vivarium | DOUBLE BLIND

Shortly after the conversation with Zero ends, Zero opens the doors of the Garden and allows everyone to leave. However, the rest of the warehouse isn't better than the Garden:

The lights are still off, leaving everyone surrounded in darkness. The temperature just keeps on dropping, reaching near freezing point. The air feels more and more polluted, making it difficult to breathe without coughing, and nothing seems to be working as they should be. The electronic doors refuse to open without any power source, cutting off access to the cafeteria and dorms. At the very least, Zero has managed to open all the doors leading to puzzle rooms and has informed the group that new areas are now accessible to them, but they're on their own should they want to enter any other rooms.

Before the screens in the Garden turn off, Zero finally informs them that a new feature has been unlocked on their bracelets: any test subject wearing a bracelet may communicate with one another with the bracelet acting as a communication device. Holding onto the left button will enable the line to open just like a walkie-talkie. As long as test subjects are in the warehouse, they will have no troubles speaking with one another. What if they wish to talk to Zero? Zero's time is not be riffled, but they were generous enough to appear whenever anyone found a screen and pressed the on button a total of three quick successions.

And with that, Zero disappears from the grids and finally leaves everyone in complete darkness, leaving only one last piece:

"Best of luck, Test Subjects."

BASIC INFO ✖ MISSIONS ✖ MINGLE

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, yay, would you look at that.

"How did they even get so scattered?" First the head past the vent and in the boiler room, and now this...

"Zero said they were ripped apart," said Heiji. "By the other robots. Kind of weirdly specific for a virus, ain't it?"

He was just going to shove the Calhoun piece in his bag, whatever. "At least now we can use this washroom. I got a feeling the other rooms aren't gonna stay open once the power's on."

...Huh. "They went after Calhoun, specifically?" That's... definitely pretty weird, yeah. He wonders if that doesn't mean this virus was specifically designed against Zero himself, if that's the case...

"No, probably not. He asked for our help, but I think he means it when he says it doesn't matter to him whether we work with him or not. He isn't about to reward us for it, at least." Especially not with anything as big as free access to those other rooms.

Heiji let out a short laugh and crossed his arms. "Oh, but he does care. Maybe not about Calhoun's pieces, exactly, but he did finally show his face. Now he's even deigning to argue with us lowly test subjects. And he's committed to this experiment, too, no doubt about that."

"Whatever this experiment is about." That's one of the big mysteries...

What is even the point to all of this?

"He mentioned other test subjects, too... What do you think he meant by that?" He seemed to be pretty confident the others would be willing to fight them, but over what?

Heiji thought this over. "Well, whatever it is, it's clearly important to him. And it's apparently pretty likely that his experiment is going to fail -- though he wasn't real clear on what that actually meant for us."

"Since he was threatening us with them, there must be another group here like us. At least one. But what's this thing that we have that they don't? That's what I don't understand..."

"We have the necessities I guess, but... as long as you have enough points, you should have access to them." R...ight? Zero wouldn't really make a game where they had to fight to even get that much, would he...?

Heiji sighed. "One thing me and Hershel were kicking around was if they ain't cooperate with each other as much as we do. If so, they might be a lot lower on points. There was a long time where Clive couldn't get into the cafeteria."

Imagine a warehouse full of Zeloses...

...What a terrifying thought.

"So even if they aren't actively working for Zero, they still work as a threat." That... would be just lovely to deal with, yeah.

"Do you think it's really just one other group?" He's not entirely sure how to start with gauging the logistics of any more. All he knows is, the place is huge as it is, and apparently Zero has an incredible amount of resources to support at least two groups participating in his insane 'experiment.'

"It could be more." Heiji had to admit that at this point, even if he'd resisted it as long as he could. "Apparently, Zero's trying to examine 'all possibilities'. Dunno what that means, exactly, but can ya really run a comprehensive 'experiment' with only two test groups? In Zero's book, anyway..."

"I'd really rather not get into conflicts with any other test subjects. We all wanna get out of here; there's no reason we should be fighting with each other instead of addressin' the real problem."

DOUBLE BLIND

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