January 14th, 2024, time=unknown
Location: Somewhere, Earth-1
POV: Y/N Stark,
I tap the glass, and a holoscreen with controls pops up, two buttons immediately stand out.
Eject. Terminate.
"Do we want to open one of the pods?"
"Are you crazy! NO! We are not opening a locked cryo-pod with a possible person inside, who we don't know, while we are also being hunted by those chanting bodies," Wanda hisses at me. It may not have been my brightest idea to open one of them, but my curiosity just got the best of me, alright. To be fair it still does.
"Alright, then party-pooper," I respond, but Wanda just glares at me. Quickly I add, "You are right, however. We should probably just lock this door just to be safe and figure out what was in the cells you passed by earlier."
I tap on the glass panel again to make the holoscreen disappear. I see Wanda going through the labcoats next to the door and walk over to her. From one of the pockets, she lifts a blue keycard.
"Nice thinking Wands," It would make sense for the blue keycard to accesses all the medical or support departments.
"You're not the only smart one, Stark," Wanda smirks at me.
Now that I've had the blood in my system a little longer, I notice my increase in strength and my senses. I can walk on my own again and feel much much stronger and faster. Ugh, I kinda missed drinking human blood.
I walk over to the door and nudge Wanda to follow me back into the medical bay itself. We lock up the door and move over to the barricaded door.
Before we step out I ask, "So just to be clear, we go left, follow the hallway, then through the security wing into the panopticon."
"Yeah, that sounds about right."
Alright, here we go. I lift up one of the metal cabinets and push it to the side, while Wanda takes the other one. Carefully I open up the door and push through it. The alarm sound is audible again, though blended into the background.
Following the hallway, we find ourselves in a large hall. Straight ahead of us a large metal plaque, engraved on it "FEDERAL BUREAU OF CONTROL - SECURITY CENTER"
To the left and right of the plaque, two sets of stairs lead upwards to a mezzanine. We sneak inside and immediately my eyes fall on the floating bodies in the air. I grab Wanda's arm and push her back into the hallway.
"There are more of those floaties here," I whisper.
"In the other hall, they only attacked us after we disturbed one of the bodies. We can try to sneak past them. Fighting them isn't really an option here." Wanda says.
I nod and sneak back into the security center. Under the name plaque are several signboards. Up the stairs is the control room. To the left, is the panopticon. An arrow to the right is followed by a faded-out text, but I manage to make out some of the letters; it says elevator. The arrow points towards a fancy-looking hallway with trophy cabinets on the walls, leading towards a large taped-off and barricaded slide door.
"What do we want?" Wanda asks, "We can go to the control room, maybe we can find out what the containment breach is?"
"Sounds good, follow me."
We sneak up the stairs onto the second floor. The signs lead towards the end of the room, towards 2 large wooden doors. A small sign on the side of them, "Control Room; Section 5"
I carefully push them open and slip inside. I look over my shoulder and notice Wanda keeping an eye on the floating bodies. So far they haven't moved even the slightest bit. I still wonder how Wanda managed to get rid of them earlier…
As I step into the control room I notice a slide projector turned on and is projecting some kind of video feed on a large concrete wall in front of me.
The feed appears to be security camera footage of a large cell. The sides are covered in glass panels, now shattered completely. Glass shards lay inside the cell, alongside a heavy-duty armored door, blasted off its hinges. The cell contains nothing but a single what looks to be a fixation bed.
The inside of the cell is illuminated by faint red light. Not blinking like the alarm light, but just a constant red luminescence.
In front of the projection, are several incredibly old computers. I'm talking Cold-War era old. It matches the rest of the bunker's aesthetic, except for some of the renovated areas, like the hall with the upside-down pyramid thing, where we were attacked earlier.
The entire bunker is really old, but some areas are… different. The Executive Sector was nice with a red carpet, although dusty, and marble walls with wooden accents. However, this sector, the Containment Sector, is deserted. Barely looked after. Someone patched up some rooms for their own benefit. But why?
Light bouncing off the wall is the only source of illumination in the room apart from the blinking red alarm light that is going off next to the door.
I walk closer to one of the computers and try to turn it on. No response. Makes sense, since the electricity was out everywhere else. But how is the projector still on? I look over my shoulder and notice the projector is on a smaller platform just above the door.
"Can you give me a boost?"
Wanda looks at me and nods. I run over to the front of the platform and jump. Wanda's magic lifts me up onto the raised platform.
She carefully places me down on the concrete platform. In front of me right now is a small knee-height table with an old slide projector on top of it, however, I see no cables or anything else connected to it, "Huh- that's strange."
Seconds later, Wanda lands next to me on the raised platform, "What wrong?"
"The projector doesn't appear to be connected to a power source, nor any network, yet it is giving us surveillance video. The slide tray is empty as well, so it isn't old footage either." I crouch next to the projector and check the object over once more.
"Is it possible that it is connected paranormally?" Wanda says while looking at the feed on the wall.
"It is possible that this is one of those objects we read about earlier. Wait here."
I jump back down and immediately move over to one of the cabinets on the side of the room. We didn't look through the file room for more of those case files, but If they are using this slide projector here, then it would make sense that they would have something to resemble a manual here, right?
"What the hell are you doing Y/N"
"I'm looking for something, hold on for a second,"
I try to open the first cabinet, but it's locked. I don't have the patience for this. With my strength, I yank open the drawer. Empty.
Behind me, I hear Wanda murmur, "Did she really just- you know what never mind."
I look over my shoulder and see her disbelievingly shake her head slowly.
I continue going through the rest of the cabinets. Yanking them open when they are locked, but all of them are empty. Someone must have cleaned them out.
Disappointed, I walk back over to the doors, when I notice a ring binder on top of one of the desks. The cover is simply the logo of the bureau and in small letters underneath it, it says: "OOP15-UE". I walk over to the desk and open up the first page. Immediately I'm met with a case file, with a picture of the slide projector prominent on the first page.
I pick up the ring binder and walk back to the platform. Before I can even ask for a boost, Wanda lifts me back up to the raised platform. I sit down on the floor and place the ring binder in front of me.
Flipping open the cover, the first paper inside is the case file;
SLIDE PROJECTOR (OOP15-UE) - LOW CLEARANCE VERSION
CONTAINMENT PROCEDURE:
[REDACTED]
DESCRIPTION/PARAUTILITY:
The object is a [REDACTED] with a vertical tray.
The object creates [REDACTED] (see Dr. Darling presentation 26.1 for more details). The only [REDACTED] to successfully produce this effect resulted in the capture of [REDACTED] (see Dr. Darling presentation 26.3 for more details).
The object has not been successfully bound. The parautility of this object does not require binding.
BACKGROUND:
Discovered when the Bureau responded to [REDACTED] (see AWE-24 case file for more information).
Many of the accompanying [REDACTED] were [REDACTED] (see files on P6, P7 for details). The entirety of the [REDACTED] was transported to the Bureau for examination, to find additional [REDACTED] or other altered materials.
Alright well, that explains it. The object is connected to something… paranormally.
This case file is just for the control room, so if we want more information we will probably have to find it in the archives.
I continue on to the next set of files with Wanda looking over my shoulder. A confused look in her eyes informs me that I will probably have to explain some stuff.
"According to this file, the slide projector is something called an 'object of power' and is able to create doorways to other dimensions as well as project what is happening inside of them." I point at a series of codes with names next to them, "These are probably something we need to access these dimensions. I'm not sure."
"Does that mean it is also able to project any location inside our current dimension?" Wanda asks me.
"Either that. Or- this," I point towards the projection, "is a live-feed from another dimension."
The next pages are filled with experiments they have conducted, incident reports, and some back and forth correspondence between Dr. Darling and an unknown individual.
"The only mention I can find is a reference to a file that can be found in the Research Sector, regarding something called the Astral Plane, which is currently being studied by the Bureau. From what I understand the Astral plane is connected to some of the paranatural phenomena and it has some kind of connection with something called 'The Board'."
"Well, that's totally not ominous. Does it give any information on how we can use the doorways?"
"No everything about that is redacted. I think here they just use it for surveillance video. But the file does say that only certain 'slides' can be used. So my guess is that these slides they are talking about, indicate what dimension you are looking at. The codes we found earlier are probably indexes for which slides exactly. Here," I hand her one of the papers;
FEDERAL BUREAU OF CONTROL - SLIDE PROJECTOR TESTS
The Slide Projector only works with some of the slides we found. Logically this means the slides themselves are a part of the Object of Power, or a distinct Altered Item, But of course, I had to make sure no other slides worked. I had to try. I thought maybe emotion had something to do with it. Connection. History. Love.
I brought in my parents' old slides. Birthday parties, vacations to Niagara Falls, my first day of high school, that kind of thing. There were two box's worth. I had to dig around the garage for an hour to find them. Never once thought of looking at them since they passed.
I tried them all. I waited until all the staff left for the night. I stayed up in that booth for hours, trying every single one of them. Projector off, slide out, slide in, Projector on. Nothing happens. Projector off, slide out, slide in, Projector on. Nothing happens.
Love wasn't the common factor. There's no correlation that I can see. Maybe the slide itself is the Object of Power. Maybe the Projector's just an accessory. Maybe it doesn't matter.
Why'd that fucking kid have to burn the other slides?
I realize that in order for the projector to actually project something, it needs at least a slide. The slide tray is empty, but perhaps they placed it on the lens.
I walk over to the table and crouch down next to the projector. Carefully I screw open the lens cover and remove the objective lens, revealing a slide behind it. I carefully remove it and the projection is immediately empty.
The slide itself is pretty old. The supposed-to-be white slide frame that surrounds the film is pretty much rotten and discolored. On the back of the frame, in a black marker is written; HWW4VXKP . I place back the slide in the slide tray and put back the lens and lens cover. The visual we had on the cell returns like nothing changed.
I walk back over to the binder, where Wanda is still reading through some of the files. She tilts her head slightly to the side while she's running her hand through her hair, while still glaring at the paper, "You do realize that won't work on a piece of paper right?"
She looks at me and continues to tilt her head and a deadly stare comes my way. Fearfully I look away and murmur, "shutting up now…" and continue flipping through the binder, looking for the list of codes we found earlier.
A chuckle comes from her direction and I carefully look back at her, a small smile erupts on her face when she notices. I focus back on the binder when I find the spreadsheet I was looking for.
Going through the codes, I spot HWW4VXKP . Next to it is a single name, "Containment Sector; P6 CELL. Class Keter"
"Oh fuck." I feel the playful demeanor we put up for a second fade, "Wands- Remember when we wanted to go to the panopticon and I noticed something called the P6 CELL?" I immediately look over to the projection.
The feed is the exact same as we saw it earlier. Glass shards cover the cells' floor, originating from the blown-out glass panels that are supposed to hold someone inside. The heavy-duty blast door off its hinges, laying next to a fixation bed; the leather straps torn from the bed.
"Yeah, I walked past it. Why?" Wanda notices my worried looks and walks over to me.
"Well- That over there," I point towards the projection, "Is cell P6."