Nancy went upstairs on the Slow Elevator of Slowness. Since Nancy had no more access to the outside world, Ryan was her only ally in the search for Niko's killer.
"Did you hear?" Ryan asked. "A snowstorm of gloriously epic proportions is bearing down on us! I might get a chance to break out the snowmobiles! ...Or we'll get snowed in, like last time."
Nancy shook her head; the last time she had used a snowmobile was at Icicle Creek Lodge, when she chased after a culprit who had just tried to kill her. It hadn't been a very fun experience.
"What's wrong?" Ryan asked, seeing the look on Nancy's face.
"Victor just fired me," Nancy said. "He thinks I'm a bad detective, because all I found is a clue about a black light."
"A black light?" Ryan asked. She grabbed something from a nearby toolbox. "Do you mean this thing?"
"Yes, that's it!" Nancy grabbed it excitedly. "I need to use it under a glow! Like...the glow that the Tesla coil produces on its low setting!"
"Okay, I have no idea what you're talking about," Ryan said.
"Niko left a hidden message for me," Nancy said. "Well, not for me specifically, but he left a bunch of clues, just in case he happened to be killed."
"He was a pretty paranoid person," Ryan said.
"I guess this means my next stop is the Tesla coil lab," Nancy said. "Only Victor took away my keycard, so I can't go there anymore."
"Here, take mine," Ryan said, handing her card to Nancy. "I don't really need it, because I can get into the lab without an access card."
Nancy nodded. She remembered that particular fact, which was surprisingly irrelevant to the murder mystery, because the murderer used a keycard to access the lab. They might be a murderer, but they followed proper lab entry procedures.
Nancy thanks Ryan for her help, then went downstairs to the lab. After setting the coil on "low", she wandered around the lab, waving the black light around randomly. Nancy got bored after twenty-seven seconds, so she decided to pretend that she was a Star Wars jedi, fighting evil monsters. She became so busy playing around and making cool sound effects that she almost missed seeing the writing on the hex.
Enter the hex
"This must be what Niko wants me to find!" Nancy said. The writing was invisible, unless the black light was close to it. She grabbed the hex and pulled. Amazingly, it lifted up, revealing a hidden passageway.
"Woah! Niko built a secret lab, underneath the lab? How did he do that, without anyone noticing?!" Nancy wondered. She climbed down the ladder, went down the short tunnel and looked at the door. It wouldn't open when she pulled the handle, so Nancy took a closer look at the small pad above the handle.
"A biometric fingerprint scanner, coded specifically to Niko's fingerprints?!" Nancy asked. "How am I supposed to get past that?"
