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  1.  
  2. Deus Ex Done with no Items, Skills, or Augmentations.
  3.  
  4. Contents…
  5. Introduction 2
  6. Untitled 3
  7. Level 2 6
  8. The Mole Hideout and La Guadia 9
  9. Hells Kitchen 2: NSF Headquarters 12
  10. The Escape from MJ12 and UNATCO 13
  11. The Escape from the MJ12 Hong Kong Facility 15
  12. Hong Kong part 1: The Dragon's Tooth Sword 17
  13. Hong Kong part 2: Versa Life part 1 19
  14. Hong Kong part 3: Versa Life part 2 21
  15. Dowd in Hell’s Kitchen 23
  16. The Shipyards 24
  17. The PRCS Wallcloud 26
  18. Dowd's Mausoleum 30
  19. Paris - Beginnings 31
  20. Catacomb 3D 33
  21. Champs Elysées 36
  22. The Duclare Estate 37
  23. The Cathedral of the Knights Templar 38
  24. Everett's House 42
  25. Vandenburg Airforce Base 43
  26. The Vandenburg Gas Station 50
  27. The Pasadena Ocean Lab 52
  28. The Missile Silo (Or Howard Strong’s Bad Day) 60
  29. Surface Tension 66
  30. Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole 69
  31. The Fox 73
  32. The Rabbit v1 75
  33. The Rabbit v2 79
  34. The Rabbit v3 83
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  49.  
  50. Introduction
  51.  
  52. It’s amazing to think that while I’ve been doing this project I’ve finished both school and finished a university degree. It started as an innocent schoolyard conversation about the most difficult, and by extension the most stupid, way to play through Deus Ex. Eventually we thought of doing it with nothing at all, and dismissed it as a silly fancy.
  53.  
  54. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, which led to a thread at Planet Deus Ex inviting people to help puzzle a way through the game. After a few months, having decided that most if not all of the game would in fact be possible, I decided to write these blow by blow accounts telling exactly how it could be done; that is this collection. Since they were finished I’ve gone on to record videos of the entire game in this fashion.
  55.  
  56. The rules are really quite simple. Complete the game without using anything that goes in the inventory, upgrading any skills, or installing or using any augmentations (excluding the IFF and Infolink obviously). Medbots are fair game (and the game really would be impossible without them) and anything that you can pick up in your arms can be used. In this playthrough I allowed myself to use money, but this was excised in the videos..
  57.  
  58. It was a lot of fun writing these. As you read you might notice the change in style. As I got more used to writing them they gradually become more imaginative and expansive. In particular, as it was pointed out to me, I begin to role-play as JC more and more. As I became more comfortable you can also note the way they get longer and longer. It should be noted that this is not a walkthrough as such. Rather it is a description of what I did and what happened to me as I played this particular playthrough.
  59.  
  60. Lastly, I apologise for the lack of grammar and basic spelling in these accounts. I did try to proof read a little bit, but generally I didn’t have time for more than a spell check and a once over. I have dreams of sitting down and perfecting the entire thing one day, but 52 000 words is a lot so it won’t be happening soon. So instead I present you with exactly what I posted in my thread. As a friend of mine once said, it makes it more “raw”.
  61.  
  62. So thank you for being interested enough to at least read the whole introduction. I hope you like the accounts. And thank you to everyone who helped at any point along the way.
  63.  
  64. Alginon
  65.  
  66. The first level is amazingly easy compared to the rest of the game. At least some of this is because you skip so much of it. As usual I began on the docks of Liberty Island in front of a police boat. First things first I deposited my pistol, riot prod and medkit on the ground before I went anywhere. Then I ran straight to Paul, bypassing those petty unnecessary details such as crowbars, forties and crates. It is refreshing and gives a certain sense of freedom not even to bother looking at about half the game. I talked to Paul and then went up on to Liberty Island Proper. Instead of making my way slowly around the whole island I sneaked past all of the NSF, past UNATCO HQ to the front door of the Statue. Stopping along the way to pick up the login and password “NSF001” and “smashthestate”.
  67.  
  68. I waited for the security bot to finish it’s patrol of that area and logged into the security console. I turned both cameras to enemy, but left both cameras on so as to allow me to set off the alarm at anytime safely. Then I crossed the room, past the sculpture, staying out of sight, and mounted the stairs to stand under the turret up there. After a while the camera locked onto me and the alarm was set off, making the turret shoot anyone it saw. Soon the fist casualty, the NSF trooper patrolling the floor walked past the foot of the steps. The turret spun around and began shooting. He tried to run, but in vain, and when he was dead I had the whole bottom floor to myself. How cold that sounds. In any case I went downstairs and opened the vent in the wall to the right to make an escape hole. I then picked up the TNT lying on the ground and threw it at the trip wires. Then made a mad dash for the my hidyhole. I hid in there with the door closed while all the terrorists ran around outside looking for the “pig” and generally making themselves conspicuous. To pass the time I got the bank account number of the two Statue workers. When the NSF were gone I went to the bank machine and stole some money. Then I went into the corridors leading the Gunther’s cell. The cell was beyond the room with an NSF guard sitting in a chair and a camera and turret combo on the ceiling. I tried throwing a rubbish bin to distract the guard, but just ended up hiding again, getting shot in the leg in the process. When everything had quietened down again I tried the mad dash technique again. I rushed for the console, and since the guard hesitated I managed to open it before he could shoot me. The alarm had gone off by now so the room was filled with NSF. Since I wasn’t hacking I had all the time in the world so I turned the turret to enemy and watched all the NSF either killed or wounded through the camera. When they were all gone I opened the door and freed Gunther.
  69.  
  70. After Gunther had run out the front door, brandishing his knife I proceeded up the stairs to the command centre at the top. On the third level with the gas grenades set up there are two men. An NSF trooper and a hired thug. I couldn’t get past without them seeing me so I took the TNT crate from the passage way leading out to the first level and sneaked up the ramp outside with it. I made my way around until I could hear them talking, before throwing my crate around the corner. I hid from the patrol looking for whatever had made the noise, and then sneaked past the NSF again to get another TNT crate from the first level. I continued up until I came to the last two guards before the commander. I chucked the TNT crate up the stairs and hid around the corner, listening to the explosion before heading up and accepting the commander’s surrender. Then I headed back to UNATCO HQ.
  71.  
  72. Surly it isn’t necessary to describe my adventures in UNATCO HQ so I’ll just comment on two important things. When I talked to Paul he said “you’re doing well so far”. I had killed at least 7 people with TNT and turrets so that seems strange. And when I got to Carter I had to get rid of my stealth pistol. Then I made my way to the docks to the waiting police boat.
  73.  
  74. Level 2
  75.  
  76. Level 2 was significantly harder. I began on the docks of Battery Park and spoke with Anna Navarre there. Then I followed, slowly, behind her until she managed to get all the way from the docks to Castle Clinton to take up her post guarding the entrance. For an elite Augmented Agent she sure runs slowly. When everyone was in position I ran into the entrance of the castle and around in circles for a while waiting for someone to see me. When they did I ran back out and let the fun begin. Navarre and the two UNATCO troopers cleaned out the whole courtyard for me, very obliging. When all of the NSF (and one trooper) were dead I ran over to the shanty town, setting off the firefight as I did so, and around the back to the manhole leading the air vents around the station platform. I crept around, very difficult without light augmentation, to the farthest TNT crate, the one beside the hostages, and helped myself to it. Then I took it all the way back to the castle kiosk. I chucked it at the concrete box in the middle room and ducked behind the flimsy looking wall so as not to be hurt. It was too bad about the little boy, but so it sounds nicer I’ll call him collateral damage. Inside the box was the code I needed to open the trap door to the underground, 666.I went down the steps and around the corners until I reached the top of the stairway leading down to the area with the big boxes and an NSF trooper patrolling. I waited for the troopers patrol to take him down the corridor away from me and ran down the steps and to the right to hide from the camera. And in doing so “found” the first barrel of Ambrosia. Two birds with one stone. The first objective complete I ran back outside up the stairs to find Navarre. As I was rude to her she only gave me 1 EMP grenade, which I promptly threw away, and told me not to make any deals with the terrorists. Typical Navarre.
  77.  
  78. I then proceeded back to the subway station the way I had gone earlier. I took another TNT crate, the one nearest the phone booth to be precise, and laboriously hauled it up the ladder and all the way to the vent in the roof of the station platform. I opened the vent and dropped the TNT through. That not only successfully killed all the NSF on the platform, but since I had taken away the crate beside the hostages the explosions did not kill them. I happily opened the train doors and went to meet Paul in Hells Kitchen.
  79.  
  80. After speaking with Paul the first thing I did was to go down the street to watch the firefight in the Park. As I wished the NSF trooper with the key to the Osgood and Sons warehouse opened the door for me, and conveniently got himself killed so I could get his key from him if the door somehow closed again. Having secured my ability to proceed with the game I went to find Sandra and Johnny. As usual they were arguing. I told Johnny to beat it before I added him to the list of NSF casualties. He walked away but as soon as he turned the corner he turned hostile. Bad news for hi though that when he began shooting at me the Riot cops defended me and took him out. I went and talked to Sandra and she told me the password to see smuggler. Then I went straight there because I wanted the key to the sewer manholes. When I had gone down the lift I was confronted with Smuggler’s laser trip wires. I am told that Smuggler is whacked out paranoid, but really, who needs a small security bot? I have managed to jump through the wires so the door begins to open but then closes again, but I didn’t feel like doing that so I just stacked two small crates from across the room on top of each other and jumped over. There wasn’t much to do at Smugglers so I got the key and information about Ford and left. Technically I suppose I didn’t need to Save Sandra or Ford, or even find the barrel of Ambrosia. None are crucial to the game. But they are all easy to do and were good practise I feel for later on. I never did rescue the hostages because I haven’t worked out a way how yet. Maybe someone else could spend some time trying to do it. But before rescuing Ford I went to the free clinic. I interceded on behalf of the doctor and calmed the irate patient. The Doctor gave me the 40% discount on the ‘full program’ which I bought.
  81.  
  82. To find Ford I went back to the manhole closest to Smuggler’s hideout and climbed down it. I ran through all the trip wires in the tunnels until I got the ledge at the end with the two dead bodies on it. I took the password from the data cube, ‘2167’, waited for the alarms to finally stop ringing, and set them off again on my way out. (The keypad that opens the door needs lockpicks to get at) I made my way around the alternative manhole and dropped through. In the very large room there is a metal bridge. I crawled across the bridge, staying behind the MJ12 trooper on it, and opened the door to the little room beyond it. I tried to get the to the datacube with the login and password for the security consoles surreptitiously, but of course the trooper seated in the chair saw me just as I reached the data cube. I had the information but had to launch myself into the waste to avoid being shot. I hid under a floating barrel until the combat music stopped, being hurt all the time. Then cautiously climbed the ladder to the ledge around the edge of the pit and ended up beside the security console. The troopers saw me at the top of the ladder and I sustained quite bad injuries, taking my already poisoned yellow torso down to red, before I could slip through the hole and down the ladder to hide. I used the second security console to turn the one turret to “enemies”, but left all the cameras on so I could turn the alarms on whenever I felt like it. Then I used my code to make my way out the manhole near smugglers and went to get an urgently needed medical check-up. This done I went back down the nearest manhole and back into the jaws of death. This time instead of going across the bridge I leapt into the waste below to my right, landing beside the ladder leading, eventually, to Ford’s cell. I climbed half way up and waited for the MJ12 trooper in the tunnel to turn his back. I sneaked past him, and when safely in the tunnel beyond I turned around and lured him into my trap. I hid in the water below the level of the ledge and listened while the turret did it’s grisly work on him. I did this twice more. I lured one at a time the two troopers in the room before Ford’s cell into that corridor and waited as they ran around stupidly while their lifeblood was steadily jerked out of them by unyielding lead. Charming. However their deaths did allow me to safely use the security console with the login “MJ12” and password “coupdetat” to open the door to the place of Ford’s captivity. I told him to make a run for it, which he did. I also told him I’d protect him, which I didn’t. That’s difficult with no guns. He made it out though and I got the feel good factor. To get out of the sewers now I launched myself into the waste water for the third time, and swam over to and climbed up the now familiar ladder. They saw me at the top again but I was long gone before they could do any real damage. I emerged into the fresh air again and went to see smuggler past his now friendly security bot. I told him I had rescued Ford and so he lowered his prices for items I couldn’t buy anyway. My next stop was the free clinic where I regained my 108 points of lost health, before going to the underworld bar.
  83.  
  84. At the bar I spoke to various people, but specifically to the man and the woman talking about getting Ambrosia for the man’s wife from a drug dealer. I was sympathetic enough to learn the password “righteous”. With this information I left and went though the still open door to the Osgood and Sons warehouse and out the back. I climbed over the fence, disabled the lam without picking it up, and climbed the ladder on the outside of the building to the roof. Here instead of trying my luck with the snipers on the rooftops I turned left and went down the fire escapes of the building to drop down to a lower rooftop. Then I used the ladder on the side of this building to climb down to street level. Now it would have been too hard I think (it probably would be possible but I didn’t feel like trying it then) to sneak past lams, NSF troops and dogs, so I got the ramp code from the nearby data cube and dropped through the manhole in the street. I opened the grate to the underwater tunnel and swam through. On untrained skill level it is impossible to get though that tunnel without being hurt. I lost what I think it the minimum health doing that, and ended my swim with 26 torso health having started it with 100. But I didn’t intend to get hurt much during the rest of the level so that seemed ok at the time. I logged onto the security panel beside me using the password ‘righteous’ and the guessable login ‘nsf’ (I’ve never actually found the login on the map to my knowledge, I have always guessed it). I opened the small grate leading into the tunnels below the generator, and I again turned the turret to “enemies”. Using both the trip wires and the camera I set all the alarms I could and waited for the NSF to come running to the dead end. Often the turret kills 5 or 6 NSF troops, but this time only 1 was killed, and two more seriously injured. It was enough though and I ventured out into the corridors and hid in one of the pitch black inclines. Here something that seemed very funny happened. As I was hidden a very determined looking trooper ran past saying “I’m gonna get this pig”. He went around the corner, I heard the turret shooting, and then an NSF trooper with his tail between his legs ran back the way he had come dripping blood. It seemed hilarious. After this incident I made my way to the ramp, avoiding cameras as much as possible. I used the code to open the ramp and ran around the building while the attack dog was still turned away from me.
  85.  
  86. At the back of the generator building I climbed the stairs leading to the ladder leading to the other ladder leading to the roof of the generator building. I climbed to the top of the last ladder and manoeuvred my way around to the other side of that roof, staying hidden from snipers as I did so, and jumped though one of the windows and down onto the fourth level. Unfortunately it is impossible to land without making a lot of noise, and I had a nerve racking experience creeping around the crates trying to stay hidden from 4 different NSF troopers, all running around trying to find me. It was not the hardest thing I anticipate in this game, but it was the most difficult manuvering I have done for a long time. I was amazed that I did it on my first go. Finally I managed to get to the pitch blackness behind some boxes next to the stairs leading down to the third level. Not even the NSF trooper standing less than a meter away from me could see me. When he was not looking I crept back into the light, down the stairs, and to the opposite end of the third level, staying low behind the railing stopping people falling over the edge onto the generator. I was trying to get the computer system on the second level. However to get from my hiding spot to the next set of steps would have involved running past too many troopers, so instead I jumped up onto the railing and fell down to the tiny ledge of floor that sticks out past the fence. I was about 80% over thin air. When I dropped that half a meter everyone heard me so I had to quickly aim and drop down onto the railing of the second level. Then make a mad dash past all the troopers running for the stairs to investigate what was happening on the third level to the computer room to hide under one of the small tables in there. When I was hidden from everyone I waited for the NSF to collectively settle down before venturing out and logging onto the computer using the useful phrases ‘nsf’ and ‘righteous’. I chose the special option ‘shut down generator coolant system’. A few seconds later BOOM. This was my only chance to get out now because all the NSF were busy running around. I ran out of that room and up the flight of stairs, being shot at al the time. I made the straight dash along the length of the third level, before a slalom through the boxes on the fourth, all the while being shot at and taking particular care to avoid troopers with tranq darts, before finally running through the trip wire at the top and letting the invincible Gunther take care of my pursuers.
  87.  
  88. About now it is interesting to take a look at my health. It was as follows. Head: 12, Torso: 2 (two), Right Am: 44, Left Arm: 76, Right Leg: 69, Left Leg: 21. I could probably have done it losing less health but I wasn’t going to voluntarily try that gauntlet again! I obscured myself from snipers and boarded the chopper back to UNATCO HQ. At UNATCO HQ I just did the usual stuff. Saw Simons, got my op bonus, healed myself with the medbot. I didn’t bother to see Simon’s interrogations or talk to Carter but just went straight back out again after that to get on the Chopper.
  89.  
  90. The Mole hideout and La Guadia
  91.  
  92. Jock dropped me off in Battery park. I haven’t found a way to rescue the mole person from the NSF thugs in Hells Kitchen so I didn’t have the nessesary passwird to get the code to the phone booth. Therefore I went through the shanty town and down into the subway station to Find Harley Fliben. I spoke to him and he began in character talking about how he was only in it for the money, before selling me the password I should use to get the code I need, ‘underworld’, for $500. Then I went back up the stairs to the small hut with Curly and the sick woman in it. I gave the password and was given the code, ‘6653’. Back down the stairs I went to punch in the code and be transported by revolving phone booth down into the sewers. From there I made my short way to the Brooklyn Bridge subway station. I found Charley, the man I had been told to see, walking around on one of the platforms. He told me that He’d give me the code to get to the Mole People’s hideout if I could get their water running again. It has always struck me as odd that JC, an elite Nano-Augmented Agent on a covert mission of the utmost importance has the time to stop and do a bit of chairty work for a bunch of nobodies camping in some long forgotten railway tunnels. It’s the only way though so off I went to the cave in. With me I took a tall white rubbish bin and a small white rubbish sack. Under the fallen down wooden beams there is an area you can stand up in, and jump in if you are crouched. I took my two objects under the beams and set them up so I could jump onto the rubbish bag, and then onto the rubbish bin and over the beams. Having done this I threw both ulensils over before falling down myself, so as to have a way of getting back over when finished. I lept through the steam and turned both valves somehow restarting water that had been lost in a huge explosion with a few twists, and headed on back to Charly. he told me the code to the keypad in the woman’s restroom. I used it and found myself in an abandoned subway station building.
  93.  
  94. I climbed down the ladder and hugged the wall of the platform while working my way towards the end, staying out of sight of any NSF lurking around up there. When I reached the end I had to go out into the light, leaving the safety of the shadows to go to the commander’s secret room. I avoided the sentry patroling that end of the tunnel, at one point hiding quite close to the NSF trooper with the dead cat. At the same time I feel both disgust and pity for that man. Disgudt that he would eat a cat, yet pity that his circumstances have forced him to do it. But no matter, I used the brink behind the cardboard boxes and went inside. The leader surrendered, giving up the key to the woman’s rest room. Is it just me or is there an unhealthy facination with women’s rest rooms in this game? In any case I went there past the now friendly NSF troopers and walked though the hoe in the brick wall and into the sewers again. Here there were two paths. I could choose Trial by Fire(ing turrets) or I could choose (steaming) Water Torture. I chose Trial by Fire. I pushed the large crate close to the tripwires and carried one of the smaller ones to put down beside it. Then I used them to jump over the lasers, taking the small one with me. I used it again to get over the small wall directly under the turrets, dropped it over the edge, and jumped down after it. Here, in order to get through the door, I had to kill the NSF trooper patroling the area. His patrol took him around a central pillar, and he would stop in two places on it. Once near to the alarm switch, and once further away. The technique I used was to follow him around his patrol holding the small crate. When he stopped for the second time (away from the alarm) I would stand up and throw the crate up into the air and onto his head, making him cry out in pain. Then I would run away to hide in the shadows just in front of the steam pipes I avoided ealier until he stopped looking for me and go back to patroling. I had to do this 6 times. After the 6th time he was hurt so much he began running around without pulling a weapon. When he got to this stage it was impossible to throw the crate on him while he was runing, so I gathered up the 3 other crates in the area and trapped him against the wall. Then I used the 4th crate to hurt him more. It still took 4 thows before he died. These NSF certanly have hard heads. I searched his body, keeping his key and throwing away his pistol and knife. Through the door were some laser trip wires guarding some platforms hanging from the ceiling. Beside them was a TNT crate. I chucked the TNT onto the ground in front of them blowing them up, before extending the bridge and jumping from platform to platform over the water. Then I ran down the coridor, disabling the EMP granade even though it made no difference to me. Before me now were two security bots. I waited for the nearest one to turn around, before ducking under the fallen rock and making a run for the closest hole in the wall. I have never worked out how a straight(ish) coridor like that could be made by accident, maybe I missed something and it wasn’t, but I ran down it anyway. Then I waited for both bots to be facing the other difection before making the dash across the room and entering the underground bit of La Guadia.
  95.  
  96. I didn’t spend much time in this area. I waited for the guard beside the ambrosia to walk away before “finding” the third to last barrel, hiding from the camera over the door I just came out of as I did so. Before entering the helicopter bay through the opposite door. Then I just ran over to the large boxes o the other side of the room, avoiding the NSF as I did so, found the manhole and dropped down into it. The first underwater stretch was dangerous. The minimum health possible to loose is 30 points on untrained skill. Which is what I managed to loose after several attempts. The rest of the underwater tunnels are easy enough and son I emerged outside Juan Lebedev’s terminal at La Guardia. I swan to the surface and floated under the jetty the trooper with the flame thrower walked up and down. It seems strange that the only trooper with a flame thrower was stationed so close to so much water. When he was at the other end I hauled myself onto dry ground. I grabbed the key o the barrel and ran outside. I didn’t really care if people or security bots saw me, which they did, I knew I could easily loose them among all the huge cargo crates outside. I ran to the large gates defending the entrance to the hanger from me, and became stealthy once more. The guard outside them was on a patrol. When his back was turned I ran to the small box, pressed the button within and ran though the open gates. the guard saw me as I turned the corner, but it was too late, as the gates shut behind me.
  97.  
  98. From there I went to the entrance of the small building connected to the main hanger. First I pushed the brick opening the entrance to the secret room. (Smuggling anyone?) to get the key to the sleeping quarters. Then I followed the NSF trooper on patrol on the upper level. I do not envy his job, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The first time I opened the bathroom door and hid inside until he reached the end of his patroil and came back. When he passed me I crawled to the sleeping quarters, got in and opened the concrete box to get at the datacube. In the datacube was code to the hanger. The guard made his patrol again, and as soon as he was past the sleeping quarters door on his way back I crept out again, punched in the code and went into the 747 hanger. Paul was there, I talked to him and then went on into the plane to talk further with Lebedev. First I went downstairs to “find” the last barrel of ambrosia. Then I went upstaris to get the key to the sleeping quarters. Then I stayed I the middle and went to Lebedev’s room.Momentarily I wondered, since Lebedev had gone to so much trouble of locking his door whether it was impolite to justunlock it without asking, but quickly dismissed that thought and went inside. I spoke to Lebedev, then Navarre came along and told me to kill him. Without any weapons it is hard to do that so I continued talking to him. Typicaly Navarre blamed me and did it herself. Since there was nothing else to do there I went back outside, talked to Gunther and boarded my chopper back to UNATCO HQ. There I just visited Manderely, got myself fixed my the unattended medbot and went back outside ready to be shipped off to Hong Kong.
  99.  
  100. Hells Kitchen 2: NSF Headquarters
  101.  
  102. Instead of taking me to Hong Kong, Jock took me back to Hells Kitchen where he told me to go and meet with Paul. I climbed down the ladder and entered through the window. Paul talked with me and gave me instructions as to what to do at the NSF headquarters around the corner. I went there, past the UNATCO trooper standing guard in the street, and through the front entrance where I picked up the crate of TNT in the middle of the room and left again. I took it outside to throw it at the outside door leading to the basement. The explosion splattered the poor UNATCO trooper standing beside it everywhere, it seemed quite comical since I had not even been aware that he was there. I went down the stairs, got the necessary information to log onto the computers on the roof from the data cube and came back out into the street again. Nonchalantly, as if I wasn’t about to betray UNATCO and all the troopers I was passing I walked up to the top of the warehouse, stopping briefly to regain the 23 health points I had lost during the splattering. On the fourth floor I picked up one of the TNT crates and carried it up the remaining flight of stairs. I found one of the UNATCO troopers on the roof, made sure he was out of sight of the other and threw a crate of TNT at him surreptitiously, at least as surreptitiously as one can throw a crate of TNT at a person. The other trooper didn’t hear so I went back down stairs, picked up another and exploded him too. Now undisturbed by pesky interfering busy bodies I logged onto the first computer, aligned the satellite dishes and opened the door. Then I logged on onto the next computer with the overly melodramatic login of ‘napoleon’ and broadcast the message.
  103.  
  104. I couldn’t now go back the way I had come because of Simon’s obvious overreaction, so instead I jumped off the building. I didn’t need my legs any more for this stage so it didn’t matter that I had 30 torso health and 6 in each of my ambulatory appendages afterwards. I picked up a rubbish bag and crouched behind the UNATCO trooper I passed earlier in the street. I threw the bag to distract him and used my opportunity to sneak past and run back to Paul’s apartment, using a small crate as a stepping stone to reach the ladder. Inside the apartment I spoke to Paul for a while until the MiBs showed up. Instead of hiding now I stayed in the room and watched the fight, staying out of it’s way for as long as possible. But after not too long a UNATCO trooper ran in and shot me in the head, how impolite.
  105.  
  106. The Escape from MJ12 and UNATCO
  107.  
  108. I awoke in captivity, in a cell of my own. I’d been rescuing people out of cells for so long it seemed fitting to be in one myself. Like Karma, if you accept that from the other sides point of view it was right for those people to be in cells and I was doing wrong. Navarre appeared and spoke to me for a while, and the Daedalus opened my cell door and rescued me. Karma works both ways it seems. I crawled out under the partially open door, waited for the MJ12 trooper at the end of the hall to begins his patrol, and sneaked up to his table
  109. to get the cell door codes from the data cube there. Then I sneaked back to the farthest cell door on the right, opposite my own cell, and healed myself with the medbot, possibly rashly considering that it had quite failed to heal the dead NSF trooper right beside it. Ready for action again I went back and hid under the table the cell door codes were on. When my guard had walked up the hallway, quite failing to notice my suspiciously open cell door, I made a rush for the door. Ignoring the camera I pumped my legs and feverishly wished for speed augmentation. Unfortunately the alarm went off just before I got out the door. I hid in the tunnels under the floor while the great search took place, listening to various MJ12 troopers constantly hearing me even though I was not moving. Eventually however they all went back to patrolling. This was when I emerged from the floor like a ghost rising from the grave, and unseen I wafted along to the medical area. (No I was not cheating and using fly mode, it is merely a figure of speech). I met the French doctor who gave me the code to the medical bay, successfully bypassed the room with the greasel cages, sneaked past the MJ12 troop talking with the secretary, and mounted the stairs to the right. Here, in an amazing lapse in clear thinking on the part of MJ12, they had installed a switch to release the karkians in plain sight so that any child could see it. I wonder how the MJ12 troopers guarding this medical bay felt about this. These fierce, but useful brutes immediately took apart those MJ12 troopers, and began devouring the bodies. I used this short period of time to quickly punch in the code which opened the door and went inside to meet with the still alive Paul. Somehow, it is not immediately obvious, I got his data vaults for Daedalus. And Paul gave me the crucial information of how to discover Navarre’s kill Phrase. Then I tried to leave. The two karkians blocked my way, but after I had waited for a seemingly very long time, their constant random movements took them to two different places not blocking the door and a path to the stairs I desperately wanted to use. I took this chance and ran all the way to the nearest grate in the floor to the underground tunnels, being shot once in the leg with a pistol on the way, and got in. I have often wondered at the strange placing of those tunnels, covering almost all the places an escaping prisoner might want to go, and having an entrance conveniently placed outside the entrance to the cells. It’s as if someone wanted them to be used. I did use them and emerged from the closest grate to the exit. I quickly ran there, used the code Daedalus had given me, ran past the trooper at the reception with the tranq darts, and changed map so he couldn’t follow me.
  110.  
  111. Now I found myself back at UNATCO HQ for the fourth and last time. I followed the UNATCO trooper slowly patrolling to the medical bay and waited for him to go back again. Then revealed myself to Jaime by tugging on his doctors coat, or at least I don’t think he had seen me because even though I had been crouching right beside him for almost a minute, he was very surprised when I began talking to him. I told him to help me by staying at UNATCO as a spy, healed my leg with the medbot, and then quietly made my way to Carter’s armoury to hide behind the wall and waited for the UNATCO troopers’s patrol to take him towards the toilets. He was gone a long time which made it ridiculously easy to log onto Navarre’s computer using the password ‘archon’ and login ‘demiurge’ and decode the second half of her Kill Phrase. Half of Anna’s fate secured I made my way up the stairs to Manderely’s office, as usual on these visits. Ignoring the gasps from Janice Reed I entered, interrupting the conversation with Simon’s with a really really drawn out alternative oath of service, and then interrupted his feeling sorry for himself by stealing the other half of Navarre’s kill phrase. Then I dodged behind the wall in his office, and then dashed through the door and out into the corridor. Otherwise Manderely really is quite good with his pistol, and he was quite desperate since it would probably have been his saving grace had he killed me. I then went upstairs and happened to meet by Anna Navarre. She said she was going to kill me, I said “Take your best shot Flatlander Woman”. She said “how did you know…?”, and then ended the she said she said as she exploded, her deathly (literally) scream echoed through the corridors, but failed to alert any of the rest of the building. The question I have to ask though is, wasn’t it dangerous for Navarre to know her own kill phrase? What if she had got drunk and was dared to say it or something? Pondering this I went back downstairs, avoiding the UNATCO troopers to see Alex. He gave me the key to the exit. I took the key back upstairs on the nano keying, opened the door, rushed past the UNATCO trooper at the security door, but stopped before rushing past the trooper guarding the main doors. Instead I picked up a trophy on the book case and threw it to his opposite side. While he was distracted working out, firstly that a big golden cup had made the noise and not an escaping Denton, and secondly the all the ways in which a large gold cup could vacate its position on the book case and turn up beside his desk other than an escaping Denton, I, an escaping Denton, escaped out the doors. I then ran to the helicopter and got inside, ready to this time actually be shipped to Hong Kong.
  112.  
  113. The Escape from the MJ12 Hong Kong Facility
  114.  
  115. It appeared that Jock was not the ace pilot he said he was. He had known that there was an MJ12 facility in Hong Kong, and had known that they would be looking out for him, yet he had still got caught. But there is no use in complaining about something you can’t change, so I went straight away to get that key I was told about. I walked to the nearest trap door to the maintenance tunnels and dropped down through it. From here I crawled through the tunnels to the largish area with the controls to release the poison gas and got into position behind one of the explosive barrels. Now anyone who has ever pushed on of these barrels anywhere knows that it is more exciting watching paint dry… while it is still in the paint pot… and I think I just won the understatement of the year award. Superman could not do this faster than a speeding milk truck. If you have ever done it, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, don’t. Particularly when most of your route requires you to crouch. I was amazed at how many times I would push the barrel for what seemed like an eternity and turn around to see that I had gone less than a meter. But I persevered, and eventually managed to stay awake long enough to push my exploding barrel all the way through the ventilation shafts to the grate leading into the barracks at the top of the stairs beside the bunk beds. Then, talking care not to stay in the view of the remarkably well placed camera, I pushed it an inch at a time past the bunks and under the grate in the ceiling. Then I opened the grate and crawled back along the tunnels and out into the hellibay again.
  116.  
  117. From here I sneaked down the stairs towards the barracks. I honestly think this map is one of the best designed in the game. Everything seems to be in the best strategic place to make anything I do harder than it should be. First the tunnels with low ceilings, then the camera in the corner, and now this window allowing the MJ12 troopers to see out. It took many attempts but I did finally manage to get both small crates stacked in the corner at the bottom of the stairs without being seen and deposit them both in the helibay. The first one I placed carefully in the middle of the security door to the right so as to stop the bot that would later be activated from interfering with my activities later on. There is no particular reason why I put it in front of the door to the right. I just did. The second crate I carried up the ladder to the roof. Carefully avoiding the cameras gaze, and trying not to make too many noises that would attract the MJ12 troops I made a quick dash for the cover of the boxes to the left. And then, still holding my small crate, another one across the roof to the other boxes relatively close to the opening of the air shaft running down to the barracks. The troopers appeared not to be able to see me at this distance so I was quite free to open the manhole and throw my crate down the shaft, onto the explosive crate I had put there earlier. Unlike every other practise attempt, when it had taken up to 16 throws, this time the barrel blew up immediately. I hid inside the shaft, clinging to the ladder, while the troopers both above and below searched for me, and when they had settled down again, obviously deciding that a massive explosion only a few meters away from them must have been a mass hallucination or something, I dropped to the floor. It is true that it left no physical evidence behind it for the troopers to find, except that all the doors on the lockers had been blown off. I took the key to the flight control deck from one of the previously locked lockers, picked up my trusty crate, and again made the pilgrimage through the ventilation system and into the helibay.
  118.  
  119. I placed my second crate in front of the other security door and then made my way up the stairs now to the flight control deck entrance. I used my hard earned key to open the door, and then pressed the button. Jock told me to come downstairs, which I did, and I watched him fire two highly explosive missiles at what was quite possibly a structural wall inside a very enclosed area many floors above the street. The MJ12 troopers did not come to investigate. I assume that men who can ignore an explosion 3 meters away are not phased by ones on the other side of the building. I ran past the security bot hemmed in by my very small crate, and then made many valiant failures to get to the lift without being either shot or electrocuted. Eventually with some careful positioning of the bot’s direction I managed this feat with no damage, and took the lift down to Wan Chai Market.
  120.  
  121. Hong Kong part 1: The Dragon's Tooth Sword
  122.  
  123. Upon entering Wan Chai Market I decided that the easiest thing to do would be to just do the obvious and follow everyone’s instructions. So following this pattern I took Jock’s hint and went to find Paul’s compound. It was not hard to find, and outside I talked to Gordon Quick. It seems strange to me that the leader of the triad would be outside the walls in the dangerous situation of guarding the compound from attack, especially with a triad war going on around him, but he was. He told me that in order to see Tracer Tong I would need to
  124. gain his trust. And in order to do that I would have to go and investigate Maggie Chow’s apartment to try and find a stolen sword. This I said I would do, but first I made my way to the canal and onto the sampan where the woman was selling weapon mods. I picked up one of the small crates that was on the boat and carried it to Tonnochi Road. Then I went into Queens Tower, still carrying my small crate, and went up the elevator to Maggie’s apartment. Here I was greeted by Maggie’s maid who started saying “I will accompany you” and other such annoying phrases like that. Paraphrased my thoughts went along the lines of “Screw you”, and so I ran past her and deposited my small crate in her way in the small link between the room with the piano in it and the rest of the house. I talked to Maggie Chow, and then went upstairs to the to the conference room. Here I found the data cube with Maggie’s birthday on it and then went back downstairs. As I had hopped the maid had not seen me upstairs and pulled her pistol on me. I picked up the small crate and let her through the doorway, and then put it down again, thus trapping her with Maggie so she wouldn’t be able to interfere with my in my further adventures in the apartment.
  125.  
  126. Surely this next bit has to be one of the most clichéd bits in the whole game, second only to the moving fireplace in the Duclare mansion. I wonder why they left out the secret passage behind the bookcase with the false book, was it an oversight? But I digress, I pulled the lantern and opened the secret door into the secret military base/research facility in Maggie Chow’s apartment, presumably installed without the owners noticing anything. I crept along the hallway, passed the tripwires, being careful not to alert the guards, and punched the code 718 into the keypad, opening the door. Then I crept through it, again not alerting the guards in the next room, to the large machine in the centre of the room. I listened to what Tracer Tong had to say and then put the same code into the keypad on the contraption. With a lot of ceremony, but no light display, the case opened revealing the Dragon’s Tooth Sword. This was as close as I had to get. Tong contacted me again and told me to take it to Max
  127. Chen, the leader of the Red Arrow Triad. I crept out of the room and back into the apartment, picked up my small crate and made my way back to Wan Chai market. Before getting there however I made a necessary detour. First I put my crate down beside the entrance to Versa Life (for reasons that will become apparent later) and then went on to the Lucky Money Club. I paid my money to get in, and then walked across the dance floor and up the stairs, past Isaac and then down through the storage rooms and into the meeting room of the Red Arrow behind the mirror glass. To my left was Max Chen, looking much more dignified in his own private office with a fish pond and a bridge and flanked by two guards than Gordon Quick out in the street with an open shirt and fancy hair style(but no medallion). I pushed past the rude Red Arrow members seated at the table and went in to see Max Chen. I told him about the sword and he proposed a truce. I agreed to go and tell the Luminous path, but before I could the club was attacked by MJ12 commandos. I waited in Max Chen’s office while the Red Arrow dealt with them, and then went to see Gordon Quick. He was all impressed with me and said “you are the man we hoped you were”. I had known that all along, but refrained from pointing out that if he had just listened to me in the first place I wouldn’t have had to do all that…
  128.  
  129. I used the code he gave me, 1997, to enter the compound, made my way to the sparing room and used it again to go through the picture and into the secret passage. It’s not quite up there as the bookcase but it’ll do. I went down into the cellar, opened the next hidden door (before writing this I had not realised what a deluge of secret doors and passage ways there were in the game. Now I keep thinking of other ones all over the place) and met Tracer Tong. He welcomed me and sent me downstairs where he turned off my kill switch. When I went back up stairs to the control room Tong began speaking in riddles. Fortunately JC understood (even if I didn’t) and I agreed to do a favour for Tong: Infiltrating Versa Life and uploading the Dragon’s Tooth Sword schematics for both triads.
  130.  
  131. Hong Kong part 2: Versa Life part 1
  132.  
  133. From Tracer Tong’s lab I was able to go straight to the lift and into the unsuspecting Versa Life building. I pressed the appropriate keys on the keypad, picked up my crate and entered the lift. This took me up to Versa Life reception. Still carrying my crate I ran up two flights of stairs and sought out the Mr Hundley I had been told about. I still had a lot of money I had been given for working for UNATCO so I bought a security pass from him for 2000 credits. Then I picked up my crate again and went to the lift. I punched the right buttons and took my crate down to the big red room. I then carried it to the end of the room by the statue and deposited it beside the alarm switch. I ran along the small passageway above the lab with several research divisions, bio, physics, nanotech, to another lift. This lift took me up to the small room, overlooking the big statue, which doesn’t seem to have any practical purpose at all. Maybe Bob Page sat up there and looked at his big hand. On the table there was a datacube. In the datacube there was Maggie Chow’s login, ‘Mchow’. I stored this in my databanks and returned past this puzzled MIB to the ground floor.
  134.  
  135. Here I changed from sneaky deceiving Denton to violent irrational Denton seemingly unconcerned with his own safety. I waited for the MJ12 commando to be down by the lift, at the opposite end from the MJ12 Trooper with the gep gun. I picked up my crate and chucked it on his head. He didn’t notice the first time so I did it again. (It always takes two accurate throws; I had to attempt this a lot more than once before it worked). His first action was to run over and turn on the alarm. I took this time to run up the stairs towards the break room. When I had made sure he had followed me I stood by the cabinet in the conference room and waited. As soon as he rounded the corner he aimed and fired a rocket. But even before the payload had even left the barrel I was already moving. I dived under the conference table and hid there until it was safe to dash past both the gep gun and flamethrower wielding troopers into the bathroom and then into the vent. When everyone had gone back to being friendly I trotted out and took Maggie Chow’s password, Damocles, from the datacube in the cupboard destroyed by the gep rocket, and went downstairs to the computer. I went up the lift, entered the correct login and password, and uploaded the sword schematics to the two triads.
  136.  
  137. Now I had to get out. The alarm had gone off and everyone was coming to get me so I had to move fast. I immediately turned around and pressed the button the go down the lift. Once on the ground I ran up the ramp and judged on the move that the MJ12 trooper was out of the way before running behind him and along the tunnel and up the stairs to the big red room. Now I had to run the gauntlet. I saw both the commando and the trooper were quite close to the statue end of the room so I took the chance and ran between them for the lift. There were rockets coming from both sides behind me and I was leaping and dodging around like a counter strike player in a desperate attempt to avoid being splattered across the floor. I reached the lift and threw myself sideways against the wall just in time to see a rocket pass through the air where I had been in just been less than a second ago and explode against the back of the lift. But then I pressed the button and was safe.
  138.  
  139. Back at level three the alarms were still going. I descended the stairs to the second floor and stood on the walkway leading the level two cubicles. Here I waited until a security guard saw me. When the one beside the lift did and began shooting all the rest ran out of the security booth and started running up the stairs. The chase was on. I waited until I was sure they were all coming before hiding in the air vent. The guards ran into the darkness but then stood around not able to find me in my hiding place. Eventually they all began trooping back downstairs. I crept out through the darkness and dropped down over the edge to the first floor. Then before anyone else had got down too I pressed the button and took the lift back to the street. From here I went to the temple where Max Chen and Gordon Quick did their thing. Then I went back to Tracer Tong. He told me that I had to go back into Versa Life and upload more schematics. He did give me a lift code thro
  140.  
  141. Hong Kong part 3 – Versa Life part 2
  142.  
  143. Leaving Tracer Tong’s lab for the second time I went back to the lift to go back to Versa Life reception, to greet a reception party of my own. I went up the lift and hid to one side to avoid being seen by the MJ12 Commando standing guard. When I was ready I rushed out and made straight for the stairs, luckily I was fast enough so I didn’t get shot. When I reached the top I looked back to see that no one had followed me, so I began to go to the lift. However before going down it I had to get the next Commando out of the way. I stood at the entrance of the passageway leading to the lift and waited for the commando to see me. When he did he began to run towards me. I ran to the vent and hid in the air duct for some time. After a while I ventured out and looked for the commando. He was still looking for me so I was able to avoid him before he could get back to his post, run to the lift and go down it to the big red room. There was a spider bot as well as the commando and MJ12 trooper I had left there earlier. Spider bots mainly damage bioelectricity and do not deal out much to health. Thus the spider bot was not much of a problem, and I was able to run right past it, avoid the other two men and run around the back of the statue. I picked up my crate that I had left there and ran up the stairs towards the break room. I had to move fast but I avoided being shot by the Commando up there and managed to get into the ventilation shaft through the bathroom without being hurt. I crept past the unsuspecting greasel that had escaped in the tunnels and after a bit of navigation eventually emerged opposite the MJ12 barracks. I waited for the WIB to continue her patrol back towards the lab and lightly dropped to the ground. I crept into the room where I had uploaded the sword schematics and dropped the crate on the ground.
  144.  
  145. In this part of the complex there were two Commandos guarding the glass tunnel to level 2, the MJ12 trooper with the gep gun was still patrolling, and there was a trooper in the tunnel. First I spent a long time doing complicated manoeuvres to eventually lure the commandos away from the door. I won’t go into detail because it would be about 2 pages of describing myself doing all kinds of things, most of them tedious, for about 1 hour and 20 minutes. And to be Frank I could never remember all of it, or any of it for that matter, I just have the knowledge that I did it somehow. However I did finally manage to lure them down the ramp on the right side of the room (as you come from the lab). They stopped on the flat bit nearest the bottom and didn’t go back up so I had vastly improved my movement capability on the upper floor. I picked up my crate and took it to the top. I must admit at this point that I was not sure what I was going to do here. I had vague ambitions to run through the tunnel with the crate, but that was impossible because the trooper would shoot me and I would drop it. However I did manage to do it by fluke! (Although I am absolutely positive that it could be orchestrated). One of the times I was trying to run through the tunnel I hadn’t realised position of the trooper with the gep gun. As I ran he fired a rocket at me, and it hit the other trooper. This was my saving grace. Once I had lost the gep trooper I was able to run through the tunnel with my crate as often as I liked. I took my crate to the end, use the code 55655, and went down to level 2.
  146.  
  147. I opened the trap door in the floor around the corner and dropped down to the tunnels beneath, so as to avoid the commando and the bot. Then I went along the passageway leading to the alternative entrance and the pool of water. I got the code from the datacube in a corner, 768, and then used it to open the security doors on the bottom level and close the ones on the top. I picked up my crate and proceeded along the corridor. At the end there was a door/bridge type thing. It was blocking my way so first I lowered it and took my crate across. But now it was blocking my way down the stairs so I went back and punched the code to close it. Then I had to run across and fall down before it closed trapping me again. (And away from my crate too which had so faithfully served me since that first incident in Maggie Chow’s apartment. I don’t think I could have taken that). If you don’t take the crate across first you can’t run fast enough to get past it. Then I went down the steps and threw my crate through the lowest tripwire, blocking it. The alarm didn’t go off so I crept under them, ran past the stationary bots and surprised the scientist at the end of the hall. She ran away and turned the alarm on. This brought the commando running so I hid in the little antechamber on the right. Both he and the bots searched but none of them found me. When the alarms had stopped, the bots were disabled again and the commando had walked off I ventured out. The camera saw me but as soon as I opened the computer screen it stopped beeping. The scientist saw me too, but this time ran away without turning the alarm on. I used Maggie Chow’s login and password again to upload the necessary schematics and to open the door to the UC chamber. Then I ran around the long way to avoid the commando and grappled down the ladder to the very flimsy structure hundreds of meters off the ground. I walked past all the tempting augmentation and upgrade canisters and climbed down the large ladder to the medbot with which I healed the wounds I got running past the MJ12 trooper in the tunnel. I then went out into the area at the bottom of the UC structure, talked to Maggie Chow, and then ran around to the control panel to use the code Daedalus gave me to destroy the UC. Then I dropped down under the railing and then down the ladder into the flooded area underneath. I jumped from cylinder to cylinder until I came to the one that would ultimately lead to the canals, and then swam through it and surfaced to get air. The baby karkian in the pipe was a problem so I had to swim under water to lure it out. When it did come out I swam the most direct way to the pipe and then along it as fast as I could, both to not have my legs bitten off and to survive the swim itself. By the time I could come up for air it seemed that I had been gasping for a very long time. I checked my health and discovered I had 4 points left! But no matter, there was nothing else to be done that could harm me.
  148.  
  149. I got out of the water and Tong started talking about the Illuminati for some reason. There I was, having just survived rockets fired at me, sharp eyed commandos, bots, karkians and swimming and he was talking about nonsense! I was unhappy to leave my crate behind too, but sometimes professionals have to make sacrifices. I came out the pipe and into the canal. I went up onto the street via the fruit and vegetable seller’s house, and then went back to Tong. I didn’t take up Max and Gordon’s offer. I talked to Tong, who told me all about the Illuminati and told me to search out Stanton Dowd. I gave a cursory glance at Paul, went to get my health back from the medbot, and then left to get onto Jock’s helicopter to go to New York.
  150.  
  151. Dowd in Hell’s Kitchen
  152.  
  153. Jock dropped me off, back in hells Kitchen again. I quickly grappled down the outside of the ‘Ton Hotel and, on the advice of Tong, went to the Underworld Tavern to find Harley Filben. I talked to him and he set me up with a meeting with Dowd. Then I talked to Vinny the marine. He said he could get me into the Shipyard, so I accepted. Then I left the bar for good. I crept past the patrolling riot cops and made my way to where Osgood and Sons used to be, where I found Dowd cowering behind a burned out old wall. I talked to him and he told me all about tri hull wield points and other stuff. He also told me I had to go and talk to Smuggler. I don’t understand why it should be necessary to do this if you don’t intend to buy anything from him, but you do. I went to the entrance and went down the lift, after making sure that the patrolling bot was heading towards the tunnel leading to the old NSF Headquarters. I walked through the tripwires and through the wooden door, and then talked smuggler. I didn’t buy anything from him, but I did tell him about the raid that I had heard about from Gunther. It seemed cruel to not buy anything AND let him die at the same time. Then I went back onto the street. It takes a little while for the troopers to materialise so as soon as the map loaded I ran for it. There was one riot cop in an awkward place, but he hesitated so didn’t have time to do much damage, and I managed to get into the ‘Ton and change maps only moments after the first MJ12 troops appeared. Inside the building I avoided the cops on my way to Paul’s apartment and climbed out the window. I climbed up the ladder as fast as possible and crawled back onto the roof where Jock was waiting for me. I was surprised I had only lost 12 health in each leg, that is much better than any pervious attempt I had tried like this. Feeling happy, I climbed onto the helicopter and settled back for the short trip to the Brooklyn Naval Shipyards.
  154.  
  155. The Shipyards
  156.  
  157. I found myself surrounded by high wire fences and apparently outside the Brooklyn Naval Shipyards. I opened the grate in the wall, crawled through it, and then proceeded to the main gate to talk with the monotone marine on guard. I was Vinny’s best buddy by now so they kindly gave me a key that I used to open the gates. The first place I went once inside was to the cluster of explosive barrels outside the ammo storage warehouse, via behind the office building to avoid the guard. I got behind one and pushed it, slowly, hiding a couple of times from the patrol, to underneath the window of the small office adjoining the larger office building. Then I went to attract the guard’s attention. I lured him to the barrel I had just laboriously pushed and then spent the next long while trying to get him to shoot the barrel blowing it up, without getting myself hurt. This took a few attempts, but eventually he threw a lam that bounced off the back wall and landed a few feet away. I dashed to the other side of the building and heard the explosion from there. When I got back I decided in hindsight that maybe the lam AND the barrel was a little overkill. Not only was the window I wanted shattered, but so were all the other windows, the outside door, both inside doors, various desk compartments and door of the cast iron safe inside. It was very useful though as now I just waltzed in, waltzing quite fast because of the security camera, and went to the small office in a way the building was designed to accommodate. (Well, sort of). In the office I found the code to another small office inside the main warehouse. I ran back past the camera and made my way to the entrance to this building. To get to the locked office I had to avoid the camera so I ran through the darkened room to the toilets, where I found the code letting me into the far side of the dockyards. Then I waited for the camera in the corner to look away before quickly darting out, punching the code into the keypad and entering my second necessary destination. In this room I got the key to the ammo storage warehouse from under the desk. I then ran out of the warehouse and stood in front of the large door leading to part of my supply of tnt.
  158.  
  159. I used my key to open the big door. It slid back revealing the interior, and that, luckily, the bots had not been activated yet. (I think it’s because I hadn’t set an alarm off. Can someone confirm this for me?). I quickly ran to the small control room around the corner to the left and put the pillar nearest me between myself and the bot at the far end of the room so it wouldn’t see me. In the first of the storage bays there were 2 crates of tnt which I wanted to get. I pressed the button to open the bay, and then waited a while to make sure the bots hadn’t reacted to me. Then I quickly ran out the door, down the steps and across the room to the bay. The bot at the far end had begun scanning, I assume because it picked up my movement but needed to check, so I waited some more time before picking up one of the tnt crates and running back with it to the control room. This I despotised on the floor and waited again. I did this two more times until all the tnt crates were with me, and the bots were still clueless. I still had to get them outside though, but this was easy. The pillar hid me from the far bot most of the time, so I could just pick them up, run outside and put them down again behind the building with the repair bot in it. I had to wait for the guard beyond the fence to move his patrol away from my zone of action before I could do this, but when he was gone there were no obstacles. Next I ran back to the large warehouse and picked up a small crate. I took it back to my tnt crates and placed it through the bottom blue tripwire, thus allowing me to ferry all my tnt crates through the small gap without letting the military bot out, and down to the small building with the leaking gas barrels in it. I left them here for later use.
  160.  
  161. Now that I had tnt ready to use in an easily (relatively) accessible place I crept through the small dark corridor between the ammo storage warehouse and the gassy building and waited for all the marines and bots to go away. The military bots outside the main warehouse were nice and co-operative, never bothering me again, but one of the marines was a constant menace. Nevertheless there were moments when he wasn’t watching, and I took one of these to run across the area and up the steps to the door leading to the other side of the base, the interesting bit. I used the bathroom code, 0909, to open the door, and stepped inside. Vinny was again helpful as the guard at reception let me through and told me about the code in the janitor’s locker. He also didn’t kill me which was nice. I went to the locker room, indeed made the same observation as the mechanic who inexplicably insisted on walking around in there, and took the code from the second locker from the right. Now an interesting thing happened. I was running down the steps to get on board the ship when Tong contacted me to point out my destination. Even though I had seen it many times before I thought it would be fun to go back and look at it again from the window. But when I was listening to Tong’s last words the MJ12 trooper below saw me and began running up the steps. Defenceless as I was I bolted for the locker room and hid in one of the toilet cubicles, but after a little while I heard gunfire. I ventured out to find the trooper and my friendly marine in a gunfight. Eventually the marine won, and while it didn’t really make a difference to my ability to get on the ship it doesn’t really matter, but it is interesting to note. Completely safe now I went down the remaining steps, used my ridiculously easy code to raise the ships ramp, and prepared to step onto the PRCS Cloudwall.
  162.  
  163. The PRCS Wallcloud
  164.  
  165. I reached the top of the ramp at about the same time as the ramp arrived at the ship’s deck. Ignoring the great expanse in front of me I made my way straight to the crew’s quarters up another small ramp. First things first I avoided the two patrolling sailors, one upstairs and one alternating both up and down stairs, climbed up the steps and crawled through the grate into the tunnel between the medical bay and the engineering room. I went to the medical room to get my legs healed, and in this room I also found the key to below decks and the code to raise the bridge in engineering. I thought the medical bay was a strange place to keep such information but there it was. Secondly I followed the patrolling sailor around his circuit a way before break off and crawling through the small airshaft which came out under the stairs leading to the upper level. Having avoided the camera’s gaze and the gaze of the sailor’s diagonal stance outside the armoury I ran up the stairs and made a whole lot of noise floundering around outside the operations room to try and entice the guards out. Then without waiting to see if they emerged I dashed back down the stairs and back into the air vent. However instead of coming out the other end this time I looked up and to the left. Then I climbed the ladder leading to the airshaft above the ceiling of the upper floor, a devilishly difficult thing to do in pitch-blackness. I crawled along this shaft until I came to the third grate in the ceiling opening into operations. The guards hadn’t been drawn outside, but they were both beside the far door which was good enough. I dropped to the floor and listened to their conversation about RX84 while getting the code to the captains quarters from the data cube on the ledge. The people on this ship are notoriously bad at security, or if they aren’t they should be. Then I crawled to the nearer door, pressed the button and crawled through it. I was right beside the captain’s door so I used my new code and went in. Here I found two more important pieces of information; the armoury code and the captain’s login and password. Notorious I say. I also found another copy of the below decks key. Then I surreptitiously crawled out of the room and back down the stairs. I went though the airshaft, waited for the sailor to pass, went down the stairs, then across the hallway avoiding the downstairs sailor, and down more stairs to the lower decks.
  166.  
  167. I used my key to open the locked door and went through. Down even more stairs I found myself in the big engine room. I did my preliminary preparation first. I went down the stairs and around the back of the engine room in a semi circle type path until I reached the bridge. I’d need to use it often quite soon so I used the code from the medical room to raise it. I then went to the camera on the right side, the bridge side, and made it lock onto me. Before it could sound the alarm I ran back towards the wall and around the corner. Because it was a fixed camera it would stay looking at the same position forever, until it moved while tracking something, and now it was facing the right wall and not the front of the room. This being successful I went to the other side of the room and did the same thing to the other camera, giving me free reign of the front of engineering. Now I had to move the guards in the little passage leading to the main corridor below decks. There is no way I can describe how I avoided these guards in detail, and indeed I did much too much remember. But basically each time I would give them the run around. I would lead them all over the room, forcing them into dead ends that only I could get out of, loosing them by running around objects, hiding in the dark or behind barrels, almost always get shot at least once in the process. And every time I would eventually end up in the small room across the bridge where no one could see me. They would stop looking I would come out and continue on my way. This particular time the guards ended up at the far right of the room where that camera could see them, although they would end up in different places every time, most of the time separated.
  168.  
  169. Having avoided the guards I ran along the corridor until I came to the engineer with the repair bot. I had the obligatory conversation even though I had no intention of following through on it, and afterwards I went straight for the two crates of tnt in the dark corner. I picked one up and took it to the nearby ladder leading to the huge fan blowing air upwards. I climbed up this ladder and, still holding my tnt crate, I got blown to the roof, which is a true in a literal sense but is probably quite an inappropriate phrase considering what I was carrying. I then pushed my way forwards and landed in the airshaft beside the camera. I dropped down the two drops and at the bottom turned right towards the helicopter bay. But I faced slightly to the left while moving forward so when I came to the T-junction I went down the shaft leading to the room infested with electricity. At the end of the shaft there was a grate. I opened this grate, inched out as far as I could without falling down, and chucked the tnt crate onto the overhead walk way, which was apparently like the plate of a capacitor, and blew up the first tri-hull wield. Happily, pretending to whistle to myself for this game limits your actions so severely, I went back along the shaft, turned left at the junction and crawled to the grate leading into the helicopter bay. I waited for the guards to move behind the building and dropped down via the cargo crates to the floor and ran down the corridor, past the camera and hid behind large crate back beside the engineer.
  170.  
  171. When I was certain nobody had followed me I picked up the second tnt crate and went back the way I had come, along the short corridor to the helicopter bay. Then I ran along the left wall, from hiding spot to hiding spot as to avoid the guards until I was close to the second tri-hull wield. Then I discarded all cover, ran out, chucked my crate blindly at the wield and then ran as fast as I could back to the tunnel getting shot all the way. I ran along the tunnel, having my legs shot to orange by the guards that followed me, and again I hid in the pitch black spot beside the engineer. This time people did follow me, but they couldn’t find me in the blackness so didn’t hang around long. When they had gone I crept out and ran along the corridor back to engineering. Due to the absence of cameras watching the doors I was able to run for cover past the guard who was looking towards the left side of the room, but he saw me as I was going up the stairs through the cracks. I didn’t want him waiting for me on the landing when I came down with my next tnt crate so I gave him the run around, finishing by hiding across the bridge. Then I sneaked out and onto the upper decks. First, obviously, I went upstairs to the medbot. Then having healed myself I went to the armoury. First I had to wait in the medbay for the sailors to go a long way away, and then I waited for the camera to begin turning away from the armoury door. At the oppertune moment I rushed to the door, entered the code as fast as possible, and rushed inside hiding around the corner less than a second before the camera would have sounded the alarm.
  172.  
  173. I waited for the sailor’s rounds to take them away again and picked up the third tnt crate. When the camera was again facing another direction I quickly dashed across to the stairs and went back down below decks, avoiding the sailor again on the lower floor. I didn’t have far to go this time. I was able to avoid the guards and made my way to the wield point on the right side of the room. First I pushed the explosive barrel in the area as far away from the wield as possible, and then I positioned myself as far away as possible so that the tnt crate would still blow up the wield point. I chucked the tnt, darted around the corner and ran as straight for the bridge. Unfortunately this time I was no very lucky. One of the guards must have been very close, and I managed to run right passed him on my way. By the time I got to my safe house my health was as follows. Head: 4, Torso: 25, Left Arm: 76, Right Arm: 76, Left Leg: 79, Right Leg: 100. Not the best outcome but I survived. There wasn’t any more risk now though so I sneaked back to the above decks again. I went to the medical room for my 10 minutely check up, and then went back to the armoury.
  174.  
  175. I picked up the fourth crate, avoided the camera’s gaze as I ran to the stairs and had serious thoughts about using the crate on it instead of something useful, and went down to the lower decks again. Conveniently my next destination was across the bridge. I went down the stars from the landing and since both guards had ended up at the back of the room somewhere I ran along the front. I passed the rightmost camera which was already facing the wall and couldn’t follow me any further due to the ledge that got in its way and went across the bridge. In the next room there was a window. I threw my crate into this room, prudently stepped back around the corner and listened to the sound breaking glass, muffled by the sound of breaking tnt. Suddenly everyone outside started running around, but I just sat in my safe room and waited. When everyone had settled down I sneaked out and went above decks. Now that I had run out of the ships tnt I had to go outside to get some. I left the ships interior and ran down the ramp. The MJ12 troops didn’t see me so I ran through the main building, past the friendly marine, and back to the small door to which the code had been left in a toilet cubicle. I opened this door and looked around. The military bot patrolling had just reached the crane so I sat tight and waited for it to go back towards the entrance of the shipyard. The door kept shutting so I had to keep on opening it, maybe 8 times. After a while it left so I crept down the steps, did some more waiting for the marine mentioned earlier to go away and dashed to my tnt cache.
  176.  
  177. I picked up one of these and made my way back, past the crane, up the stairs, through the door, past reception, down the steps, up the ramp, up another ramp, and down the steps to the lower decks without a hitch. However when I got to the landing I had a problem. One of the guards had followed me without my noticing and was on the landing too. If I’d been more careful this would have easily been avoided, but it was done. Luckily he wasn’t facing me at the time. I took my tnt crate to the right and ducked under the railing and onto the ledge just above the camera’s sight. Then I dropped down to just beside the bridge without anyone seeing me. I went across the bridge and climbed out the window I had just blown up. I took my tnt crate along the pipe outside and threw it at the fourth tri-hull wield. It blew it up and people started shooting me. I hadn’t expected the guards to be so close, but I ran back across the pipe and back to my safe area. I was almost done so I patiently waited for quite a while before venturing out. The guards were nowhere to be seen so I crept down from the bridge and went above decks. Doing so I discovered both guards standing in the dark close to the wall hiding the wield I had just blown up. They were both facing the wall, and I wished they had been like that in the first place, oblivious to anyone moving around in the engineering room. I went up the stairs to the medbay, and then went back the same way as before until I arrived at the 0909 door again. Due to the changing of the map the military bot was out of the way this time, so I just had to wait for the pesky marine to move before running across to my tnt crates.
  178.  
  179. This was the last one, number six. I hugged it to my body was if daring anyone to come and take it as I took it back to the ship. I carried it below decks and into the corridor without any problems thanks to the nice guards’ vigil of the wall, and this time went to the right. The last tri-hull wield was heavily guarded, stealth was out of the question so I took the blunderbuss approach. I rushed into the room ignoring everyone around me, hurled the crate at the wield and rushed out again, getting shot from behind as I did so. I thought that if I was killed there should be a button to press to raise your arms in the air like Elias from the movie Platoon, I thought it would be quite appropriate imagery too considering. But I didn’t die; I just got shot in the arms and legs. Right Arm: 88, Left Arm: 88, Right leg: 27, Left Leg: 76. I hid in the pitch-blackness behind the huge crate around the corner in the corridor, so even though at one point the guards were standing less than half a meter away they couldn’t see me. After they went away I went back upstairs to the medbot just to be on the safe side. That medbot was acting like a security blanket. Then I went back down and positioned myself outside the room I had just been in.
  180.  
  181. Now I had to reverse the flow of the pumps with the computer in this heavily patrolled room. Not the best position possible, so I decided on the only even remotely reasonable, and maybe only possible, approach I can think of. It involves a subtle mixture of gaul and stupidity. I waited for the guard that patrols the corridor to come out and patrol the corridor again, checked that the guard on the platform above was not facing me, and strolled right in. I turned left, walked towards the computer and hid in a small gap between the computer desk and some electronic equipment of some sort to make myself less immediately obvious. As soon as I had crouched I flipped the switch on the wall and opened the computer screen as fast as possible. I typed in the captain’s login and password and quickly used the special function as I began to hear the surprised shouts. Then I quit and ran out very fast. I ran from one side of the room, the guards ran around the machinery in the middle from the other side, and we met at the door. I must say I was positively shocked at their behaviour! No pleasantries were exchanged at all; they just pulled out their guns and began shooting at me. Affronted at this impoliteness I left. I didn’t bother hiding this time, there wasn’t much point, I wasn’t coming back, so I just ran above decks. The ship was rocking back and forth in the most alarming manner and issuing explosions at irregular intervals, but this did not stop me from visiting the medbot. This time it was absolutely necessary otherwise I’d get stuck later on. When I was back at full health I avoided the remarkably unobservant sailors who were supposed to be looking out for things that might sabotage the ability of the ship to go to different places in the world, I’d say that explosions that rock you off your feet could be interpreted as such, and went down the ramp and back into the shipyard. When I got to the crane the military bot was back. I waited for it to leave and for the marine to .GO. .AWAY! He was really irritating by now. When it was safe I ran into the interior of the crane and took the lift to the top, crouching so nobody would see me. At the top I went to the control room and pressed the button to lower…something, I don’t know what it is… to allow me to run across it and lightly drop to the ground. Then I ran to where Jock’s helicopter was waiting and was quickly taken away.
  182.  
  183. Dowd's Mausoleum
  184.  
  185. I was dropped off in a small car park, outside a cemetery. Not a very inviting place. High walls, large imposing gate, crushed cars outside etc. Nevertheless I walked to the entrance and pressed the button. I spoke to the gatekeeper who let me inside, and then went straight to Dowd’s Mausoleum. Here I picked up a small crate and took it to the servants quarters by the gate. Inside I put the crate down, moved the picture on the wall and punched in the guessable code of 1234. This moved the bookcase exposing the generator room, with the generator inside. I moved the small crate beside the invisible tnt crate that provides the explosion for the generator and went back to Dowd. I picked up the second small crate and this time took it into the servant’s bedroom. The servant stood facing me, I threw the crate on his head. Considering how often I’ve had to do this lately I’ve come to the conclusion that this must be an absolutely normal occurrence in the world of Deus Ex which is why nobody ever reacts until the second throw. After the second throw he got mad however. I darted out of the room, into the generator room, jumped on my small crate, jumped on the invisible tnt crate and jumped on top of the generator itself where I crouched. Soon afterwards the servant followed. When he saw me perched up there he pulled out a stealth pistol and began shooting, terribly inaccurately, at me. After a while one of his stray bullets hit the generator beneath me, destroying it, but none hit either the tnt crate or myself. As soon as this happened I moved to the right to sit on the tnt crate, moved the small crate into the doorway so he couldn’t get in, and waited for him to become friendly again. I wasn’t going to jeopardize health I needed later by staying in sight. Eventually I looked around the corner to see that he had decided to be civil again, so I came out of the room and went to speak with Dowd.
  186.  
  187. If Dowd had been at all curious about why I had been running in and out moving crates around he didn’t show it. We had a long conversation, I said sorry about not finding any ambrosia although I didn’t really mean it, I had a spare tnt crate so I could have got it if I wanted. When we finished I went out the secret sliding door under the steps as Jock told me about the MJ12 troopers patrolling the cemetery. I ran along the tunnel I was in until I came to an open grave. I climbed up the ladder in front of me and looked out to see the trooper’s walking around, remarkably unobservantly. It didn’t really seem fair that if one of them saw me for more than half a second I would die, but Jock can land right in the middle of them and be as invisible as an invisible tnt crate. Having made sure there weren’t many troopers close to the helicopter I slowly rose from the grave and then quickly rushed behind the nearest of the four bushes lining the path to the mausoleum in a square shape. I crouched behind this bush for a few seconds to make sure anyone who thought they might have seen me decided they hadn’t seen me, and then swiftly glided diagonally to the opposite bush across the path. After waiting for a while here all hell broke loose. I jumped up and ran as fast as I could for the helicopter. I heard the shouts behind me but didn’t turn around before I safely had Jock between myself and vengeful troopers with guns. Jock seemed to think it was time for a conversation. I had been ready for a conversation before I let the shipyards; I was not ready for one when at any moment a trooper could find there way behind the helicopter with me. So I hurried through as quickly as possible and got on. In the miniscule amount of time between finishing the conversation and getting in the seat beside Jock the troopers all let fly, but only managed to hit the helicopter (probably more damaging than any sabotage I would think but the game didn’t notice), and I was away.
  188.  
  189. Paris - Beginnings
  190.  
  191. Paris was my next destination. Jock dropped me off on the roof of a vacant building and flew away, so the first step was to get down. I went to the top of a large lift shaft down to the bottom floor and positioned myself next to the metal beam that jutted downwards diagonally from the roof. Right on top of it I slowly inched my way towards the edge until I fell and landed on the end, which I could stand on, and then dropped onto the ledge around the lift shaft on the first level. Getting to the next level was slightly harder. I went around the ledge until I was opposite where the door of the lift would open when it stopped on that level, if there was a lift that is. There is a door frame around it which is wide enough to stand on, and is low enough so you can crouch on it under the ledge I was now standing on. To jump onto it I had a short run up, obviously limited by the width of the ledge, and then I jumped towards the doorframe. I had to jump quite hard, but not as hard as possible, otherwise my head would hit the ledge and I would fall to the bottom. Then in mid air I crouched bringing my legs up under me. This allowed me to fit through the Denton sized gap under the ledge to land on the doorframe. Then I dropped to the second ledge. From here there was another metal beam running diagonally to the third ledge. I inched my way onto it from the right angle and direction and half crawled half slid down it, thus reaching the inside of the building without loosing any health.
  192.  
  193. Now I was able to go through the doorway on this level, leaving the shaft, and move around the rest of the building. I went to see the green greasy greasels lady first. I found her, surrounded by her cats, muttering to herself in English even though she was French. I had an interesting, if somewhat confusing conversation with her and managed to eke out the code to the large door on the ground floor closing off the radiation: 0001, stupid, stupid, but very useful, password. Then I left her, her muffled words echoing through the wreck she was living in, and made my way down the stairs to this big door. I had decided earlier not to bother trying to find my way through the airshaft below the service lift. It only saves a little bit of health, which isn’t worth it since I’m not getting hurt again before the next medbot, and I can not stress enough how difficult it is trying to find your way down there in pitch blackness. Often you think you’re going right, but don’t seem to be getting to the hatch, so you turn your light on and find that you’ve been trying to crawl through a solid wall for the past 30 seconds. I wasn’t going to choreograph my actions and learn them by heart to do this, so instead I just used the code to the door and ran through the radiation. I reached safety beside the repair bot with 16 torso health. It was enough so I proceeded down the ladder and into the sewers. I made my way through them, keeping away from danger, until I came to the last tunnel leading to eventual salvation in the form of the metro, but a greasel was plodding up it towards me. I fell back went around the corner to my left, and then turned right into the dark dead end and waited in the corner. I’m not sure if greasels can see in the dark, if so it was a hopeless gesture, but contrary to real life I felt slightly safer in the shadows. I kept on waiting and eventually the greasel came into view. It didn’t see me, it walked right past me instead, so in a fit of overconfidence I began to crawl out of my hiding spot to make my way to the tunnel. Unsurprisingly the greasel saw me, so I had a sudden change of plans. I ran for it, I ran all over the sewers in an effort to shake it off, but only managed to pick up two more. In desperation I decided to see how lucky I was so I sprinted down the tunnel with three greasels on my tail. When I reached the end I threw myself on the ladder, clambered up and flailed wildly at the manhole cover, expecting at any moment to get three globs of greasel spit in my behind. Miraculously it didn’t happen, the greasels must have not come around the final corner. I thanked [insert deity here] and emerged onto the street, into the domain of the MJ12 commandos.
  194.  
  195. My first warning of this was when a rocket sped inches over my head and detonated on the crate a few meters away. Remembering my 16 torso health I sped into the metro and hid in the ventilation shafts until the danger was gone. When the commandos that chased me had returned to patrolling my next task was to get to the key to the catacombs, and I would do this by killing the commando with the key, the one patrolling around the office building. To do this I gathered my equipment from various places in the metro station. 3 small crates, 3 unbreakable crates, 2 white rubbish bins, and 1 chair. This is not the definitive list of necessary items to kill this commando, but it’s what I used. One piece at a time, avoiding the commando's patrol when necessary, I took the equipment up the steps and deposited it near the corner of the building above the metro station. I hid behind my pile to wait for the commando to pass to give myself the maximum working time, and then placed two of the small crates and one of the white rubbish bins across the street between the building and the outer wall. Then I waited again. When the commando came back he tried to walk past the crates, couldn’t, did the funny manoeuvres that the AI always does when confronted with immovable barriers, and eventually ended up persistently trying to walk through the absence of space between the rubbish bin and the outer wall. When he was too busy doing this to notice I carefully crept out and pushed the two small crates around him more closely to barricade him on all 4 sides. It was still possible for him to get out though, so I added the other rubbish bin to the mix so that I could better position the small crates. Then I put the breakable crates on top of the small crates so the barrier was too high for him to walk over. He was still using the slopped wall to jump very high however so I added the chair on top of the rubbish bin next to the wall which seemed to hem him in properly. Now completely oblivious to me unless I stood right in front of him I stood on the middle breakable crate and began the long task of throwing the last small crate on his head over and over and over and over etc again. This was going to take a long time because he kept jumping, actually I suppose a more accurate description is sliding, but it looked like jumping, up the sloped wall so I had to throw correctly to hit him on the ground each time. Adding to the difficulty, each time the crate would bounce to some strange place and I would have to sneak there to get it. But after just a few throws I noticed that if I threw it right the crate would land on the commando’s head and stay there, stopping him from jumping. I tried leaving it there and using one of the breakable crates instead. This was much easier and faster. I was able to stand in one place with the crate centimetres from my target and drop it, the commando would yelp and I would catch it in mid air and drop it again. I was able to hurt him up to twice a second this way. I don’t know how long this went on for, I wasn’t counting but it could easily have been 30 times, although it probably wasn’t quite that much. Eventually however he screamed and fell to the ground. I moved the crates from around him, took his key, trotted over the catacomb entrance and entered.
  196.  
  197. Catacomb 3D
  198.  
  199. I moved on into the catacombs. Down a dingy spiral staircase, carved out of cracked bricks and soggy grey stone. Past primitive burning barrels, set initially to keep the evil beat at bay, and into an underground warren of dark tunnels, ancient arches, and echoes that go on forever. A bastion of the primeval, extruding malice and distrust. Where horror, torture and lust reign supreme and safety, is never assured. Someone had attached a gas grenade to the wall, spoiling the atmosphere somewhat. I disabled it and continued down the hall way in front of me until I came to a pillar. I hid behind it until an MJ12 trooper appeared at the end of the corridor, stared in my direction for a few moments, and then went back to his patrol. I silently followed him, picking up a human femur as I did so partially regaining the eerie atmosphere of before, and stalked rather than crawled to the last room on the trooper’s patrol. Then I headed towards the small dark tunnel linking this room with the hallway the commando was patrolling, but just before I reached it I threw the leg bone past the trooper, gaining enough time to disappear, never to be seen. By that trooper anyway. At the end of my tunnel I waited for the commando to pass, and then followed him around his beat, before breaking off and heading down the tunnel leading to the entrance to Silhouette’s hideout. I depressed the brick by telling it sad stories, and a portion of the brink wall opened for me. This door I ran inside, and was passed by a Silhouette member rushing past me shotgun drawn. As I ran I heard shooting, but soon I was too far away to pick up the sounds anymore, and I was talking to Chad at that point anyway. Chad was very nice. He gave me the key to the blast door. I took the key there, running over the dead body of the Silhouette member who had come off second best against a commando, opened the blast door, and walked through it. In the corridor to my right there was another patrolling commando, so I went down the one to my left. Not a particularly hard decision to make. At the end there was a tnt crate. I picked this up and took it back out through the blast door and to the room the first commando was patrolling. I avoided him using all the pillars in the room, and then avoided the trooper coming the other way than me by hiding behind a pillar as he waked past. I passed the gas grenade, climbed up the stairs trying no to bump the flaming barrels and drop my tnt crate, and then emerged back into the Paris night.
  200.  
  201. I avoided the two commandos outside that I hadn’t killed and made my way back into the metro. Having placed my crate of tnt next to the more modern part of the station I then went back to visit the dead commando. Not out of any sense of compassion however, or a deep seated need to make up for or try to condone what I had done, but because his carcass was taking up three small crate which I needed. One by one I took these into the metro and piled them up by the tnt crate. Then I went to check where the bot was. I waited out if sight for the bot to make another loop and then in the short space of time while it was facing the other direction quickly ferried two of the small crates into the first room off the larger hallway. Then I waited again while the patroling bot walked into that room. Now I quickly picked up the third crate and dashed into there with it, and while it was facing the wall, scanning where nothing scannable could be, I arranged the crates so the bot was trapped in one half of the room. Now I had almost complete freedom of movement in the metro, very useful when carrying around crates which later on you are going to use to kill people. The hallway secure I went back to my tnt crate and picked it up. Then I carried it to the far end of the hallway, careful when crossing the doorway the bot could still see and shoot out of, and stood hidden behind a wall from the two troopers, but in full view of the commando in the restroom. Eventually the commando saw me. He stood stock still staring at me as in shock for a few moments, then said something and ran in another direction. Admittedly it was the right direction since it would eventualy lead to me, but it was funny. When I judge that the commando was about to run between the two troopers I darted around the corner, launched my tnt crate in the air, and then dodged back again to hear BOOM! When I slowly peeped around again everyone was gone. I went to the medbot and regained 100 torso health, and then ran out of the metro, across the street and back through the catacombs to the blast door.
  202.  
  203. Here I followed my earlier path to the tnt, and then after checking to make sure the commando couldn’t see me, continued on through the tunnels and past bunker II. At some point I was contacted by Tracer Tong. He told me I had the chance to take out a team of MJ12 troopers. He told me to use my head. I told him “man, you’re supposed to have been monitoring my progress since I found your damn glowing sword for you. But have you been paying attention to what I’ve been doing for even a minute? Or have you been too busy watching TV to notice that I’M NOT IN A POSITION TO DO THAT! Or maybe you you’ve been watching old 20th century Jackie Chan movies, but if you’d been watching me you might have noticed that in my time at the UNATCO academy they didn’t teach me how to use my hands for anything other than picking up boxes! And now YOU tell ME to use my head! I mean really, what do you think I’ve been doing for the past few days? You’re supposed to be some elite high tech science dude, but I seem to be the only person here with any intelligence! etc”. Or at least that’s what I would have said if the infolink was two way. Now that I had got that off my chest I continued on my journey.
  204.  
  205. After some twists and turns I was greeted by a ramp and some of this team mentioned earlier. I slipped down silently and hid behind of pillar at the bottom while one of them walked past me and headed in the opposite direction to me. At the end of this short tunnel I waited in a very precarious position while the second trooper walked right by me and went down another ramp to stand beside the ladder leading to the repair bot. I used this short time out of sight of both troopers to jump past the stone cross and squirm into the dark gap, presumably made to put dead bodies in. I thought about getting my commando and putting him in there, but decided against it. I waited beside the opening to the other side for the commando to pass by, and then dashed through the hole, into bunker III, and then dropped into the tunnel of water leading to the other side of the bunker, there for no apparent reason. Upon reaching the end I was gasping for air, and a quick check of my health showed that I had lost exactly 50 points in my torso, not a particularly good position to be in since now I couldn’t go back that way with untrained swimming. I think that was a particularly mean trick played by the developers. I waited behind the crates for the WIB to begin her patrol to the entrance of the circular bit of the bunker and then sneaked to her bench to steal her sewer key. When I had it I sneaked back, picked up the tnt crate beside the entrance to the water tunnel, and slowly crawled with it to near the entrance of the bunker, staying out of sight from the WIB behind pillars. When I reached the last pillar I was prompted by the necessity of escaping the commando which had just rounded the far pillar and was coming towards me to do something. I blindly charged out, chucked the tnt crate somewhere between the camera and the turret in the bunker, and then launched myself up the ladder to the left. I was shot at, but missed, by the WIB, and then disappeared onto the top accompanied by commando rockets. While I hid in the corner somebody turned an alarm on and everyone in the bunker began running to the steps on the opposite side of the room and come and get me. By the time the first commando appeared at the other end of the balcony the last trooper had started up the stairs, so I calmly went down the ladder and, completely unopposed, waltzed out of the bunker. I even rescued the hostages Chad had mentioned earlier because it was so easy and because Chad was so nice. I then stealthily passed the troopers still patrolling outside the bunker, easily avoided the commando, and went back to tell Chad that the hostages had been saved. Then I went past the commando, trooper and gas grenade on the wall back to the metro where I got my health back, and then again avoided everyone, used the sewer key on the sewer door, and followed these new tunnels until I was under the Champs Elysées.
  206.  
  207. Champs Elysées
  208.  
  209. My path took me to some sewers, apparently under the Champs Elysées. At the T-junction I turned left, and then climbed up the ladder leading to the unlocked sewer manhole. After waiting at the top for a little while, listening to the conversation between the two MJ12 troopers, the whole area began shaking. I opened the lid and watched the Military bot on patrol, hiding at the appropriate times. It stopped right in front of me, looked around, and then began its slow march back up the street. When it was about half way to the end I quickly dashed out of the hole and ran into the blackness that is the back street leading to the backpacker’s hostel. I heard people notice me, but nobody gave chase. I ran around the first corner, passed the street sweeper noticeably not getting on with his life, but then stopped short of running out into the middle of the road. I stopped, looked, listened, and then lurked in the shadows while the second security bot did its patrol. As it passed me I ran out behind it, and then disappeared up another side street eventually leading to the back entrance of the café. This I went though. Tong contacted me while I was walking through and told me to have a taste of wine for him. I thought that if television was really more interesting than me then why was I doing this? But I persevered and went to talk to Jaime. He gave me Gunther’s kill phrase, the only really interesting piece of information he had. I filled in some time with meaningless chatter, and then left again. I ran back across the street, avoiding the security bot, and this time went in the front entrance of the club. Through the front door and down a hall a man was selling tickets. I had plenty of money from my UNATCO days, err day, and I wouldn’t have to buy anything more, so I paid the 300 credits and used my new key to go inside. Then I ran straight up the stairs and went to talk to the young woman sitting at a table in the corner. I asked her if she knew where Nicolette Duclare was. She actually was Nicolette but she was pretending she wasn’t, so she told JC that she would talk to Nicolette, thus tricking JC. So when I went out back quite a lot less time than 5 minutes later JC asked if Nicolette had decided not to show. Nicolette had to explain that she was Nicolette, a situation which could easily have been avoided by just saying who she was in the first place. But now this that all cleared up we both got into Jock’s helicopter and flew away, leaving Gunther staring dejectedly at the ground.
  210.  
  211. The Duclare Estate
  212.  
  213. Jock dropped Nicolette and myself off outside the Duclare Mansion. I looked around, and then, with no particular preference, ran around the right side of the building until I reached the back door. MJ12 had boarded it up, but I just jumped and then ducked through a gap in the wood, landing in the room beyond. I looked back and marvelled at the handiwork of the organisation aspiring to rule the world, and was not impressed. Soon afterwards Nicolette appeared and shattered the entire construction with her fairy footsteps, MJ12 had to be stopped! When we were together again I ran up the stairs onto the passageway on the second floor. Here I found Beth’s bedroom door key on a small table behind a vase, and then continued down the passageway to unlock the door. After stepping through I crossed the room and looked behind the painting on the wall. Nicolette wondered why MJ12 had not taken the painting. I wondered why MJ12 had not looked in the most obvious place in the entire house. I picked up the key to the cellar, took the login and password from the datacube beside it, and then went back downstairs. Through the dinning room, the kitchen, and down some more steps I came to the locked cellar door, which I opened and walked through. In the dim interior I found a candle stick, which I pulled duly opening a secret passage. I wondered if the cream of MJ12’s cream who had been sent to assassinate one of the Illuminati’s highest leaders and one of the biggest threats to MJ12 would have found the switch even if they had found the key. Then I wondered why MJ12, probably the organisation with the most resources in the world, could not spare an extra lam or gep rocket to search the cellar of one of the most important people involved in the conspiracy. I wonder too much.
  214.  
  215. In this new section of the cellars I went to one of the explosive barrels and pushed it until it was sitting under the pane of glass in the far corner of the room near the roof. Then I picked up a small crate and crawled with it up a log of wood leaning against the wall leading to a small shaft, which didn’t seem to have any point to it from a practical point of view. Nevertheless I crawled through it, and when I reached the end I chucked my crate on top of the barrel on the floor. It exploded, shattering the glass and allowing me to crawl along the small ledge around the side of the room and enter Beth Duclare’s secret computer room. I went to the computer, used the login “bduclare” and password “nico_angel” to login, and then sent the message to Everett. Everett himself contacted me now and told me a whole lot of stuff. While this was happening Nicolette smashed several tons of wood into splinters coming up the stairs to ask me the question “what is it?” I told here, and then we went back through the house and out the back door. At this point Deus Ex got mildly pornographic. I would have stuck around but I had a cathedral to raid, so I disappeared into the maze. MJ12 had placed three commandos guarding the entrance to the sewers (not the house). I quietly avoided their sight as I moved through the maze and entered the sewers. Then I embarked on my journey to the Cathedral of the Knight’s Templar.
  216.  
  217. The Cathedral of the Knights Templar
  218.  
  219. The sewers led to a ladder which emerged at the end of a dead end street. Further up the street towards the cathedral there was a locked gate. I picked up three of the small crates lying near me and one by one piled them on top of each other, and then climbed over this obstacle. Now I ran to the corner and looked around to see a commando studiously studying the wall. I used this opportunity to run around behind him, as far as the street allowed, before he understandably bored of his inspection and began heading to where I had just been. Now while his back was to me I continued up the ever widening road, quickly to give the snipers on the bridge overhead the least time to see me, and then hid beside the door opening to the stairs leading to said bridge. Here I waited for the military bot patrolling the area to approach. It was close when I arrived at the door so I didn’t have to wait long. It stopped almost under the bridge, did its scanning thing, and then turned around and began slowly walking back the way it had come. When it had gone a little distance I ran out behind it, and hiding from the snipers again I moved into the enclosed area behind a series of arches and ran past the bot. Then of course I had to wait for the bot to pass me again, very, very, slowly. But I passed the time reading all about the cathedral at the information console I was standing beside. Eventually however the bot did pass me and continued its patrol almost to the beginning of the bridge leading to the cathedral itself. After it passed me I ran out after it, making sure neither the commando nor the trooper patrolling around the metro entrance saw me, and then hid my six foot frame behind the very small pole of indeterminate purpose. Remarkably small considering my baggy coat made me look bigger than I really was, and I’m was already quite big. It was enough though, and I crouched behind it as the bot scanned the area ahead of it and then turned around to start its patrol again. As it walked past my pole I moved my body to keep the pole between it and the highly sensitive extremely expensive highest quality military scanning implements the bot possessed. When it had left I emerged from my hiding place, probably like a cartoon character does after hiding behind a beanpole I imagine, and made my way to the start of the bridge. I wouldn’t have had enough time to make it across now, particularly since the commando patrolling it was already beginning to cross the other end, so I ducked behind another pole to the right and waited. After quite a while I heard footsteps, and then the commando strode into view and stood beside the pole I was precariously hiding behind. Then he turned around and began walking back again. I moved out behind him and followed, at his pace, all the way to the cathedral grounds. Eventually we made it though, and when we officially entered the courtyard I broke off and hid myself behind a large trough with planets growing in it.
  220.  
  221. Now I had to wait for the opportune moment. It took a while, but eventually circumstances changed to allow for my next move. The commando had gone back onto the bridge and would now probably take twenty or so minutes to appear again, the security bot patrolling the side of the cathedral had scanned my end and had begun to walk away, and the trooper with the assault shotgun had turned around and begun walking past the main doors, therefore looking away from where I wanted to be. I ran behind him and then raced after the security bot, since the period of time between the bot’s retreat and the trooper’s had been quite long. As it turned out I didn’t have much time at all. As I hurled myself at the trellis after racing down the side of the building I heard the bot begin scanning, which meant it had reach the end of it’s patrol and was about to turn around. Then just as I reached the top and flopped onto the stone roof I heard the click of a gun. But no firing, I had made it. I waited here for a while, reflecting as I did so on the uses for a trellis on the side of the building, it was in the shade all the time so it would be no use for growing planets on. Then when I heard the bot striding away again I began to move. I climbed up one of the beams onto the roof of the Templar library. Then I walked to the edge of the roof near the window and jumped onto the pillar jutting out diagonally and downwards from the roof and climbed up this. I heard the sniper in the window react, but before he could do anything I was standing above him with several feet of stone between myself and his gun barrel. From here it was a short crawl to the bridge linking the two cathedral buildings together.
  222.  
  223. I crouched on the thin ledge on the outside of the building, looking around the jutting out piece of wall every so often to check where the sniper patrolling the bridge was. When I first looked around he was walking towards me. I waited while he walked into the chamber at the top of the building I was outside, and then as soon as he walked out again I slid around the jutting wall. I dropped onto the bridge itself when he was far enough away, and crawled inside. Immediately I made my way down the stairs, so he wouldn’t see me on his return journey, and was confronted with the back of the sniper who had heard me earlier. This would be easy except for a bug which means that a large section of the upraised ledge around the edge of the stairs is missing, even though the texture is there. I don’t know if everyone has this problem or just me, but it means I can’t sneak behind him because he always hears me falling off when I reach the bug. So instead I tried the rushing tactic. I got as close as possible to him, and then stood up, jumped onto the ledge, and ran down the stairs and into the Templar Library as fast as possible. After a few attempts I even managed it without getting shot in the head. I ran to the end of the library and hid in the scarce shadows until I was sure there was no pursuit, then picked up the main doors key and began down the stairs to the sleeping quarters. There were two commandos down there, the first one patrolling the corridor and both rooms off it. Part of this patrol involved looking up the stairs I was coming down, so I stopped at the bend and waited for him to check I wasn’t there, which he did, even though I was there, if partially hidden by a wall watching. When he went away I crept down and hid under the table which is a magical place where I was completely invisible even though I was in full view of the first commando as he walked towards me up the hall. I waited for this commando to check both rooms and look up the stairs again, and then when he began walking away from me down the hall I quickly followed him. He went to the far room first, so I raided the near room and stole a pillow from the bed. I took this back under the table just in time since I crawled under as the commando was walking up the hall towards me again. I waited here with my pillow for the commando to look up the stairs, and then as soon as he turned around and began moving I began crawling out from under the table, for I needed all the time I could get to complete my next covert operation. I crept into the small room with the second commando in it as far as possible without touching him. Here I stood up. I aimed my pillow high and threw it over the commando’s shoulder into the far corner of the room. He turned to look at it, giving me a tiny space I could move into. Right behind him now I grasped the information in the data cube, and crouched again to make my way back under the table seconds before the first commando appeared out of the corridor. He did his thing, and then I was free to go back up the stairs and into the library again. The sniper by the window outside had gone back to counting the number of times the bot on the ground went back and forth, so at the bottom of the steps I jumped onto the ledge and crawled along it, right behind his back until I was on the verge of falling into the bug. Then I jumped up and ran as fast as possible up the stairs, out onto the bridge, and then around the outside of the building to where I had been before. I was lucky the sniper had been at the other end of the bridge facing away when I made my mad dash.
  224.  
  225. I was now in the same situation as earlier, but with slightly harder goals this time. Now I had to get into the other building. As before I waited for the patrolling sniper to walk into chamber at my end, but this time as soon as he did so I began running, taking the chance that he might hear me, towards the other end. About two thirds of the way across I stopped running and began crawling as I approached the second chamber, which followed the traditional timeless rules of FPS and RGP games since the beginning. Almost exactly the same map layout plus more enemies equals new, harder, level. Again luckily the situation was in my favour. The sniper inside the room was facing the wall as I entered, and I had just enough time to crawl onto the stairs leading down. A second later and he would have seen me, I saw him beginning to turn as my vision of him was blocked by the wall as I descended. Now I was confronted by another sniper, but this time facing away from the window, and straight towards me. Stealth was impossible, so instead I just jumped over the edge and fell all the way down to the floor, landing beside the kitchens. I was hurt, my torso was at 52 and both legs at 36, but even unaugmented nanite enhanced legs can, it seems, withstand falling from three floors up onto stone, so I was fine to continue on. I picked myself up, ran up the steps, turned left at the first door and ran along the corridor, past the gold vault, and stopped beside the doorway to the right. With patients the next bit could easily have been done without a hiccup, but for some reason I didn’t have much at this point. (I really don’t know why I didn’t want to spend an extra minute doing it right). Rashly, after waiting for the trooper patrolling around the pillar in the room beyond to disappear behind it, I crawled out and hid behind it myself. But I didn’t hide myself from the camera when I did so. So when I then crawled to the large door and used the code I got from the data cube on the keypad the camera set off the alarm. I managed to avoid getting shot by the turret as I ran through the door, but the trooper did get me and I got a shotgun blast to the side, which took my torso health down to 12. I managed to escape though and I hid for a time behind the stairs on the hologram side of the room. And eventually I heard the trooper go away.
  226.  
  227. I trotted out. I rounded the steps and waited while Gunther ran up to me. We had an interesting conversation, which concluded with Gunther doing a little dance and blowing up. I have no idea why, was it something I said? Interested as I was at this sudden occurrence of madness from one who seemed to have his head more firmly stuck in reality than much of the world (which isn’t saying much), I headed over to the computer. I logged in using some more numbers from the data cube, and did what I had to do. Which incidentally is not what a man has to do since men don’t often raid cathedrals guarded by troops of a man who wants to rule the world for a another man who wants to rule the world but can’t right now. They also don’t have to extract themselves out of big messes like this one. I, however did. I talked to Walton Simons, ran up the stairs, carefully avoided the trooper with the sawd off shotgun this time and made my way to the end of the corridor. The sniper was still facing my direction, so I quickly ran down the stairs before he could react. Here I used the main door key to open one of the side doors, and smacked my head in frustration. Why hadn’t I just used this fabulous concept of ground based access between buildings in the first place instead of leaping from three stories up to avoid men wanting to kill me, and possessing the equipment to do it? But it was done, and I had to get out now. I waited in the doorway until the bot patrolling the immediate area had reached it’s furthest point away and was almost around the other side of the building, and until the trooper outside had walked past in the opposite direction, and then ran straight for the trough I had hidden behind earlier. I waited in the darkness for the commando on the bridge to come back across, which took a long time by the way, before running across it myself. At the other side I checked to see where the military bot was, and seeing it was walking in the other direction I ran down the steps into the metro, past all the police and down to the station platform. Here I met up with Toby Atanwe. We did some drugs together, and then I blacked out.
  228.  
  229. Everett's House
  230.  
  231. I woke up with someone I barley knew. I didn’t know where I was or how I got there or what I was doing there. Nevertheless I persevered. I listened to what Atanwe had to say, and then began the long trek to find Morgan Everett. I went through the kitchen, down the stairs, through the storage room, around the corner, through the aquarium, up the steps around the corner and along the corridor. Half way along I turned left. After talking to Alex I regained my 156 health from the medbot in the next room, and then continued my way along the corridor until I came face to face with Everett. We had an interesting conversation, he told me that I had to go to the Vandenburg to uplink to the milnet and that my pilot was waiting at the helipad so to go there. I turned around and went out of the room, along the corridor, around the corner, down the steps, through the aquarium, around the corner, through the storage room, up the stairs, through the kitchen, through the heavy door, up the stairs and into the helibay. Before I got in the helicopter with Jock I decided to grace the poor mechanic in the corner with the privilege of my presence. The mechanic didn’t seem very eager to talk with such a brilliant conversationalist as myself which seemed to me… odd. This had to be solved at any cost. So, I went out of the helipad, down the stairs, through the heavy door, through the kitchen, down the stairs, through the storage room, around the corner, through the aquarium, up the steps, around the corner, along the corridor and into Everett’s room. Everette was very helpful and we worked out that the mechanic was probably an impostor, which also explained why there was another dead mechanic on the floor as I walked in which had also seemed… odd. So I went out of the room, along the corridor, around the corner, down the steps, through the aquarium, around the corner, through the storage room, up the stairs, through the kitchen, through the heavy door, up the stairs and into the helibay.
  232.  
  233. Now there was a scene so totally completely ripped off The Lord of the Rings, except strangely backwards. Personally I think it’s terrible to plagiarise, but if you must do it then at least try to be accurate. I went up the mechanic and told him his name, but instead of telling him his real name I told him his fake one. And if this wasn’t bad enough instead of becoming all friendly he began running away. Which is logical, but doesn’t fit the story. I was absolutely horrified, but was partially pacified that they had got the back story right. At least the mechanic tried to claim that he hadn’t killed the other one, but no mentioning of birthdays though. Unfortunately this minor reprieve would be overshadowed completely later on when I would find out that they did the torture scene after this one, not before, which turns the entire story on it’s head! Smarting about this incompetence from the storywriters I went over to Jock and told him about the mechanic. He checked the helicopter and discovered the bomb, but luckily disabled it. Although I think it would have been a good idea to have allowed me to move away first, it’s harsh but pilots are replaceable. I did not go to tell Everett the good news, which (phew) is about five lines I don’t have to write. I just got on the helicopter and off we went to Vandenburg.
  234.  
  235. Vandenburg Airforce Base
  236.  
  237. Jock dropped me off on the Roof of the main building of the Vandenburg Airforce Base and took off, abandoning me to my fate. Almost immediately I was accosted by some crazed woman babbling something about snipers and security systems. Appalled by this visage taken straight from my worst nightmares I dumbly listened to what she had to say, before politely excusing myself so I could find a way down to the ground. I quickly backed away and then ran over to the back to the building and jumped up onto the ledge that ran around the edges. I moved along this until I found myself above a balcony, which I dropped onto, and then turned to my left and went through the unlocked door. This took me into the large room with big hanging platforms that appeared to be made of fence. With a frame rate of about 5 I turned and found my way to the ladder on the wall, which I descended, and then found the second ladder which took me to the floor. Then finally having regained proper control over my movements I remembered the woman raving about some switches to lock down security. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I decided, possibly against my better judgement, to follow her advice, which involved going inside the building. I picked up one of the 2 small crates beside me and placed to beside the hole in the wall leading into the interior. Then I jumped up onto it and crawled through the hole where I found myself confronted by a grate. This obstacle was easily passed by opening the grate, but I soon discovered a camera in the upper right hand corner of the room, which was inconveniently hidden by the open grate. After moving around a bit I found an angle at which I could see it and waited until it was looking towards the main entrance, then I crawled into what appeared to be reception and ran over to the heavy metal door on the left of the room. This opened into a large hallway, and standing in the middle were two MJ12 troopers and a MIB. There was also a very useful crate of tnt on a trolley. I trotted along the middle of the corridor until I was almost in the sight of the security camera beside the lift, and then judging that I could be quick enough I dashed over to the trolley, grabbed the tnt, and then dashed back to the door I had just come through. The men did not move. I used the hole in the door to monitor the camera, and when it was looking away I quickly ran back to the vent, ducked, and crawled back into the room with the ladders.
  238.  
  239. Now I carefully took my tnt crate to a second vent, just past the steps leading down to the lowest level in the room. This I opened and crawled through until I got to the other end which opened into a small enclosed area with a very large pipe running through it. Very very carefully I threw the tnt crate onto the pipe without damaging it, and then went back through the vent to the two normal small crates. I brought these through and threw them on the pipe as well, and then carefully so as not to alert the guards on the water tower just ahead jumped on after them. I stacked the crates up one on top of the other beside the fence and jumped up them, and the over the fence to alight on the other side. Then I ran alongside the main building until I came to the pit in which I was able to use the code I had from that woman to enable one half of the security system. Then ran back to the fence. Until now I had not realised the true usefullness and importance of elastic fences. I’m sure hundreds of people told the head janitor, or whoever buys the fences, that it was completely unnecessary and an absolute waste of money, but they sure must be happy they had them installed now. I reached through the wires and pulled each crate through until I had them all on the outside, and then stacked them all up again and leapt over the fence onto the pipe. One of the small crates I took back and placed it under the hole again, and then I took the tnt crate with me through the hole and into the big hallway. As expected the MIB and troopers were still there, so, again ignoring the camera, I ran at them with my unwieldy weapon and launched it through the air into the middle of the group, although mainly at the MIB, due to his amazing pharmaceutical ability to better withstand tnt explosions. I think I’m going to request that one when I finish saving the world. First there was a Boom, and then a satisfactory squelchy noise as blood and pieces of flesh rebounded off the walls. The explosion caught me a bit too, so before going to the second keypad I decided to seek medical attention. I had to run away from the two troopers from upstairs who I just knew were running down that very second anyway, so I impatiently waited for the camera by the lift to stop it’s frustratingly long beeping, before I running past it back into reception. Then instead of making my way to the hole I turned a sharp right and ran up the stairs and along the gangway leading to the conference room upstairs.
  240.  
  241. As I stood beside the round table, below me were two MJ12 troopers and a medbot. I grabbed one of the chairs from around the table and inched my way as far over the edge of the floor as possible, under the railing, until I was crouching over the heads of the troopers. Then I threw my chair right over them, and as they turned to look at it I used the noise to cover my own landing, and their distraction as they tried to figure out how on earth a chair managed to levitate and drop itself right in front to them to sneak up to the medbot and use it. After this masterful display of covert abilities that any seasoned intelligence officer would be proud of I got up and began running around in circles, another intricate military manoeuvre mainly designed to attract the enemy’s attention. This one worked to perfection too, so right away I, understandably, ran away. I dashed around the corner and through the three tripwires in the hallway, setting off the alarm but stopped there and waited. Soon one of the troopers ran after me, and after a few attempts I was able to get him to throw a lam at me instead of just shooting his gun. The lam hit me and bounced to the ground, I bounced around the next corner, and I assume the trooper bounced in the opposite direction, as a few seconds later it exploded. I waited in reception under the security camera for a while before going back in then. When I did I crept through the hallway where there used to be some tripwires and then used the medbot to replenish my orange torso after being shot a few times during my escapades, behind the backs of the two troopers with apparent amnesia, staring into the flooded room beyond.
  242.  
  243. Having now made my preparations for future visits I left the area and, carefully avoiding the camera, made my way back into the corridor where the MIB and troopers had been. The reclusive cleaners had obviously been busy while I was away as the entire place was as spick and span as ever, not even a suggestion that three men had had their insides blown out a few minutes earlier. Impressed I ran to the door at the end of the corridor and went through. To my left was the second keypad, to my right was the stairwell leading to two more MJ12 troopers. They seemed pretty comfortable in their sofa and I didn’t want to disturb them, so I went left. I entered in the code 5868 and the red OFFLINE display changed to a nice green one that said ONLINE. Mission complete, everything was great, now I just had to get outside. But damn it, I had just used one of my steps in an offensive manner and various laws of physics had confiscated from me it forever, I had to get something else. I went back to Vandenburg reception and got me a potted plant. Then I came back into the hallway and stopped just before the indent leading to the lift to wait for the camera I had passed several times earlier, including just then, to stop beeping. When it did I stepped around the corner, threw my pot plant onto the steps, and then crouching behind it slowly pushed it further and further towards the far wall until I was level with the lift. Here I waited, cunningly disguised as a small piece of greenery, until the camera stopped beeping and the alarm did not sound. Maybe the security system thought that anyone stupid enough to try and hide from a security camera behind a pot plant couldn’t possible be a risk. Without any troops alerted I pressed the button on the lift, the one with the door opening mechanism suspiciously timed to be as awkward as possible to open when you’re in a hurry, and when the doors did open about 5 seconds after I felt they should have I got in and commanded it to take me to level 3, labelled “the roof”. The doors opened to reveal two more MJ12 troopers, on either side of the doorway, looking away from me. I have noticed that MJ12 troopers seem to come in pairs. These two were remarkably well trained, they didn’t even blink when the lift doors opened mysteriously behind them, let alone turn around to see who is was. This was useful because it gave me a head start. With a complete lack of any other options my only choice was to use the “quick dash technique”, also known as “as fast as possible” and “deathwish”. When the doors opened, faster off the mark than an Olympic sprinter, I flew past the two troopers and reached the far door before their shock gave over to the automatic reaction I had become so used to. They drew their weapons and began shooting at me. As the bullets hit my back I had managed to get though the first door and was desperately trying to open the second. I got through, but not before a smattering of bullets had hit me from my legs to my head. It was then a case of running up the stairs, past the camera and turret, and getting onto the roof itself, just to be on the safe side.
  244.  
  245. When I burst through the door I saw the crazy scientist woman standing a little way away, luckily she didn’t see me, so I was able to wait, cowering behind the staircase entrance, for the required length of time before venturing back down the stairs again. I made my way down until I was on the flight above the camera. But instead of trying to face the turret I jumped onto the railing protecting the little gap to one side and dropped through it. Deflating my smugness somewhat at being so tricky I noticed the camera was looking directly at me as I landed, so I moved through the door to my left and positioned myself so I was out of sight of the two troopers through the next open door. After I judged they had decided they had not in fact just seen me crawl out in front of them, I crawled across their sight again but soon I was on the other side of the room. Out of sight again I picked up a small crate sitting to one side and climbed up the ladder and over to the top of the lift shaft in the corner of the room. First I threw my crate down to the bottom, then I carefully crawled along the sliver of ledge jutting out around the edge of the lift until I was on the other side. I did not inch my way forward then, since there wasn’t even an inch for me to crouch on, but slowly I moved forward until I fell down to the ground myself, in four parts via the three little red lights on the side of the shaft. No doubt these were installed by far-sighted builders just in case a secret agent ever happened to want to descend the lift shaft without Speed Enhancement installed. When I reached the bottom I was met with a mechanic who had, it seems, not bothered to read the blueprints and had fatally attempted a different form of decent to mine. I grabbed my small crate, opened the grate, and crawled out past the keypad, through the door and into the vacated hallway. Then along this and through the hole in reception, careful not to be seen by the camera, and deposited my crate on the ground before making another visit to the doctor. After sneaking my way to the medbot and sneaking back I carried the two small crates I had back outside and rebuilt my steps over the fence. Then over I moved around the side of the building, hiding in the big pool of water when necessary from the one of the pair of troopers patrolling the outside, and when I reached the front I dropped over the drop and landed on the large field patrolled by two military bots. I moved as far as possible into the middle of the field keeping in the shadow of the concrete wall I was beside, and then when the coast was clear I quickly ran diagonally across the grounds until I reached the bot hanger. At the entrance I pressed the big red shiny button and the door opened. I went inside where I got to indulge myself and press two more shiny red buttons and listen to a loud siren. Then it was like real life “Scrap Heap Challenge” as two huge killing machines strolled out of their bays and began shooting things. The bots first turned on the two MJ12 troopers guarding the entrance to the base. Then they turned on the first of MJ12’s military bots. I waited inside as my dream team marched around destroying everything in their path while Jock kept me informed via the infolink. After a while all 4 bots had been destroyed, but as I emerged I saw one of the MJ12 commandos blowing up one of my bots! This was unheard of, and I was on the verge of picking up a gun and taking the fight to him myself when my second bot ponderously turned around and took him out with a missile. A fitting end, justice is rough in the jungle. Pleased, I went to see Tony Mares in the communications building.
  246.  
  247. When I got there Tony Mares told me that in order to get to Dr Savage I had to get a key, the only copy of which they happened to have given to another person who they had sent into some dangerous tunnels without knowing what was down there to try and link up. There was a fare chance he had died on the way, so now they were proposing to send me instead. Being the hard man I was I grunted a yes and went into the back room to a manhole leading to these tunnels. This I opened, and then climbed down the ladder into the darkness. I could hear spiderbots, but since they did hardly any damage, and I certainly didn’t have to worry about my bioelectricity levels, I decided to just run right through them. I got past the first spider ok and avoided its attack, but when I stopped at the control panel further along to reset the first security option it caught up with me. When I left the second spider had also found me and I ran along the tunnel with two spiderbots snapping at my heels, slowly working away at my health. I ran right past the camera and turret in the middle of the tunnel, rounded a bend and came across a series of blue tripwires. Instead of trying to jump over them, spurred on by my pursuers, I carried on and ploughed straight through, ignored another two spiderbots rising from the floor, and ran through the slowly closing security door until I was safe. Now I bent over and opened the small grate to right. This I crawled through until I came to another grate, which I opened and dropped through, landing in the big flooded reactor room. I paddled through the water a bit until I was in the right place, and then dived straight down and picked up the nanokey for the maintenance door on the floor. With it on my person I came up for a breath, paddled some more towards the exit door, and then dived under to swim through it, along the tunnel and then up the stairs to the surface. I made the swim without damage, and opened the door I came to step back into the tunnel, but the spiderbots had lowered my torso health to orange with their persistent attacking. So instead of continuing I made my way back through the tunnel, out of the communications building, into the main building through the main doors where the commandos were not, and back into the medbay. I crept to the medbot to regain the health I’d lost, and then crept out and ran back to the communications building.
  248.  
  249. In the back room I dropped back into the spider infested tunnels and ran. The spiders must have followed me as I left earlier because three of them were near the beginning of the tunnel. I sped past them, pressed the first reset button, and then leaving the spiders in my imaginary dust I dashed down the tunnel, through the blue trip wires, and then through the closing door at the end. This time I didn’t turn right, but turned left. With the key from the reactor room I opened the maintenance door, climbed the ladder behind it, and then carefully made my way across the pipes over the radiation, wondering all the while why they would keep barrels of radioactive material in the main corridor instead of in a proper storage facility. It made me wonder whether these X-51 people really were the right people to get help from. When I couldn’t go any further I fell down into what looked like a storage room. The bridge that would take me to the other side was down, so I ran over the edge and landed on the bottom floor. After going “ooh” I passed the poor spiderbot scuttling around without giving it time to attack me, went up the stars to the control room, and crossed over to the controls. Intuitive controls are a great thing, but sometimes can it be taken too far? On this huge slab of computing, which looks like it could have been designed to send men to the moon in the 1960s, there were a total of 3 buttons. These buttons were labelled “1”, “2”, and “3”. I pressed the button with the big “3” on it, and the lift went up to the third level. A job well done! After having battled with the forces of technology and won I triumphantly went back down the stairs and ran along the corridor along the side of the storage room. At the end when I ran straight through the blue strip wires, a turret came down to try and shoot at me, but I was through the door and running up the spiral staircase to the top of the bridge. This I crossed, and when I turned the corner on the other side I came face to face with the dead mechanic they had sent earlier. This man had battled through thick and thin to get here. With cunning, ingenuity, and brute strength and fitness he had managed to avoid the free running spiderbots in the tunnels and dance his way over the tripwires I had just run through like a thug. He had utilised advanced technology to force his way through deadly radiation. In the storage room his brilliant athletic ability had allowed him to climb to the other side without resorting to using the bridge. And then, just meters away from the end of this gaultlet, his arms outstretched and a grim smile on his face as he reflected on his achievements, he was savagely cut down from behind by a lone spiderbot. Particularly tragic seeing that there was a flamethrower in the storage room which could have been put to excellent use. Too bad he wouldn’t have made it past the MIB waiting outside the door anyway. But now the aforementioned spiderbot was attacking me as I mused, so I picked up the mechanic’s key and climbed up the ladder and through the trapdoor myself.
  250.  
  251. I found myself in the small locked room off the main corridor. My legs and torso were seriously hurt by the whole spiderbot business, so this warranted yet another visit to the medbot, luckily I was going there anyway. On the way I disappeared through the hole, in reception, and reappeared a little while later with a small crate. It felt right, I hadn’t used one in such a long time, at least 1000 words. I took this into the medical room, avoiding various cameras on the way, and silently put it on the ground in the corridor outside. I crept over to the medbot to fix my health, and then crawled back, picked my crate up, and crawled with it back into the medbay, up the steps to the right, and through the door at the top. Safely through I turned around and put the crate on the top step so it was blocking the door, then I went into the flooded room. On one of the tables in the middle of the flood was a microscope. Being careful not to fall into the electrified water I followed the time honoured tradition of FPS and dutifully did the Leaping From Table To Table And If You Miss You’ll Be Hurt Or Killed scene. I jumped from metal table to metal table, grabbed the microscope, and threw it back to solid ground. Then I winced as it turned a darker shade of grey when it landed. All this time while I had been in view the two troopers in the medbay had been understandably panicking and running around in circles, pausing every few seconds to stop and futilely point their guns at me. It’s not everyday you find out that a high tech elite secret agent was just a few minutes ago crawling around behind you with you completely at his mercy. Unfortunately they still wanted to kill me though. I jumped back across the tables, picked up my microscope, and went into the short hallway from the door to the flooded room, and hid out of sight beside my small crate. Eventually the troopers stopped looking around, and when I peered around the doorframe one trooper had gone back to his old position looking through the large glass window, but the other one had run up the steps and was very close. My box had confounded him enough so that he wasn’t looking at the door, but he was staring at the wall right beside it. Still crouched I picked up the crate and silently put it down out of my way. Then I picked up my microscope again and crawled out the door. Troopers have a viewing area of 180 degrees, but since the doorframe was blocking his view of me I was invisible until about 175 degrees of that, and I was able to move quickly enough to get behind him before he reacted. Then I skulked out of the room.
  252.  
  253. I took my microscope across reception, avoiding the camera, and to the lift to the second floor. When I was ready I darted around the corner, ran up the steps, and then used what had seemed the most completely irrelevant skill taught at the UNATCO Academy to hide from the camera. Botany. Eventually, obviously deciding that trees suddenly growing dark blue trench coats were not secret agents in disguise but merely proof of the evolutionary theory, it stopped beeping. I called down the lift and took it up one level. When the doors opened I crawled out and made my way onto the bridge nearby. When I was almost in the view of the trooper directing the laying of tnt, and obviously not very good at it since he had been trying since I arrived, I aimed high in the air and threw the microscope over his head. It smashed on the ground, but he turned around to look for what had made the noise. I used the time to run the rest of the way over the bridge, grab one of the two tnt crates, run back halfway again, and chuck the crate high in the air at the MJ12 trooper and one unit of collateral damage. While the tnt was still flying I ducked, slipped under the railing on the bridge, and fell to the floor. As I fell the world went BOOM as two crates of tnt acted as one. The explosion minorly hurt me, and as I looked around afterwards I saw the two troopers at the other end of the corridor on the second level looking at me, so I left the area very quickly and went to the medbay to fix myself. When I got back the troopers were still standing around on the ground floor, but this was not a problem as it gave me free reign on the level above. Before they cloud see me I ducked behind my pot plant until I was able to get into the lift, and then exited the lift at the second level and went over to the large metal doors which had cheerfully withstood the huge explosion without a dent. Pulling out my nanokeyring I pressed it to the surface, unlocked it, and entered into the abode of Gary Savage.
  254.  
  255. First things first I went to talk to the big cheese. I headed down the stairs until I reached the bottom floor. Above the work floor I spoke to Carter, since it was completely logical and unsurprising that he would be here, and then went down some more steps to talk to Savage himself. He sent me into a room full of short circuiting electronic equipment with arcs of electricity flying around everywhere. Gary Savage obviously knew nothing about the idea of strategy. The correct way, the technique that has been passed down from generation to generation until it has become enshrined on popular knowledge and intellectual discussion alike that it is no longer even considered a strategy, is first to send in your unimportant pawns, and then send progressively stronger units when they die in the hope that they will do the job without actually endangering anything important. The fact that inevitably this will just result in terrible loss of life, the job taking significantly longer than necessary and that the unit of importance always goes anyway is of no matter. Gary Savage however was proposing sending in his big guns first. It went against every bone in my body through centuries of ingrained “common sense”, but I accepted his charge to go and fix a tricky electrical fault. To prepare first I went to the entrance of this room which Savage had just opened and picked up the key on the small trolley to my right. Then I went upstairs, opened the door to the glass chamber on the highest level and picked up one of the small crates inside. This I took back downstairs and down the side of the electricity infested room. When I reached the end I turned and threw my crate down onto the floor in my path to the switch in the centre of the room. This blocked one of the electrical arcs so I was able to reach the switch and power up the lift without being hurt. Having done this I grabbed my crate again and used it to block another beam of electricity coming from a small squat structure that could be have been a generator to my right and jumped onto it, and then onto the structure. Then again I used the crate to block another arc between the thing I was on and the next thing across towards the back of the room, jumped onto it again, and jumped onto the next structure. Then I quickly ran to the lift and pressed the up button. When I arrived on the second floor there was nothing for it, so without bothering to try and dodge the lightning I just ran through it to the computer, getting mildly scorched on the way. When I reached the keyboard I typed in the login and password Savage had given me, “Gsavage” and “Tiffany”, and uplinked the milnet. This also fixed the electrical fault. The easy solutions to difficult problems never cease to amaze me.
  256.  
  257. On the way out again some significant stuff happened, and when I got back to Savage we had a visit from Bob Page. Then I was sent out to get some gas from a gas station nearby. At least I think that’s what I had to do, somebody mentioned a gas station and getting something, it was probably to power the UC. Pleased that my next mission was nice and easy I made my way back through the Vandenburg building to the medbay. Because there was no relocking mechanism on the door I was very careful about not alerting the troopers as I healed myself with the medbot. If they heard me they might take a little look around the facility and discover my new friends. I was reasonably confident they hadn’t seen me, they hadn’t shot at me which is a good sign, so I left, ran out of the building and across the field until I found Jock. I passed Tong coming the other way and got into the Black helicopter to be taken to my next destination.
  258.  
  259. The Vandenburg Gas Station
  260.  
  261. When we reached the gas station I was in a grumpy mood. Jock had explained on the way that we were not stopping to pick up some gas, and were in fact on a rescue mission to attempt to save Dr Savage’s daughter Tiffany from the clutches of MJ12. I was fairly put out by this to say the least and resolved to be as uncooperative as possible, and what better way to get back at this slight than to kill Savage’s only daughter? I was dropped of in a gully beyond the station. A little way along there were two bums. I walked over and politely addressed myself first to the lady, but then this male chauvinist pig she was with butted in and hogged all the conversation. Nevertheless I managed to get a key out of them for the sewer pipe that would take me to the top of the cliff. With this in hand I ran over, unlocked the pipe, moved down the middle, and climbed up the ladder at the end. The ladder ended inside a strange wooden four sided structure with no roof built for no apparent reason outside the station. Quickly I crouched in one corner, out of sight from anyone looking through the jagged hole in the wall, and waited. After a little while I heard footsteps as an MJ12 trooper walked passed my hiding spot, paused, and then walked back again. As soon as he passed me the second time I crawled out of the hole and crawled around the back of the structure until I was between it and the gas pumps. Here I waited and watched until the trooper paused at the other end of his patrol and then turned around and began walking back towards me. This was a nervous time as the commando patrolling around the pumps, foolishly in my opinion considering how little it would take for the roof to come down…, was about to turn in his route to face me. It was close, but just as the commando turned around the trooper disappeared behind the structure and I got up and ran as fast as I could for cover towards the gas station building. I heard the trooper hear me, but nobody gave chase and before long I reached the front door and went through. When inside I went into the back rooms and picked up one of the small crates on the floor. This I put down next to the barrel in a corner. I jumped on it, and then climbed progressively higher towards the air vent near the ceiling. The other end of this vent exited into an attic, in the middle of which there was a hole in the roof. I crawled through the dark cramped space until I was positioned under it, and then stood up, leaped onto the ladder hanging down, and hauled myself up until I was standing on the roof of the gas station.
  262.  
  263. From this roof I leaped onto the roof of the small garage beside it where tiffany was being held. I then proceeded to run around like a maniac, jumping around in circles and generally trying to make as much racket as possible. Nobody inside stirred. I then tried running around the edges of the roof in the hope that one of the commandos patrolling outside might notice me. They didn’t, I bet it was the baggy coat. Nobody thought to issue me with bright red and blue bellbottoms and a garish sickly green cardigan for missions when stealth would not be the optimal approach. Eventually I gave up. When you don’t want the attention of MJ12 it’s hard to avoid, but when you actually need it it’s almost impossible to attract. I gave up this approach entirely and waited for the commando patrolling around the side of the building to move as far towards the door end of the garage as possible. Then I fell off the edge of the roof onto the fence between the garage and the main building, and then fell onto the ground. Before the commando had time to turn around and come back I ran back into the station and made my way back to the small crate I’d used earlier, which I picked it up. I ran with it out of the building, and then carefully took it around the back. I carried it over the rocks until I was on the other side of the fence, climbed up the outside ladder onto the roof of the station, and then chucked it across the divide onto the garage roof.
  264.  
  265. First I tried running around in circles while throwing the crate repeatedly onto the roof. That didn’t work. Then I tried throwing the crate onto the ground outside the garage. When that didn’t work I sampled the quickload function extensively, and after eventually deciding this technique was wholly unsatisfactory I preceded to try throwing the crate down beside the commando patrolling around below. He didn’t even notice it. Bob Page was cleverer than I thought. He had obviously planned for this and had chosen the troops that would make even this objective as hard as possible. Fragging hasn’t been this difficult since Doom. Eventually I decided to try throwing the crate on top of the commando’s head, and actually surprising me the idea worked. He certainly reacted fast and ran around on the ground a bit, but he didn’t see me initially. However when he had almost reached the large truck parked a few meters away in his wild rushing about he turned around and did so. I had to dodge a few badly aimed rockets, but as I began realising that it would be even easier if I just stood in one place the alarm sounded. I quickly crouched down out of sight as below me I listened to an opening door. I heard gunfire, a woman screaming, and then more gunfire and more screaming and then as they did it again and I wondered when they had begun making women so tough. This time though the junkyard door burst open. Jock, completely forgetting that it is impolite to admit to spying on young women without their knowledge, told me Tiffany was dead and that I’d failed. What on earth was he talking about? I hadn’t failed, I’d passed, although considering how much difficulty I’d had maybe with only about 60%. I stayed on the roof a little while longer waiting for the alarms to stop and the commandos to calm down, and then fell down via the fence on the other side of the garage and ran into the junkyard. After avoiding the commando patrolling the entrance on the way in I spoke with Jock. I pretended to be sad, but what I really wanted to say was that that’d teach that Savage not to mess with me! Then we went to the Pasadena Ocean Lab.
  266.  
  267. The Pasadena Ocean Lab
  268.  
  269. As the black helicopter disappeared I found myself in a large concrete basin near the entrance to the Pasadena Ocean Lab. The first thing I did was to run over to the entrance to the basin and look around the corner where a large, welcoming looking military bot was walking toward me. I hid myself behind the concrete wall and listened to the “thud” “thud” “thud” of its approach. Slowly it walked past and I watched as it stopped when it reached the far wall. For reasons unknown it now took an indepth scan of the featureless rock face in front of it, and then turned around to come back. I ducked back behind the wall again and waited patiently for it to pass. But of course after a little while I just had to check its progress, so I very quickly peered around the corner to see if it had gone by yet, a few seconds too early. The thing saw me in the half a second I wasn’t standing behind 2 meters of solid concrete, and while this event wasn’t particularly dangerous it did mean I had to sit tight for what was now an unbearable length of time berating myself. The bot stopped to scan for my presence, and then had to turn right around, go back to the rock face, scan it again just in case something had happened to it in the last 20 seconds, and then turn around and walk back past me again. This time I waited long enough, too long it seemed, for when I did dare look around the corner it was quite some way away. I had to run to catch up. I followed behind it for the remaining 2 meters to the boat ramp, and when it passed it I broke off and slid down into the water. In the distance there was a module of unobvious purpose (to me anyway, maybe someone can enlighten me?), the main feature of which was large hole in the bottom clearly very cleverly engineered to rise up and down in rhythm with the tides. Around this structure two MJ12 scuba divers patrolled in a square. Keeping near the surface for air I swam towards the module where the two, I am sure very alert scuba divers, completely failed to notice me floundering through the water with their keen eyes wary for anything that might threaten the hole. When I reached them I fell in behind one, thus staying out of sight of both, and followed him around. I watched the second diver closely. The two were exactly half way around from each other, so when they were both in the middle of their respective sides and parallel to each other I darted into the middle under the module and began rising towards the hole above me. This small gap was the longest possible time I had when I could be in the open but unseen by both divers at the same time. Even now though just before I broke the surface I heard a minicrossbow being drawn. But it was enough, as before a small arrow penetrated my very visible behind I pulled myself out of the water and huddled in the nearest corner underneath where the steps in the new room joined the upper level.
  270.  
  271. I could hear footsteps. That meant the trooper patrolling the inside was close, and a brief foray to the foot of the steps told me that he had just reached the top of said steps and would see me very soon if I didn’t get back into my corner very fast. I did so and waited while he walked down to the lower level and stopped, looking out over the hole. I quietly waited while he finished being oblivious to all the ripples my body would have made when I came out, and then when the footsteps started up again and he reached the top of the stairs I began to move myself. I crawled up the steps and followed him along his route around the sides of the room until he turned into the beginning one of the tubes leading back towards the onshore section of the Ocean Lab. Now, if you don’t know a trooper has exactly 180 degree vision, so as long as your body is behind a horizontal line jutting out from either side of his head you’re safe. This trooper’s patrol stopped just past the entrance to the tube and turned him to the left when he turned around. So as I came up behind him in the tube I veered out to his right. While he was momentarily stopped I kept moving past him, but not quite far enough for to get in front of him so he would be able to see me. I timed it so I stayed behind the line until he began to turn, and when this happened I kept on moving so by the time he had turned around completely I was still behind him, but in the tube.
  272.  
  273. Having successfully evaded this trooper I crawled along the tube, so as not to alert anyone close by, and climbed up the ladder at the end. In the next tube, which the ladder led to, another trooper patrolled up and down. I can imagine that he felt really safe in that job since anyone getting to him would have had to get past either all the guards inside the building, or past divers and another guard at the other end. Either way he’d know about it because someone would sound an alarm first. Secure in the knowledge that he was in no danger from anyone he confidently walked up and down, completely failing to notice me holding onto the ladder just under the floor level, waiting for his head to appear visible through the grate in the floor. I watched through the grate so I would know when he had arrived at this end of the tube. In just a little while he came into view and I saw him stop, and then turn around to walk back. As soon as he turned around I climbed the rest of the way up the ladder, alighted silently on the floor, and crawled after him catching him just before he reached the other end of the corridor. I’m probably going to disappoint the more blood thirsty of you now by saying that I didn’t kill him. If I’d had a gun I could have easily, but I didn’t, so I pulled the same trick on him as I had the other trooper. When he stopped I kept on going on his right, and when he turned I continued so when he was walking away I was quietly making my own way up the ladder at the end. I climbed up to the first level and quietly got off. I then crept through the blackness around the corner to the right and stole a small crate from beside the tunnel leading to the karkian cage. With this in hand I crawled back again, climbed halfway down the ladder and perched there waiting for the trooper to come back again. After not too long he did. He didn’t bother looking up the ladder, but instead paused at the end of the tube as usual, and then turned to traverse it again. When he was looking away again I quickly climbed down the ladder and followed after him with my small crate. Again when he reached the far end I crept right past him and made my way down the ladder and partway along the next tube. When I reached the bend in it I stopped and waited for the trooper in this area to come back to the entrance. When I looked around the corner I could see him walking down the steps, so I had to wait a while before he re entered the tube. Like before he looked down it for a few seconds, and then turned and walked away again. When he did I followed after him, but this time turned right instead of left and made my way to the door leading outside.
  274.  
  275. I crawled through the door and saw the bridge leading over the water to the lift that went to the ocean floor. Unfortunately I also saw an MJ12 trooper wielding a flamethrower coming along it towards me. He was about half way along, and if I had waited outside he’d have seen me. I turned around and looked back inside to see the MJ12 trooper there just about to turn to walk down the steps. He’d see me if I went back in now, so I stayed outside carefully watching the flamethrower as it came closer and closer. Then, when the trooper carrying it was almost close enough to see me I quickly crawled back through the door, timing it so the inside trooper had his back towards me right then. Using the time I had I crawled to the right and hid in the corner as the inside trooper turned away from me at the top of the steps, and then stayed behind him as I crawled back to the door. This time when I looked through it I could see the outside trooper was walking away from me. Hoping the sniper on the roof wouldn’t see me I crawled after him, catching him just before the last bend. At the end of his patrol this trooper always turned to the right, so I slowly moved out to his left as he reached the end of his patrol. When he turned around I sneaked past him, so when he walked away again I was able to open the door leading into the building housing the lift and walk through it. Luckily, by chance I had been forced to cross go across the bridge at a time when sniper couldn’t see me.
  276.  
  277. The trooper in this building seemed scared to come out from behind the lift shaft in the middle of the room, possibly he was doing something illegal. So I was easily able to run into the lift and press the button to go down almost before he knew I was there. Certainly before he was able to react. I had been carrying my small crate around all this time, however I had things to do now so while the lift was going down I dropped it on the floor. At the bottom I ran out of the lift, getting spotted by the camera above the entrance as I did so, but I ducked behind the medium crate near the corner. When I looked around it I saw the trooper who patrolled up and down the corridor walking away from me. I followed behind him until I reached a pile of boxes halfway down the hall, from behind which I watched as he stopped at the end, and then turned around to come back again. I hid behind the boxes as he passed, and then crawled down the rest of the corridor and entered the laboratory at the end. In here with the barrels of ambrosia and virus I crouched in the dark left hand corner and waited until I was sure I hadn’t been spotted by anyone, and then slowly began crawling across the room until I was almost under the stairs leading to the second level. Now I settled back for the long wait until the female scientist’s rambling walk brought her to my half of the room, as opposed to the half under the intense scrutiny of the MJ12 trooper I was crouched behind. One of the ones that actually see you when you walk in front of them, not the kind that guards gas stations. When finally she did walk past me I followed her until we were good distance away from the trooper and then I engaged her in conversation and managed to wrest away the password and login to the security system. No matter how many times I do this particular act it’s always nerve wracking. She talks in such a loud voice that surly anyone should be able to hear, programmed to or not. After finishing the conversation I crawled silently back up the hallways outside, taking the necessary precautions with cameras and boxes, until I was sitting behind the medium crate near the lift again. I opened the security console and logged in using “tech” and “sharkman” and changed both turrets in the display to “enemies”, while leaving all cameras as they were. Then I stood up. The consequences of this action was the alarm attached to the camera above the lift entrance began sounding. And the consequence of this was one trooper patrolling up and down the corridor suddenly wasn’t anymore. In a little while another one out of the three left came running out of the lab and up the corridor, possibly indicating slackness in the guards. He didn’t last long; the first turret took him out very fast. Two down I ran back along the tunnel and into the room at the end where I did some zigzags near the entrance. This brought the one on the ground floor running, who I let see me at the entrance to the corridor before I ran back up it. He somehow managed to do significantly better and got passed the first turret. Waiting beside the lift in case I should have to flee I was worried he’d actually reach me. However my apprehension was unnecessary as the second turret soon ripped into him, well the bullets did anyway, and when I ventured around the corner he was splayed out on the floor. The fourth trooper I had to go and get from the top of the stairs, but he came and died too, and I was free to do whatever I wanted. I flirted with the idea of having a party. But much like the 2004 US Democratic Party convention I was stuck for balloons, so I decided to get on with the job. People always grumble and groan when given a job to do by somebody else, but when they actually have a choice they tend to do the same thing anyway. Humans are irrational like that; I don’t see many monkeys saying, “now my monkey brothers, we have escaped back to the mighty rainforests of our homeland, so let’s have a tea party”. Beyond the laboratory in the sub bay the mechanic told me to ask he appropriate authority for the login for the sub bay doors. I had already done this, so I opened the door and proudly tapped him on the shoulder to show him, but he didn’t acknowledge all my hard work at all. I had been intending to swim down to the Ocean lab proper, but now I decided to take one of his subs to spite him. So I went back to the lift, picked up my crate, came back and got into one of the mini subs. Come to think of it, taking a sub would have been a good idea right at the start.
  278.  
  279. When I emerged at the bottom of the sea the first thing to meet my eyes was a dead MJ12 trooper. Things were looking promising, maybe this section would be easy. I picked up my small crate and hauled it up to the three flights of stairs to the top of the building, where I opened the door and dodged some bullets. Maybe not. These came from a turret that was part of a security system that Helios would later refer to as “confused”. I’m a little dubious about this description myself; an automated turret shooting absolutely everything it sees doesn’t sound all that confused to me. I put the small crate down in the corridor outside and fetched a breakable crate from downstairs. I threw this into the room, and beside it I threw the small crate. Then I ran in after them and took cover behind the counter running alongside one wall with computer screens on top. From safety here I grabbed the breakable crate and crawled through the small gap to the other end. Here I carefully I placed it on the ground, about a meter in front of me and out from the wall. Then I went back, got the small crate, and took this through the gap too. When I risked standing up to throw it on top of the breakable one just this brief appearance had been enough to set the turret off, so after it had settled down again I very quickly stood up again and dodged out behind my makeshift barrier. The turret turned and shot at me, but only hit the small crate. I turned around the to open the door behind me, and then steeled myself and dashed through it the most direct way possible without getting shot once. Now in the corridor beyond I ran down to the T junction in front of me and ducked behind the medium crate sitting in the middle of the floor to shelter from the second confused turret randomly shooting out in front of it. This crate I pushed along, very slowly, until it would not go any further. Then as if in a rugby scrum I screwed it around to the left until I was able to grab the nanokey on the floor. I grabbed it and then crawled out of the junction and used it to open the door into the next laboratory area.
  280.  
  281. I crawled up the stairs in here very carefully, being sure not to alert either the greasel with its back towards me when I entered or the one on the higher floor near the ladder descending into the flooded level below. Both of them were gnawing on the grizzly remains of a scientist, I guess even transgenics have to bow to peer pressure. The second greasel, remarkably, just managed to exclude the top of the ladder from its view by a tiny fraction. This extraordinarily suspicious piece of luck made going up and down it blissfully easy. I grabbed onto it and descended about a quarter of the way so I could see into the flooded room below. A surprisingly disciplined greasel, deprived of sustenance unlike its brethren upstairs, prowled around below in an exact straight line. I waited on the ladder for it to reach the end I was at and then turn around to go back again. When it was halfway back I dived into the water and swam through the door and into the corridor across from me. After glaring at the electrical wire hanging a centimetre above the water’s surface I opened the door at the other end and swam into another flooded room that could have been an office. I rose up for air beside the partitioned area, and then dived to the bottom to swim around it and not be spotted by the greasel waiting inside. The data cube I was heading for though was in front of the doorway leading in. When I reached the doorway I had to quickly dash out at about one eighth the speed I would have liked in front of the greasel and grab the information in the little blue box and store it in my datavaults. Then I quickly surfaced to get air, rising diagonally to try and get out of sight of the greasel, and swam away as fast as possible. Luckily the greasel didn’t follow, but it was only luck. I tried to console myself by thinking that even if I had had master skills at swimming I would still have zero at aquatic greasel evasion and it would have been just as nerve wracking, but it didn’t work, it would have helped. I think what happened was the greasel must have got trapped inside the partition when I swam away again into the corridor outside. I waited inconspicuously here for the patrolling greasel to come to my end and turn around again before making my way to the ladder and climbing back up it. The greasel at the top had finished its meal, but the direction it was still facing meant it still couldn’t see me. I silently alighted on the floor at the top of the ladder and crawled to the bench nearby in the middle of the room. From this I took a flask and carried it back down the ladder. Again about a quarter of the way down I waited for the greasel, but this time when it paused at my end I threw the flask over it’s head. Then I used the distracting splash to launch myself into the air and swim, as circumstances subscribed both as fast as possible and as slowly as possible at the same time, to the far away door. I hastily punched in the code from the datacube, the door opened, and just as I heard the greasel give a yelp of surprise and recognition of dinner I swam through the portal and up the stairs beyond.
  282.  
  283. At the top was a small checkpoint before entering the Ocean Lab proper with all the big equipment and machines. Some dangerous looking electrical arcs sprang from a broken piece of electronic equipment and played out little glittery dances on the shiny metal of the door. Somebody could kill themselves through prolonged exposure to those things… Quickly, so as not to be that person, I darted out and opened the door, and while it was opening went around behind the desk. I got the login and password to the security system on the top level from the datacube there, and picked up one recently vacated chair the previous occupant of which I suspect I’d already met. I threw the chair down out the through the doorway and then dived after it myself. Without a scratch so far I picked up the chair, opened the door at the bottom of the slope and entered the excavations being done in the area. Jutting out of the rock into the open was a corridor. I put down my chair at the entrance and then raced to the other end where I jumped onto the table and quickly, while it was still feeding, used the two small crates in the room to trap the huge karkian in one third of it. Very soon it finished its meal and I got the satisfaction of watching it run back and forth in this really rather pathetic trap. I also took some time out to wonder how all the free transgenics I’d come across so far had managed to, in the hours since the disaster, time the ends of their meals to exactly when I arrived on the scene. However this was not important. I picked up the key on the table, then picked up the chair to the table, and took it about halfway down the corridor and put it down underneath some kind of window in the wall. Then I brought my other chair over beside it and jumped up onto it. Through the window I could see two greasels in the small dark area just below me. I picked up the chair I wasn’t standing on and threw it over the heads of the greasels towards the wall. In theory this was supposed to stop them looking at the door leading to the crews quarters. To be perfectly honest I have no idea if it served its purpose correctly or not. Greasels tend to hop around when they’re disturbed and there’s no telling where they’ll end up looking. But whatever it did the greasels did not see me as I crawled to the door with my body pressed against the rock in the middle of the room as long as possible, even though one of them seemed to be looking directly at me the whole time. I unlocked and opened the door unobserved and walked through it.
  284.  
  285. Running through complete darkness is very difficult, trust me on this. I generally relied on my feet telling me when to turn because they stopped making any noise when I smacked headfirst into walls. But after a few false starts, quite a few false hopes, and one time when I realised I must have been trying to run into a corner for at least 10 seconds, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I wondered whether it being a red light was a bad omen. Through the door at the end was the crew’s quarters. Without going into any of the rooms I climbed down the ladder to the lower level where I met the third “confused” turret, which reinforced my suspicion of that word. To minimise damage I ran down the hall at it sideways, but by the time I got into the lift my head had 60 health left and my right arm was at 40. The turret went on firing as I stood in the lift, and didn’t stop until I had completely left the area. At the bottom I ran out and disabled the gas grenade on the wall. Sometimes you just have to wonder. In an immediate world of mutants and robots, humans will try to protect themselves with devices that are of no use on either. Further on a series of blue trip wires bared my way. In this situation stealth was not an option. I took a run up and burst through the beams and pumped my legs to the exit of this very simple maze, dodging round the leaping over spider bots in my way. I didn’t have much to worry about; I hardly had to worry about my bioelectricity levels. And by the time I’d passed them all they had brought my left arm and leg down to 92 and my right leg to 84. Not so easy for the commando I passed at the entrance though. After leaving the spiderbots skittering about but unable to come out the exit I found myself in a huge room. On the other side of a pillar in the middle came the sounds of a large spider bot patrolling up and down. I hid behind this pillar and waited for it to reach the opposite end of the room, and then ran across to the lift. But before calling it down first I crawled to the edge of its landing platform next to the water and peered down. Underneath me a poor MIB floated on top of the water, and under him there was an assault shotgun, and more importantly a datacube. I dived under the water to get at the cube, which yielded the most original login and password ever, showing that somebody must have a collection of classic movies somewhere. Then I swam back to the lift and called it down.
  286.  
  287. As the lift descended slowly I crouched to stay hidden from the spider bot. When it got there I crawled onto it and rode it up to near the roof. Still crouched I crawled off it to avoid being hit by either confused turret numbers four or five and made my way over to the security console on the right of the sky bridge. The right turret fired off a few shots so I backed behind a bench while the console opened. I entered the necessary codes to extend the bridge, and then walked across it. On the other side there was another computer. The same login and password worked on this and I finally uploaded the schematics of the UC to Gary Savage. Then I picked up the tnt crate in the room, intending to use it on the small spider bots, and went back down the lift. As I came down the large spider bot passed by on its patrol and tnt crate and I were able to run around the pillar where we talked to Bob page. After he had gloated like all supervillains do for no apparently purpose, apart from maybe to give the hero some time to defeat him, I took my crate to the spider bots. However for some reason I don’t know they had all stopped moving, which offered interesting prospects for the tnt crate later. I tested this a few times, and when they did nothing I collected my tnt and, casually whistling a jaunty tune, strutted all the way back to the lift to the crew’s quarters.
  288.  
  289. I put the tnt down in the lift and took it back up to where the turret began firing again. But now it was payback time. At the top I picked it up, stood in the middle of the lift, threw it high in the air, and while it was airborne leapt into the corner of the lift for protection. When the tnt connected with the floor suddenly the turret wasn’t there anymore and I was able to go all the way back up the corridor without being hurt at all. The dark corridor proved even more troublesome this time without a light, there not even being a red light at the end of it. But eventually, after much waving about of the mouse, I managed to highlight the door in the pitch blackness and open it. Now came the race. I burst through that door and ran alongside the tracks until I was almost at the other end of the excavation room. Then I leapt over them diagonally and, without breaking my stride, pounded on to the door, but I had to stop here while it opened. And that’s where Walton Simons caught me, just as I was running up the ramp beyond it. We talked, and then he pulled out his plasma rifle. However, luckily, the door closed near the end of the conversation. This gave me a head start while he had to open it again, and I used the opportunity to hurry into the checkpoint and hide under the desk. A few seconds later I heard Simons run into the room and stop. Unfortunately I could hear he wasn’t in the right place (or from his perspective he was in a very good place), so slowly I inched out from underneath and stood up for a fraction of a second a few times. Each time he moved a little bit until eventually he was standing right in front of the door, the one currently being electrified. I forgot to time how long it took, but it took a very long time. Enough to read a considerable number of pages in my book at any rate. Simons stood there going “ooh ooh ooh”, it sounded like he was singing along to some very slow very bad techno music. Eventually, when I was beginning to fear he would live forever there was a loud piercing shriek, which ended more gurgly than shrieky, and Walton Simons was no more. Which is a nice euphemism meaning that he was dead.
  290.  
  291. Wasting no time now I ran down the steps outside and submersed myself in the water. When I looked around the corner the greasel had gone, but there was a diver in its place. Walton Simons certainly was ruthless. I waited in the passageway, checking every few seconds while the diver swam around. Eventually he turned and swam into the wall and seemed to get stuck. He wasn’t able to turn around. I know it’s exploiting the AI, but it was repeatable so I took advantage of the opportunity and swam past and climbed up the ladder. The greasel on the above level had obligingly not moved an inch while Simons and his diver had come through, so I was able to creep off the ladder, down the steps past the second amazingly well disciplined greasel further on, and out of the room. In the next corridor the turret was still malfunctioning at the T junction, but I was able to run past it and reach the door at the end. It was, after much experimentation, too difficult to get into this room past the turret without being shot at least once. I was able to achieve this though. I readied myself, and then ran through the door, over the bump in the floor which was what slowed me down and made me get shot, and then backpedaled right until I was standing behind my stacked crates again. The bullet I caught brought my left arm down to 72. I paused here a bit, and then ran out towards the bench along the side of the room. A strange phenomenon prevents you from crawling behind the bench from this side even though you can crawl out from it. However if you take a running jump, duck in mid air, and land about halfway past the beginning so you’re half sticking out you can force yourself into the space. I did this and was able to crawl the rest of the way behind it without getting shot again. I made my way to the other end of the bench, and when ready made a quick dash for the door. The turret began turning around again but I got out before it could get off a shot. Now, to avoid alerting the diver on the floor below, I crawled down the steps back to the submarine bay, used the codes from the checkpoint to open the sub bay doors, and got in my sub to head back to the surface.
  292.  
  293. When I got back the mechanic was still standing where I had left him. He seemed happy enough so I let him be. The soldiers in the lab were all still dead so I climbed the ladder in the sub bay and headed back to the lift. The cameras in the corridor were still working, but I was able to ignore these and run right through, and take the lift back to the surface of the sea. At the top the MJ12 trooper was still skulking around behind the lift shaft, so I crawled out and made my way to the door leading outside. On the bridge the trooper was still lugging his flamethrower around, and the one on the roof of the module still patrolled with his sniper rifle. I felt quite bad suddenly. All of these troopers had completely failed in their mission, or were going to in a few seconds, and none knew it. I’m not sure MJ12 takes kindly to failure. When I looked out the door the trooper on the bridge had just turned around and was walking away from me, but the sniper’s patrol was just bringing him into position so he would see me if I followed along behind. It took a while, and I had to keep peering out the door to see where the sniper was without being seen while periodically getting out of sight of the trooper inside, whose patrol behind the lift enabled him to see the door every so often. Eventually however the sniper began the part of his route which didn’t allow him to see the bridge and the trooper on the bridge was close enough to catch up. I did so, crept passed him when he turned at the other end, and then crawled to the door leading into the module. Inside, conveniently, the trooper was walking towards the steps that would lead him down to the pool. When he passed me, on the other side of the room and I was out of his sight, I crawled in and stayed close to the wall as I went into the first tube leading on shore. At the end of this I climbed almost all the way up the ladder and, just like earlier, watched for the trooper in the second tube through the grating in the floor. When his head appeared and turned around I climbed the rest of the way up and followed him. At the end I crept passed him again, and then climbed all the rest of the necessary ladders until I arrived at the roof. Gary Savage and Jock were there. I made a show of being sorry about Tiffany, and we spoke about the missile. Then I was sent off with Jock to stop it from hitting Vandenburg, leaving Savage all alone, with a bloodthirsty hoard of MJ12 troopers and MIBs with all types of weaponry, transgenics, turrets, military bots and pigeons. It’s a good thing NPCs can’t climb ladders or he would have been in trouble.
  294.  
  295. The Missile Silo
  296. (Or Howard Strong’s Bad Day)
  297.  
  298. When Jock disappeared after dropping me off by the wooden fence surrounding a US military missile silo appropriated by Bob Page I looked around, and then ran over to the gates and ducked down. After a little while a pair of guard dogs made an appearance at the end of the fence to the left and looked in my direction. However in that time I had cleverly disguised myself as a piece of gate so they didn’t see me. They stared for a few seconds, and missing my presence turned around and went back the way they had come. Soon afterwards I ran after them until I reached the corner, where I crouched and followed them along the wooden fence. About halfway along I crossed over the area surrounding the base so I would be in the shadows beside the wire fence around the facility, for whatever good that would do against attack dogs. About another quarter along I paused, so as to be out of sight of anything around the next corner, and watched the to dogs I was dogging. Soon both dogs stopped and turned to their right. When safely turned away from me I inched along the wire fence towards the hut in the corner of the map until I could see a third attack dog wandering around aimlessly between the base itself and the missile’s silo. When I had determined that it was not looking in my direction at that moment I took my chances, stood up, and began running sideways towards the hut watching the dog the whole while. I doubt knowing that the dog had seen me would make much difference if it had, I was already moving as fast as I could, but luckily it didn’t in the time it took me to get behind the hut. Now, in the pitch blackness with a small but substantial building between myself and razor sharp teeth, I felt relatively safe.
  299.  
  300. Here in my cocoon of darkness I listened to the conversation of the three MJ12 troopers inside the hut, and marvelled at the intellectual capabilities of one of them. Then I crawled out the other end of the small gap I was in emerging next to the downstairs door. This I stood in front of, opened, did a little dance similar to a tap dance in front of it, and then left again very fast like a baby sitter confronted by Bart Simpson. My leaving manner also draws comparison to someone who had just seen three men through the doorway stand up and pull a variety of nasty looking weaponry out of various concealed compartments in their clothes. I bounded back around the corner, crouched, and waited. Nothing seemed to happen, so contrary to all common sense I silhouetted myself within the doorframe again. All three were still standing up in different parts of the room and this time, as you do when mysterious strangers turn up on your doorstep and are suspiciously bad at dancing, ran outside shouting and waving their weapons around. I watched them for a little while as they milled around outside until I was sure none of them would turn around soon and quickly crept into the building and shut the door behind me. Inside I stood up and the grabbed the key on the table, but then I realised I’d misjudged and had already worn out my welcome. It was about now that the troopers would stop looking for me and begin coming back inside. It seemed like a crazy idea at the time, there was no way they could possible miss me, but I decided to crouch in the corner beside the door while they came in. Quickly I did so, and a few seconds later the door opened and a trooper walked in. He walked right past me. Directly after him came a second trooper, who did the same. I waited there a few more moments in case the third was a little late, but soon I had to crawl out. If I’d waited any longer the troopers inside would have turned around to sit down and seen me. Pressed to the wall I slithered out of the room and around the side of the building into my black space, where I found the third trooper. He had obviously been rejected by his buddies, this was probably because he was the stupid one. He was walking about in a complete darkness, unable to see anything at all, even when I crawled passed his knees and around the corner of the hut he had no idea I was there. Surveying along the wooden fence I saw that it was free of dogs to my satisfaction, so I left the trooper looking for me forever in a place where he couldn’t ever find me even when I was there and began running back to where I was dropped off. Quite early in my dash the sniper in the tower saw me, but I just moved closer to the fence and arrived at the front gates to the base without a scratch.
  301.  
  302. I used my nano keyring to open the rickety old things and stepped inside. Neither of the two bots walking around inside were visible, so I made my way around the inside of the fence, passing near the lift underground on the way, until I reached the old trailer parked in the corner of the base. Next to this there were two crates, a medium one, and the other of the ever present small type. I stopped here, but before I could do anything with them I saw one of the bots at the far end of the enclosure. It was turning around to come towards me, so I crouched down behind the medium crate and waited. Before long I heard the mechanical thump thump thump as the bot came nearer. It was surprisingly eerie, I half expected the artificial voice to begin saying Fe Fi Fo Fum as if in some twisted fairy tale. Instead when it stopped moving it said “Scanning Area”, and then turned to the right, moved a few steps and then surprisingly intelligently scanned underneath the trailer. I do believe this is the only bot I can think of whose scanning routine is actually useful. I moved around the medium crate a bit to make sure I was out of its way, and of course this only allowed me to see the second bot coming towards me from the same direction as the first. I had to wait again for it to go through the same motions, and then as it disappeared I stood up and began to push my hiding place towards the nearby building. Slowly, as most things happen in this game, I inched it across the ground until it was underneath the small ledge on the second storey. When it was out of the way of anything that might walk past it I left the small crate where it was and took the same path as the bots around the back of said building until I was behind the trash store. I did not stop to scan any areas. I did stop behind the storeroom however because I had caught up with the bots, they seemed to be having some difficulties and the second one had caught up with the first infront of the gates. As I watched however they sorted themselves out and continued close together around their patrol. After quickly checking the sniper wasn’t looking I darted out from behind the small building, grabbed the small crate a few meters away beside on of the outside buildings, and took it back to the trailer with me. There the first bot and I met. I saw it before it saw me, so I chucked the crate on the ground and quickly hid behind one of the wheels. The bot scanned ahead of it, turned right, and moved to scan under the trailer. I moved around to the other side of the wheel, but as I did the second bot arrived which put me in a very difficult situation. The wheel wasn’t big enough to hide me from both bots at once and I had to do a complex dance sliding from one side of it to the other to stay out of view of both bots for enough time so neither would notice that I was there, and to avoid the critical last moment of the scans. I managed it though, and then I just had to wait for the second bot to do its second scan and walk away before I could begin playing with crates again. While I had time I quickly stacked both small crates beside the medium one, and then followed the bots to the rubbish shack. This time I dashed inside, picked up one of the small white rubbish bags, and ran back to the medium crate. I dropped the rubbish and picked up one of the small crates again. hen I threw this on top of the medium crate, but before I could do anymore the first bot appeared to my right and I had to go hide behind the wheel again. After going through the whole cycle of hiding for the second time the bots were gone for a reasonable period, so I took the opportunity to throw the trash bag onto the medium crate and climbed onto it myself via the small crate on the ground. Then, in very difficult circumstances in the cramped space I found myself in, anyone who has tried to handle crates in small areas will know what I mean, I managed to stack all three objects up and use them as a ladder to reach the ledge above.
  303.  
  304. This had taken some time, and just like in either a bad spy movie, or a very good spy movie that can pull it off, the bots had appeared again in the last scramble onto up the crates and now I had to crouch on the ledge as they marched past underneath. When their attention was taken up scanning under the trailer again I leaned over the edge and pulled the rubbish bag up after me, since I had put it on the top. This I set down beside me, and then I proceeded to pull up one of the small crates which I took with me through the door, down the ladder, through the room with the repair bot in it which probably felt quite left out, and through the grating in the floor in one corner of the room. Now underneath the ground it really felt like a bad spy movie. Nevertheless I took my crate to the end of the shaft where I dropped into the staircase which took me to the deep subterranean part of the missile silo. At the bottom I was confronted by some massive doors, which could have proved a problem if the military bothered to change their codes once every few years. (For some reason, I don't recommend trying to infiltrate a secret military facility in real life using last decades' codes though, in case anyone was thinking about it.) At the behest of Savage I committed what actually amounts to an act of corporate sabotage by opening the doors and walking through. In the room beyond I threw my small crate on top of the second crate which was already by the door into the long tunnel leading to the launch control. Then I opened said door, got behind both crates and using this trusty shield advanced up the hallway. Almost immediately I felt it’s benefits as I did not have to run away from the commando who appeared just beyond the trip wires ahead as I reached about halfway. I continued pushing and after he was gone I carefully pushed both through the red beams to cut them off at the source, sounding the alarm. This time I did run away, quite fast, all the way through the tunnel, and the blast doors to under the staircase beside the lift. Later I learned that these lengths had been totally unnecessary. When I ventured back to the trip wires the commando had gone back to patrolling and the MIB from above who had stuck around was standing with his back towards the entrance, as you do when you respond to the threat of someone coming through the entrance. I crouched behind the crates and waited for the commando to do his whole round again. Then when he walked away to my left I crawled under the remaining wire and took myself to the right. I crawled around the whole area, passed the crates at the back, until I reached the ladder up to the loft. When the commando was safely out of sight I climbed up this ladder. I momentarily disturbed the spiderbot as I landed right beside it, I was able to crouch on the other side of the breakable crate up there until it stopped looking for me, and when it had gone back to brooding in its dark corner I crept away and fell into the bathroom which was doubling as a jail cell.
  305.  
  306. Inside they were keeping a man hostage. It’s a good idea and all but I’m not sure they thought their plan through properly. Taking over a missile silo and launching a nuclear missile at your enemies is practical in theory, but how can you expect your troops to work to their full potential when they have a man watching them every time they go to the toilet. I put it down to the troops being thoroughly unnerved by this experience rather than any skill or ability of my own that allowed me to divert the missile and escape. Again, right in the middle of a large group of people who wanted to kill me my conversation partner insisted on talking in a very loud voice. His conversation was not at all interesting though, or at least paled in significance when compared to the data cube in the sink. It gave me the password and login to the launch system. With this securely tucked away in my datavaults I stacked up the small crates on the larger boxes inside and climbed out into the loft again. I brought two small crates out after me, one of which I carried over to the ladder and threw onto the floor below. This brought both the MIB and commando running, and while they were searching for whoever made the noise I grabbed the second crate and threw it down after it. After a few tries at this I finally got a situation where the commando went back to patrolling as usual, and the MIB took up a position staring intently at the wall, his back pointed directly at the crates at the bottom of the ladder. Very very slowly and patiently I crawled down and carefully alighted beside my haul without making a sound. Then, one after the other, I silently took both crates away and placed them under the stairs leading to the second level. From a handy hiding spot I watched the commando on his patrol walk towards the steps, then to the trip wires where he consistently failed to notice the evidence of my breaking and entering, and then walked off towards the bathroom. I think he chose this patrol because he really needed to go to the toilet, but whenever he reached it just couldn’t bring himself to go in.
  307.  
  308. With his back towards me I took one of the crates and made my way up the stairs with it into the control room. Neither MIB sitting at the large computer terminals were facing me, so I took my crate around the sides of the room through the pitch black shadows from the machines and put it down quietly when the shadows stopped. Then I went back to get the second one. When I had both crates ready at my disposal whenever I needed them I crawled back around the machines and into the middle of the room, staying behind both MIBs. I inched up behind the one on the right until I could just reach out with my fingertips and open the safety cover over the little button beside him. In the MJ12 labs under UNATCO I read that MIBs are 78% more effective in combat than ordinary unaugmented humans. Obviously this did not extend to observational skills. There I was, close enough to breathe down his neck if I hadn’t been breathing on his ankles, my arm stuck out in front of his face waving around, and he managed to see nothing. It’s either that or I have an extremely glorified opinion of human capability. When the cover was up it took a lot of manoeuvring around with both hands clamped on he mouse forcing intricate little movements of the cursor before I was able to focus on the button itself and press it so the glass screen in front of the launch control console slid down. Triumphant in my achievement I made my way back to my crates ready to launch phase two. One of these I picked up and then stealthily crouched behind the computer I had just been pressing buttons on. To my right was the console, and I slowly moved closer and closer to it staying out of sight of the terribly observant MIBs and chucked the crate a meter or so in front of me so it sat beside the console. Neither MIB moved, but I sat tight until, after a little while, I heard feet and the third commando appeared up the stairs partially restoring my faith in humanity. He ran around the room a little bit and then left again. When he had gone I grabbed the second crate and repeated the process, throwing this one on top of the first. Again neither MIB moved so I crept around the edges of the room and made some noise near the top of the stairs. At this both MIBs reacted and jumped out of their seats, so I ran back the way I had come and ducked behind my second little pile of sacked crates in 10 minutes. I reached out beside me to open the security console, and when this was open I used the codes I took from the bathroom and rerouted the nuclear missile to Area 51. (Which just happened to be where I was going next, but I have faith that it is me at fault when I wonder whether irradiating your next destination is a good idea or not and come to a negative conclusion).
  309.  
  310. Now to get out. I tensed and waited for buttons to flash, horns to blare, alarms to sound, screens popping out saying “WARNING MISSILE DIVERTED” in big red flashing writing, and the commotion as 3 MIBs and a commando began running about, shouting conflicting orders at each other, and generally making a bigger mess than already existed. As per usual in these situations. Nothing happened. Carefully I extracted myself from my hiding spot and crawled through the darkness to the stairs, still nothing happened. Through the cracks between the stairs I watched the commando unconcernedly walk off towards the bathroom (again), so I continued down the stairs, under the tripwire, and down the corridor. At the end I found the one un-unlockable blast door conveniently open. I would have thought that locking blast doors would be more appropriate than making a pathway to the one person who could save (save is a relative term) the launch, but I’m not a power crazed megalomaniac so I don’t understand the complex thought processes required to make these decisions. At last when I reached the long tunnel leading to the missile a bunch of people at the other end tried to attack me. Happily, finally knowing that all my hard work was being recognised, I opened the long laundry shoot(?) in the floor in front of me and after making sure they were running towards me slid down it. At the bottom I splashed into water and swam down to the lift controls. Before running out of breath I pressed the button to call the lift down and then rose to the surface. After a little while it came down to water level, I hauled myself on and pressed the button labelled four. As I expected this took me to level four, where I went to the middle of the room, jumped on the railing beside the rocket and looked down. Far below me I saw Howard Strong. I spent some time lining myself up correctly, and then dropped off the railing and I landed on his head. He must have been very surprised, that sort of thing just does not happen in real life.
  311.  
  312. I bounced off and landed of the railing around his platform. From my very close proximity I observed as he looked stunned for a second before crumpling into a heap. I think it probably hurt quite a lot, it certainly hurt me. Afterwards my health stood as follows. Head: 60, Torso: 56, Right Arm: 40, Left Arm: 72, Right Leg: 26, Left Leg: 34. I dropped to the floor and called the lift. When it reached me I crawled into the corner for extra safety and rode it up to the top level, level 6. Here I checked to make sure the MIB was on the other side of the rocket, and then quickly scaled the ladder to one side and pressed the button to open the hatch. I emerged from the acid fumes of a rocket about to launch into, well, the acid fumes of a rocket about to launch underground that had drifted above ground and were now fighting a battle with the fresh air. I looked around a little bit and seeing no obvious impending danger I ran over the Jock’s helicopter. The trooper I had left behind was still walking around, but had moved out in front of the building. Being rejected like that must hurt a lot. As I talked to Jock in the helicopter I noticed that, to my concern, two attack dogs on one side were quickly closing in on my location, and from the other side the three MJ12 troopers were having a friendly reunion. Soon it became apparent that actually they had come out to kill me, which was quite disappointing. But before either group could do anything I suddenly disappeared and Jock began racing a nuclear missile to Area 51. I do hope his objective was to loose.
  313.  
  314. Surface Tension
  315.  
  316. As Jock flew away for the last time and warned me about the sniper I wondered, yet again, about the recruiting system used for MJ12 troopers. When a large, black coloured helicopter had just settled on the landing pad and taken off again the guard had managed to see entirely nothing. However, his eagle eyes were able to spot my tiny dark figure cloaked in shadow with apparent ease. I know my baggy coat makes me look bigger than I really am, but surly… To avoid an ignominious end so close to my final objective I took cover behind the helicopter pad and waited there for a few seconds, then I began to make my way around the topside of Area 51. I ran over to the ramp nearby leading to the lower ground level and crouched at the top behind the small wall so I could watch the security bot trudging over and back across the hump below me. When it was walking away from me towards the large hanger I quickly ran down the first ramp, did a 180 degree spin at the bottom and continued down the second and on into the barracks. The room was messy. It was like one of those unintentionally symbolic occurrences that you can later claim to have meant all along. For all his tough talk, when the going did get tough Bob Page threw all his toys out of the sand pit and made a mess. It didn’t take very long to find the key to the sky tower, but when I had grabbed it and hurried back to the door I had to dart behind the wall as the bot I had just avoided was coming down the ramp in my direction. I waited while it did not break out of the mould but blandly conformed to the expected behaviour of a stereotypical security bot, blindly scanning its assigned area before turning around to thump back the way it had come. As it left I ran out and flattened myself against the wall of the ramp below the bot as it made its way down the other side of the hump, scanned, and turned around yet again. Then I quickly ran out across the open space ahead of me towards to hanger.
  317.  
  318. I timed my operation so as to avoid the second bot patrolling the front side of the building, so entered through the gap where the broken doors didn’t quite meet undetected. In the middle of the room I spied two Commandos and an MIB standing around doing nothing, occasionally muttering a random comment to themselves. Unfortunately I was unable to do what normal spies would do, which consisted of stealthily shooting them all in the head, so instead I settled for sneaking around the edges of the room hiding behind boxes until I came to a large metal beam loosened in the explosion. This made a convenient diagonal path to the second floor of the structure in the corner in the room. I checked to make sure no one had seen me, and then sprang up and daringly dashed from my cover to the beam. This I raced up as fast as I could nano-augmented-agent-with-no-nano-augmentationsly go and at the top franticly ducked to squeeze through the gap into the second story room. Here I stopped for a bit and listened, but didn’t hear anything. I was half relieved, half disappointed that all my effort hadn’t been noticed by anybody at all. Nevertheless I walked over to the soldier in the corner and in an all too easy fashion extracted the login and password to the computer system from him. Then I ran to one of the windows, leapt onto the sill, and alighted on the balcony outside. Of course this time everyone heard me. There was a lot of running about and shouting below me at this point, but I was able to obscure myself using the floor as I crept along the platform towards the doors, and by the time I fell to the ground at the end people had settled down enough to not notice me. From here I was able to crawl out of the hanger, and when I did so by lucky chance the bot outside was walking away from me and I was able to run all the way to the sky tower, unlock the door, and step inside.
  319.  
  320. First I ran over to the lam on the ladder leading to the higher level and disarmed it, but I did conscientiously leave it sitting on the wall as I climbed up. On the next level I passed a harmless repair bot and climbed a second ladder to the top of the tower where the sniper was patrolling. Snug inside the ladder shaft I waited until the trooper walked behind the pillar above me before quickly dashing up the ladder, opening the security console, and descending part way down before it had opened fully. Using my secret telekinetic powers I typed in the necessary codes and then, through several sheets of steal and meters on concrete turned off all the available cameras and opened the huge blast doors Page had been taunting me about. This done I closed the window and dropped down to the floor, where I was met by a defiant repair bot which had somehow managed to place itself directly in front of the ladder down. It was probably resentful of my total rejection of it and its whole brotherhood of similar models all over the world. I couldn’t jump past it, run past it, or go over the top of it. Maybe this was the end of the road. Umpteen terrorists, anti-terrorists and private terrorists could not succeed where a humble repair bot with a vengeance could. It would have made a sad end, but luckily quite soon it moved out of the way of its own accord and I was able to triumphantly descend having passed my most difficult task yet.
  321.  
  322. When I came out of the bottom of the tower I ran around the base of the helipad to stay out of sight of the sniper and found one of the small crates left scattered around the area. I took this with me down the first ramp, and hid it with it in the corner making myself inconspicuous as the bot passed me on its way to the barracks. When it was gone I ran down the second ramp towards the hanger and threw my crate down at the bottom of it. One crate was not enough though, so as the bot continued on it’s only slightly inconvenienced patrol I ran back to the helipad to get a second crate. When I had it on the ramp I waited this time for the bot to walk past my first crate on its way to the hanger, then as it faced away from me I ran down after it, placed the second crate beside the first, and then dashed back up both ramps before the bot could turn around to add a dirty silver coloured lining to my cloud. The crates trapped the bot at the base of the ramp, unable to get up and most importantly, unable to see to shoot me as I pushed two large medium crates all the way to the blast doors. As I have said before, pushing crates is incredibly dull. The time it takes to cover even a small distance could be described by even the most rational person as “forever”, particularly if much of it must be done crouched, so you can imagine how I feel about it. It is always a good opportunity to catch up on those things you’ve always wanted to do though, like renovating your house, taking up painting and opening your own art gallery, or brushing up on your history of everything from Alexander the Great to the little plastic thingy on the ends of your shoelaces. There were two incidents of note however. At the beginning of the ramp, after finally making it there, I had to crouch behind the crates to stop the sniper shooting at me. I think the game was telling me that I don’t have time to stand around pushing large boxes, but in a most inappropriate manner. The second was that I had to crouch while pushing the crate around the corner onto the second ramp so the bot wouldn’t shoot at me. But, by the time I had discovered the meaning of life I had managed to go through this whole charade twice and had two medium crates at the entrance to Pages bunker. I was so excited I completely forgot what it was.
  323.  
  324. I had turned off the camera aimed at the blast doors from outside, and the inside one proved remarkably easy to hide from. I had expected to have to crouch behind the crates as I pushed them underneath, but as it turned out I could stand up having half my body showing and it wouldn’t react at all. This was great, I must have transferred my considerable botany skills to manufacturing and welding as well, and it meant progress went a lot faster. When I had both crates past the camera and turret I began putting my master plan into action. To make my way down both of the tunnels where the large one I was in broke off into two smaller ones, using the crates to protect me from two patrolling security bots as I did so. First I manoeuvred the crates so they were side by side, both visible to the bots. Then I began pushing one of them into the tunnel on the right, using it to shield myself from the security bot walking up and down inside it. As this took a while, whenever both bots met in the middle I frequently had to run back to the second crate where I could hide from both. But after a while this was no longer necessary because I had safely pushed my crate completely into the right tunnel, and now contented myself with slowly moving down this one, pushing when it was safe and hiding behind my one crate when it was not. Soon, as this tunnel was quite short, I was close enough to the end to run down into the large chamber ahead of me. Someone had very generously left me three whole tnt crates to work with. I was only in a position to use one, but I do appreciate the gesture. To avoid a chain reaction I carefully moved two of them out of the way, and then did my superhero impersonation with the other. I dashed towards it, grabbed it in both hands and in one motion smoothly turned to face the room in the left corner while taking a few steps towards it. At the perfect moment I let go of my crate and as it hurtled towards its destination I leapt backwards and ground my face on the floor as the explosion rocketed over my head sending debris and shrapnel everywhere. Well… it was pretty accurate until the last bit. In reality I just stepped back a bit and was fine. I had done some damage though, as where windows and a door had once been there was now nothing but empty space, which is what I had intended.
  325.  
  326. Inside I was able to successfully turn the lift power on, but when I came out again the bot, understandably quizzical about what was going on, was striding down the ramp towards me. Quick as a flash, combining the powers of several superheroes at once, I suddenly appeared behind a large crate in the centre of the room and became invisible. The bot stumbled around a bit, but I stayed hidden until it left again. I could have made a quick getaway, but I had more crate pushing to do later on which would take time. Anyway, I was playing at superheroes rather than supervillians who I understand have a patent on those. After following the bot back to its tunnel I used the crate to make my way back to the fork, and when I was able, pushed it into the middle of the three hallways so the pointed corner of the wall was trying to cut through the crate like a cold knife through some very hard butter. The bots were still behaving like the losers of Ballroom Challenge, seldom in the same place at the same time, but when they did connect I needed the extra protection. I got behind my second crate when the second bot just began walking away and used this longest period of time available to push it past the first so I could use my original crate to hide from the first bot. Then, when I was well and truly in the left hand corridor, I used the same system as earlier to make my way down the tunnel in fits and starts. I made it, and when the bot turned away from me one last time I stood up, ran to the large lift at the end of the tunnel, and rode it on down.
  327.  
  328. Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole
  329.  
  330. After quite a long time the lift from the surface came to a grinding halt at the bottom of the shaft. Almost immediately after stepping off the platform Page began to ramble away in my head again, but I ignored him as I pressed the lit up button to my left and waited while the huge blast doors in front of me opened. After running through them, about half way to the next set of blast doors, Page suddenly stopped speaking to me. I thought that was very rude, not that I missed his voice though. These doors opened automatically as I approached and revealed the entrance to Sector Two. As soon as I entered I ran over to the assorted boxes stacked in front of me and crawled behind them to hide from the camera until I reached the edge of the platform. Below me stretched a series of diagonal trip wires, carefully and ingeniously designed to permit safe traverse across them only with the maximum amount of effort. It took a long time and a large number of quickloads to jump over each beam of blue light, but eventually I reached the other side without a single spiderbot trailing along behind me. Moving forward again I avoided the explosion from the faulty piece of equipment and then I talked to Everett at Station 5. He was trying to establish a monopoly on me by getting his proposal in early and poisoning my ear about his opposition. I said I’d think about it, it was a convenient thing to say. After he left I turned around and set off down the tunnel directly behind me. At the first bend I stopped and waited. After a while I got bored and preemptively moved behind a crate. Not too long after that I heard and then saw the security bot patrolling up and down the corridor. It walked past my hiding place, performed its duty to its electronic circuits and silicon brain, and then turned around and walked away again. I pondered for a while what a security bot would do if it weren’t programmed but free to do whatever it wished. The sad answer is it probably wouldn’t do anything at all. Then at a safe distance I followed it down the hall until I reached the entrance to the crew’s quarters. Savage had just given the code to me earlier, which again illustrates the dangers of not regularly changing your passwords, so I punched it in and walked inside to head straight for the medbot.
  331.  
  332. It turned out I was pretty hurt. I had forgotten how bad it was, but after using the medbot once for 300 points of health my right arm was still at 63 and my left arm at 72. I waited around for a minute, spending some of it staring at the trapped greasel through the glass of one of the bunk cubicles until the fight music came on. But when the medbot was done charging I regretfully had to left my new, angry pet alone and heal my arms. Now fully rejuvenated and ready for action I headed back out to rejoin the fray. I rushed out the door, and then quickly ran back inside with my tail between my legs. Of course, it figures that the time it takes to use the medbot twice was approximately the same time it takes for the bot to reach the end of its patrol and come back again. I waited in the room for the bot to do its business, and then followed it down the hall once again towards the recreation area. Upon reaching it, before attempting to go in, I hid behind some boxes at the side of the corridor from the camera up ahead so I wouldn’t be pounded into the ground by a bot/turret tag team and waited while the bot plodded around the corner. When it was safe-ish I stood up, quickly darted across the hall to enter the code for the door, and when it opened I stepped through. There was now no time to think. The WIB and MJ12 trooper sitting in the corner of the room immediately saw my hulking shape eclipse the light from the doorway. But for some reason I thought anyway. I thought that normally I was quite pleased by the sloppy work of these employees of this large company who seem much more interested in their break time than catching enemies. But this time this trait was not helping one bit. My train of thought was very suddenly derailed by a hail of bullets from the corner and I was suddenly jolted into action. I lunged forward for the datacube left on the edge of a table and then hotstepped it out of the room followed by numerous small pieces of metal, many of which found their target. Happy to have made it out I ran back to the sleeping quarters and again sought out the medbot. Secret agenting is a dangerous job. My health, fantastic only a moment ago, wasn’t looking too good again and now read Head: 70, Torso: 28, Right Arm: 39, Right Leg: 88. I used the useful medbot for the third time, and then walked over to the first cubicle on the left to open it with my hard gotten code. From inside I took the nanokey I needed, and then I made my way back to Station 5.
  333.  
  334. I wasn’t quite as quick at getting back as it may have just seemed however. Along the way I acquired an explosive metal barrel which I pushed a third of the distance, so multiply the time it should have taken by about 6 and that’s how long it took. When I got to the junction I turned and began pushing it into the shorter tunnel, keeping this barrel full of a highly explosive substance close to me as I went into the midst of a large number of MJ12 troopers and commandos. It made sense at the time I swear. After turning the solitary corner on my way I came into view of a few of these soldiers, so I ducked behind my barrel and kept on going. Slowly. I pushed it diagonally across the corridor, and then went the rest of the way along on the far side until I was just to the right of the commando keeping watch at the end. I made sure I had room to manoeuvre right around the barrel when I needed to, and then sat down to wait. After only a little while the second commando marched out from behind the wall just beside me, paused, and marched back again. As that one disappeared I inched around the barrel until I was just noticed by the first commando. Enough so he was alerted that something was there, but not so much that he knew it was me. Like clockwork, when he was decided he hadn’t actually seen anything, he began to walk up the hall I had just come down. I slid around the barrel as he passed me, and when he was a reasonable distance away I stood up and prepared to run. Just across from me was a hatch in the floor near to one of those rebellious repair bots. As I dived out from my hiding place I am sure that all the different troopers all tried their best to kill me, but none of them were successful before I had bounded across the open space and began to grapple with the trap door. It took altogether too long to open in my opinion, but when it was I slipped through it into the cool dark tunnel under the floor and was safe. If being in the middle of Bob Page’s secret bunker surrounded by a very large amount of very angry men and having no way out again safe.
  335.  
  336. Safe as under the floor was, it wasn’t very interesting, so I resolved to go back up again very soon. It didn’t take long for everyone to calm down, so when I did climb back up the ladder and onto the ground no one was watching. I crawled across to the next ladder I had to go up and pulled myself up the rungs until I was just below the platform, where I stopped and listened for footsteps. I could hear some getting closer and closer, and then a little bit quieter, and then they stopped altogether as the rifle wielding trooper making them stared up the corridor I had come down. When he had rightly determined that I was not there he turned around and went back. As I judged he was turning away from me I hauled myself up onto the platform, and then desperately tried to shove one of the barrels on the walkway out from the wall so I could hide behind it. Just as the trooper turned around to come back again I managed to create a Denton sized space between the barrel and the wall which I was able to squeeze into as he passed. Then when the coast was clear I quickly crawled to the doorway, opened it with my nanokey, crawled through, and carefully shut it behind me. Relieved to be able to, and in fact now required to, stand up, I did so and ran over to the lift where I pressed the big red button. As Bob Page began his predictable ranting I made my way to the back of the room where I hid myself in the tunnel and waited. When the lift arrived, disappointingly missing a ding sound, I began galabanting around like a dancing elephant at the entrance to the tunnel on the right side of the room, where I stuck out like a dancing elephant in a tunnel. As hoped the two troopers and the MIB in the lift noticed, and all three came out and began running towards me. I used the opportunity to slip out the other end to run for the lift. It was quite a successful operation, unless you count the trooper who obviously didn’t know a hint when he saw one and was still in the middle of the room when I came rushing out. He took my torso and right arm and leg down to 76, 72 and 76 respectively. But I managed to get on the lift and take it down fine. Bob Page even complimented me on my dancing, or something, quicker on my feet than my daddy I am it seems. I thought that was quite sweet.
  337.  
  338. As soon as I stepped into Sector Three I was accosted by Tong who wanted to blow things up. The idea had a certain appeal, but unfortunately caution overruled enthusiasm and I said I’d think about it. When we finished our conversation the doors ahead of me opened and I was confronted by a huge forklift truck bearing down on me. It was like carmageddon for a few seconds except I was on the receiving end. I threw myself against the wall and closed my eyes, and then opened them again to make sure Tong wasn’t watching. When I had ascertained he was gone I walked up to the forklift just to make quite sure it was actually stationary, and then carried on doing my own thing as if it had never happened. I flicked the switch at the back of it and then ran around and sat on the fork as it raised into the air, stopping just beside a grating in the wall where they must push the giant boxes the forklift lifts into the central staircase. I opened it and crawled into the gap, but just as I was about to alight on the steps below the greasel downstairs opened the door and ran out. This was quickly followed by a trooper with a gep gun, and then an MIB running down the stairs. Puzzled but appreciative of this strange behaviour I ran up to the top, easily sneaking past the mechanic in the control room, and made my way into the corridor on the left. The remarkable absentmindedness of MJ12 employees doesn’t seem to be confined to the military branch. Sure enough, in the room at the end of this corridor, I found a datacube left lying around with the login and password for the console in the control room. By the time I had it and went back the MIB had come up the stairs again, and I listened to the ominous conversation he had with the mechanic before sneaking to the console and logging in. First I opened the door to the reactors, and then I instinctively turned off all the cameras that were operational. When I had logged out again I sneaked back passed the two men, crawled to the bottom of the stairs where the greasel was still absent, and then made my way to the newly opened door leading to the reactor control room.
  339.  
  340. I ignored the spider bots that couldn’t do much to hurt me and ran down the corridor to the two huge reactors. I got quite lucky now. I was able to run between the two massive things through the cloud of green smog and then climb up the ladder into the control room without any of the Grays seeing me. In the control room the mechanic who would get so worked up about the idea of the reactors getting started unwittingly gave me the code that would ultimately allow me to do so, if I so wanted. I must have disarmed his vigilance with my bad joke. Back down the ladder I successfully ran past the Grays again, and then past the spider bots taking only a little more damage, then past all the transgenics on the loose in the area, then past the forklift which I gave a dirty look, and then back up the stairs to the entrance of the Aquinas Hub. I typed 1038 into the keypad, and then stepped through the slowly opening door.
  341.  
  342. The Fox
  343.  
  344. I carefully shut the surprisingly small door for such a significant event behind me and walked down the hallway ahead until I came to the small office area with a medbot strolling around. After using it to make myself fighting fit again, even though that phrase was largely meaningless at the time, I made my way to the ladder in the corner of the room. Now, I had intended to sneak down the ladder slowly, hiding from the grays, and then wait for the commando in the adjacent tunnel to let his patrol bring him to me. I then would have silently followed him down the tunnel and smoothly glided past him as he turned at the other end so I could skip down the steps to my left and carry on. It didn’t quite happen that way, but the technique I ended up using proved very effective. When I descended the ladder one of the grays saw me, and as I knew that I’d be dead in 15 seconds if I stayed where I was I dropped any semblance of stealth and ran instead. I dashed into the commando’s corridor as he was facing away from me and pelted after him. If I had been able to I would probably have yelled “coooommmmiiinnggggg thrroooouuuuugghh” as I did so, but it’s lucky that I couldn’t because he would have turned around and shot me. I streaked past the hunk of metal plodding along and long before he could react had disappeared around the corner. I didn’t dare stop here though, and I dangerously took several flights of stairs at pace and only paused when I reached the lift that would take me up to Helios. At the top Helios droned on about governments and the human mind and other boring stuff like that. I wonder why they put pineapple on so many different pizzas. Not that I don’t like pineapple, in fact I like it a lot, but sometimes when I don’t want it it certainly makes the selection very small. I wonder… Then I realised that Helios was done talking and if it had had eyes it would have been staring at me waiting. “I’ll think about it” I bluffed before turning around and leaving the way I had come.
  345.  
  346. Back at the bottom of the lift I acted fast. Soldiers were coming. I ignored Helios’ offer of security bots to help me and ran onto the platform of the internal transport system. Before anything could come along the rail I ran down the shaft until I stopped at the end. Below me a giant spider bot walked up and down, doing a good job of looking all menacing as well as other things it was designed for. A little higher up underneath me was a large pipe attached to the wall. I dropped onto this and crouched at the far end as a squad of soldiers entered on their train thingy and were conveyed on the rail over me to where the security bots were waiting. I hope they had a lovely time. When they were out of sight I made sure the giant spider was at the other end of the large hall and heavily dropped to the ground, loosing 10 torso health and 9 in each of my lower appendages. On the ground I ran to the large blast doors nearby which would lead me to Bob Page. When I reached them I glanced back over my shoulder to discover the bot had discovered me and was slowly hauling itself to the doors. I tried to run through them to safety but they were shut, the bot stumbled, banged and clinked closer and closer, and Helios appeared to be talking in my head. “Do not forget…” clink clink bang “the uplink locks” clink. Do Not Forget To Open The Doors! I silently screamed in my head. It might have been that, it might have been Helios demonstrating his power over me by not opening the doors until the last minute, it might have been awkward developers creating some unstreamlined gameplay, but only just before the first arc of lightning hit me did the doors open and I slipped though into the room beyond. Inside I ran past the dead marine on the floor. This was an ominous sign, but I was a badass hero who no one ever tells to reload, not even myself, so I didn’t worry. Up the stairs on my left, along the catwalk and through the tunnel, and then I ran straight into Paul. Obviously this was a case of sibling rivalry. He was so nice and polite about everything, but I could tell underneath he was jealous that I got to save the world and not him. I brushed him off and continued into my nursery.
  347.  
  348. First things first I checked to make sure the medbot I wanted to use wasn’t in the way of the imminent explosion that Page’s next trap would consist of. Then I did my best to avoid being hit by the door that inexplicably left its hinges on one side of the room and found its way to the other side, even though the explosion left the doorframe itself unscathed. They must have some pretty tight building regulations in the future. I wasn’t harmed by this last scare tactic, so I quickly used the medbot to regain the 28 points of health I lost, and then crawled around under the floor, in the corner near the large explosion, until I found what I was looking for. The datacube contained the login and password, “lab 12” and “graytest”, that I needed for my next destination. With this information in hand I continued my infiltration of this top secret facility through a staple of the FPS genre: The Only Way Possible. Sometimes I wonder how many potential heroes there are who never got to do any heroing because a door they needed to go through was locked, or a tree truck they would have used to climb over a security fence fell down 3 meters further away than they needed, or the person who would have given them the access codes to the computer system was killed in an explosion hours before the hero even reached them AND for some reason was not carrying around those particular codes that they had no idea they would need that day on a piece of paper in their coat pocket. Lucky for us, JC was not one of those wannabe heroes.
  349.  
  350. I crouched as I went through the short but winding alternate corridor, so when I reached the window behind which the gray’s enclosure was located the grays wouldn’t see me. I crawled to the security consol and opened it. At the login screen I very deliberately flipped the password and login over and deleted the space in “lab 12”. The codes worked and I used the computer to shut down the environmental generator, turn off the security camera out of instinct and unlock and open the far door. When I was done I opened the door beside me, and stood up at the window waiting for the grays to notice. Both were wandering around on the far side of the room, but luckily the closer one saw me. After the initial shocked stare that all characters do as they notice the baggy coat and sunglasses and try to work out whether they are looking at a secret agent or a flasher, it began running after me and I took off back to the large room to hide under the floor. After a little while I emerged under the blue bubbling pipe in the middle and climbed back up one of the small flights of stairs taking care not to alert the gray in the room somewhere and trotted back to the gray’s enclosure. With one less gray inside this time I ventured into the room and with my back to the wall inched around the sides to the right. I used the glowing pillars to hide from the gray as I got closer and closer to the door, and about 2 meters away I paused and waited for the gray to wander off. It was standing so close if I had tried to sneak by I would have been hurt by radiation. Eventually it left, giving me a small opportunity to run through the door into the last antechamber before the prize.
  351.  
  352. The Rabbit v1
  353.  
  354. I marched down the hallway towards Bob Page suspended in his glowing ball of energy and stepped out to confront him. In the ensuing conversation Page was suitably snide and condescending as befits an evil super villain, and JC was suitably cool and unflustered, as always. As soon as the conversation ended I stepped back out of reach of the suddenly activated turret nearby and waited for it to calm down. When it was back to normal I made my way down the wall until I was almost underneath it and got ready. When I ran out from under my shelter, the turret had time to let out one ringing shot harmlessly over my head before I had turned the corner to the left and belted down the hallway. But like in any good secret base the fun did not end there. Almost immediately I was confronted, or rather behinded, by two UC made small spider bots which began scuttling along behind me. I turned the next corner to the right and kept up the pace. I ran past the Aquinas Router entrance and out onto the platform where the infusion control was located. Here I ducked under the railing around the edges and hid behind the computer system for a little while to make sure neither of the spiders would follow me, then, when they didn’t I looked down at the vast array of “fun” that awaited below.
  355.  
  356. I spent some time watching the karkians on the lowest floor. The one I could plainly see was patrolling up and down its designated area just as intelligently as an MJ12 trooper, which gave me all the advantages. When it was a reasonable distance away from my landing spot I quietly slipped off the platform and fell through the air to land heavily on the tiny railing underneath surrounding the second level, showing an incredible skill at balancing in the process. Without wasting a second I fell off this railing onto a yellow pipe a little further down, and then dropped to the floor. Aware that standing in an open area with large numbers of transgenics roaming around free to display their natural instincts, as natural as instinct can be in a vast enclosed metal room, was not the best thing I could be doing I resolved to run very fast to the little maintenance door ahead of me and go through the doorway. This I did, squeezing myself through the gap as soon as it was big enough, just before a giant crocodile/komodo dragon beast snapped me in two. To be absolutely sure of safety I quickly opened the grate by the dead mechanic and crawled through that as well. Now hidden from any stray greasels that might be wandering around outside I took a look at my wounds. From the various different falls I had been through I now had 70 torso health and 58 in both my legs, but I decided this was probably enough to continue. When I ventured back through the grate I found that luckily the mechanic had just happened to be carrying around the exact code I needed in his pocket. What a happy coincidence. After storing the code in my head I ventured back out to heroically find the right door.
  357.  
  358. First I watched the transgenics out of the open maintenance door on the left hand side of the room, the opposite side to the blue fusion device. In particular I watched one karkian that walked up and down that side of the room. When I was sure of the pattern I prepared myself to leave my little red cocoon of safety, and when the karkian came as close to my position as it would, and then turned away from me, I stood up and ran out after it hoping that no other transgenics would notice me. None of them appeared to have, as when I had caught up to the karkian and veered off to the right to hide myself in a dark corner in the centre of the room no greasels hopped after me and no great galumphing scary looking baby elephants came pounding around the corner. I crouched there out of sight of anything for a while until, as expected, the karkian I had followed turned around and walked back the way it had come. When it passed me I stood up and made a desperate dash to the door of the Coolant Control System. Lucky for me the only creature that might have caused a problem here, another greasel at this end of the room, had been on the far side and didn’t notice. I waited here for a while until I was sure nothing was after me, then I checked where the assorted transgenics were and briskly jogged from this large door to the entrance to the Aquinas Substation on the other side. Again I huddled in the corner out of view like a city kid visiting a farm who has lost their parents making sure none of the animals could see me. When I determined I had been successful I slowly moved towards the keypad by the door, punched in 6765, and watched the door open.
  359.  
  360. This next bit looked pretty easy. All I had to do was slip into the room, use the console on the wall to open the door to the Aquinas Router, and take the lift back upstairs. But of course, we all know what happens when things look easy. (Mainly because we have all played the game through before.) I took a few steps forward and BAM; there’s an explosion and the room filled with electricity. I sat and watched the arcs jutting into the room for some time, and while I could see where the individual ones were placed I could see no particular pattern in when they occurred. I tried my best to avoid them when I went inside, but I’m not sure my attempts were successful and there’s no way I could describe exactly what I did that worked. I’ve put it down to luck. But what I did do was crouch on the floor a lot, because this seemed to direct electricity to my legs more than my torso and quickly crawled across the room to the clear space near the switch. I took a bit of damage doing this, loosing a further 12 torso health and 47 from both legs, and decided I would have much preferred to have started with a bit more health. But I was committed now so I used the megalomaniac password to log into the console and open the door, and prepared for the next stretch. I tried lots of different ways to avoid the lightning and get to the lift, but almost all of them ended with me curled up in a foetal position by the lift doors, dying just before they opened. I don’t know how many attempts I tried, but incredibly one time I pressed the lift button and found myself still alive when the doors opened beside me. Fingers crossed, touching several pieces of wood, desperate not to let anything jinx it, I crawled inside and reached out for the up button. I got very lucky, my now my health was horrible. Head: 40, Torso: 20, Right Arm: 70, and I didn’t have any legs anymore at all.
  361.  
  362. At the top when the doors opened again I peered around the corner looking for any stray spider bots still crawling around in the area. I didn’t see any, so crawling myself as I wasn’t in either the mental or physical state to do anything else, I made my way past the balcony with the kill Page button and into room of the Aquinas Router where I became bestest friends with the medbot. After using my new friend twice I abandoned it and began hanging out with Helios, following the instructions it gave me in my head. I opened both channels and then typed the password I was provided with into the computer system at the front of the room and engaged the primary router. Page got all angry at me again, but I didn’t really have time to argue. I had a date with a computer program to get to. I left the Aquinas Router the way I had come and began the long backtrack to Helios. I ran out of the room, down the long corridors I had run away from spider bots along earlier, jumping over a stray spider bot on the way. I swept past poor Page still behind his force field, so disappointingly I wasn’t able to make him eat my dust. I ignored the second spider bot on Page’s platform and ran back through the antechamber I started in and into the grays’ enclosure. The one gray I had left was still wandering around inside, so I kept my back to the wall and my front behind a glowing pillar at all times and moved around the edge of the chamber back into the twisted corridor. After coming out of this I ran through the suspension tank room, gave a wide grace to the gray wandering around near the exit door and raced down the corridor. I’m sure the gray began to chase me, but I don’t care because very soon after that I changed maps.
  363.  
  364. At the end of the tunnel the giant spider bot still guarded the blast doors into and out of Sector 4. I didn’t have much reason to be afraid this time however, so I went down the stairs and ran right past it before it could do anything much. At the end of the huge hall I ran through the doorway on the right, ignored the greasel under the stairs, and ran up them. As I had approached down the hall the MJ12 trooper on the platform above had seen me coming and came to find me, but I stepped past him at the stop of the stairs getting a small splattering of bullets and kept on climbing. At the top I ran past the two grays that had caused so much inconvenience earlier and climbed back up the ladder so I was almost back to the door into the Aquinas Hub. While I waited around up here for a while so the grays would have time to forget about me I used the medbot, more for mental security than actual need. Then I slowly began to go down the ladder again. This time when I ventured down the whole plan went much more smoothly. I alighted quietly on the ground without either creature noticing and slipped into the tunnel I had headed down before. This time hooning was out of the question, there were too many soldiers at the other end for this to be a viable option. Instead I did what I had intended to do. I waited for the commando to come to me, and then slowly followed him to the end of his patrol. When he stopped I glided out to his right, and when he turned 180 degrees to his left I slid around him unnoticed. The remaining troops between me and Helios were slightly more difficult. After several tries I managed to run by them all using the Rambo/Pacifist technique. I ran half way down the steps to the lower level until one of the troopers still standing on the internal transport system aimed his gep gun at me. Before he fired I ran back up the steps and slipped under the railing to fall to the ground, thus neatly avoiding the commando who had been down there but was now half way up the stairs. Before the soldiers in the transport system could run out I dashed across their view, and then tried to run past the commando at the top of the next two flights of stairs. I passed him ok, and as I ran down the steps on the right I ducked. I don’t know if this made any difference in the commando’s ability to aim at me, but I do know that every other time I hadn’t ducked and I’d been shot in the back and killed, so something must have happened differently this time. When I realised I wasn’t dead yet I quickly ran to the lift and pressed the up button.
  365.  
  366. Now, pepperoni on pizza, that is a completely different matter. Most of the time… No, No, Focus this time I thought to myself as the lift flew upwards. When it stopped I stepped off and turned on “walk” to mark the solemnity of the occasion. After a few steps I decided it was boring and turned run back on instead. As I approached I could feel the presence of the two greatest powers in the world coming together. The greatest man and the greatest machine joining to create one magnificent being, set to control the fate of human kind for the rest of eternity. To rule, and to be untouchable, infallible, undefeatable, by any force on the planet other than itself. For better for worse, good or evil, this was destiny. This was what was meant to be...
  367.  
  368. ...weee...
  369.  
  370. “If there were no god it would be necessary to create him” – Voltaire
  371.  
  372. The Rabbit v2
  373.  
  374. I stood in the antechamber outside the core of Area 51 with a strange sense of Deja voo. In front of me was a familiar corridor, I went down it. At the end I found a familiar cavern with a familiar ball of energy in the middle. Inside this was a familiar face, although it did make sense that the face was familiar since it had been alternately trying to kill me and laughing manically for the past several days now. I stepped closer and engaged Bob Page in conversation. As if deliberately trying to confuse me Page put on his best Zen master This-Makes-Sense-Only-If-You-Know-What-I-Know imitation, but luckily JC seemed unfazed, or didn’t care, and put on his best Action-Hero-Smack-Talk impersonation, which he understandably was quite good at. When the conversation finished I instinctively stepped backwards as bullets from the turret above skimmed overhead. Then for some reason an image of spider bots crept into my mind. I wondered why while I quickly ran under the turret and along the corridor on the right, directly into some spider bots. Curiouser and curiouser. My initial instinct was to run away, and since there was nothing in particular to stay me from this course of action I did so. Away to the left, around the corner, and soon I found myself hiding on the ledge behind the infusion control machines. I decided that I’d been in a whole bunch of very high places since I arrived at Liberty Island so it was no wonder I felt like I’d been here before. When I was sure the spider bots were not coming for me I peered over the edge looking for the absolute safest way down. Far below I spied a railing and, very carefully, so as to preserve as much health as possible, I dropped over the edge. After some experimentation I managed to land on it loosing only 16 health from my torso and 23 from both my legs. Without pausing to wonder where I had learned such amazing balancing skills in this situation without any recent practise that I could recall I fell off the railing onto the pipe below. Then after checking that the nearest karkian was currently off down near the blue fusion devise I dropped to the floor, sidestepped a greasel and lunged for the maintenance door. I opened it and burst through, and closed it behind me as a glob of greasel spit buried itself in the doorframe.
  375.  
  376. I sat for a while by the friendly mechanic next to me who was dying to talk to someone. Outside I could hear the karkian thumping around; obviously it had heard me fall but hadn’t been fast enough to catch up. When the thumps eventually moved away I opened the door and peered out. No transgenics were to be seen… the pathway to the grate in the floor nearby was clear? Hey! That sounded original! How strange today is, but then I suppose it’s not everyday you discover you’re working for a front for a multinational conspiracy headed by the uber computer nerd so you begin to destroy the entire scheme single handed. There are bound to be a few irregularities in the course of events. By the time I had finished thinking this I was already in action. Having opened the small grate and crawled into it without incident at the end of the tunnel I found another small room with a trapdoor leading into the giant water pipes beneath Area 51. Presumably at the present time it was for maintenance, and in the future guides would use it to lead groups on a full tour of discovery of this ancient temple of the 21st century American civilisation so people could ooh and aah and discuss how a primitive nano-technology working people could have built such magnificent buildings without modern tools. Or maybe not… if my plan goes through.
  377.  
  378. I pressed the button on the wall nearby and positioned myself on the edge while the trapdoors slide open. This next task would take a lot of concentration. With my torso health in the 80s I had no margin for error. I took a deep breath, and plunged into the icy depths. Well, I didn’t really plunge, I can’t say plunge is a good word to describe what I did, no in fact if I were to be accurate I’d say I more lowered myself in, slowly, over several minutes, starting with my toes. I said icy people, Icy! The other benefit of this was that I could begin moving as soon as my head submerged. As I swam I stayed as close to the ceiling as possible and took the corners as closely as I could. Everyone knows that the fastest way to get between two points is in a straight line; this is particularly true if you prescribe to the folded space theory and have a handy worm hole. However in this windy tunnel I had to make do with a zigzag type course from bend to bend. Somewhere along one of the zags I ran out of air and that hideous gulping sound began emanating from my speakers. With each gulp 10 torso health disappeared, and as I moved towards the end and my health display became yellow, then orange, and then finally dark red I really feared I wouldn’t make it. The worst part was that in real life it’s always possible to swim harder. Even if it makes no difference at least you can feel like you’re trying. In this situation there was nothing I could do but press the forward button as hard as I could and hope. I had not quite made it to the other side when the red arrived, but I clawed my way upwards towards the surface and I am sure when I burst through the surface on the other side I was on the very verge of death. There can’t have been much more than milliseconds between treading water with 4 health and a watery grave.
  379.  
  380. When I was quite sure I was alive I quickly doggy paddled to the ladder on the wall next to me and clambered onto it. Holding onto the rungs below the floor level I waited as the footsteps of an MJ12 commando echoed past me, stopped, and then echoed back the other way. When he had gone I climbed up the rest of the ladder, balanced my way along the top of the wire fence, dropped to the ground between the two pools of water, and hid myself behind a pipe. Here I again waited for the commando’s footsteps to come and go, and then careful to keep the several large pipes between myself and the other MJ12 troopers in the area I made my way to the coolant controls. There was another one of those big red shiny buttons on the machine. Gleefully I pressed it. Saving the world can be fun if you want. It was at this point that Page infamously offered me a continent if I agreed to stop. Now this was not a bad offer. If he was willing to name a continent as his first bid I’m sure he would have gone higher. Two continents, several large islands and a bunch of complimentary coastal states thrown in is not a prospect to be sneezed at. But after much deliberation I decided that my small thatched hut in a village somewhere with my horse and my cow and my 2 pigs would be more picturesque and perfect and other nice words beginning with p. Damn am I kicking myself now! Anyway, continuing on with Tong’s plan I crawled back to my original hiding spot by the wire fence behind the pipe and waited for the commando to come close again. This time when he turned back I went with him, utilising his peculiar 180 degree blind spot. Like usual as we moved into the next room full of different types of machinery I swerved off to the side, and when he turned around again I kept on going past until I was in the centre of the room. I was alone, I had the room to myself, and I could do anything. But because I was such a dedicated secret agent I stood up and ran to the controls at the side of the room near the door. It wasn’t until I crouched in the shadows again behind the control panel to escape the prying eyes of the soon to return commando that I noticed a trooper on the runway above me. I was lucky I hadn’t been seen. Much more careful now I pressed the appropriate button that made the nice fire effects, and then crawled to the button that would open the door, pressed it, and crawled into the airlock type room that was revealed.
  381.  
  382. Through the opposite door transgenics were everywhere, but I had slalomed through these creatures before. Hang on, when had I ever done that before? All this deja voo made my head hurt. Nevertheless as soon as it opened I dashed out to be spotted by several surprised greasels and a karkian before I could even change direction. As I began running around the central structure greasels converged on me from the left and right, and the karkian advanced on me from ahead. As I ran towards it I prepared to execute a shoulder barge, but at the last moment I thought and dodged around it instead. From there onwards I was pursued by the shrill cries of strange beasts, not to mention the strange beats themselves, all the way to the maintenance door. Luckily I had left it open. I exploded through the door frame and opened the grate in the wall which I crawled through. Then, safe, I put my thumbs on either side of my nose, waggled my fingers around and made a “nyhaa nyhaa” noise with my tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth. I’m not sure the transgenics understood, but it made me feel better. My victory dance complete I climbed up the ladder and began to make my way back through Area 51 with that strange sense of deja voo still pervading the atmosphere. Oh that’s right, I came in this way not 15 minutes ago.
  383.  
  384. After arriving at the top of the ladder my route took me past old Bobby. I expect he wasn’t very happy, but he didn’t have anything to say. Hurrying now I jumped over the spider bot scurrying around in my path and soon I had passed through the ante chamber and was entering the grays’ enclosure. One gray was still inside, wandering around, but this didn’t pose a huge problem. I crawled around the outside of the room keeping glowing pillars between me and it until I was in the windy corridor again. I paused for a second and looked out the interior window at the coolant control system. I also looked at the guards still diligently patrolling completely unaware that anything was amiss. *crackle crackle* “Coolant Patrol One Zero One, do you copy? We have an intruder on the loose, how are things in your area?” “Oh just fine and dandy here sir, no problems at all… hey, is that the reactor blowing up? Now dang it all how did tha-!!!” I felt powerful, but I couldn’t stop long. Not least because the gray I had just avoided might turn around at any moment. So I continued back into the stasis pod room where I was very happy to use the medbot sitting there, and then I ran out the other door. On the way out I brushed past the second gray loosing 20 torso health, I should have banished any sort of complacency after my mistake with the trooper earlier, but this close to the end it didn’t really matter. I ran through corridors until I got to the huge chamber where I was harassed by the giant spider bot again, but this time it held no fear for me so I ran right passed it. As I neared the door at the end of the chamber I initiated my last real challenge. The trooper on the gangway above noticed me running, and after a few more meters we had a tussle on the stairs, which he was blocking. I got peppered with bullets until I could squeeze past him and I came out the other side with a polka dot of different numbers scattered around different body parts. In the interests of posterity I shall record them here, for after dashing past the grays up ahead and scrambling up the ladder before they could reach me I fixed everything back to 100 with the medbot. Head: 28, Torso: 50, Right Arm: 64, Left Arm: 76, Right Leg: 85, Left Leg: 88. Incidentally I tried to spell out the numbers on the buttons of a telephone but I could not create any anagrams at all.
  385.  
  386. Now this was really the home stretch. I ventured back down the hallway away from all this Aquinas hub business and peeked through the 1038 door. All the troopers had obviously gone back to their original positions by now so I was pretty safe in crawling out, down the steps and back to the entrance to the reactors. The spider bots were nowhere to be found and the door was still open, so I waltzed on through. At the end of the corridor in a cloud of green smoke the reactors still sat silent. Without letting the grays know I was there I carefully dropped myself down into the left pit to further check off Tong’s instructions. Contrary to appearances the smog was not in fact very harmful; I was able to take my time pressing the button on the side of the first reactor, crawling over to the second, pressing its button, and crawling back out of the right pit. Through all that I lost only a little health in my legs. One more deed to be done I quietly made my way up the steps out of the fog and continued into the control room. Up the ladder the edgy mechanic was still hovering over the safety switches. I began pressing them. At each switch the mechanic got more and more hysterical, until the third switch was his last straw. As I pressed it he pulled out a pistol and I, hoping desperately I had not attracted any grays, dived back down the ladder. One pistol shot to the torso was not what I needed when Bob Page’s deification, or lack of it, rested one last extension of a finger on the engage button. The mechanic didn’t seem to be calming down, but after a while when I peeped over top of the ladder I found him facing away from my direction. Crouched I slowly inched my way up behind him. Arm outstretched towards the last remaining safety device of the huge unstable reactors. Closer I came, fingers itching, twitching…
  387.  
  388. The future was in my hands, yet out of my sight. Here I had the chance to determine the destiny of mankind, but was I in the position to make that decision? What would I create? On the one hand, my destruction of the global communication system could result in a smaller, happier society. There could be villages containing close knit communities free from the interference of a corrupt impersonal system lead by people who cruelly manipulate others, using them as mere tools for their own twisted personal gain. A world of fair and levelled agrarian societies based on subsistence farming working together to create the basis of a perfect world. An paradise where, away from problems that plague present society: pollution, war, racism, the agendas of the rich and powerful, human kind could respect and love one another in perfect harmony.
  389.  
  390. Or, would I create a holocaust. Panic as the very backbone of human society suddenly crumbles. Riots in the streets as electricity stops, water no longer flows, food is no longer available or even grown. Survival becomes the sole aim of everyone on the planet. The world is given over to mob rule as any semblance of government fails to rebuild itself, until the only men who rise to power are vicious warlords ruling through force, torture, and fear. The constant fighting of primitively armed forces stifles any attempt at progress, and for the ordinary person life is defined by pain…
  391.  
  392. Let’s find out. I pressed the button.
  393.  
  394. “Yesterday we obeyed Kings and bent out necks before Emperors. But today we kneel only to truth…”
  395. -Kahlil Gibran
  396.  
  397. The Rabbit v3
  398.  
  399. Was I awake, or was I dreaming? I certainly seemed suspiciously light, except for this baggy coat, and I felt that everything was flowing past me like it held some ethereal, mythic quality as if a story had been told a thousand times over a thousand years and its framework was no longer governed by its details. I found myself gliding from the antechamber and meeting with Bob Page. The conversation is lost to me, but I do remember a turret firing and the bullets passing through my unsubstantial body. Or maybe they just missed. It’s so hard to tell. I continued on down billowing hallways, turning corners with no angels and dodging walls which placed themselves in my stumbling path until I spied some spider bots following my trail. If this wasn’t real they couldn’t hurt me, could they? Or maybe they could. I didn’t care to find out so I drifted away and the bots ceased to exist as I lost sight of them. Now they existed only in my mind, a nightmare as far as I could tell, but the mind is a fine thing be afraid of. I carefully placed my body where those eyes of my mind could not see. It was a high place. The thought came to me that I had to go downwards, further into the heart of this labyrinth I appeared to be trapped inside. Distance was hard to perceive in this light-headed state of mine, but it seemed as though it might be a long way to the nearest plain below me. This would tell me whether my senses were conveying a true conception of my surroundings, or maybe whether this entire complex was a trick of the light. I dropped. OUCH. All right fine then I’m awake. That was a little disappointing. Ok then let’s get down to business.
  400.  
  401. I looked around and the first thing that became apparent was that I was sitting on a railing on the second level under Page surrounded by grays and in plain view of most of them. Quickly I dropped to the floor and ran over to the further pile of boxes where I hid. As expected, very soon I heard the gallop of one of the aliens coming to investigate, I guess it had thought it had seen a human. I stayed hidden until it left again. I then squeezed my way out from the narrow ledge I was sitting on between the boxes and the edge of the floor and crawled my way to the nearby door through which was the first step to killing Bob Page. As I opened it I was confronted by some kind of broken generator surrounded by radiation. I didn’t have much of a choice, even though I had 84 torso health from the fall, so I readied myself and ran inside. I lost no time in taking the most direct route to the blue fusion reactor trapped inside as possible. As I reached it I lunged for the keypad, and suddenly realised I didn’t know the code. I remembered to check my datavaults, luckily the whole world seems to stop when I retreat into my own head. It turned out that Alex had contacted me with the first three digits when I was in my confused state. Wow, what luck. Having discovered these I stabbed the buttons 724, and then at random I pressed the number 3. It was the right number. Wow, what luck. Then as the device powered down I made a desperate leap for safety outside the radiation, and made it with 4 torso health. Wow, what luck. What a lucky 30 seconds I was having. That was only one device however, so I ran down the ramp I was standing at the top of and began to make my way to blue fusion reactor number two.
  402.  
  403. The ramp eventually led me to the bottom floor of the centre of Area 51. I didn’t stay here very long though because as soon as I arrived a wandering greasel saw me. I dodged around it and ran for the maintenance door just around the corner, opened it, darted inside, and closed it again slowly but firmly. I then opened the grate in the wall, passed by dead mechanic forlornly lying on the ground, and utilised the ladder for the immediate use for which it was intended but probably without the long term aims anybody involved in its construction had considered. When I pulled myself back onto the floor at the top I ran down the path ahead of me towards the device located in its own little enclave high above the arena. But as I was running down the stairs towards it I looked at the walls around me and thought “hmmm”. There appeared to be some doors. Near to the device I found two medium crates and shoved one of them back through the open doorway to block the lower door. Then I took the two small crates from beside the stairwell and placed them in front of the other door at the top of the stairs. As an afterthought I also placed two breakable crates there too, small crates live up to their name by actually being quite small. Having taken my precautions I walked to the blue fusion device and entered the same code as before. Sure enough soon afterwards I heard the faint, lonely cries of “scanning area” of two poor security bots. I walked back out running quickly past any gaps that I found being careful not to get shot. It’s not all that difficult to outwit bots, but it would have been terrible to become overconfident at that stage. I still had two more reactors to go.
  404.  
  405. But first I had to go and get a whole lot of health back. I ran through various corridors passing Page and leaping over his attendant spider bot, until I had reached the antechamber again. From there the only place to go was into grays’ habitat, so I ran inside and crouched down. The single gray I had left earlier was still marching around his enclosure, so I inched my way around the edge of the room keeping the glowing pillars between us until I exited out the door on the other side. Back in the clone room the second gray appeared to be nowhere to be seen, or should that be didn’t appear? Nevertheless I ran over to the medbot and revived myself from the very point of death; a single touch would probably have killed me, and then went happily on my way. Back through the gray enclosure and inside the antechamber again I encountered that inconsiderate spider bot in the doorway. Obviously had followed me as far as it could go and was now sitting back doing the robot equivalent of sniggering. I was reluctant to loose more health so soon after regaining so much but I didn’t have a choice and eventually I resigned myself to running over it. Yes, I mean running over it. It’s a pity there’s no stamp button. However I only ended up loosing eight points in my left arm and leg which was a relief. I then sprinted past Page, who this time had nothing to say, and continued down the same corridors as earlier but this time much more sensibly and with a little bit of coherence. Eventually I found myself sitting behind the same machines as earlier, only this time knowing that the fall was going to hurt.
  406.  
  407. I fell and immediately ran to the nearby boxes to hide behind them. Again grays came to investigate, and again they left without finding me. Now I put into practise a manoeuvre I have called the Gray-Train. From my hiding spot I watched the grays patrolling until I saw that the bridge leading to the blue fusion device platform was unoccupied and the gray that occasionally walked along it had its back to me. Attempting to time my run perfectly I got up and sprinted. Ignoring the first gray from that point on, knowing that it would hear and follow me, instead I focused on finding the second gray in the area. I sped past the reactor, and then unexpectedly came face to face with my quarry as it blocked my path. Not to be defeated I leapt onto the railing and jumped past it landing on the far side, but I still lost 60 health from its radioactive presence taking my torso from 84 to 24. But this was not very important and I kept on running around the whole second floor, picking up the third gray on my way so I had three aliens following me in a line. This engine however was about to become unhitched. I struggled up the diagonal roof with my poor legs hurt from the fall until I was above the broken generator, and then I launched myself off and made my way to the device. When I reached it I hid myself and peeked around the corner. As I had hoped I had lost the grays when I jumped off the roof. Two of them were still standing up there while one of them had also jumped down but was wandering around aimlessly by the boxes. I wasn’t sure how much time I had so I quickly punched the buttons and then dropped down off the bridge onto the pipe below, directly above the third blue fusion reactor.
  408.  
  409. It was at this point that Page made an attempt to bargain with me. He offered me Versa Life and a place on President Mead’s cabinet. Now this was a very enticing offer. I knew that I had been fighting against Page’s designs for a long time, but I then realised that he must have been an honourable man if he was willing to concede so much so that he might see his project completed. Of course I would accept, but I was feeling in a classical mood so I decided to answer him in Latin. Unfortunately Latin has no word for yes, you have to say “it is so” or “that is correct” or whatever. I chose to respond with “whatever”, but I think Page must have misunderstood me because he never got back to me on that. I wasn’t the type to renegade on one sure contract with only the hope of securing another however, so I carried on trying to kill Page until I heard from him. With this aim in mind I crouched on the pipe trying to avoid the gazes of the karkians that patrolled below me, hoping that my baggy coat that made me look bigger than I really was made me look as big as the darkness and not merely big enough to see. As I surveyed the area below me my main problem was one large karkian walking up and down beneath me. All the other transgenics could probably be trusted to not see me on the ground for at least as long as I needed, probably. It felt like playing a game of Russian Roulette against myself with five barrels loaded. After watching long enough to determine the timing of the karkian I positioned myself on the edge of the pipe as the karkian lumbered slowly underneath me towards the maintenance door at the end of the room. As soon as it passed by, much too soon for comfort as I was sure it would hear me, I dropped down literally 15cms behind it and immediately punched in the now familiar code.
  410.  
  411. Then I stood up and I ran. I ran away from the karkian and raced around the structure in the centre of the floor much like an arc of an astronaut in a centrifuge, except slower and without a machine and with a whole bunch of transgenics chasing after me. In fact, the simile is quite poor. I dodged around the creatures until I came to the maintenance door and wondered why I had chosen to shut it earlier when I knew this was going to happen. Luckily nothing was so close behind that it could catch me as I wrenched it open and pulled myself through the gap before closing it again. This time permanently. Again I climbed the ladder, but now when I reached the top I didn’t go straight ahead to comfort the bots I had trapped but rather dropped down the nearby ledge and went over to Bob Page again. It was much like I was on a roundabout; I was always finding myself in the same place. Swerving around spider bots again I headed off and resolutely marched through the same corridors as before, now with a specific purpose in mind. For the last time I approached the Infusion Controls where the glass cover over the one important switch was lying open. Still in my classical mood and a little bit cocky I tried shouting out “He who is about to die salutes me!” I was in a position to be cocky. He didn’t answer, so I killed him…
  412.  
  413. … And the world went back to normal. Back to a stable time in history before civilisation became expedient to the malicious purposes of one man. I could have gifted the world a benevolent dictator, or I could have created a simple, uncomplicated paradise. But could they be trusted to work? Would they truly allow for the flourishing of human society? They were untested, and it was unlikely. Instead I chose to place the world again into the invisible hands of the Illuminati to be gently guided into the future for the betterment of humankind. For centuries, without self interest, the Illuminati had wielded their influenced over the human race to achieve a standard it had never known before, and would have never achieved on its own. The history of the world bore this shadowy group to be the one organisation fit to control society. They had been the epitome of man consciously directing his own destiny… and it was about to begin again.
  414.  
  415. “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”
  416. -Paradise Lost, John Milton
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