#fhq.plot.0

It has been hours since you cleared the scan to travel into the Cascadian Mountains which houses Site-φ deep in the heart of its remote ranges. Your phone's been taken — standard security measures, every seasoned employee of the Foundation knows this — along with various contraband deemed unfit to travel with you. Weapons, laptops, batteries, anything that gives a signal of where you are, aloe plants. Did you hear that right? Aloe?

However, the Foundation is not one to be questioned. You climb onto the metal steps of the helicopter, its roaring blades scything the air overhead, and enter. You are the sole guest.

The chopper judders into the air, the thrum of the rotor beating at the back of your skull like a second, stranger pulse. As the flight stretches on, and on, and on, you find yourself frowning, measuring the distance, gauging the direction — and giving up, ultimately, on making sense of your course, eyes screwed shut as the worst headache in your recent, obviously quite reliable memory scrapes away at your sense of space and time. You wrack your brain, anything to stave off the pain lancing at your temples, when [ A SONG FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD STARTS PLAYING, A MELODY THAT REMINDS YOU OF A TIME WHEN YOU WERE A HAPPY CHILD — ONCE. ] Your head plays it through, your lips mouthing the lyrics as the nausea clears. The ringing dissipates with the last note, and a raw urge leaps up in your throat — almost hysterical, breath seized in your chest. Do not forget it, some insensible thought insists. You will need it some day.

You blink, squinting around the helicopter's unwelcoming cabin, all darkly glinting metal and dull plastic and — well, whatever those carefully sealed crates might contain, wrapped in cargo netting and emblazoned with THIS WAY UPs and FRAGILE and BIOHAZARDOUS and DO NOT FEED. Staggering up from the thinly padded seat, you make your way to the back of the cockpit, peering out towards... wherever it is you're going. The mountains —right. There they are, prickling with forbidding, dense trees, darkly green under a searing white-grey sky, all clouds and mist. It's a little much to stare down for too long, so you slump back into your seat, rummage through your carry on bag, and pull out [ A FIDGETABLE, ANALOG ITEM, CAN BE KNIFEY THOUGH YOU BETTER HAVE A GOOD REASON FOR IT TO BE ] and start playing with it to pass the time. Minutes become hours . Hours become more hours.

You wake up with a start. You've been sleeping. "Last stop," the pilot — face unseen, completely concealed behind a dark-tinted helmet that they probably... don't need? — hollers, as if there were any other stops at all. Disoriented, you try to gather your scattered thoughts as the chopper hovers, sinks, sets down at last. For a moment, you're unsure, entirely, of what will be on the other side of the fuselage; [ A PLACE OF GREAT PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE, BE THAT POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE ], suffuses your senses. Shouldering your bag, you shake off the memory and reef the helicopter door open, eager to be closer to something like solid ground again. The landing pad is rugged, windblown, a scrap of perfectly cleared plateau, the tall undergrowth sheared back from the concrete. An unfamiliar man, mustached and carrying nothing besides the dark bags under his eyes, waits for you. He doesn't smile. You almost give him your name, but he stops you.

"There's a welcome packet for you at your quarters. Maps, important numbers, time tables... Your belongings, what we could get anyway, have already been moved in." His stern gaze ticks side to side, up and down, assessing you for — something. "Get some rest. Freshen up. Stay standing any longer and you're likely to fall over."