Description: The time has finally come for Luise to follow the lead given to her in Thailand by an agent of Shadaloo. Coming to Peru, she travels to a remote mountain facility to track down her father... but is there some information that you're better off never knowing? ("Schmetterling und Strohblume", Part 1)
It's not much to work with, but if the only clue thus far is to start a search in Peru, what choice is there than to start from the northernost part of it and work their way down? That would have been the case if it weren't for the fact that a more specific location was given as well- The mountainous area of the Cusco Region.
The lab that once occupied well over hundreds of employees wasn't hidden in some sort of super secret, out of the way area, just close enough the mountains to keep out of the general publics eye. It's clear just by looking at the three story building that it's abandoned; a modern structure, made of white brick really doesn't look very special. The parking lot in front is completely empty, the tar street broken up and a wreck. But back to the building, all of the windows are broken on the first floor though the steel in the windowways seem to prevent people from entering regardless, the front doors are blocked off by a second, steel-bar door in front with a broken security slider by its side. The second floor up is less protected, though the degrading is more obvious the further one looks up.
Day or night doesn't really matter for a place like this, and for Luise, getting in at all should be very little trouble.
The climate of South America has not been kind to Luise, overall; a pale-skinned woman used to the chilly temperate forest of southeastern Germany has little place in the blazing heat of Peru. Never mind that while she is not a fool, she isn't the world's most accomplished spy and secret agent. Her normal black and silver garb has been replaced in her travels with white caftans and wide-brimmed hats to help conceal her identity. But when she finally reached the small mountain town where her search would end, she knew the little charade couldn't last.
She waits until dusk, putting her 'traditional' garb back on... being in her fighting clothes is a sort of psychological armor for Luise, something she girds herself with before diving into a world she never expected to be part of. The cracked tarmac, dyed red-orange by the setting sun, crackles and pops underneath her shoes as she approaches, pushing through the gate and observing the building.
"...Long gone," she murmurs. Her fears realized, the Dancing Butterfly can't help but sigh. She didn't expect to find a fully functional facility with Detlev Meyrink directing traffic in the parking lot, but she had hoped for more than... rather sad-looking ruins, all told. She extends her senses somewhat, keeping watch for sudden spikes in the flow of Psycho Power that might indicate an unwanted observer, even as she walks to the ruined door, running a finger over the security panel.
Unfortunatly there doesn't seem to be a single bit of activity going on within the building. In fact anyone who had a visited this place in the past probably got some amusement out of breaking the windows before heading back to wherever they came from.
Luise doesn't feel anything at the moment, when her sense extend, but she does end up having a very unusual experience. The door that's broken and locked for just a moment looks completely fixed. A blink of an eye reverts things to normal. The security panels green light flashes, a red laser draws along Luise's fingertips like a scanner and following an approving beep, the steel door raises with multiple squeaks and grinds. The door behind it draw open as well, revealing a wide room that leads to a front desk, an elevator, a stairwell, and deeper into the facility on the first floor. Unlike the outside, this room is suprisingly still in amazing condition, despite being abandoned, there's no desks or chairs, but signs of where a rug may have been as well as cabinets. There are also, however, papers scattered on the floor, as well as a couple of corkboard bulliten boards.
She actually recoils in surprise from the door, briefly. Luise had expected that she'd have to force the door; finding it still in working order is actually quite surprising, but not half so surprising as the fact that it responded to her at all. Although she's no expert on biometrics, Luise knows enough to be... cautious, at least. The stupid thing may still be broken, after all, and this is nothing but a fluke...
Cautiously stepping inside, hovering just a second in the shadows of the doorframe, Luise drifts in, taking in the scene. She almost expects armed guards to explode out of the woodwork, and suddenly brings a hand to her forehead, sighing. "Paranoia... not going to accomplish anything." She says it aloud mostly just to hear the sound of her own voice. Reaching down, she finds the closest piece of paper that has writing on it and picks it up.
Luckily nothing happens once Luise makes her way inside, at least nothing disasterous to herself. She's simply greeted with quiet, save for the sound of her own voice and steps.
The faded, single paper turns out to be three papers stapled togeather. The first page talks about emergency procedures, and where to evacuate in case of an emergency.
The second page is a map of the entire facility, it would appear there are two floors below, a laboratory, and below that a freezer floor. The floor Luise currently is on goes to various business offices. The second floor is another laboratory floor, and the third is the presidents office. The are red circles where emergency exits are, and there apparently are none at all in the lower levels.
The third page is a memo mentioning that there's an important meeting to be held in the presidents office directly, at approximatly eight months ago.
A midnight blue-hued fingernail taps against the bundle of papers. Luise has had plenty of time to envision what this place was going to be like... perhaps something out of "Dr. No", a sunken glass-walled facility somewhere under the sea, or built into a cliff face high in the Andes. What she's effectively got is a medical office building, perhaps of the type one would find in just about any major city.
The meeting in the presidents' office doesn't interest her, and the above-ground facilities are likely mundane... but a freezer floor? What could whoever is running this place need with an entire *floor*? Tearing the map out of the bundle, she takes it with her and heads for the closest stairs, trying to keep her steps measured. Normally the very image of placid calm, the Dancing Butterfly feels distinctly off beam with her own nervousness.
It's not exactly as simple as taking a stairwell to get to the bottom most floor, but it will take Luise to the lower level. Dusty security cameras no longer seem to be functional, some of them in fact look broken. The door that presumably leads to the lab is completely blown open, it'd seem with an explosive, since even a large chunk of wall is ripped out. Inside, however, is absolutly nothing, save for some broken tables and shattered machinery. Through here she finds another elevator, doors forced open and the lift on the lowest level.
Finally she gets down to the freezer floor. A very short hall leads to it, the steel floor rests on the floor, and the walls, floors ceiling made entirely of steel. Some cabinets still reside, steel blocks that seem to serve as tables still stand, it's clear this place used to be filled completely in ice, like it were a meat freezer or something. Upon first glance, one could assume many many samples were kept down here. Just exactly how small or how large they were, though, isn't clear. Drawers are opened, empty test tubes litter the floor, theres no doubt this floor was ransacked. There's so much that could be looked at, but Luise ends up having another odd vision.
An old man in a labcoat appears before her eyes from the furthest end of the lab, he looks like a silouette dressed in a white labcoat in glasses, speaking to another siloutte, female, similarly dressed with alarmingly long and styled hair. The woman walks through Luise, and the glasses wearing man hangs back a moment, and draws out a pen. He removes a clipboard from the wall, scribbles on it, then hangs it back up, and finally leaves the lab as well.
When the scenario returns to normal, the clipboard is still there, but on the floor.
The first one she could put down to a trick of the light, or possibly nerves. It was, after all, a split second only... perhaps her nervousness superimposing the image of a restored security device.
The second 'vision' makes it clear that Luise can no longer convince herself it was some sort of fluke. When the vision finally passes, the pale blonde staggers backward into the nearest wall, her dark blue eyes wide with... not exactly horror, but something darker and more sinister than surprise. Why is she seeing these things, here and now? An academic dilettante such as Luise is certainly familiar with common parapsychological ideas, such as psychometry, but she's shown no such ability in the past.
Never mind that the heaviness in her heart is compounded by the setting. "Genetic engineering," she murmurs under her breath. Or body modification, or cyborg implanting... while she is no expert, she took an interest in the work of her father Detlev and knows the structure of a lab fit for dealing with experiments on human subjects. Whoever ran this place was doing something... strange.
It's a long while before she can move across the room to pick up the clipboard from the floor, and even as she bends to do it her hands shakes, stopping just shy of getting a grip on the object. It's as if some line of demarcation is drawn between her and it, some border into a dark country she cannot cross again.
In the end, Luise can't be sure that she'd find the answer to her 'visions' on her own, and if there were any hints at all on this floor surely they'd be long gone? But there's nothing but quiet. when things calm once more, as if nothing had happened at all, which is technically true.
The clipboard has a lot of things written on it, it seems to be a sign-in board of sorts. According to the board someone is suppose to stand guard while the room is in use; on the left are the names of presumably scientists that enter and on the right their guardian. On the left many generic names, though the most often seen name is 'Foxy' and 'Meyrink'. Everyone appears to genrally have a different guardian per visit, save for Meyrink, whom seems to have 'Jaeger' with him every single time.
There's a clatter as Luise drops the clipboard, the entire thing landing on the cluttered floor with a sound that's like the tolling of a bell for how quiet the surroundings are. She'd hoped the things she'd been told -- by Seth, by Tiistai, by Zero -- weren't true, but with each successive iteration of the tale the gnawing suspicion became harder and harder to ignore. Now she's seen the proof, the *written* proof, with her own eyes. Unable to move, Luise simply stands there, her fingers curled slightly around empty air where the clipboard used to be.
She has no idea who Foxy is, not who Jaeger is... but they're names, and names are useful things. Find Jaeger or Foxy, and you'll have your link to why Detlev Meyrink was here, what he was doing... and who he was doing it for. But never before has success -- for this is certainly the reason why Luise came to this remote place, her goal is achieved -- tasted quite so bitter, or given rise to such a bowel-knotting sense of dread. Whatever happened here, it didn't happen gently. Looters don't take elevator doors home for the scrap metal. Something... broke out of here. And whatever it was, the owners didn't feel like coming back to clean up the job...
It's after some time that Luise is able to reach down and pick up the clipboard again, hands shaking as she does so. It's her proof, and it's her only clue... and her only link to Detlev Meyrink, the father she thought she knew. Giving the shattered lab one last look, she turns and starts the long journey back to the first floor, having no desire to stay any further. Yes, the lab itself might provide even more clues...
"...but do I really want to know what those clues are..." she finishes to herself, aloud.
There's no response to Luise's words.
No suprise there though, right? As Luise makes her trip back, and looks at all the carnage about the facility, it somehow just seems to carry an even more grim air about it.
The first floor is as abandoned as when Luise first entered. Again there's no resistance, no sign of life. It's just going to be a walk back as quiet as when she arrived.
Log created on 19:53:08 08/13/2007 by Luise, and last modified on 16:13:33 09/30/2007.