Following my brief and unchaste rest at the brothel, and having transfered some money to upgrade the Blood Pit (which I have yet to visit…), I find that Miranda has joined Director Mitty in the Mandate’s underground facility:
Adown we go, diving for the Abyss! (can we title ourselves bathybic adventurers, or would that require actual water be involved?)
The first man to whom we talk is a Mandate scientist, obviously brother to the keen-eyed woman who earlier told us, “Look, tents.”
Gravestones, in an abandonned expedition lead how long ago we do not know, expedition whose very existence has been willfully erased from memory, and all this in a place utterly alien to the human condition… Yes, Scientist Man, I think ‘ominous’ is indeed accurate. That really made me laugh. 
But what epitaph is engraved in the stone?
Is that a general ‘yourself’, or is that aimed at me in particular? I can’t tell.
Making our way eastward, we meet this eyesome creature and her husband:
Here she is in full:
Yet more abandoned Mandate encampments have been rediscovered here and there, she explains. And further still eastward is what the scientists have taken to call the Valley Of Pillars; but there, some eerie, disturbing entity calling itself the Guardian proves an impassable balk to the Mandate’s forward teams.
Thus for the moment other ways must be explored. Fortune has it that, strewn about the Abyss, are what glaucope beauty Nona calls DBTP: Dematarialisation Beam Transfer Points.
A.k.a. ‘teleporters’, a technology developed by the Mandate and thus far kept unshared with the unworthy public. Surely, we conjecture, using such a teleporter would allow us to warp further into these abyssal environs, bypassing the Guardian entirely. Alas, the network is deactivated, and a certain key is required to reactivate it.
So… where is the key, oh my Nona?
Classic. A short cave trek later, uneventful save for an encounter with weak crashers, and after rummaging awhile through an abandonned Mandate camp, we find a metallic disc conveniently stamped ‘DBTP Network Key’, which we promptly bring back to bella Nona.
Precautions are taken. Forward teams venture through the reactived teleporter; and they do not warn of any danger on the other side. Consequently, I and the girls are given the green light to use it in turn.
Don’t you just love it, when a game warns you—in a vaguely disguised meta way—you are about to walk into a trap?
And indeed I learn my keen gamer presentiment whispered of verity.
We cannot move, cannot speak, suspensed mid-step it seems by means technological in nature. These men are prompt to understand we are Director Mitty’s special guests as Nona’s husband put it. The name ‘Dells’ is mentionned; and so too are mentionned the foreboding terms ‘questioning’ and ‘processing’.
He introduces an ‘anomaly’ into our cell. A black flash of oblivion later, it seems we girls have unvoluntarily spilled the proverbial beans. Then:
What’s that I have about this situation? Oh yes, of course… misgivings aplenty.
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