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Maybe the real unethical experimentation on nonconsenting subjects was the friends we made along the way
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Lucky is going to be having words with Command, she's thinking to herself as she tries to find her way around the labyrinth that is this place. They were, to be fair, totally correct about the overall level of security here, but that's because it seems that the two los lowest basement levels of the Regenschirm Somatology Laboratory don't need security, because all of the experiments have breached containment who knows how long ago and anyone foolish enough to try to infiltrate it via the sewers will be taken care of by said experiments long before they ever become an actual security issue to the scientists. 

There's still power, probably because the entire lab shares a grid, but the creatures have caused sufficient damage that the lights are few and far between, with many of them having been destroyed or hanging pathetically from wires that go into holes in the ceiling. Coupled with the facts that many of the walls have been destroyed, that piles of rubble and old electronics litter the floor, and that the original layout of the place was probably created by someone who lost touch with reality a decade prior, and she stands by her description of the place as a "labyrinth".

But you know what? She could have dealt with that. She could've dealt with poorly lit corridors and mazelike passages and escaped horrors beyond her comprehension just fine. The problem she's having is that the escaped horrors aren't beyond her comprehension. In fact, quite the opposite, they are well within her comprehension. Because they're people. 

They look kind of like ghosts, in that they don't seem to be fully in this dimension and when you look away it feels like they kind of flicker at the edge of your vision, but they're definitely way, way more solid than the stories she's heard have led her to believe ghosts would be. And their faces are almost creepier for being perfectly blank and placid rather than expressing any emotions. And many of them are clones of each other. And they use real person Skills and they have actual tactics and the only reason they haven't killed her and Gonie given their numbers is that it seems like their short-term memory is, approximately, not, and when they're not actively aware of the presence of living humans or being agitated by others nearby they seem happy to roam aimlessly and not hurt anyone.

Their tactical ability was still good enough to separate her and Gonie, though. Fuck that mage and her Ice Wall very, very much. 

So Lucky's invisible right now, and her invisibility is good enough as long as she doesn't run into a clone of the archer or the monk or that fucking rogue, but she needs to find an exit. In the worst case she'll activate her suicide contingency but that'd be expensive and she didn't even get to explode anything. Not that there's much of value she could explode down here, it seems, but still, it's the principle of the thing. 

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And eventually, after what feels like an eternity, she finds stairs leading up

Would that be a good idea? Then again, she's completely lost, so it's that or keep roaming around until she finds something less likely to lead directly up into the actual inhabited parts of the lab.

An arrow connects with the back of her shoulder and she curses loudly and decides that she is in fact taking that risk.

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The door leading upstairs is locked and solid metal but Lucky does have a bomb and it does the job of opening that door nicely. Also probably attracting the attention of many experiments. 

Once up, it's very clear very quickly that the place has been completely evacuated, with nice offices and cubicles showing signs of barely-not-panicked scrambling to get away asap. Whatever security has been called hasn't arrived yet, though, so she has the run of the place. For now.

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Man, what did the people who work here do to deserve the punishment of having offices so close to that chaotic Hel downstairs? 

And oh this is such a golden opportunity, who knows what she could find here? But on the other hand she can hear the commotion downstairs of the experiments trying to find her so rather than try to do anything stupid she will find somewhere to hide long enough for them to forget about her. Then she can find incriminating evidence or explode some stuff or whatever.

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Well. There's this little cubicle right here. It's got more stuff in it than most of them, and a (flimsy) door.

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Yeah she doesn't need the door to offer protection, just cover. Into it she goes.

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It's... cozy. Decorated with very careful attention to detail. On the desk are a potted succulent, and a very nice-looking abacus which might be imported from Amatsu or somewhere, and a framed sketch of a little boy wearing fancy clothes and a slightly uncomfortable smile.

On the wall there's a painting of an ancient-looking castle. The drawing might've been professionally done; the painting isn't. The brushstrokes aren't so much unconfident as they are confidently wrong. Even the frame hangs a bit oddly, not quite flush with the wall, as if there's something behind it. ...that might be less a mark of poor quality and more a sign that it's hiding a wall safe, to be fair.

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She will Not Look. She will instead hide under a desk and wait until she can't hear any more noises. 

(A part of her is starting to realise that, just like the experiments had been dormant downstairs, they might go dormant up here too rather than returning, in which case she's hosed. But, well, cross that bridge when she gets to it, any plan that ends with her out of here and not using her suicide contingency begins with the not-ghosts no longer actively looking for her.)

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She can hear the commotion of the strange clones running around. She can hear them stay there a while. She can hear an attack—though plausibly it was just a rat that startled one of them. She cannot hear them say anything, because they don't speak, they just move.

And eventually she can't hear anything.

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Yeah but that fucking rogue can be really fucking quiet so she'll wait here a bit longer.

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So the silence will settle and stretch on.

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...probably some form of security will appear soon, right? 

.......are the creatures gone?

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She will certainly not be able to determine that from under the desk.

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Right. Yes. Of course. 

Well, there's no cost in being invisible and very very quiet, just in case, but she probably should get out.

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......okay but she saw a bunch of things that made her really curious and, and it could be useful information and, and, and she realises she's making excuses but the mission's already gone tits up anyway so she might as well indulge.

Now what's hiding behind the painting...?

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A safe! It doesn't have a keyhole or tumbler, though, just a little magic-reader that'll respond to a specific keystone.

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Ah.

...can she...

.......she absolutely cannot. She shouldn't even try. This is Not In Her Wheelhouse.

Instead she will explore the rest of the cubicle.

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The desk is full of ciphered notes, with charts and graphs and tables of data attached.

...one of the drawers doesn't want to pull as far out as its mates; it sticks on something, a few inches before its full extension.

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Okay if there's one thing she's good at is mechanical dexterity, surely she can figure out how to open it?

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Oh, yes, absolutely. If she lifts a little as she pulls, it slides right out of the desk, and inside the hidden compartment is a twinkling little gemstone.

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Twinkle twinkle little gemstone, what does it do, if there is one thing she is good at after years of messing with magic rocks is being able to tell what a magic rock does.

Mostly. Most of the time. In general terms.

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Well, this one poisons her. And paralyzes her hand, so she can't let go of it.

"That's not the key," says a young man a few feet above her. If she cares to look up, he's perched like a gargoyle on one of the dividing panels. If she doesn't, well, who knows.

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"It would've been really very stupid to hide the key right there, next to the safe," she agrees. "I didn't think it was. I just really like shiny rocks." Her metaphorical finger is on her suicide trigger but this guy talking to her probably means that she's fine for now? "It's nice to meet you, I'm Lucky."

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"No, there is a keystone in here," he insists. "It's just not that one. I was kind of excited to see somebody test the system, actually, nobody's tried. Maybe I overthought it."

He hops down, his shiny black shoes meeting the tile soundlessly. The cubicle isn't quite big enough for the both of them; he puts the succulent on a little shelf and sits atop the desk where it was.

Even though she's currently invisible, he's remarkably respectful of her personal space.

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You know what, he's not the only one who's going to be testing new technology, here. She's never had reason to check whether her delivery mechanism for the condensed green potion works, not wanting to poison herself, but it is a mental motion she programmed into her legs, and she can feel the needle go directly into her and start slowly pumping the generic antidote into her bloodstream.

"So, why didn't you evacuate with everyone else?"

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"The subjects were confined to the lower levels. And if any did make it up here, I could take care of them."

He frowns at her legs. "That's a bit rude, isn't it?"

(It isn't working, rude or not. Whatever this rock is doing doesn't fit traditional delivery pathways or their inhibitors.)

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