The corridor lurches. Emergency light stutters over cracked panels and drifting dust as the Hunter Captain presses back against the wall, breathing hard. Overhead, a ceiling plate buckles with a metallic shriek.
Mara
I did not expect you to survive the sequence. You were assembled here, under this wing, from the first viable pattern.
A hand-held screen in her grip flickers to a maintenance map, then flashes red across the lower levels. Whole sections of the facility are being wiped, sealed, or vented.
Mara
They are erasing the lab. The records, the shells, the failures, all of it. If you stay, you disappear with it.
Buster Jones
...
Mara
I led the work. I made the call to keep the successful one and bury the rest. If you want the truth, you have to move now.
Another groan rolls through the floor. A seam in the wall splits open ahead, spilling white steam and the first clean route toward the exit.
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach the exit
“I grab the Captain by her collar and drag her toward the exit.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Strength, rolled +0)
Buster yanks the Hunter Captain by the collar and hauls her off the wall. Her screen clatters and skids through the steam as his first stride shakes loose dust from the buckled ceiling.
Mara
Wait, the route is changing. If you drag me wrong, we both get sealed in.
He keeps moving anyway, boots grinding over debris. The split seam ahead belches hotter steam, and the red light flashes over their silhouettes like a warning beacon.
Mara
He is not hesitating. Not anymore.
A deep crack answers from somewhere above. The floor shivers under both of them, and a fresh shower of grit rains down from the hanging ceiling plate.
Mara
Buster, listen. The whole wing is going. The exit is through there, before the next collapse.
He drags her into the steam-washed opening as the corridor behind them groans louder, cutting off the old path in a hiss of failing metal.
Quest Complete
Reach the exit