From Bad To Worse

Posted on Mon Oct 7th, 2019 @ 10:17am by

878 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: What Stalks The Night
Location: Command Room

"Stefan, I'm James, I'm an engineer. Is it ok if I ask you a few questions about the systems here, power, layout?"

Stefan nodded, consigned to his fate that he may well die here when it finds them.

"You mentioned to the Doctor a geothermal plant and some damage from an explosion. Has there been any other damage that you know of that might effect power?" James asked, if he was to fix something he needed to know the extent of the power systems issues, but first he needed to know what was being powered.

"I don't know." Stefan spoke, there was still fear in his eyes. James had broken his sanctuary, there was no hiding for him anymore.

James rubbed his chin, Stefan didn't know or he did and couldn't tell. James stood up and walked to the holotable, it looked intact just a bit of a mess. He looked over to one console that was clearly offline, the display struggled to display some text but it couldn't be read but that meant power. Opening the panel on the side he could see the damage, that familiar odour of burnt circuits. Using a variety of tools he ran a systems check on the table, physically and mechanically it was fine, just the power was the issue. James pulled some components out of the console he was looking at with the idea to fashion a form of regulated power source.

The whole process took nearly 15 minutes, a few cables strewn along the floor towards the table, his tool kit open and some of its contents disgorged onto the floor and the tables surface. By the time he was ready he checked once more, it looked good but it was flaky at best.

James saw the table come to life, at first only just but it did. Once it seemed to become stable James slipped the passcard into the reader and a holographic panel appeared.

"You....you shouldn't be looking at that." Stefan spoke.

"I need to know what I'm working with before the plant detonates, I need to know where the power faults are, the severity and bypass options if I'm going to have any hope of getting us out of here." That was not strictly true, but what he spoke served a purpose. James had to look around the interface but was able to locate an engineering section, power allocation. Pressing it the table revealed a map of the complex and it was far larger than anyone would have expected. His engineering eye saw errors all over the facility, it was haemorrhaging power and the plant was trying to compensate by building power output. Some of the rooms had titles, galley, quarters, engineering, but some were greyed out only displaying power consumption figures.

What ever they were, Stefan didn't have access to or there was something there that needed to stay "Ok, I got something." James spoke trying to get peoples attention.

"Internal sensors are down." Giving some bad news first. "Power fluctuations all over the facility, more than I can handle especially given what we are told is out there. Short story is, there is a problem with the power plant, its putting out power but these unknown rooms." He pointed to the 9 greyed out unnamed rooms all of which demanding a high and steady power need. "Seem to be priority set rooms, I can't divert from here. The EPS grid is a mess, junctions all over the facility are down."

Pressing a button James showed that he was routing power from the plant, to one wing of the complex through another then to the control room just to get some measure of semi stable power. "Life support is operational but its fragile." James continued. "There are blast doors." Pressing a button many red flashing icons appeared on the map. "Blast doors, green is sealed, red is not." The sheer amount of them especially leading to some of the greyed out rooms was staggering and most were red, only the ones to the grey areas were still green for the most part.

"Entry point is here and we are here." James zoomed in a little. There were 7 entry points to the section of the complex they were in, 2 of which had green blast doors, the others were red.

Xavier turned to Stefan. "Stefan, what are these areas?" He asked pointing to the grey zones.

"Scientific and bio labs." That was all Stefan said, vague as his answer was.

"What kind of experiments were being run here?" James asked.

"I can't tell you." Stefan spoke.

"What do you mean, can't tell us?" James shot back. "In case you haven't noticed pal, your neck is on the line like the rest of us unless I can fix what's broken."

"I can't tell you because I don't know, okay? Alright. I'm a Neuro-pathologist. I get sealed in a room, I do my job and ask no questions."

Well if that wasn't shady Xavier didn't know what was. "James..." A sort of ease up expression on his face

Stefan sat in the chair leaning against a console that was long inoperable as he stared blankly at it, the bottle of water in his hand slowly rotating it with his fingers.

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