In the air, there was an astringent smell from industrial cleaners used to sterilise the lab, barely pushed around as industrial fans circulated it throughout the lab.

Everything looked pristine so that Wilhelm thought someone arrived here not too long ago, but as he dug around, he was shocked as he found documents from the '40s still in their folders.

An untouched lab.

Quite frightening for someone like him.

"Are all the labs like this?" Anya inquisitively asks as she went with Taylor to a corner of the lab that had a calendar set for January 1941.

While moving around, Wilhelm tells her that he wouldn't know, he wasn't daft enough to go into any lab he stumbled upon, out of fear for what lies inside.

"It looks like the lab hadn't been used since they installed it," Paul notes as he went around it, finding nothing suggesting anything had been touched since it was installed, going far as checking the folders left behind.

Edgar gave his thoughts, saying that the Soviets were quick to make the labs as quickly as they did the bomb shelters, putting everything needed to function within them.

Can't be sure how many labs there were, since the Soviets lied about the numbers, and the officials were careful not letting anyone not in the know catch wind.

Given how many abominations crawled out of the woodwork, there must be dozens, including the ones used by the scientists.

"God, why did it have to be a lab?" Wilhelm winced at the thought of them going through the lab, the stories he heard from the few who survived going through them weighed on his mind.

Going over towards the end of the lab, Paul sees a door haphazardly blocked with chairs and some of the steel tables.

He alerted the others and Wilhelm mustered that whatever was chasing the soldier might still be somewhere around, warning that the abominations were harder to kill than the animals.

Showing Wilhelm his shotgun, Paul assures him that he can handle himself, causing Wilhelm to mutter something under his breathe.

Reluctantly, he helped unblock the door, it took nerves of steel to open the door revealing another long corridor with a door at the end.

Having no map, no references other than it was another lab left abandoned by the ages, the group forced themselves down the corridor, only their traveling feet the ambiance as they went towards the door.

Upon reaching it, Paul opened it with one hand, upon doing so he found an underground facility with pipes snaking around corners on the wall, popping noises coming from periodically.

The heavy smell's gone, instead replaced with only a smell familiar in graveyards.

Without the Zone helping, Edgar relied on what she told him, and he pointed in the direction that the Zone thinks would take them on the path finding the scientists.

It was hard not to jump at every noise in the underground facility, a sense of dread, like there's something around the corner, even when they turn the corner and find nothing there.

The deeper they got into the underground facility, the more it became a labyrinth of labs that looked untouched, and only added to the unease as the group went through the winding corridors, cautiously checking every room they can enter for any signs of something that lurked in the lab.

"Maybe whatever they were working on got out?" Taylor suggests the possibility whatever killed the soldier escaped the confines of the lab from somewhere else within, and hopefully meant they wouldn't encounter it.

Admittedly she sounded hopeful that it was true, but Wilhelm dashed that, saying that there's many ways it could've gone, but topside isn't one of them, as he mentioned that sometimes whatever the Soviets made didn't always leave.

Whatever those were, Wilhelm can only shudder.

Paul remained optimistic, despite Wilhelm warning him how dangerous the labs can be, especially the intricate ones like this, and with them in an enclosed area, fighting isn't going to be easy, and much more dangerous.

"Believe me, Mr. Wilhelm, I've faced worse odds, so has Taylor," Paul explained.

Scoffing, Wilhelm stated, "Not odds, mate, you either survive here, or you end up in the belly of the beast, literary!"

There was no concept of luck or odds, as hostile the Zone is to all and any who dared traverse the land, either they handle what the Zone dishes out, or they become a dish.

He didn't appreciate how Paul can act calmly in an area where reality is its own person and can change on a whim, but Taylor smoothed things over between them, reminding them they have scientists to find.

"If there's anything I know, whatever's down here aren't fond of them either, so we have that," Taylor pointed out that with the mutants produced in the labs, there's always a chance they have a sliver of memory regarding who tortured them.

It's not much for them, but they don't have to worry about the mutants attacking them on the scientists' whim.

The journey through the lab continued onward, the group sees what the scientists were doing, as they found abandoned operating tables, broken glass, surgical equipment scattered around the ground, and skeletal remains of either victims or their tormentors.

Seeing the remains, Anya spotted ones with malformed heads, one skeleton had two jaws, another had none!

"I'd say… at least a few years," Taylor gave her estimate how long the remains been here, virtually untouched.

Stepping around the area, Edgar felt the glass under his feet as he walked, he heard a murmur in his mind, and it caused him to turn his head towards a door.

Pointing towards it, Edgar alerts the others towards it, with Paul walking towards it, his shotgun raised as he prepared for anything that might be behind the door.

Taking a deep breath, Paul kicked it open, his angel eyes trained on the opened doorway, and he saw nothing there except darkness and an air current.

Stepping through the threshold, Paul sees he's standing on a catwalk in a silo, glancing above he sees an opening at the top.

Glancing over the railings, Paul sees the catwalk descending into the darkness below.

No choice but to descend into the darkness below, the group took caution coming down the staircases, though it didn't help the periodically metal groaning made them fear the catwalk was falling apart.

With the sliver of opening from the top of the silo, Edgar heard the Zone once again, telling him everything that's happened since they went down into the lab.

There's another storm brewing and it's significantly stronger than usual storms, she's desperate at stopping the invaders.

The way she was talking to Edgar, it sounded like she was unsure, and when he reached out to ask what was wrong, the Zone told him something he couldn't understand.

She couldn't tell him more; the soldiers are starting to make headway against the war.

Like a concerned father, Edgar encouraged her to save her strength, that they will handle it.

However, he heard something in the void, a man's whisper, directed to the Zone.