Quoted By:
Every second feels stolen. Your legs protest as you push off, clutching what you can carry as you stagger towards the nearest escape pod. The klaxons blare in shrill counterpoint to the guttural rumbling of the foundation as its structure groans and screeches. Only now can you hear the terrible sound of rushing water, and the rumble of several dozen atmospheres slowly crushing the facility.
The hatch seals with a hiss as you throw yourself and your precious cargo inside, slamming your hand against the launch console. For a terrible instant, nothing happens, only the groan of tortured metal outside that slowly grows louder and closer. Then the pod jolts, rockets igniting with a violent kick that drives you back into the crash couch.
Sheer gravity crushes you into the seat as the pod accelerates down and up its magnetic launch rail. A low, bass rumble vibrates through the pod walls, building into a deafening crescendo...then, release. The pod tears free of the chute in a blast of bubbles and fire, torpedoing up out of the abyss and out of the doomed facility.
Through the narrow viewport, you catch sight of the facility vanishing behind you. A yawning rupture across the ocean floor splits the facility wide, steel and ferrocrete folding inward like paper. Water surges in through shattered walls and fault points, crushing chambers into nothingness into seconds. Entire wings crumble under the pressure, collapsing with a haunting silence as the ocean reclaims what was always hers.
The alarms, the android’s screams, the facility where <span class="mu-i">_you_ </span> were born.
They’re all gone now, drowned to never again see the light of day. Only the fading glow of emergency lights marks where the complex was, a scattering of lattice-red swallowed whole by the abyss. And even those begin winking out, their power sources shorting and blossoming ever-so-briefly into plumes of orange light as water surges into generators and shorts them with violent explosions.
You are alive.
But you are utterly alone.
>>Line Break.
In a bid to keep yourself busy, you inspect your ill-gotten loot as the escape pod begins to slowly climb up and out of the depths of the ocean.
In spite of the gore covering the holster, the pistol appears to be in serviceable condition. A brief flick of the power switch on the vibrosword's hilt sends a keening hum reverberating along and off the walls of the pod. Attempting to interface with the pod itself reveals little beyond rote diagnostics, not even any hidden files planted after-market.
Then you turn to the the pod's emergency locker, and the late security guard's grab bag...
>Roll 1d100 Loot Check.
>Best of five.
