Conall was filled with equal parts anticipation and anxiety as he clicked the link to the DropOff folder Eon had sent him. He was at home in his apartment, on his own personal laptop, but it still felt like he should look over his shoulder.
Even though he was doing it for a good reason, it all felt somehow illicit. It was either because he was going behind the backs of the other site directors to get the information
and
communicating with a metahuman to do so, or because he had a fair idea of what some of the content in the tapes would be, or both. It wasn't as if he was going to be watching for prurient reasons, but it had been some time since he was at researcher level and dealt with metahumans regularly. He wasn't as desensitised to their activities as he used to be, and that had him feeling awkward and anxious as the page loaded on his screen.
There wasn't anything explicit on the first page, anyway. A bunch of folders, named according to which area of the site the videos stemmed from. He clicked into one called "containment area Alpha" and found more sub-folders for the hallways and rooms. This was going to take a
lot
of time to sort through. At least several evenings, if not longer. He would have to thank Eon for organising everything thoroughly. They really hadn't been kidding when they recommended taking a systematic approach. He stopped to retrieve a pen and writing pad before he went any further.
Once he felt prepared, Conall chose to look at the surveillance footage for one of the hallways in Area Alpha first, and clicked into the video.
It wasn't what he was expecting. In fact, it was... A lot of nothing, really. Employees walking up and down at random intervals, researchers coming out of containment rooms when it was time to hand over to the next shift, all the normal comings and goings of a site. Conall clicked forward to a random timestamp later. Still nothing. He clicked a timestamp two-thirds of the way through the whole video.
That
was a metahuman orgy in the middle of the hallway. Fucking hell. Conall paused it, face hot, wrote down the time as being confirmed as
after
the containment breach was well underway, and started choosing earlier timestamps. The ones where everything was normal were too early, and the ones where subjects and transformed employees alike were well into, well, fucking, those were too late. He needed to find when the metahumans in containment began to escape.
Conall decided to work his way back from the timestamp when the orgy had already begun, while doing his best to ignore the
imagery
on screen. Those metahumans in the recording wouldn't care if footage of them was watched, all things considered. It was more that Conall wanted to avoid feeling like he was doing any of this out of self-interest. He worked back through the footage while letting his eyes unfocus a bit so the figures on screen were more like blobs.
Finally, an hour after he began, he found what he thought was the time when metahuman containment had failed; several metahumans in Area Alpha had emerged from their containment rooms at that time along with former research staff following behind, if the remnants of lab coats clinging to them were any indication... Everything must have snowballed from there. It didn't look like they were released one after the other but rather at the same time, so either this was coordinated by a group of staff who had been compromised, or it was an issue with the remote locking system.
He checked the videos for a few other areas of containment cells around the same time, to make sure. It happened more or less simultaneously. That meant either the site had been deeply compromised by an organised group of staff under metahuman influence, or it had to be the locking system. It seemed unlikely that it was the former - surely someone would have noticed - so for now he would work from the assumption it was the latter.
Well then, he had a time when it had happened, now to figure out why it had happened. Conall chewed on the top of his pencil as he thought about it. It was a simultaneous failure of the containment cells, so maybe something in the electronics, or the security room? The security staff on surveillance duty would have the ability to override the remote locks on the doors. He didn't really know how the technology worked, but he knew Epsilon-1 had a modern remote lock system similar to Phi-2. He remembered the discussion amongst the site directors when a number of sites had installed them at the same time a few years back. If the remote locking system was as much of a security risk as the videos seemed to suggest, replacing the locks again would be a pain, but doable.
After a short break for some chamomile tea, he opened the video from the security room itself. He had always thought having a camera installed there was a bit redundant, but now that he needed to piece together what had happened, he was after changing his mind.
Conall chose a timestamp a few minutes before the remote locks seemed to have failed. Everything looked normal for the first minute or two - the three guards on duty watching the surveillance cameras were chatting and working, with no indication that anything was about to happen. Next thing one of them stood and pointed at a few of the screens, asking the other two if they were seeing the same thing.
The locks on the containment cells had disengaged all at once, the doors to some literally swinging open as it happened. Conall wrote down the time. Now he knew exactly when it happened. He was glued to his laptop as he watched the scene in the security room unfold. The other two guards confirmed that the first one wasn't seeing things. One of them tried to sound an alarm, to use the intercom, to do
something
to alert the researchers and agents around the site.
Apparently
those were all gone dead. As far as Conall could make out from the stream of loud curses the camera audio had caught. The blackout on all site communications was simultaneous, too. That was even more suspicious.
Even knowing everything in the footage had already happened, Conall still felt bad watching the security guards try desperately to get any of their communications to work, before they resorted to pulling out their mobile phones. God, they had to mass-text everyone. Knowing that a lot of the staff weren't supposed to be using their personal phones outside of breaktimes, as well. After the initial cursing, they'd switched into professional mode, though. One called the department heads and the director, while another was sitting and sending out text messages. The third... What was she doing, actually?
It looked like she was watching the other two in between using her mobile. It felt a little strange somehow. Conall frowned. The frown deepened when the first guard got off the phone and went to open the door out of the room. It was locked. He called the others over to help try the door. The one who had been watching the other two shrugged and didn't bother trying to help.
Instead she turned back to the bank of screens and sat down, her hands spread out on the controls. The other two asked her what the fuck she was doing. They were trying to break the door open. Another remote lock...
Conall paused and wrote that down. The first thing to replace in Phi-2 would have to be the door to the security room. What an absolute nightmare scenario. A whole containment breach,
and
the security team were locked in a room during it. There were other guards on patrol as well and probably some in the nearest break room, but they would have been overwhelmed by trying to respond.
Conall pressed play again, keeping his eyes on the guard who was doing absolutely sweet nothing to help open the door. The others decided to look in the room for something to use as a lever, or to bash the hinges, and that's when
it
happened. The seated guard's hands
melted
into the control panel. It looked like black ooze, seeping into the gaps in the electronics. Then the various wires and cables piled in the corners of the room started to writhe like snakes, flowing forward to tangle around the ankles of the two other guards.
Well, shit. The guard had been a metahuman all along.
An eldritch, technologically-inclined one. Who was fairly powerful, it looked like. No wonder the locks and communications had gone down - a metahuman like that could interface with the systems themselves and play them like a piano virtuoso.
He watched with wide eyes as the two guards were dragged across the room by a writhing wave of wires, which tugged them into place on their desk chairs and tied across their arms and ankles and wrists and chests. Both of them were cursing at the guard-turned-metahuman, who simply laughed.
