Session 41 - A Wind in the Door

Previously, Across the Horizon...
Our heroes have traveled to Kuganepo in search of cannons and they have found opportunity and strife.
There is indeed an experimental cannon being worked on here, and they even secured a meeting with someone interested in helping them acquire said cannon -- one Jiandie Zheng, representing the corporation AZYS. The cannon in question is in a factory adjoining an AZYS lab, but due to circumstances beyond AZYS control, the factory and laboratory both were inaccessible. A labor dispute has led to both locations being locked down.
But certainly the work of a loyal and well-compensated AZYS employee could bring about an end to this nasty dispute, especially when that employee is everyone's favorite ball of fuzzy black mage anxiety, Yves Mjrwin.
After a discussion about contract law, work history, and human resources, our heroes have the matter of the cannon and the dispute to resolve, all the while determining how exactly to proceed regarding AZYS itself.
We join our heroes on the morning of the 18th day in Kuganepo, on the third day of the spring break, with a light misty rain falling and umbrellas filling the streets...
**
The crew of the Starfall stand ready to do whatever it is the officers want them to do, especially if that is 'wear more hats and hobnob with locals.'
The pilot of the Starfall stands ready to do whatever it is the officers want her to do, unless it means not finishing this cup of coffee under a cheery yellow umbrella on the deck.
The spymaster of the Starfall is perched on a stack of crates at the end of the hallway leading toward the kitchen, a pen dangling from her mouth as she reads the morning paper.
Some of the crew of the Starfall are joyously rehearsing, but they've been told to take "Hurrah for the Pirate King!" indoors so as not to make any weird impressions on folks onshore. Linnet is currently with them, but cocking one ear for orders elsewhere.
The artisan of the Starfall is holding two identical smithing hammers, one in each hand, and has been staring off into space for four and a half minutes now. Everyone has been giving him a wide berth.
Isa is standing by the gangway in a profoundly utilitarian grey poncho, her face framed by a slow drizzle off the hood. Her arms are underneath the waterproofed fabric, but you can tell they are crossed impatiently.
"But many a king on a first-class throne If he wants to call his crown his own Must manage somehow to get through More dirty work than ever we do..." "For he is a Pirate King! Hurrah, hurrah for the Pirate King! And it is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King..."
Artemicion comes to his senses and does this in a different, more soundproof room.
"Apoc, watch where you're flourishing the hat, you almost whacked half the chorus in the face!" Linnet says.
Apoc makes a great show of bowing apologetically, waving the chocobo feather hat in the other half's.
Bast comes up on deck wearing a rather more practical outfit than last time, just in time to catch the last moments of Artemicion's inner monologue and his retreat. He mutters to Isa "Any idea what that was about?"
Isa shakes her head, the motion dampened by the hood. "No clue."
"Then it can probably wait. Everyone ready?"
"Aye aye."
Linnet swoops her way out on deck. "I heard call! Let's go do something dangerous!"
"Yay," says Yves, optimistically. He has just handed a sealed letter to a crew member who is not currently singing about pirates, so that it can make its way to the last known address of someone who is probably a lawyer, and more or less a friend.
(It would definitely have been worked into the song if he'd chosen a different crew member, so, good call.)
Lily takes the letter with a smile and a confident nod. "I'll get it there today, Officer," she says, and then departs to do just that.
And then you are all in the city proper, heads down through the constant drizzle, the weather doing little to dampen the spirits of people desperate to not be taking tests for a change.
Before too much time passes (and only one extra errand for drinks), you have arrived at the Viesen-Croyle Factory, which has about six or seven people out front, raincoats on, hoods up, hands in their pockets, sullen expressions on their faces.
Linnet ceases humming "With cat-like tread" while in the presence of AZYS employees who are not Yves.
The factory itself is a wide two-story building set just a bit off the road, with two pink-blossomed trees out front, a sign by the sidewalk declaring its name, and a very thick chain and ostentatious silver padlock barring the front door.
One of the strikers seems to be the leader, from how the others all elbow him when they realize there are people paying attention. He walks a little closer to the group, hands still in his pockets, and says, "You're not scabs, are you?"
"Not here for that kind of work. Serj said something 'got out' in there? And there's some sort of chemical spill?" Bast says.
Yves leans over to Linnet and whispers, "What's a scab? Besides the thing that forms over a skinned knee?"
"Strikers' term for a strikebreaker. Not a good thing to be called. Which is why I didn't say anything, because I don't know if we are or not," Linnet whispers back.
"Yeah, I did, but not to--oh, you're with the fancy kids?" Serj Tarkan takes the hood back, revealing a long, curly, fire-red mohawk. "They said to expect a crew, but I didn't know when."
"That's us, yeah." Bast offers his hand. "Dyne still not budging?"
"Not a bit," Serj says, shaking Bast's hand. "So we stand out here with our signs, at least when the ink's not gonna run. You're thinking you're going to go clear all this up?" He glances through the group. "Just the five of you?" he adds, as if unsure if he should number Orrey and Linnet among the five capable warriors he was promised.
Linnet lets her breezes pick up a bit and her fists spark.
"Figured we could take a look at any rate, but not without knowing more about what went sideways in there," Bast says. "Sounds like they've been cutting corners on safety for a while now? What sort of chemicals were you working with?"
"We weren't all on the floor when it happened, since it was during lunch," Serj says. "Something ruptured in the main room, setting off all of the alarms. We evacuated the facility as quickly as he could, and locked it down from the lab side and from here once we all got outside."
"So you don't know," Isa notes from her shroud.
He runs his fingers through that luxurious mohawk. "Since then, we've had to lock the lab down too, as I think the seals on the bottom floor broke. And no, specifically, we don't know."
"Do you at least know, like, which of several experiments might have gotten loose? Or what species we'd be looking at?" Linnet asks. "Or if your 'something' isn't a live species at all, that'd help to know too."
He looks uncomfortable at that question, and clearly doesn't want to answer.
"Look, we're not here to rat you out to AZYS. We'd just like a fighting chance to make it out of there in a state where we could still call a lawyer, rather than having to be scraped off the floor and mailed to one. But if it's dangerous enough to all of you that you fled the building, it'd be a professional courtesy not to send the cleanup crew in totally blind. I know the NDAs they make you guys sign are supposed to have worse consequences than death, and I'm not sure I have a counterargument other than politeness. But, well, it's worth a shot." (Linnet is attempting Shy Glance Upward Through Hair Sweeping Over Part Of Face, which doesn't work quite so well when your hair is constantly tossing in the breeze.) (and when you're floating at the other person's eye level.)
Serj chews on the inside of his cheek, hands stuffed in his pockets, as he looks into the middle distance as he thinks... and then his gaze comes back to that hair, eyes following the way the strands dance in a breeze that the drizzling rain ignores. "I-I mean, I'd never want anything to happen to you... or any of you! At all. Of course not. Of course not.
"It's, uh... okay, so there's a little genetic research going on in there -- it's all above my head, but you really strike me as someone who would just... just get it, you know? So I can't tell you a whole lot for sure, but I know there's some stuff in there that's, like, duplicating the effects that something would have on someone."
Serj is tongue-tying himself.
Like I'm having on you right now, that would put you out of a job, Linnet doesn't say aloud.
"I mean -- it's research stuff. What would this medicine do to someone... healthy, or unhealthy, or a viera, or a sylph, or something. But testing that stuff on an actual person, that'd be, like... unethical... right?"
He tries an honest smile, and the first time is not the charm. Perhaps another one later.
"I think you're absolutely right, at least before thorough testing on much simpler and non-sentient animals."
"So instead, they use material that's designed to react and behave like whatever the test subject would be. So I don't know what would have happened, because all the material in there is just people like you and me."
"It's awfully nice to see the research team cares about the people involved at least as much as they care about their work."
He lingers on the 'you and me' part of that sentence, trying it out.
"So...what escaped is some sort of human-mimicking...biomagitech? ...after it was experimented on a bunch? Well, that sounds like a fascinating subject before it escaped and like a major problem right now. Serj, how much jeopardy will your job be in if the escaped thing needs to be, uh, put down rather than re-caged?"
"I mean... it might be? I didn't see what it was. We just evacuated. And... I mean, we've lost an entire factory and lab right now. We can get our research back if we have the location back."
"Right. Well, thank you, Serj, now we have a much better idea how to proceed. We'll do our level best to save the factory and all of your jobs, and hopefully get out in one piece each." Linnet bats her eyelashes at him. "You've been very helpful. Captain? How do we proceed?" The second smile is considerably dumber than the first smile.
"Did everyone make it out in the evacuation?"
"Not everyone," Serj says after a moment. "We were missing two people on the factory side."
"Names and brief descriptions?"
"And is there a reliable way to tell whatever this thing is apart from regular people?" Bast adds to Linnet's question.
"Strike up a conversation?" Linnet offers.
"Ask if it's signed an NDA?" Yves tries.
"Cirri Idraen... wind sylph. About... your height, glasses. Wearing an orange scarf." He doesn't like thinking about this. "Weiss Glassman, human, late fifties. Gray beard, eyepatch. Big shoulders. And I mean.. they're not people. The research stuff. It's just... stuff. It's not humanoid or anything. Anyone in there that's a person is safe." He wrings his hands together. "I can open the lock for you so you can go in, but I need to close and lock it after you too."
"Lock it after us? Well, I suppose. As long as you're staying right here so you can hear any banging on the door and screaming, okay?" Linnet says.
He nods, even more uncomfortable.
"Anything else we should watch out for? This doesn't sound like the problems with chemicals someone mentioned to the kids," Bast says.
"Just be careful, all right? That's all. Whatever's in there is dangerous, and I mean, I can see that you're all capable, just... I don't know enough of what's going on here. I just come to work and I do my job. That's all." Any crisis of faith at the work that he's done up until now doesn't seem strong enough to sway Serj anymore, and he takes the padlock in hand and pulls the key out from the string around his neck. "When you're ready."
Bast gives Yves a raised-eyebrow glance at Serj's plaintive conclusion and lowers the waterproof sack from his shoulder, assembling the crossbow. "Now's good."
He pulls the chain out from around the door after unlocking it and ushers you all inside. He does not open the door himself.
Once you are inside, you hear the chain rattling itself back in place... and the key turning the lock shut.
Yves is definitely having Thoughts about some of this, none of which he's voicing while there are people outside the crew around to hear.
Isa flings off her poncho, in a practiced move designed to prevent it from soaking her. "Well. This is clear-cut and straightforward, isn't it."
It would be too kind to call this a foyer, as that would imply a sense of style and purpose that is lacking here. Chairs line the north, east, and west walls, and a large desk takes up the southern side of the room.
Doors to the east and west stand closed, thin windows above the doorknobs coated with dust.
Two oversized double doors behind the desk lead into the rest of the facility. The leftmost door is slightly ajar, the top set of hinges broken out from the doorjamb. The door has wedged itself into the floor and ceiling very well, and the rightmost door has a deadbolt extending down into the ground.
A medicinal odor fills the air. In acknowledgment of tradition, one of the overhead lights flickers ominously.
"This definitely won't raise any moral quandaries while we attempt to resolve it," Yves says, staring at the door that's ajar. "...and will they /never/ spring for reliable light bulbs in these places?"
Isa finishes buckling her gauntlet, and makes a practice fist. "Maintenance is on strike," she notes.
"Or has been struck. Can see that verb going either way," Yves mutters. His metal-laced rod makes an appearance.
Linnet holds up a finger to the group, floats over to the slightly-open door, puts her head next to the gap, and whistles a single note into the next room. (Listening for a response or an echo.)
"Any idea how this place might be laid out, Yves?" Bast asks.
"Well, that's a failure as far as information-gathering goes. Shall we kick in the door?" Linnet asks.
"Like... a... testing facility?" Yves shakes his head. "I barely paid attention to the layout of the building I worked in, once I knew how to find the bathrooms and the coffee kiosk reliably." He frowns at that ajar door some more. "I mean, I would guess that more volatile stuff would be further down. You don't want it smoking out windows into the countryside or whatever."
"So we should... look for elevators? I'm not sure if there would be just one set of them, or more than one. Depends on how the security runs, and who ran the budget."
"Let's not announce our presence to the entire facility if we can help it, kicking doors and riding elevators included." Bast walks over to the desk, looking it over for anything of interest.
"Aw, okay, fine."
The deadbolt is on the inside of the door, sealing it from the other side. These doors were designed to be controlled from the rest of the factory, not this front room.
"Well, looks like we're down to two choices, then. Left or right?"
"If we start with the open doors... that's probably the way people were running from, so maybe that's the best place to look for anyone who got left behind. So, uh..." Yves blinks several times. "...left is a nice direction?"
The desk has schedules for meetings, plus sign-in/out sheets on clipboards. The last sign-in was on 12:15 on the 27th. Most of the entries are for physicals or follow-up visits.
"Huh. Hey, Yves. Does this strike you as the sort of place people go for treatment?" Bast asks.
Yves shakes his head uncertainly. "If they're just testing on biomatter that's definitely not people, I don't see why they'd have live testing as well. Unless that's a different division than the one that guy was telling us about."
The door opens into a hallway, the north stretch dead ending in a nice little table with a fake fern on it. A door is on the opposite wall, closed, not locked. The hallway turns, then turns again, but you'll have to proceed further to see more down the hall.
"Looked like a lot of visitors coming and going and getting examined here." Bast keeps the crossbow at the ready, moving quietly to check around the corner.
Thus far, you have not heard any other sounds from inside. No machinery, no footsteps, no anguished screams, no cries for help.
Isa's head has not stopped moving, looking at corners and doorways with checklist efficiency. She hasn't spoken since the foyer, in case anything out there is counting voices.
The sign-in sheet's last entry, that 12:15 sign-in, did not have a corresponding sign-out. Jacaranda Vale.
"Anyone you recognize on the list, Yves?" Orrey asks.
Bast comes back with an "All quiet so far" and tries the closed door across the hall.
Linnet checks the closed door for signs of recent entry or exit, like disturbed dust. Or blood.
There are no signs of a struggle around this door.
Yves shakes his head, trying to stay simultaneously close to the group and out of the immediate blast zone if anything... blasts.
This is a small room set aside for some level of testing. There is a green bed with a white sheet over it in the corner, plus three cabinets on the opposite wall. A stainless steel industrial sink is set next to a tall standing desk with a three-foot-wide pale yellow cylinder that runs down into the floor.
"I assume none of this is the biomagitech. Not enough oozing." That said, Linnet tentatively pokes the cylinder with one finger.
Yves goes to squint at the cylinder for a moment, in case it's lab equipment he can identify.
The cylinder does not respond to a tap.
"...why is this only meant for sylphs?"
"Just diagnosis, looks like," Yves says, after another 360 turn to take in the entire room. "They're not doing anything /to/ people in here, unless it's with stuff they wheel in and out, and--what part is for sylphs? The bed?" Yves looks at the bed for signs of sylph-specific...bedding?
"What kind of diagnostics need a sink like that?"
"Most of y'all probably don't need specialized equipment to take vitals, but sylphs don't quite work the same way, so there's generally a room set aside in most larger hospitals for sylph-specific equipment. This looks like the room I used to go to for checkups as a kid, but about three times more intimidating. I don't understand why they'd need it here, though." Linnet searches the cylinder for an opening mechanism.
"Serj said they're trying to mimick different types of people..." Orrey trails off and then shrugs.
"At this rate, the biological testing material might answer some questions after all." Yves' shoulders hunch up, and he adds more quietly, "Horrible answers to horrible questions..."
"In any case, nothing inherently scary in here. You can probably head back into the hallway. I'll just be a second."
After a moment, Linnet determines where the cylinder would open, if it could -- a latch on the side operated by five smooth buttons -- but it does not respond. There is no power to the cylinder.
Isa hangs near the door, peeking out into the hallway from time to time.
"Nothing in need of containment in here," Yves also concludes.
Linnet pokes the buttons a few times - no response - and gives up. "Well, if it's in that cylinder, it's staying there. Can't get it open, there's no power."
Bast shrugs at Linnet and slides past Isa, moving further down the hallway.
"That's normally for moving equipment and samples. Anyway. What's next?" Linnet retreats from the cylinder room - closing the door behind her, joins the party, and peeks around the corner.
The hallway continues down, unlit, silent. There is a set of stairs on the eastern side, halfway down, heading up. A locked door with a swipe reader blocks the pathway heading down. Another door is closed a little further down, and the hallway then turns to the west.
There are still no sounds, still no acknowledgement of your presence.
Orrey checks out the swipe-reader door, checking to see if it's still locked without power.
Floating an inch above the floor so as not to make too many sounds, Linnet investigates the closed door.
The door to the new room is unlocked, but there are no windows on the door itself to allow a peek inside.
"Serj mentioned the seals on the bottom floor failing. Do we want to start at the top?" Bast points at the stairs.
"Well, we're here, might as well finish this hallway, at least Doesn't look like we're making it down easily." Linnet opens the door in front of her, expecting another exam room.
This room is full of three rows of desks, packed tightly together, all facing the reinforced glass window pointing into the center of the factory. There are papers strewn about, giving the impression that this room was evacuated in a hurry. The glass is cracked in here, three huge gouges taken out of it as if scored by massive claws. A pair of cracked glasses sit in the northeast corner, and a long orange scarf is wedged into the dent of a broken file cabinet, the lower half smeared with blood.
"Uh, guys? We got a problem," Linnet says.
"Idraen," Isa says.
"Ah, hell." Linnet untangles the scarf and peeks into the file cabinet.
"That seems....bad," Yves opines.
"...what would it be mimicking that would have claws that huge? Serj, what were you not telling me?" Linnet muses, mostly to herself.
Isa walks over to the gallery window, trying to get a look into the heart of the factory.
Orrey follows Isa, a few steps to the side.
The file cabinet is full of files, as one would imagine, but these are very well laid out, covering the results of multiple experiments, arranged by days. There is plenty of talk of 'calibre' and 'zone of impact' and some really concerning stuff about 'flechette trajectory' and a few interested notes about 'stellar explosion radius.' Curiously, there are also entries for how the test made each person feel.. emotionally.
Most reported a vague sense of unease.
Linnet swipes a few of the more interesting files (from different parts of the filing system) and stashes them in her backpack for future reading.
Yves' ears have drooped so far down that they're like black curtains at the sides of his head.
The factory floor, from what Isa can see through the gouges in the glass, is heavily damaged, with burn marks and deep scratches, metal rent. There are no assembly lines here, but there are marks for where something heavy could be moved along a track and pulled into position. The south wall is different than the others, with a space clear in the middle to allow more room for whatever testing is done. There is another testing room like the one you're in across from you, though its glass doesn't look to be in much better shape than yours.
You can barely see the others in the dim reflection from this spiderwebbed glass, how Linnet pokes through the file cabinet, how Orrey alternates between looking at the carnage around the scarf and the distress on Yves's face.
And then you -- and you alone-- see another person standing there, wearing glasses missing their lenses and a scarf stained with her own blood.
And then the winds howl.
The scattered papers whip themselves into a whirlwind, chairs crashing into each other, cabinets rattling back and forth.
The scarf whips itself loose and swirls up into the whirlwind.
"What the - !" Linnet's braid whips around in the whirlwind so hard it whacks Isa in the small of her back. "Sorry!"
Yves says something mildly obscene and deeply profane, and raises a hand crackling with lightning, then freezes in place, clearly having second thoughts about /doing/ anything with that.
"Splendid." Bast flattens himself against the wall by a cabinet, crossbow searching for a target and not finding one.
"Idraen!" Isa repeats. "Out, out, everyone out!"
Orrey is flat-footed, but attempts to respond to the command.
Yves does not need to be told twice.
"Isa, the hell are you talking about?" Linnet shouts.
"Where is the wind coming from?!" Orrey shouts as he heads to the door.
Isa doesn't look inclined to explain herself while still inside the room. "Out!" she yells, backing towards the door with her hand up in front of her face.
Yves is outing, but fast.
Bast's leap takes him over the chair that the wind is dragging past him and halfway to the door.
Papers rage against them, helpless and flailing, chairs crashing into the broken window time and time again, the glass reinforced to hold and not shatter in or out.
The wind is powerless to stop their retreat.
"Okay, okay, sheesh, I'm outing, I'm outing." Linnet slams her hand over her file-stuffed bag and fights her way to the hallway. But she looks back, squinting into the whirlwind to try to get a sense of where the hell it came from. Isa is the last out, and pulls the door shut behind her. "Everyone good? Only a matter of time before it grabbed something heavy enough to hurt."
"What's /it/?" Yves asks. "Not the ventilation system, that."
As soon as the door closes, the wind dies.
The sound remains, for a moment.
Anguish, and then it's gone, drifting away with a rustle of hair and fur.
"...was that...Cirri?" Linnet asks tentatively. "How the..."
"In the window, I saw you all...and then I saw Idraen. Before the storm."
Orrey tilts his head. "You saw a ghost?"
Isa shrugs. "I saw Idraen. I thought it might have been a memory; I didn't think the wind was real at first."
"A ghost in the wind..." Orrey says strangely.
"That was damn real. Sorry about the hair, by the way, couldn't get a grip."
Yves blinks rapidly. "Is... oh. Uh. You all remember... the auction? That woman? With the... she knew this man..." He's struggling to remember the details, but impatient all the same to get this said. "If, if something could make a sylph like hers turn to /stone/, a wind sylph could turn all to /wind/ with the same thing, maybe? Like... some drugs aren't great for some types of people. And if they were testing something, or it was too concentrated, or--wait, but if that means..." He falls silent again, still blinking a lot.
Isa gives Linnet a wave. "Comes with the territory," she says.
"Yves. You're suggesting that whatever they're testing in here...bloody discorporated Cirri Idraen?" Linnet looks like she's trying not to throw up.
"It turned her into the purest substance of her being?" Orrey asks.
"That is entirely too nice a way of putting it, Orrey, but thanks."
"Didn't one of those books have a fix?" Isa asks.
"The Green one, yeah!" Orrey looks at Linnet for confirmation.
"Didn't just discorporate," Yves says slowly, "if, uh, if that's still... Idraen. And not just pieces. Usually just pieces don't... keep moving. But also, I mean, if it's happened before, more slowly, and if it's the same thing, that means they already had a version that would do this, and someone got it out of here and used it. On purpose, probably."
"I think that was an intermediate fix, not a Phoenix Down-level fix," Linnet says.
"If there's a fix at all, we should see what we can do to help." Orrey insists.
"If there is a fix at all," Yves says in a low voice.
"And if there's not, we need to stop it from happening again," Isa says.
Linnet's just staring at her hands, smeared lightly with the blood from Cirri Idraen's scarf. Her expression is one of frozen, slowly dawning horror.
Bast gives the door a downright grim look. "Not gonna lie, the temptation to burn this place down behind us is getting stronger."
"Don't do that," Yves says quickly. "Some things spread through smoke inhalation."
"Wait." Linnet darts back into the room and returns with the scarf in her hands, folding it carefully to keep the blood on the inside. "...to remember."
...she's staring at her hands again. Freshly bloodied.
The memory of the wind's howl echoes down the weakly lit hallway.