The Rundown Military Base squats under a dead-gray sky, chain-link fencing buckled inward, floodlights flickering over shattered concrete and slick green puddles.
Clover Ewing stands at the breach in her crimson WHOOP catsuit, boots planted careful on the slimy ground as a skittering carpet of small cockroaches fans around her ankles.
Ahead, Max Exterminus rises from the wreckage, half-man and half-insect, his posture twitching with furious purpose as if every second is already too late.
Max Exterminus
Too slow. Humanity is already overdue for extinction.
The bugs churn at his feet, drawn into a tightening ring around a cracked control bunker door, where something inside hums with unstable, wrong-time energy.
Max Exterminus
Step back, Clover Ewing. Or watch the future collapse into the swarm.
Clover Ewing
The glow is coming from inside the bunker.
Max spreads his clawed hands, and the roaches surge toward her in a black wave, while the bunker door groans under the pressure from within.
✓ Quest Accepted
Escape the roach swarm
“I duck for the bunker door”
SUCCESS (Great Acrobatics, rolled -2)
Clover drops low and cuts under the first rush, her boots splashing through the slick green muck as the roaches break around her instead of over her.
She slides into the bunker threshold, the cracked door whining on its warped track while the swarm bunches behind her at the lip.
Max Exterminus
No, stay out there. The swarm is kinder than what is inside.
A pulse of blue white distortion flickers from the gap, washing over Clover's gloves and the concrete walls in a stuttering sheen.
Max Exterminus
That door is failing. If you want answers, move before the timeline tears wider.
Clover Ewing
I’m in.
The bunker mouth swallows her shadow, and behind her the roach wave scrapes at the sill, denied for the moment but still pressing. Inside, the unseen machinery hums harder, as if something within just noticed her.
“Max Exterminus spits stinky green goo at Clover that pins her to one of wooden crates.”
SUCCESS (Good Agility, rolled +0)
The glob sails wide, hissing past Clover and bursting hard against the crate stack instead. Sticky green slime splatters wood and concrete, not her suit.
Clover twists with the impact, one boot carving a quick brace on the bunker floor. She stays free, the goo already stringing in ugly ropes where it landed.
Max Exterminus
Still too quick. Good. I want you alert when the door wakes up.
Behind him, the warped doorway throbs with blue white static, and the swarm outside surges against the sill, legs scraping in a dry, furious whisper.
Max Exterminus
You can dodge spit. Let us see what you do when the bunker starts remembering.
The hum from deeper inside hardens into a steady vibration, and dust shivers loose from the ceiling seams above Clover.
The roaches have not crossed the threshold, but the crack in the door widens by a finger, inviting the next move.
Quest Complete
Escape the roach swarm
Skill Upgrade: Acrobatics Great→Superb