@Cerebrate @NyantaStarhunt
“…Every two years since the facility was locked down, I’ve been mustering together all I can to speak to someone perchance wandering in the place you’re standing. All the preparations I make by the way, give about…
two weeks, tops, out of every two years, hoping against all likelihood that someone sane and not just one of those creepy doppelgangers would made it to the facility’s entranceway to release the interior locks, while I’d do the same to the exterior ones.”
“Why would I do this?”
“Because like you for some reason, the rest of the world pinned the blame on me, ever since that privileged bastard ‘Nurlan’ hightailed for greener pastures long before it all went sideways, and
someone had to take responsibility. Everyone also preferred to think of you all as dead, with the bodies just ‘needing time to catch up’, as they always liked putting it. And guess what? The catastrophe didn’t stop in there. Within a year after the facility closed down, the arcology above went into decline. Whole place looks like a
potemkin village now, what with the civil servant bots still keeping everything eerily nice and tidy…”
“Speakin’ of which; here, get a look at the plaza just outside, on the monitor over on that receptionist’s desk to your left,”
[
🎶 ]
Camera feed comes onto the mentioned screen, showing the immediate outside area beyond the complex’s entrance. Besides the one person standing near the entrance and waving back at the camera, the entire place is noticeably vacant, like a ghost town…
Panning left and right, janitorial robots are seen sweeping and hauling away incinerated chassis of armed sentry drones, likely the ‘preparations’ this stranger had spoken of. There appear to be a few intact drones flying past some windows occasionally. One suddenly explodes in the air while caught on camera, making the stranger down below at the entrance flinch away for cover, while a thunderous boom reaches the three within the complex, rocking the place a bit.
“Eh… So, you’d imagine I’ve got plenty of reasons to want in, what with breaking your sorry butts out, along with finding clues on where that horse responsible may’ve fled off to, maybe even some ‘occupational redemption’, if that fantasy isn’t too much to ask for… but when I hear myself getting blamed for this, specifically by folks trapped on the inside no less, that I deep down felt I’d never see again, it really makes me question myself on why I’ve bothered sticking around, mind you.”