek recovered a sample of the Matheson-22 virus Dr. Strickland had created. As a result, it became public knowledge around the House.

In the aftermath of the attack, Derek was partnered with Shannon, and they began looking for a way they could track the Wazir's next movements. This plan brought them to the White Room, where Strickland was meeting with Lucy Danvers. As the agents began going over potential armaments with Lucy, Strickland left the room. After the agents were armed with more of Lucy's gadgets, including a quantum knife for Shannon, the attack began.

## Battle

### Matheson Virus

Immediately, Strickland began the assault by dispensing the Matheson virus through the air within the White Room, turning any who contacted the air into draugr. Derek, Shannon, and Lucy were spared, but countless other White Room personnel were instantly transformed into zombies, leading them to attack their former colleagues to turn them as well. At the same time, Strickland sabotaged the sprinkler system so that the attack couldn't be put down immediately with the holy water reserves.

At the same time, twelve Sons of Mars mercenaries entered the facility and began moving through the area. They had two main goals - extract Strickland back to Pantheon Corp and destroy the House's internal servers to delay them as much as possible. After adequately suiting up, Derek and Shannon left the room to reactivate the sprinkler system, encountering and putting down several draugr along the way. On their way to the sprinkler system, the pair first encountered several Sons of Mars and began to systematically eliminate them.

Using the weapons Lucy had just provided them, Shannon quickly put down the patrol, then the pair entered the sprinkler room and turned it on. This eliminated the draugr in the facility, but not the mercenaries. Shannon interrogated one of the mercenaries she previously fought, who revealed that the backup plan should the draugr outbreak be put down is to go room to room and kill everyone they could find. As the other mercenaries began to do just that, the dying man also revealed their goal to destroy the information hub just before he died from his wounds. This left Derek to choose between whether to save the information hub or the scientists in the White Room; after a brief hesitation, Derek chose to save the people.

### Ending the Massacre

The pair followed the gunfire to find four more mercenaries about to execute a woman named Aditi, with Derek and Shannon narrowly saving her life before instructing her to begin rallying survivors to the atomic testing lab to ride out the attack. Aditi complied and left, leaving the pair to continue hunting the mercenaries. However, before the pair could find the other mercenaries, Strickland made his move; having been found by five of them, he killed the extraction team sent to rescue him and took one of their suits of armor. Realizing that the mole intended to sneak out, the pair headed to the security room, but Strickland had broken the holy water sprinklers outside of the room, leaving draugr still inside.

The draugr swarmed the duo, forcing them to retreat to the holy water-filled halls and forcing Shannon to use her full lilin powers to take them down. Giving in to her lilin side made Shannon briefly lose control of herself and attempt to feed on Derek, but he managed to head butt her and force her back to her normal self. However, before they could do anything else, Strickland overrode the lockdown and slipped out as it ended, concluding the attack.

## Aftermath

Strickland's defection within the draugr attack allowed him to fake his death, with the Professor concluding that he had been converted into a draugr and then destroyed by the holy water. At the same time, Tommy Moretti was declared AWOL, leaving the suspicion of being the mole on him (although Tommy was a mole, he was not responsible for the attack). Strickland's role would remain obfuscated until Derek gradually realized he was still alive during his investigation into Cassandra Cassidy's business.

The involvement of the Sons of Mars and their usage of Pantheon Corp's weaponry was the last piece of evidence needed to fully connect Cassandra to the Wazir's recent actions, leading to her receiving a kill on sight order from the Professor. In a last ditch effort to potentially prove her innocence, Derek requested that he be put in charge of the investigation due to the Professor's emotionally compromised state, leading to Cassandra escaping the Red Room long enough to begin a crusade of her own against the House.

The destruction of the information hub proved to be incredibly instrumental to the Wazir's plan, as once the House fully came under attack, they had no way to track everything that was happening and where. With the other Divisions refusing to cooperate with Division One, they were completely helpless until Derek ascended to the Committee and forced the other Divisions to cooperate.

Everyone who lost their lives in the attack would be avenged when the Wazir killed Strickland himself as a show of respect to Derek.