revivalproject | Glowing Fields

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Glowing Fields

WHO: Jon, Cayde and maybe Tony later
WHERE: The Laboratories (Green 22)
WHAT: Time for a break-in!
WHEN: Early April-ish...?
WARNINGS: TBA

Explorations like this one are what Jon has had in mind when making sure to pick up what he considers useful equipment while they were on Coruscant. And he doesn't regret his decisions. Especially having proper boots makes a huge difference when traversing the ruins of the city towards the corner at which Jon has agreed to meet with Cayde. Whether or not Tony will join them for this trip remains yet to be seen. At least for the time being it will be merely the Exo and the Archivist.

The structure they have set their eyes on is already well in view once Jon arrives and casts a look around for Cayde. Upon not spotting the Exo right away, his attention shifts over to the large building nearby and Jon nods to himself, confident they will soon know more about this particular building.

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"Glows? That's usually not a good sign," Cayde smirks, but he looks back towards the building's surroundings in a new light. "Like, glownie-glow?" While he's come around these parts before, he'd never thought to wander up this way during the night, and most of his necessary night adventures had been in the more popular areas of the city.

He follows Jon up to the gate. Those sorts of things would hardly be enough to keep a Guardian out. "So how in tact do you want to keep things?" he asks as he sizes up the fence.

"Glownies glow differently, I'm afraid." Jon replies and runs his eyes around the shape of the gate with a frown. "And I'd say we try to keep it as intact as possible in case we want to make use of it later." Though from his own observations something as simple as a bolt cutter won't be enough to break this gate open.

"You don't happen to know how to pick locks?"

Cayde laughs incredulously. "Do I know how to pick locks," he mutters, shaking his head despite the grin as he steps up to inspect the lock. He fishes around his belt pouch before coming up with a few slivers of metal, selecting two before he inserts them to start probing the inner workings of the lock.

Okay, so maybe he's a little rusty at it. Most locks he's had to break into in the recent past have been of the technical sort, in which case Sundance was the best locksmith you could have. There's a few awkward minutes and grumbling that brings the Exo this close to pulling his hand cannon and shooting the lock free. But there are some things that even though you don't think about, the know-how is still buried deep in muscle-memory or circuitry in this case, knowing when to twist and adjust an angle. Eventually he manages to tease the lock open with a very anticlimactic *snik*.

The Hunter still looks proud of himself as he steps back after pushing open the door, slipping his tools away.

"Nicely done." Jon comments with a little smile, having waited and watched in patient silence while Cayde took care of the gate.

He wastes no time to step inside, looking at the plants growing near the building and how they differ from other plants he has seen around the city. Apparently the fact that they are glowing doesn't hinder their growth at all. On the contrary. These plants look incredibly healthy.

But their goal is the building itself, waiting for them just down a path that used to be bigger than it is these days.

"...the map refers to this place as a lab. I have been wondering what it is the Agrii may have been researching in it."

"All in the wrist." Cayde slips in after the Archivist, brows arching at the plants and the more obvious glow of those that sit in the shade of the building. "Weird patches of glowing plants aren't too unusual," he notes, although he doesn't sound entirely convinced about it. Still, this is an alien planet. With glowing sheep-horse things. Which he's still not sure if it's due to radioactivity or not.

"Who knows? Kind of odd that it's been locked up though. Sundance, just let me know if anything pings your radar."

Jon raises a brow in Cayde's direction. "You think it's odd? I find it rather reasonable. If what they were doing in this place is dangerous it makes sense that they made sure it's secure and out of reach even in case of an evacuation. Automatic locking-mechanisms for security reasons aren't unknown on my Earth at least."

That the lock at the gate appeared to be of the more manual kind and pickable rather speaks of a person taking their duties seriously even in what may have been a pressing situation.

"But I hope we learn a little more soon."

"Eh, put that way I guess that makes a little more sense. But it still takes time to do. Did they lock up before the storms hit or after?" If things were as bad as that recording had made it out to be, locking up after oneself tended to be low on the list of priorities.

Cayde stops to poke at some of the plants that have been growing there, but he doesn't take long to catch up with Jon once they get to the lab building itself. He has a look at the door.

"It's possible that no one was here when it started." Which seems possible enough to Jon. Though if he were speaking for himself, then he might well be the person to make sure to lock the gates of a place meant to be off-limits even when evacuating.

The main door of the actual building appears a lot heavier - And much heavier secured. No regular locks Jon can see, no keypad - which doesn't surprise him - it doesn't even appear to have a handle. "Huh. Now this is more alien than the doors they had on Coruscant." The Archivist muses aloud and presses a hand against the metal to see if the door is meant to be pushed open. "I believe this is meant to slide open..."

Could be possible. Cayde gives a nod, not really too concerned about the reasons or the how's as he's already moved on with his focus.

"With or without help?" He's looking as Jon tries to push the thing, applying a shoulder to see for himself if it'll budge.

"Sundance," the Exo says, holding his hand out to call up his Ghost. "Wanna check this out? See if this thing'll open up with a little nudge." He winks at her and she gives a bob in acknowledgment, turning to beam a light at the door as she flits beside it to see if there are any electronic locks and systems to bypass.

Jon removes his hand from the door and looks at Sundance as if there is a way for him to see if the Ghost can figure something out. "There may be a mechanism around that scans the person approaching the door. Check if they are authorized to enter this place?" A guess. Coruscant and the ship the Agrii are using have introduced Jon to a multitude of unfamiliar technology and yet this may be something entirely new again.

"At least I don't believe we're looking at something magically sealed."

"No, not magic," Sundance confirms as she pauses in her scanning. "One moment." And then she vanishes into the door itself with a brief shimmer of light.

Cayde steps back, optics tracing the door all the way around in search of anything they might have missed, like a release lever or something. "One of those laser swords might be handy right about now. Ooh- I think she's got something," he says, apparently getting some sort of correspondence from Sundance as she worked.

The large doors shudder and begin to slowly pull back.

"I doubt anyone wants to see me using a lightsaber." Jon muses with a frown when the heavy door starts moving out of the way and releasing a cloud of dust and old air. Jon takes a step back with a small grimace, frown deepening as he looks forward into the dark building. "Jesus, it smells in there!"

Of what exactly it smells, he isn't certain. It's not the smell of a building that has been left empty for some time. Neither does it smell of rot. There may be a hint of old smoke in there somewhere.

Jon pulls out his flashlight and glances up at the Exo. "There may be some equipment or substances in here that have reacted to the storms. Guess we may want to be careful."

Given Jon's track record, it's probably no surprise to see Cayde wince at that. But the Exo still grins at Jon. "Yeah, you'd probably just lob off your own leg." So encouraging!

He's only barely setting foot into the building itself once Sundance rejoins them when his face scrunches up in response to the smell Jon proclaims. "Yikes. What is that?"

The Archivist is given a nod at the caution suggested. "Place has been abandoned and locked up for a long while and for a reason. Guess careful is warranted." He looks around, Sundance switching over from her ambient beam of light to a more direct one to help her Guardian see.

Jon won't argue with Cayde's judgement regarding his abilities with a lightsaber. Instead, he directs the beam of his flashlight into the building and casts it around a few times to look for anything catching his attention right away.

"Well. At least nothing has jumped at us so far." He observes, but not without a frown, before taking his first step into the actual building. This part very obviously is just an entrance area. The actual labs he assumes to be further in and so Jon is moving that way without any further hesitation.

Back on Earth there would possibly some sort of reception area or an office with the respective paperwork, computers to look into and similar things. The lack of any such things here is hardly surprising given the Agrii's lack of a written language and therefore paperwork. Which brings back another thought. "If they kept any records here, those would be on such smaller data points we found the remains of in the library. I suggest keeping an eye out for those."

"Sundance isn't picking up anything of the uh, alive sort, at least," Cayde offers helpfully.

Nothing shiny's drawn his attention, but then if this is a lab then he doubts he'll find anything worthwhile by way of loot. He lifts his head as Jon makes a good point. Well, that's a sure way to keep him from trying to pick anything up. He's been abstaining from touching glowy orbs, he should get a medal!

"Got it," he says, sharing a look and a nod with Sundance.

"Nothing alive is good. Still smelly weirdly in here." Jon makes a face and steps further inside, making it into the next part of the building without much effort. There isn't a lot furniture in here and the next part isn't too different even though definitely set up to conduct various experiments.

The counters are pretty solid construction made of metal and rock and the machines set up, while clearly detached from any energy source for a long time, are the same technological style as other Agrii technology remains Jon has seen throughout the city.

"Better preserved than what has been at the hospital." He observes and shines his light around further. "I'm wondering why this place has no power. We restored it for the rest of the city!"

Cayde is already looking bored, not that he had much expectations for a laboratory so much as just the idea of breaking into something that hasn't been accessed in a while. He may have secretly hoped for there to be some kind of stash of contraband hidden inside, but everything just looks too empty and neat. Not even any half-baked experiments so far as he can see.

So why does it smell so bad?

"Maybe the power was deliberately cut off? Or it was damaged and no one knew because this place hasn't even been cracked open until now." He lets Sundance scan some of the equipment that's out to see if there's anything worthwhile. "Picking up any sort of power readings?" he asks her as she pokes about.

The Ghost pauses and hovers in place a moment as she tries to get a better readout.

"Possibly. Maybe it even had its own generator... Though then again, the hospital had none until Tony installed it..." Jon utters his own thoughts in return and walks further while Sundance makes her scan.

At the end of this portion of the building is a set of large double doors, left open rather than locked. Stepping through those has Jon stop to take in the scene. The room is large. In the middle sits a large machine with further devices set around the walls of the room. Although it is more that Jon assumes these were all machines at one point. What he finds himself looking at much rather resembles molten lumps of stone and metal, with the mass at the center having burned through the floor and into the levels beneath.

Grimacing, Jon takes a step back to turn his head back to Cayde still in the previous room. "Please tell me Sundance can scan for radiation as well."

"'course she can," Cayde replies. And then he pauses and turns to look towards Jon as he considers the question the Archivist had asked. Glancing at Sundance, the Exo nods before moving towards the other room that Jon had ventured into, his Ghost trailing after.

"...well that looks reassuring... Sundance, we picking anything up that we should be concerned about?"

"Hmm." Jon nods and turns his attention to the Ghost. Finding this along with the glowing plants outside is worrisome at best.

"I'm not sure if we should dare to find out what the basement of this place looks like. If there is one, of course, and this hasn't merely burned its way into the sewer system."

"That's even more reassuring," Cayde mutters. "I knew something around here had to be radioactive."

"You said you thought the glownies were radioactive," Sundance points out.

"Well! It's a possibility, right? Glowing usually isn't healthy. Unless it's from handsome Exos and their lovely Ghost partners."

The Ghost twitches in a headshake, her front vertices then bunching slightly in the suggestion of a narrowing eye. "Picking up low levels of residual radiation. Below anything to be concerned about, thankfully, but I suggest we don't hang around any longer than necessary."

"The glownies? Really?" The bewildered look Jon directs at Cayde along with that question does a good job at underlining his thoughts about that idea. "Weren't people eating the glownies?" Is everyone just slowly getting radiation poisoning...?

His attention is pulled back towards the faintly glowing mass at Sundance's words, however, causing Jon to nod slowly. "Hmm. Yes. I suppose you're right. But I wonder if what happened here was an accident, or a reaction to a storm."

At this point Jon is slowly moving through the room, trying to make sense of the molten devices and machines. Though he doubts they will be able to tell what kind of experiments were conducted here after all.

Cayde offers an exaggerated shrug at Jon. "I mean, it's a fair possibility, right? Things don't just glow unless they're wired for it oooor they're radioactive! Anyway it was an early thought me an' Stark had."

He otherwise doesn't seem terribly concerned about the possibility of radioactive creatures as he goes to look around himself once the Archivist resumes his own searching. Sundance lets her light pass across the globs of melted machinery but she doesn't linger long. There's no telling what they were used for in such a state.

"Huh. I always thought of them as bioluminescent." Jon offers his theory while returning from circling the room. Nothing to find there, unfortunately. Nothing that could be records or notes of whatever has been researched here, which is rather disappointing.

He stops when he reaches Cayde again and casts a frown over his shoulder, back into the room. "Right. Doesn't look like we'll be having any luck in here and- I'll be honest: I'm not too keen to look for a way into the basement to seek out more of this molten mass. And I will see if I can leave a note with the map about this place being potentially unhealthy to stick around in for too long."

The Exo snap-points at Jon then. "That's what I meant."

As it becomes more and more apparent there's nothing fun nor even remotely shiny for him to find in here, Cayde turns back to Jon, not exactly reassured to see the man's reached the same conclusion. His brows lift at mention of the basement. "And here I thought you were the man that wanted to know everything," he grins. "Although from what you said earlier, I think I'd be more concerned about it still possibly contaminating things from below and us just not knowing it."

Jon frowns a little, but then shakes his head. "I want to know. But I don't want to risk releasing something onto the city that might be dangerous. The Chernobyl disaster hardly lies three decades in the past on my Earth, but the documentations on it are very thorough."

His eyes fall down onto the floor they stand on and he lightly taps the tip of his shoe against it. "Tony may have something we can use to scan the underground of and around this building without physically having to enter it. I did similar scans with his glove to help Reeve map out present power lines of the city."

"Oh right, the one you almost shot me with," Cayde nods. Go figure that's the main thing he remembers about that glove. Sorry Jon, never letting you live that one down.

"Good point though. Probably better keeping distance. Least we can report what we've found out. Although that doesn't really answer what they were doing in here that resulted in the mess..."

He strokes his chin but shrugs. There really isn't much of a way to figure that out with everything looking like sad lumps.

"Almost!" Jon emphasizes the important part. Cayde didn't get mortally wounded from that little mishap. And he has gotten way better at handling that glove after being entrusted with it for a while.

Sighing, Jon shrugs, clearly not happy about their lack of answers. "Whatever records they kept is either gone or destroyed." IF the Agrii whatever Agrii scientists worked here even kept any records.

"Let's head out for now. I will send another message to Tony, letting him know what we found. Maybe we even need to think about properly sealing this place."

The outburst makes Cayde snicker. He waves a hand before reaching over to pat Jon on the shoulder.

"Yeah, let him know we didn't have any fun without him. Putting more than a lock on the door here seems like a good idea though. Maybe a big sign..." Because everyone loves knowing they're near a radioactive site, right? Riiiight.

Jon nods and starts walking back towards the entrance of the building, still finding a little smile for the Exo. Putting up signs isn't a bad idea.

"It may not have been the most... Thrilling exploration, but I'm glad you came along, Cayde. Thank you."

Taking one last look around on the off chance that they might've missed something, Cayde finally turns to follow Jon as well. Maybe it's not entirely a bad thing that their venture has turned up mostly empty-handed. There's not many souvenirs one might like to bring back from even a mildly radioactive site.

"Can't be all fun and games I guess," he says, shrugging at the Archivist, but he offers a crooked grin. "Any time."

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Glowing Fields

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is this okay if there was some thing going on lemmee know and I'll fix it

Should be fine. We're just making stuff up as we go anyway~

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