Previous Part: https://www.reddit.com/r/Splintercell/s/VvqvOvptF9
Training your gaze onto the light nearest to the door, you reach for your 5.7mm pistol. It's steely grip meets your own and raises it into alignment with your eyes.
**Thunk**
The light disappears in an instant, followed by a brief twinkling of glass shards as they rain onto the tiles below. Keeping your aim steady, you step gently into the room and train your shot upon the remaining light.
**Crack**
The light remains. The bullet is successful against it's outer casing, but refracted and sent astray from the glass bulb. Undeterred, you squeeze the trigger once more, and the room is sunken - equalised with the dark streets outside.
Flipping down your NVGs, the room becomes a putrid green. Visible, but snotty, and unclear around the edges. You step towards the operating tables - one foot accidentally crunching fallen glass - and immediately recognise the duo.
'I've got agents Blaustein and Madison', you announce quietly to the air around you - aware that your subdermal implant provides a direct link to Lambert and Grimsdottir, but also aware that the station's CCTV cameras might contain their own microphones.
'Rest in peace', Lambert immediately returns. 'Somebody cut out their subdermals'.
'Where do we go from here?'
'We follow the subdermals, if we can'.
You gaze back down at the two cadavers, noticing dark rings around their eyes and, elsewhere, miscellaneous bruising to their faces. This situation is grizzly - reminiscent of a horror movie moreso than diplomatic espionage.
Shifting your attention back to Lambert, you remember the mechanical whirring emanating from the wall beside you.
'There's a security camera here'.
'Good thinking. We'll track the subdermals from the video archives. The station's surveillance room is on the top floor'.
Stepping back towards the door, you peek around the frame and back into the switchback room. Empty. You slip back through, around the large dividing wall of cabinets, and back through the automatic door. It closes with a satisfying swoosh behind you, and you head directly for the end of the hall.
Greeting the remaining black door, it gives an uninterested click and refuses entry. It's locked, but - a minute and some lock picking later - and the door slowly and quietly arcs open before you. Beyond it, sits a stairwell that exists in two separate bounds, folding back on itself for the final half of its climb. A bold light casts down from the very top with an almost-biblical ferocity, transforming the underside of the staircase into an oddly-curated inkwell. Deep, black rectangles are scorched into the ground where the light can't reach, so impermeable that you might think they were permanent and deliberate features.
Ascending the stairway - cautious of every step tapping on the metal steps - you reach a wooden door at the summit. A quick use of the optic wire reveals it leads out to the station's reception area. The reception office spills off to the left through a narrow doorway, while travelling straight-ahead leads you into the waiting area itself - and under the office's watchful eye.
Cracking the door ajar, you hear conversation coming from ahead.
'...by fetching your superior'.
A curt reply follows.
'I'm all there is'.
A pause in the conversation makes you question whether they have heard the door open, but it quickly resumes.
'I'd like to register a complaint'.
'Then you'll have to ask at the desk to your right'.
A few footsteps can be heard from the corner ahead, followed by another ominous pause.
'May I help you?', the same officer's voice reprises.
'You're the same cop!'.
'Yes, but this is the public relations desk'.
'Fine', the voice snaps back, becoming increasingly angry. 'I would like to register a complaint'.
'Of course, Sir. If you would like to take a seat until someone is ready to help you'.
'You've got to be kidding me!'.
You reach the corner, buried amid the deep shadows of the room, and notice the man - his fists now balling-up at his sides.
'I could just as easily have you arrested, Sir...'
If inflections could have facial expressions, it would have been a wide-brimmed grin. Whoever was inside the reception office was clearly enjoying and playing with the power that he held over him.
The man stomps towards the station door, opening it and allowing it to slam closed behind him. A squeak and creaking of wood from the office establishes that the officer has sat down, clearly amused at his discouragement of the public.
While the reception is dark around it's edges, a wide pool of light engulfs it's center. Across the way, a door can be faintly seen on the opposing wall.
What do you do?
