Maybe they can make a difference. Pull that chain. Be the spark. Fan the flames. Deliver some jolt, some spike of Hope into the world. Not out of any sense of obligation, not because they have any inkling that they will see the results. Hell, this might be a suicide mission, except both of them have failed suicide missions in the past. They came back with eyes open, still breathing, hearts still beating, refusing to simply give up and die just because someone else wills it.
This thought, and the too-familiar smell of the labs, creeps down his spine like electrified ice-water, and he grits his teeth against the visceral urge to punch down.
Or to turn around and shimmy back. No, no. Theyâre here. Theyâre committed.
The T-junction ahead roars with fans. To the right and directly in front of them, mesh and filter-shrouded blades whip and whir, a rattling drone loud enough to obfuscate any warping or popping their knees on the metal might impress. Itâs loud enough to drown out any hope of conversation too. Damn it.
Kunsel threads his arm back behind himself, bends his elbow, and signal-gestures to the left before taking the turn as gracefully as one can in a four-by-four box. At least the standard construction is consistent, sharply squared off and supported underneath with struts strong enough to hold them, likely strong enough to hold whatever monsters might escape from their containment. Itâs vital to have a working ventilation system, after all, if one intends to use it to pump suppression gasses into an enclosed space.
Cue a glance up directly above, where tanks - like recessed scuba cylinders - are banded, bolted, and linked together with pipes and wires for remote control. Kunsel ducks his head and slopes further forward, army-crawling on his forearms and spread thighs rather than hands and knees. He figures Zack will get the picture, and it affords him a little more room to gesture two fingers down, clenched fist. Stop where Iâve stopped.
Quicker, practiced, he skitters forward to the other side of a grated hatch and then rolls over, folds flexibly, and ends up facing Zack, peering down below. The shaft has passed either through or above one of the blocky prefab pods, and is somewhat misaligned, providing a split view.
Thereâs the peek of a toilet and sink on one side, and then the broader section of the ventilation panel reveals⌠amber light, interspersed with flicker-glows of blue, a computer server, a monitor with a weirdly fetal-looking screensaver. Maybe thatâs just the angle on the desk. The main lights are off, and it appears to be unoccupied at present.
He demonstrates the thumb screws on his side of the vent panel. Easy enough for both of them to undo and lift up, aside, and then drop down one after the other.
Floor level. A plush carpet cushions their feet.
It looks like the office of a tenured executive professor with decades upon decades of plaudits, richly appointed. Shelves in immaculate order border one wall, filled with dozens upon dozens of hard-bound volumes, a luxury in the digital era, contrasting the standard filing cabinets. Display cases in glass and wood hold items of curiosity - specimens floating in formalin, hermetically sealed jars of two-headed serpents and bizarre fish-creatures, a zolom egg, embryos identified only by arcane labeling systemsâŚ
And a preserved human arm. Left arm, by the looks of it, skin pale under display lights. The wing tattoo from wrist to tricep must have been exquisite in life, deep black with painstaking black-feathered details.
The specimen holding bay, visible through its reciprocal mirror, was recently occupied. The smears on hard-point restraints and the angled slant of an examination table are still shimmering red.
ââŚwell, this fucking place never gets less creepy. You wanna get the hard copies? Iâve got his computer.â
Any variation of disgruntled noises he makes as blue light crosses into his purview is lost to the roar of the spinning fan blades. Once the grate is lifted, Zack touches down after Kunsel on three points. At a glance, the office might have looked astonishingly mundaneâ not so much once the menagerie of scientific collectibles comes into play.Â
âHate it, hate it, hate it,â Zack growls, hunching his shoulders and staring too long at what must ostensibly be a human arm while the hairs on his neck stand on end. A perfectly normal arm as far as he can see, save for the intricate inkwork beneath the skin. Why the self-purported man of science himself might feel the need to save this particular arm or even put it on display in the first place, Zack can only imagine. This one feels less like a curio and more like⌠a morbid trophy.
That isnât even the worst part about this place. He is keenly aware of Kunselâs presence next to him when he goes stock still and his breath catches in his throat. The sight on the other side of the thick wall of glass is intimately familiar to him, and Zack wrangles with the flash of panic that briefly keeps him rooted in place. Voice. Focus. Back to Kunsel.
Looking through the bookshelf and cabinet is perfect, because it keeps his back to the slab of steel looming behind the mirror like a bad memory.
âRight. Yeah. On it.â
With a roll of his shoulders, he takes an exaggerated step towards the nearest row of shelves filled with multi-colored tomes. He runs his finger along the top of the books on the way to the metal filing cabinet situated at the end of the shelf. Most of the books appear to be purely decorative. Textbooks covering various topics on the nature of microbiology, genesplicing, and phylogenetics. Zack stops, hovering two fingers over a row of first-edition copies about the Planetâs history. A few with a focus on the Ancients in particular. There is a small gap between the last book, Decline of the Cetra and History for the Modern Midgarian.Â
He does another quick pass before deciding to move on. The real trouble would be figuring out which of these ethically questionable gems to take back with them. Anything worth keeping in an unlocked cabinet couldnât be that Planet shattering. Zack cards through the file folders after he slides the drawer out on its track to skim through titles.
Some of the documents were purely archival; datasets or sequences that had been analyzed long ago littered with chicken scratch notes scrawled in the margins and a dash of angry, red marks.Â
Now for the alphabetized sections. Finger over thumb, he looks through each headerâs contents. Minutes tick by. Boring, gross, boringâ
 âRegulation of apoptosis,â âPetri net modeling of biological networks,â Slowing the rate of senescence in non-human tissues,â âAccelerating mako-osteoclast activation and development of new limbs.âÂ
The standouts. At least, the papers he could understand enough to single out.
One last check. Zack flattens out a palm along the sides of the drawer, feeling for any unusual grooves or catches that might unlock a hidden panel. No luck. Plucking out stapled notes from several file folders of interest, he stacks them up then thumbs to the back of the drawer for an empty folder to stash them in. After the folder has been tucked under his arm, Zack rearranges the folders into some semblance of their previous orientation before sliding the drawer shut.
âAlrightâŚthink Iâve got as good as weâre gonna get out of those cabinets. I am so ready to get the hell out of here. Dig up any interesting dirt on his computer?â