>Check for clues. Maybe there's a lab notebook with records of something.
Karin pulled the door shut behind her and moved a rolling cart marked AUTOCLAVE in front of it. She locked the wheels. It wouldn't keep a anyone out, but it sure would slow them down long enough for her to... to do something...
Her head still hurt. This was such a dumb problem.
Karin eyed the lab benches in front of her. There was a waste beaker filled with an amber liquid that was almost definitely lysogeny broth, fresh enough it hadn't all evaporated away. The shaking incubator in the corner was making a jzzh-jzzh-jzzh noise that meant it was indeed currently shaking. Even if it was empty right now, this was an active lab.
Maybe there's fire escape info, Karin thought, making a beeline for a line of binders on one of the shelves over the work benches. Further down the bench was an ethanol lamp— a little glass ball with a wick— and then a bit more, a lighter. Karin shoved the lighter into her pocket and moved the lamp, filled with sloshing clear alcohol, in front of her, in case she needed to... throw an explosive cocktail at someone, or something...
The first notebook was labeled PROTOCOLS and she set it aside. She also ignored PURCHASE ORDERS and MOUSE ROOM. The second said SAFETY DATA, and Karin briefly flipped through in search of information on evacuation. However, it contained only information on presumably all the chemicals kept in the lab. Karin clicked her tongue in annoyance. The other binders were labeled with people's names and appeared to be experimental records.
Karin turned, scanning the walls by the door with her eyes. If she were a fire escape plan, where would she be...?
A lot of the smaller countries didn't have mandates for posted safety information, and this place appeared to be one of them. Or maybe she was in some sort of secret evil lab that just didn't obey the law? Both seemed plausible.
She tried the binders she'd set aside. PROTOCOLS was only experimental procedures. PURCHASE ORDERS contained records of lab supply orders and supported the hypothesis that the lab was active, and also that she was still in the same tiny country she remembered being sent to, but the addresses and names were otherwise meaningless to her. MOUSE ROOM revealed that the room she'd woken up in had once housed mice meant for... chakra related experiments... but they'd all been sacrificed recently after some sort of chakra-based disease broke out.
Well, I don't like that, Karin thought, squinting down at the note on the incident from just a few weeks ago.
Now what?
Check out what actual experiments they were running!
That sounds REALLY bad. Go back to trying to escape.
Go back to the mouse room and ask that guy.
See results
Voting ended onMay 10
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