Night falls as you walk towards the center of the plateau formation, determined to help Babbage with his request. Though a part of you wishes to have asked Noir to accompany you, the rest of you believes she has earned her relaxation time. You’ve been on the road so long that you both could use a bit of a rest.

Besides, you feel relatively confident that you could handle this on your own. Your own constant Scanning helps you pinpoint the location of the psionic beings as Babbage had mentioned. He was right to describe it as like television or radio static: it’s plain psionic noise and somewhat grating to your senses.

Take the chaotic jumbled minds of any Crazed - the worst one - and then multiply that by a hundred. Random unintelligible thoughts and emotions are thrown out into the wild violently in wild momentary pulses and varying degrees of strength and power.

You sense that each pulse is a kind of attack, perhaps akin to a lethal Surge. But they all scatter and break apart when they hit your defenses - none are strong enough to penetrate even your simplest shielding.

Though these beings flicker their psyche in and out constantly, you’re still able to get a sense of their general capabilities. Particularly how much energy they have in their reserves. You’re glad to find that none seem to exceed your own in any way, and it would take many of them to match up with you evenly. And as far as you can tell, they haven’t woven any specific psionic powers thus far.

Their static must be some kind of innate psionic defense - one that you plan to try to copy and practice once you’re done with this job.

The closer you travel towards where these creatures seem to be clustered together, you find that the noises of the various nighttime critters and insects around you dwindle significantly. Basically, there’s less critters here because they sense their lives being threatened somehow. Or perhaps that low-level psionic static defense is killing them as they get closer.

This reinforces the fact that you’re perhaps on the right track. And also that perhaps this might be more dangerous than you think.

It only takes you the better part of an hour before you come to one of the largest plateaus in the entire region - the thing practically dominates the sky above you, and its cliff faces are the steepest of all those around.

Perhaps most tellingly, the pulses from the psionic creatures are strongest here, more than enough for you to almost exactly pinpoint where they are. They’re inside the plateau you’re standing in front of, which must mean that this is very likely the location of that hidden military research facility that Babbage mentioned.

So you spend another dozen or so minutes circling the plateau in search of its entrance. Along the way you find a dirt road wide enough to allow for large vehicles, which you follow all the way to an opening at the base of the plateau.

There, the dirt road comes to a three-way intersection with one fork leading further west, and the other into a half-circle tunnel roughly six meters long jutting out of the cliff side. Just outside the tunnel entrance is a rather severe security checkpoint with concrete barriers, a machine gun emplacement behind a sandbag barrier, and a heavily armored security station.

Oddly, you find that everything here has been left alone. Either no-one has come here to loot it, or no-one has been able to come here to loot it. No doubt the psionic static has something to do with that.

You peek into the security station as you pass by it only to find the desiccated corpse of its guard still inside, slumped over in its chair. Not only is the corpse in relatively good shape, but seeing as it’s inside an armored box, nothing has been able to pick it apart. Not even maggots.

It’s even still wearing its uniform, which has been badly stained by flesh and other organic matter that has gone through the process of liquefaction. Behind the corpse is a modest armory with a rifle, a shotgun, and presumably a bunch of ammunition.

Though you’re tempted to open it up and grab the ammo, no part of you wants to smell that corpse.

More to the fact, seeing as there’s one out here, you’re almost certain that you’ll run into more. And so before you get any further, you dig into your messenger bag and whip out a dust mask. You snap it over your nose and mouth before wrapping your scarf around you protectively. And then, you dull your sense of smell as best you can in preparation for the worst.

If this place hasn’t been touched in years, then it’s very likely that it’s a tomb inside. One that’s been seeping in rot for all that time. Despite the threat of unknown psionic horrors down there, it’s the promise of the stench of death that turns you off this job even more.

Once you’re satisfied, you continue down the large tunnel entryway, which continues for a dozen meters further into the plateau.

It is eerily dark here considering very little moonlight can actually reach you, and you find yourself amplifying your Temperance to your maximum so that you can see. Though everything becomes a rather grainy gray, you are still able to see most everything down here.

The tunnel roadway opens up to a small parking area which seems large enough for a number of vehicles - a half a dozen at least. In fact there are a trio of vehicles parked here - two Humvees and a plain unmarked car.

All seem to be in good condition, though you’re not exactly too worried about searching them. Not right now anyway. You’re sure there’s plenty of goodies deep inside the place, and whatever’s in these vehicles would be the least of them.

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The tunnel terminates at a massive set of heavy security doors that seems to be split down the middle, allowing it to slide away to the sides. Currently, it’s shut tight. There’s a smaller access door built into the right side door which likely allows personnel to go through without having to open up the entire thing.

Also close to the right side is yet another security station, though it is far less armed and armored than the one just outside. The desiccated corpse manning this one is halfway out of the station itself, splayed out to the world.

And although it isn’t protected by the station, you note that nothing has eaten it or taken a single bite of it as well. Its uniform is also mostly intact, though clearly deeply stained by its owner's liquefied flesh. It has clearly been dead for a good long while - definitely for years.

What takes most of your attention are a trio of corpses gathered around the heavy security doors. Their corpses look much fresher than the other two guards - and equally as untouched by nature. Their bodies are collapsing much slower as a result, and are simply drying up from the heat of day.

Quite tellingly, none are wearing fatigues or uniforms, and are instead wearing a variety of outdoor gear. Backpacks and hiking shoes and gloves and such. Though you’re certain they aren’t just plain hikers who lost their way - these are very clearly scavengers and looters.

You weave a portion of your energies and form them into a brief Astral Memory. Time around you rewinds to glimpses and moments in this trio’s life here. Or rather, their deaths. You watch as they scream in pain as they clutch their heads, then one by one tumble to the ground, dead.

And you find your suspicions correct - these pulses of psionic static are lethal mental attacks. Certainly more than enough to kill non-psions outright. Now it makes a ton more sense why no living things have dared to come close, despite the promise of a good meal.

When you withdraw from the Astral Memory, you realize that the psionic creatures haven’t actually done anything in the last few minutes. At least since your entry into the tunnel, which is certainly worrying. Unable to figure out what they’re up to, you instead refocus your attention to the corpses in front of you.

Not that they’re significant to you - they’re just scavengers like yourself after all.

It’s their equipment that piques your interest the most. Not only do they have large packs to fill loot with, but they’ve got all kinds of interesting tools scattered around them. There’s a sledgehammer on the ground in front of the doors, right in the middle of the two. Jammed in the thin gap are a couple of metal wedges, which they presumably were using to attempt to open this massive gate.

There are also a couple of crowbars on the ground nearby, though one looks as though it’s bent out of shape. It’s likely they broke it while attempting to open the door.

You smirk uncontrollably. Even though you know nothing about this facility, just looking at the door tells you that a simple lever would never be enough to open it. In fact, you suspect that bombs wouldn’t be enough to open the door.

This place isn’t just fortified against discovery - it’s also fortified against attack.

Thankfully you aren’t attacking it. You just want to get inside.

You reach outward with equal parts ESP, Scan, and Telekinesis and wash them over the heavy security doors. With each of your powers, and by working them in layers, you attempt to find the shape of the doors - where their physical forms butt up against the psionic world.

And not just their exteriors, but their interior mechanisms as well.

After dealing with hundreds of tiny particles, dealing with massive solid pieces seems unfairly easy. You’re able to sense massive bolts deep inside holding these doors shut from multiple sides. Each of the doors have their own bolt piercing the other one, latching each other shut solidly.

There are also smaller bolts that are jammed into the doors from above and below - four per door. Which means that there are ten total bolts holding the doors in position. No amount of crowbars or steel wedges would have budged these doors in the slightest.

With deft precision, you use your Telekinesis to turn and twist one of the larger door bolts until it is no longer hooked in place, then slide it back into its open position. Without any electricity running through the building, there’s nothing to stop you from actually unlocking the door like this.

Once the bolt is drawn back, you spin the bolt back and lock it in place.

You then proceed to unlock the double doors one bolt at a time, sliding each one away and locking them in the open position. All the while, you concentrate on the shape and feel of the steel bolt mechanisms themselves, intrinsically understanding how it moves, how it works.

After you slip the bolts back into position, you use your Telekinesis to slide open the doors in front of you. Despite years of standing still, they move almost effortlessly. Not quite because of your abilities, but because of the spectacular engineering involved.

It seems magnetic plates are involved with keeping the doors perfectly aligned with the rails, making them slide with ease. Though you can sense large pistons that would normally open or shut the doors, none pose a barrier to you. Simply, without electricity, they can’t maintain the tremendous amount of pressure needed to operate the doors in the first place.

And so the heavy security doors slide open as though you’re about to head out to a patio.

There’s a kind of psionic chitter that erupts the moment you step through, but it ends as abruptly as it comes. You can’t hardly make heads or tails of it, considering it’s just more psionic static. But it’s loud and it's focused, and it comes from all of the presences around you all at the same time.

Knowing that you can’t possibly leave this door open, you reluctantly use your Telekinesis to shut it. It’s not even the fact that you don’t want anything wandering in here. It’s that you don’t want anything inside to wander out.

That could spell disaster for Oasis, should anything in here decide to do some exploration of their own.

Whatever minimal amount of light winks out the moment the doors meet, bathing you in pure darkness. You’re reminded of the farm house you visited weeks ago - it is just as dark as it was there. And it’s cold - dozens of meters of stone and steel keeps this place rather chilly.

And that sweet smell of rot seeps into your nose, telling you just how thick death is in the air here.

But you remain undaunted, despite your heart beating a million times a second. There’s a thrill and a fear that sweeps through you at the same time. A sort of eagerness and reluctance to continue this little jaunt. It isn’t just the reward, of course. That’s just the icing to this cake.

You’re looking forward to facing whatever it is you have to face in this insane darkness, in this little dungeon crawl. And so you strengthen yourself with a potent Fortify, raise your psionic defenses even further, then step further into the base.