"Wha- Quark!" Sigma cries, spinning around in tandem with me.

"Why did we come here...?" Quark mutters in a dazed tone. "What's the point...? We're just going to die..."

My heart seizes. Oh no, the Radical-6!

"No, we're not just going to die... we have to die... all of us... it's the only way for us to be free..."

"Wh- what are you talking about, Quark...?" Sigma says, looking increasingly freaked out the longer that Quark speaks.

"Just end it... end it all..." Quark rambles. "Free the body... free the mind... free... the..."

Before he can finish that all too ominous line, Quark's eyes roll up in his skull, and he collapses backwards in a dead faint. Sigma lunges forward and manages to catch Quark before he can fully hit the ground, thankfully preventing the young boy's head from smashing into the floor.

"Quark! Are you okay?!"

When Quark doesn't respond, Sigma puts a hand to the boy's chest, presumably to check that he's still breathing. Upon confirming as much, Sigma lets out a sigh of relief, though he still looks extremely troubled.

"What the hell was that...?"

That would be an event I really should have been more prepared for. It happened in the original VLR after all, as well as the initial timeline I went through, even if it didn't happen in the last one for whatever reason... although, isn't Quark normally supposed to have this little episode before everyone enters the Chromatic Doors, not after? Ugh, why has so much of my meta-knowledge turned out to be so utterly useless?

"Any ideas, Clover?" Sigma asks.

I nod, opening my mouth to suggest that it might be the effects of Radical-6 — and freeze.

I wasn't present for the discussion of the newspaper article this time around. I can't say that.

"I- actually no, I don't have any clue what that was either, Sigma." I say instead. "Here, bring him into the room."

Sigma seems slightly confused by my instant reversal of stance, but does as asked anyways, lifting Quark up in a cradling hold and cautiously sidling into the laboratory. He lays Quark's prone body down next to the glowing tanks, looking a little regretful that he doesn't have anything to rest the young boy's head on.

"It was like he just suddenly went crazy." Sigma says restlessly as he straightens back up. "But why?"

"I don't know, but I doubt it's anything good." I reply. "We should try and get through this room quickly so we can get Quark back to the infirmary as soon as possible."

Partially because that's just the best place for us to take care of him, but also because I really, really don't want Quark to wake back up while we're still in here, fully suicidal and out of his mind, with only Sigma and I to try and restrain him. Given just how strong he proved to be last time whilst in the throes of the virus, I'm not sure that the two of us alone could actually stop him from killing himself this time, and I'd rather not have to find out.

Thankfully, Sigma seems to agree with me, and we wordlessly disperse throughout the room — or, well, "disperse" in the sense that we walk a few feet away to examine different things. The room isn't actually large enough for us to truly distance ourselves from each other, but that's probably for the best anyways, given how these escape rooms tend to work.

I crouch down to investigate the open cubbyholes beneath the second alcove on the left, which appears to have a fume hood and a chemical drain built into it. Meanwhile, Sigma moves over to the shelves in the back, which are stocked with a bunch of cylindrical, metal-and-glass containers — much like the one stuffed underneath the alcove I'm looking in.

"Okay, I've got... a jar of seeds, looks like?" I say, pulling the cylinder out into the light.

"Same here." Sigma says, pulling an almost identical-looking container off the bottom shelf. "There's two more of them on the table as well."

"Huh, right you are." I say, taking the container from Sigma's outstretched hand and placing it with mine at the front of the table, next to the one already sitting there, then reaching around the bizarre-looking microscope on the right to grab the container there as well. "What's with all the seeds?"

I look back up at Sigma just in time to see him slowly lid his eyes at me, his lips suddenly quirking into a broad smile... only for it to drop just as quickly as he turns away again, shaking his head.

"Not the time..." I hear him mutter under his breath.

...he was about to make some horrible "seed" related innuendo, wasn't he. I've got to be more careful with what I say around this guy — good on Sigma for showing some self-restraint this time though.

"There's some other stuff here too." Sigma says, attempting to brush past the comment he just almost made as he pulls some more containers off the shelves. "We've got some sort of clear mystery liquid... a root that kind of looks like a severed hand..."

He turns to show me the container before placing it on the table, and I flinch back slightly — he's right, that does look like a hand, albeit a rather grotesquely stretched out one. Did they grow it that way on purpose? Surely not.

"And also... this."

Sigma pulls down the final non-empty container, inside of which is-

"Oh, eww." I say, unable to stop myself from grimacing upon seeing the dead frog floating in the jar.

"Hey, be nice." Sigma teasingly replies. "He's not that ugly. Besides, maybe if you kiss him, he'll turn into a prince."

I roll my eyes. "Yeah, maybe, but seeing as how that frog has been sitting in a chemical bath for who knows how long, I have my doubts that the resulting 'prince' would be in the best of shape."

Sigma nods. "You're probably right."

Having said as much, he smirks and pops the lid off the frog's container, filling the nearby air with a rather strong disinfectant scent.

"Sure you don't wanna give it a try anyways?"

I level the flattest glare I can manage in his direction.

"I'll pass, thanks."

Sigma chuckles and closes the container back up, then joins me as I move to examine the leftmost alcove. This one doesn't have any storage space beneath it like the one to its right does, but there's a tray sitting inside of it, emblazoned with another lion-eating-the-sun design, and on it rests-

"A scalpel?"

I shiver a little as Sigma picks up and examines the silvery tool. Another damn blade... this facility has a lot more potential weapons in it than I initially thought it did. And that's just the obvious ones.

"Still cold, huh?" Sigma asks, evidently having noticed me shudder.

"Yeah, but that's... not really the issue." I say, taking a few steps back. "Just, keep that thing pointed away from me, alright?"

'And far away from Quark.' I privately add, glancing back over at our third team member's prone form.

Not having any use for it just yet, Sigma sets the scalpel back down and moves to examine the wall of tanks, while I turn my attention to the table in the center of the room. Even ignoring the seed jars, there's a fair amount of stuff sitting on it, including a pair of odd-looking machines taking up a good chunk of the table's surface. One is trapezoidal and blocky, with a pair of small cylinders jutting from its top, while the other is a larger, hollow cylinder (someone up here apparently really likes cylinders) with some sort of thin, tube-shaped canister hooked up to its interior. There's also a bundle of black and yellow wires extruding from the latter's base, which are themselves connected to a black, flat-topped dome thing with what almost looks like miniature blast doors on its side.

I take a few seconds to investigate the mystery machines, but don't find much that wasn't obvious at a glance. The trapezoid has a pair of tiny screens on its side, but they're not on at the moment, and there's no apparent power switch to change that. It doesn't seem like we can do anything with either of them — which is weird, because usually these rooms don't contain completely pointless objects. Maybe something else in here will activate them?

Shrugging, I move on, picking up the two metal binders laying on the table instead. Spotting a similar binder set inside one of the alcoves on the right, as well as yet another jar of seeds, I grab the latter and place it with its brethren without comment, then lay the binders back down and open up all three of them at once.

"...oh hey, I think this room may actually come with instructions?"

Sigma turns away from the tanks, his normal eye widening a fraction. "Really? For what?"

"Well," I say, scanning over the revealed pages, "this one is for 'Hydroponics', which I think has to do with that big pipe network over there?"

I gesture at the installation occupying the rightmost alcove, where three interconnected pipes lead down from the ceiling, dividing into five before leading straight down through the counter below. Their open ends poke into the top of the five smaller cubbies beneath, each of which contains a mostly empty beaker back lit by a brightly colored number panel.

"This next one is for 'DNA Extraction', and I'm pretty sure is for that weird-looking blender over there." I continue, this time more certain of my answer as I gesture again, this time to the alcove on the left of the pipes. "And this last one is about... Frog Dissection."

I pull a face, looking from the frog container to the scalpel and back.

"Well, that seems like a pretty clear hint." I say. "If a rather disgusting one."

I mean come on, there's not even anywhere to wash our hands in here! Seriously Sigma-Zero, even if your hands are robotic, that's hardly an excuse for ignoring basic sanitation practices!

"I take it you'd prefer I handle this?" Sigma asks, already picking up the frog in question.

I nod. "Please. It'd be kind of hard for me anyways, what with my nails."

Since Sigma's hands are occupied, I start reading the next steps aloud for him. Sigma obligingly follows along, pouring the preservation liquid (ethanol, according to the instructions) down the nearby drain, then extracting the frog from its glassy prison and laying it out beneath the fume hood. Seeing the dead amphibian lying there, limbs splayed and belly up on the cold, hard metal, I can't help but feel a small pang of sympathy for it.

"Poor little guy..." I say, quietly bowing my head as Sigma slowly lowers the scalpel towards the frog's stomach. "I'm sorry we need to cut you open, Mr. Maybe-Prince. I promise, we wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I hope you can understand."

Sigma pauses for a moment to aim his one normal eye at me. "What happened to 'ew, gross'?"

"Just because I don't enjoy the sight of floating frog corpses doesn't mean I can't feel bad for him." I reply, breaking from my almost-mourning pose. "I mean, would you want your body to be preserved after death in a jar on a shelf, just for someone to come along and dissect you who-even-knows how long later? I doubt the little guy willingly donated his body to science either — he may just be a long-expired frog, but I wish we could at least treat his remains a little better."

Sigma shakes his head at me, seeming a little amused.

"I didn't realize you had such strong feelings for this frog." he says. "Are you sure you don't want to try and-"

"Oh, get on with it already!"

Thankfully not belaboring the joke, Sigma turns back to the table and lowers the scalpel, slitting the frog's stomach open with one quick cut and revealing something round and blue inside. Without any of the hesitation I would have displayed in his place, Sigma reaches in and pulls out the object, which turns out to be a small, half-blue and half-clear orb with an odd protrusion on its front, filled with some sort of weird-looking goo.

"Seems Mr. Maybe-Prince here had a kidney stone." Sigma comments.

I giggle. "Yeah, and is it me, or does it kind of look like it came out of one of those plastic toy vending machines?"

"Huh?"

"You know, the kind that you see at supermarkets with the cheap little prizes inside." I elaborate. "Those little plastic boxes that cost like a quarter or two each? Usually have gumball machines next to them?"

"Ah, those." Sigma says with an air of realization as he looks back at the capsule in his hand. "Huh, you're right, it kinda does. Don't think we'll be finding any prizes inside of this though, unless you're into weird frog goo."

He looks around the room. "Now, where do we put this?"

I glance over at the microscope again — or, more specifically, the four round indents on top of the squat, cylindrical attachment (more cylinders?!) hooked up to its front.

"One of those, maybe?" I suggest, pointing.

Evidently not having any better ideas, Sigma walks over to the instrument in question, bending down to look into the lens.

"Huh, can't see a thing." he notes as he straightens back up. "It's pitch black in there. You're right though Clover, looks like this should fit, so maybe if I do this..."

Sigma fits the extruding bit of the half-blue capsule into the top of the microscope, which it fastens into with a satisfying *click*, then bends down to look into the lens again.

"...then absolutely nothing will change." Sigma deadpans.

I snort. "Well yeah, we probably need to fill all four ho-"

I catch myself, knowing exactly how Sigma will reply to that particular wording, and quickly rephrase.

"-all four slots first before it'll start working. Doubt these would be here otherwise."

I hold up two empty versions of the same capsule Sigma just inserted, previously sitting on the same tray I placed all the seed jars on, and lightly squeeze one to pop it open.

"You're probably right." Sigma sighs as he moves back from the microscope. "Anyways, looks like that's all the loose items in here, so let's get blending."

On board with that plan, I start moving towards the appliance in question, but Sigma is closer and gets there first. Seeing as how he's already started looking over the DNA extraction instructions, I decide to let Sigma handle this one himself, sidling up to watch as he grabs the root and the jar of liquid and sets them next to the blender. A few seconds later, he also walks over to the fume hood and, to my surprise, takes the waste tank out from underneath the counter, which I didn't even realize (or remember) could be removed.

"Not that I'm doubting you, but why do we need that?" I ask, slightly puzzled.

"The instructions say we need ethanol for this process," Sigma replies, hefting the waste tank onto the counter, "and this what we've got to work with."

I frown. "Okay, but if we're trying to extract DNA from the root, isn't all the frog residue floating around in that stuff going to contaminate the sample?"

Sigma shrugs helplessly. "Maybe? I don't see any other ethanol in here though."

I point at the container of clear liquid. "What's in there then?"

"Saline solution, apparently." Sigma replies. "It says so underneath the lid, and we need that too."

Still concerned, I take another quick look around, but Sigma's right. This room is fairly small, and we've already picked up pretty much everything we possibly could, save for the empty jars on the back shelf.

"I... suppose you've got a point." I say uncertainly as Sigma tosses the root into the funnel-like attachment beneath the blender. "Let's just hope this works then."

Sigma closes the lid and starts up the blender, which whirs to life surprisingly quietly for how powerful it seems to be. In just a few seconds, the root has been thoroughly pulped, at which point Sigma opens the lid back up and carefully pours some saline solution into the funnel, the liquid inexplicably turning a vibrant neon green upon contact with the root pulp and slowly starting to drip into the beaker below.

"You know, this is kind of making me feel like I'm back in biology class." I idly comment as the liquid gradually trickles down. "Any moment now, the teacher is going to walk in and yell at me for not wearing safety goggles, or pulling my hair back."

"Or having a lab coat." Sigma adds. "Seriously, where's the lab coats? They're the coolest part of the job. What kind of sub-standard scientist forgets to stock their lab with those?"

I snicker. "I guess whoever designed this place must not have been very bright, huh Sigma?"

Sigma nods in honest agreement, and it's all I can do not to bust out laughing.

Once all of the now absurdly colorful liquid has collected in the beaker, Sigma opens up the waste tank and pours some of the unfortunately froggy ethanol in, causing the mixture to take on an almost jello-like consistency. Finally, he removes the beaker and scoops some of the contents into an empty capsule, causing the transparent top of the plastic orb to take on the same neon green color as the mixture.

"And that's how it's done!" Sigma says, sounding inordinately pleased with himself as he slots the new capsule into the microscope and peers into the lens again. "Still nothing to see in here though, and, uh..."

We both turn to stare at the remaining root-saline-ethanol jello sitting in the beaker, which we have no way of easily getting rid of since we're currently using the waste tank. After a second or two, I just grab an empty container off the shelves and dump the excess material into it, though the beaker is still left slick with slime — once again, I really hope this puzzle doesn't care that much about cross-contamination.

"Alright, now what?" I say.

"I'm guessing we just do this again?" Sigma hazards. "We've still got an empty capsule, and a bunch of seeds to use for material."

"Right, but which kind?" I reply, gesturing at our collection of jars. "There's five different varieties of seed here, and we've got a limited supply of ethanol."

Sigma scratches at his shoulder. "That's true... maybe we need another clue. Let's come back to it later."

Well, I hope later is soon, because I don't see much else in here we can fiddle with other than the pipe network. Aside from the weird table machines that is, which might just be totally useless — are they seriously just here to make the room look appropriately science-y? I swear at least one of the things was somehow important though...

Frustrated by my inability to remember, I put the subject out of mind for the moment and move with Sigma to the rightmost alcove, picking the hydroponics folder back up in the process.

"Man, look at all these pipes..." Sigma muses. "This looks complicated."

"It looks complicated, but I don't think it actually is." I note as I skim over the (extremely brief) instructions. "We just need to get a ratio of one part fluid to ten parts water for each beaker... huh."

I guess I have to rescind my earlier statement. Assuming this works as stated, there is running water in here — it's just incredibly inconvenient to use or access. Like, there's not even a drain in the floor in case any of it spills, or there isn't a beaker under all five pipes, so it literally can't be used for anything other than this puzzle. Inconvenience, thy name is Zero.

"Does that mean those numbers are units of liquid then?" Sigma asks, glancing up at the glowing red '40', '80' and '40' over each respective pipe, and then at the '3', '3', '2', '5', and '3' behind each of the beakers. "In that case, I think we just need to use these handles to change which way the pipes send down water, so that each beaker gets the proper amount."

I raise an eyebrow, a little surprised at how fast he figured that out. "I think so, yeah."

Although... we don't have any surplus of the fluid that's already in the beakers, do we? And the instructions say they're all different kinds...

"Do not pull the lever without double-checking your answer though." I add. "I don't think there's any way to reset this puzzle, so we may only get one shot at it."

I'm not entirely certain about that — to my admittedly-limited recollection, there aren't any puzzles in VLR where the player can permanently lock themselves out of the solution — but I just don't see any way we could possibly "redo" this one if we get it wrong.

"Shouldn't be a problem." Sigma says confidently as he starts flipping handles. "I am proving to be a rather awesome scientist, if I do say so myself."

I roll my eyes. "Somehow I think it'll take a little more than what we've been doing for anyone to consider you a 'scientist'."

Sigma stops for a moment to cross his arms at me, as though pouting. "Oh come on, can't you just let me have this? Where's the accolades? The awards? The recognition of my scholarly excellence?"

Unbidden, my lips curl upwards into a smirk. "Oh, my mistake. Just a second."

Clearing my throat, I plaster on my brightest, widest smile, then turn to look Sigma directly in the eye.

"Ahem... congratulations Doctor Sigma!" I exclaim, clapping wildly. "I always knew you could do it! Those guys with PHDs in Biochemistry haven't got a thing on you, who can cut open frogs and solve moderately difficult escape room puzzles!"

Sigma does a few exaggerated bows in my direction. "Thank you, thank you! I couldn't have done it without the help of my lovely assistant, who carried out the truly crucial tasks of staring over my shoulder the entire time while making snarky comments!"

Laughing, I open my mouth to fire back- then abruptly snap it shut.

What am I doing? What are we doing?!

"Clover?" Sigma says, the grin slipping off his face a little. "Something wrong?"

"Yes something's wrong!" I exclaim, visibly startling him. "We're supposed to be hurrying, remember? And instead we're just standing here doing some sort of impromptu two-person comedy routine! We need to focus!"

Sigma's gaze briefly flickers over to where Quark still lies, and his tone quickly sobers. "Right."

He turns back to the pipes with renewed concentration, while I turn away and try to force my brain back on task.

I didn't even notice the two of us had fallen into such an easy conversational rhythm. Sigma is a lot more fun to talk with than I'd honestly expected him to be... not to say that's a bad thing, but we somehow managed to get so caught up in our own banter that we practically forgot about Quark, which is especially egregious in my case, given that I know what's likely going to happen when he wakes back up again. As Sigma himself pointed out when we started this room, this is not the time to be cracking jokes.

Determined to not accidentally extend our stay here any longer, I move away from Sigma to ensure I don't distract him again. I also take a moment to remind myself that Quark isn't the only reason I should be doing my best to focus right now — the whole point of these escape rooms is to raise our "epiphany points" after all, meaning it's likely in my best interest to solve as many of these puzzles as I can. I don't know how much any of it will help in my case, if at all, and I still don't regret passing off dissection duty, but the fact remains that I shouldn't just be sitting back and letting Sigma do this stuff for me.

I frown. Sigma is already working on the pipes though, and it would likely just be counterproductive to have both of us trying to figure them out at once. In which case, what's left for me to do? The seed blending? We still don't know which kind to put in, and I doubt that we have enough ethanol left to try them all at random...

Anxiously tapping my foot, I pick up the trio of folders again, scanning over them to check if we missed something. Which, as it turns out, I did — peeking out from under the hydroponics instructions is a second sheet of paper, which I somehow passed over the first time I looked. Pulling it free, I find that it explains that there's a connection between the beaker fluids and the seeds... presented in the form of five distinct syllogisms.

Perfect.

Moving in front of the quintet of seed jars, I set myself upon the logic puzzle. It doesn't strike me as a particularly difficult problem, but between the renewed franticness of my thoughts and the fact that I can't write anything down, it takes me a lot longer than I feel it should — so much so that by the time I've got it figured out, Sigma looks ready to pull the lever on the pipes.

"Hey Clover, come check my math?"

I walk over and do so, finding that his configuration looks correct — apparently the answer is literally just to make all the handles face straight down, dividing every juncture in half.

"Looks good to me." I say.

"Let's do this then."

Sigma throws the switch, and trickles of water flow down from above into each of the five beakers. The little red lights above them each turn green in succession, then stay that way, presumably confirming that we got it right.

"Great, let's get these seeds in them." I say, already moving to do so.

"Wait, what?"

"There was a logic puzzle in the hydroponics directions explaining what to do next." I quickly explain as I pop seeds into their corresponding beakers. "I solved it while you were busy."

"Okay, but weren't you the one who said we should check-"

I toss a seed into the final beaker, and something in the wall immediately makes a thumping noise, at which point a tiny half-red capsule comes tumbling down the chute beneath the switch.

"...nevermind then."

"Sorry, just trying to speed us along." I say a little sheepishly.

Sigma shakes his head.

"Alright," he says, picking up and placing the third capsule in the microscope, "just one more to-"

The screen next to the microscope lights up in white. Sigma tilts his head at it, clearly not having expected that, while I immediately lower my head to the eyepiece.

"It's working." I announce.

...for a given definition of "working" at least, since this definitely isn't showing what the microscope's eyepiece is actually pointed at. Instead, I seem to be looking at a small, rectangular screen displaying six rows of colorful tabs, framed against a background of neon DNA strands. Each of the rows is paired with another, and each of the tabs is labeled with either a "G", "C", "A", or "T".

"It is?" Sigma asks. "We haven't even gotten the fourth capsule in yet."

I don't respond, already working to figure this out. There aren't any instructions to be seen, but given what I'm looking at, along with the very on-the-nose background image, it's not hard to figure out that this puzzle is based around DNA base sequences. As such, I probably just need to shift the rows around — which seem to be controlled by the dials on the side of the microscope — until every G connects to a C, and every T connects to an A. Annoyingly however, when any one row moves, so too does another. All except for the fifth one that is, in which case I probably need to make sure I match that one up last-

"Clover?" Sigma suddenly says from behind me. "Need some help?"

"Ah- no, I'm fine." I haltingly reply, still twisting dials. "Don't worry, I've got this."

"You sure?" Sigma continues.

"Very sure."

"Alright, just let me know if you want-"

"Sigma, could you please just stop talking and let me focus!" I snap.

The words come out somewhat harsher than I intended, but the distraction Sigma is providing really isn't helping me- wait, there!

I make one final move, and all 36 of the tabs lock together — whereupon a surprisingly loud rendition of the "COMPLETED" jingle issues from somewhere on the machine, almost directly in my ears.

Yelping in surprise, I stumble a couple steps back from the eyepiece, thankfully managing not to trip over my own feet in the process. Steadying myself and grumbling internally at the aural jump scare, I look to the screen on the microscope's right, and am pleased to find that it's now lit up in bright green.

Sigma is already looking at the passcode, seeming a little stunned — as well as oddly disappointed? — but quickly wipes the expression from his face when he notices me staring.

"Nice job, Clover!" he says in way of congratulations. "That's only the normal password though. Should we try to get the other one too? If there's another one of those files inside, it could be important."

I shake my head. "We can't risk taking the time for that. We need to get Quark to the infirmary."

Sigma seems to hesitate for a moment, but ultimately concedes as I start punching the passcode into the safe. It swings open just as obligingly as the others, and inside I find the expected contents, including a map of Floor B, a pair of moon cards, and the exit key for the room. That isn't all though, as there's also a small brown book of some kind, propped up against the safe's back wall, as well as a thick glass bottle filled with bright purple liquid, the label on the front of which reads-

My breath hitches.

Axelavir.