Julie had come to a crossroads. There was a sign indicating a gynecologist's office down one hallway. Bleh. Another led to a hand doctor. Okay. The last hallway was for employees only. Julie figured that's where the good stuff was and headed for the double doors. The lock had been broken for a while at this point so she wouldn't be the first, but oh well.
Julie darted into the first open door, which was an office. She checked the room quickly and found a couple of dollars. Better than nothing.
She Scouted the next couple of rooms and discovered a mumbling splicer. She ran over and stabbed him through the heart. Then she started exploring the rooms up until then. Some cans of food were in one. She ate the one of string beans with her traveling spork (Yes, she'd predicted this situation.) and stored the rest of the cans for later.
The next room had an EVE hypo. She snagged it.
The next room had a dead body (promptly searched) and an audiovox that she played. Out came a female, Irish voice. "Rian…I hope you're the one that found this." Julie tensed. This was for Ryan? "I came to the Medical Pavilion because I needed to talk, but I can't find you anywhere. I'm worried. Please, if you get this contact me. I'll keep checking the histology lab. It's the one with the hippo, right?" The recording abruptly
Julie blinked. "Hippo?" What was a hippo doing here? And what was histology? Was that lady talking to Andrew Ryan or someone who had the same name? Whichever it was, it didn't seem particularly relevant to her. She sent another Scouting projection out. There didn't seem to be too many splicers in this area, but she did see one up ahead that she set on fire before returning back to her body and continuing forwards.
Next up was a fork in the road. Julie took the left since it seemed to head towards a set of labs of some sort. She wrinkled her nose as she walked in the left one. "Ugh!" It smelled awful even through the suit. Maybe that was why the splicers were avoiding this area. What was that smell anyway? She looked at the closest container and blinked. It was quite openly labeled as being a thyroid. She glanced at the next container, which was stated to be a uterus. Oh. That was probably why it smelled funny. She gave the room a quick lookover and then darted to the room across the hall.
There were several odd machines lining the wall that Julie couldn't identify, but what really caught her attention was the hippo doll sitting next to one of the machines. Julie stared. Was that what the Irish lady had been talking about? Julie decided to see if there was anything in the drawers flanking the weird machine. One had the numbers '1920' carved into the back of it. She had no idea what that was for. The other drawer surprisingly had a gene tonic in it. "Huh." After a moment of deciphering the text and studying the picture, Julie determined the tonic was EVE Link…which would restore some EVE when she used a first aid hypo. Well, she was fairly certain she didn't have that. She uncapped the needle and stuck it into her side.
Once it stopped burning, Scout threw the syringe away. She went through the rest of the room, but didn't find anything particularly useful. The next room had a bunch of containers that looked to have held chemicals that had evaporated long ago. Also some bottles that still had chemicals. Julie grabbed a couple of smaller, flammable ones. Also…another audiovox.
"Rian, your coworkers said they saw you a couple of hours before. Are you avoiding me? I know we don't always see eye to eye, but this might be our last chance to talk to each other. Please…I don't want it to end like this."
"No kidding," muttered Julie.
The last lab was more chemicals and samples. She went back into the hallway, Scouting to make sure she wouldn't have to deal with any surprises. It was mostly offices. There was one room with lockers.
Julie remembered the numbers carved into the drawer and tried the lockers. Some were broken. Some refused to open. One clicked open when she set the lock to '1920'. Inside was another gene tonic and an audiovox. Julie picked up the audiovox and hit play.
"Rian, I know now I won't see you again. I'm starting to have hallucinations. I'm not sure how much longer I have, so I'm leaving…And I won't come back. I don't want to risk killing my own brother. This is my parting gift to you. Use it, trade it, throw it away. It doesn't matter anymore. And Rian…" The woman started to cry. "I am so sorry it had to be like this. I just wish-" The audiovox suddenly cut out. Julie checked the cassette. It ran out of tape.
So…This Ryan guy, who was probably not Andrew Ryan, was this lady's brother? Or her brother worked here at least. And didn't want to talk to her. And she was a splicer now, if she was even still alive. It was surprisingly depressing. Julie decided she didn't want to think about this anymore.
Julie grabbed the gene tonic…The lady's gift to Rian? That he just left here for some reason. It seemed like common sense, but it also seemed like a waste. She read the description, blinked, and re-read to make sure she hadn't messed up any of the words. This was a gene tonic that would permanently disable any security devices that were hit with Electrobolt. Handy. She injected it.
One less thing to worry about.
