Firefly: Black Cat Blues - 6.13 Reavers of Osiris, Part 5
I beat Mass Effect today and it was awesome! I'll write more about that later probably. That was at about 1:30 and I then decided to restart Bioshock (which I'd only gotten about 2 hours into on my first attempt, then life intervened). I figured I'd play a couple hours, but the next time I came up for air, dayzdark was setting up for D&D and the clock said 6:15, meaning I played for 5 hours with literally no outside concept of the passage of time. I can't remember the last time that happened to me with anything let alone a video game. Freaking great game. They weren't kidding.
Anyway, plot summary!
Previous episode here.
The realization that Quinn and Siqin have been captured by the Reavers responsible for the Osiris dismemberment murders sends the crew into full panic mode. Birgitta, Detective Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris pile into the remaining shuttle and take off in search of the mule, hoping to find some clue of Quinn and Siqin's whereabouts along with it. They locate the mule (and land their shuttle in the middle of four lanes of traffic to check it out) but find nothing other than a couple of small blood splatters and a deliberately sabotaged vehicle. Soon the local authorities have shown up to scold the crew for taking off without permission and for disrupting traffic ("You're lucky no one shot you out of the sky." "We get that a lot."); they talk their way out of it and return to Black Cat, leaving Birgitta behind to repair and retrieve the mule.
By now, Daisy has reached Black Cat safely; when she hears what's going on, she is appalled and says that at least she was able to bring back some information that she hopes will be useful. In consultation with her friends at the University of Londinum, she learned that the pollen found all over José's pants comes from a tree known as the Gold Dust Elm. The Gold Dust Elm is very common on the Rim, but it's seen as an invasive species on most Core planets, so the high concentrations of trees that would be necessary to coat someone's pants in pollen will be few and far between on Osiris. Nicolas asks Marsh if he knows of any places with large amounts of Gold Dust Elm trees, and he immediately thinks of a neighborhood called Gold Dust Hill. Gold Dust Hill is one of the oldest neighborhoods on all of Osiris, so its trees are allowed to stand because they are a crucial part of its history and culture. Also, many of the Osiris dismemberment murders took place in or around Gold Dust Hill, or had bodies dumped there. So the crew decides that Birgitta, Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris will go to Gold Dust Hill in the mule to look for a place where the Reavers might be keeping Quinn and Siqin. Archer will come separately and remain nearby as backup if needed, and Daisy will stay on Black Cat (both because Nicolas wants somebody keeping an eye on the ship, and because he doesn't want her to get hurt).
At the same time, Quinn and Siqin are waking up with no idea where they are, except that it's dark and they're both restrained on tables. They're in a dark room with a huge tree in the center of it that reaches up toward a faint light source and deposits gold-colored pollen onto everything around it. Three figures enter the room, emerging from the darkness - the three Reavers from before. Without words, they surround Siqin as Quinn continues to feign unconsciousness. They cut the typical Reaver scars into her arms and her face, then pull up her shirt and begin pricking her with small needles. Siqin doesn't understand what they're doing until she feels an all-too-familiar tingling and itching on her skin. The Reavers fill a syringe and begin slowly injecting it into one of her veins, and as her throat begins to close up she realizes that the Reavers have discovered and exploited her severe, life-threatening allergy to peanuts.[1]
The lead Reaver, who is wearing a three-piece suit, then approaches Quinn. He shines a light on a nearby wall, revealing a strange mural drawn in blood; it seems that the Reavers are either incapable of speaking or choose not to, so this is how they will convey their wants to Quinn. The mural shows a crude depiction of Black Cat with Quinn alongside it, and of the three Reavers approaching the ship. An arrow then directs the ship to a drawing of a planet with the letter "Q" written inside it, and a humanoid figure depicted in a godlike or holy way standing on the surface of that planet. It seems that the Reavers want Quinn to use Black Cat to help them leave Osiris to find this "Q" planet and the godlike figure they apparently worship. When the Reavers see that Quinn understands this,
they throw in the incentive: If Quinn helps get them off the planet, they'll let Siqin go.
Quinn talks the Reavers into giving Siqin a bit of antidote so she won't die while Quinn considers this, but it's clear that they are ready to start again at a moment's notice if Quinn doesn't take the offer. For that reason, Quinn agrees. The head Reaver nods and gets handed a syringe by his assistants; Quinn doesn't get what's going on until he starts cutting the Reaver scars into her face and hands and she realizes that the Reavers intend to turn her into one of them! Quinn protests that she won't be able to fly the ship if the Reavers do this, but they don't seem to believe her and make it clear that they won't let Siqin go if she doesn't submit to this. Seeing Siqin choking and crying, Quinn asks if they'll give her half. This seems acceptable, and the Reavers inject her with half of the syringe's contents. Then they release Siqin from her bonds and shove her toward the door. Siqin takes off running, knowing this is her only chance to save herself.
Outside, Birgitta, Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris have arrived in the Gold Dust Hill neighborhood and are trying to decide where to start. Gold Dust Hill has no shortage of parks and other green spaces where large amounts of pollen can be seen (as well as no shortage of streets and buildings with "Q" in their names), but to begin with Nicolas is most interested in Gold Dust Base, an old Alliance base that was one of the first built on Osiris after the Alliance's formation. Considering how the Alliance seems to still have its fingers in the Dionysus Project, Nicolas thinks it's logical that Reavers might make their lair in an old base. But when the crew arrives at Gold Dust Base, they can see that it's not really a functioning Alliance base any more and has become more of a tourist attraction; even if the Reavers were hiding out underneath it, they'd have a lot of trouble coming and going unseen. So the crew checks out their second choice, the Gold Dust Hill Botanical Gardens, which are known to have an extensive exhibit on the Gold Dust Elm and thus plenty of opportunity to spread pollen around.
The botanical gardens are for the most part a large open green space in which anyone would have trouble hiding anything; if the Reavers are here, chances are good that they will have to be located somewhere within the "employees only" section of the large greenhouse at the center of the property. The crew enters and waits for a useful moment to sneak in through an opened door. Once inside, they encounter a surprised worker who gets knocked unconscious and hauled around with them in a wheelbarrow after they prove unable to convince him that they're really supposed to be there. The crew avoids any further encounters as they make their way through a bunch of normal-looking storerooms, cultivation greenhouses, and labs - it seems like nothing illicit is going on in this part of the botanical gardens, at least. But in a small room full of compost meant for future disposal, Nicolas finds a heavy manhole cover set into the floor, labeled with a warning sign declaring that the waste disposal tunnels below are unsafe and condemned. The crew thinks this sounds like the sort of place that Reavers would take their victims, so they pry the cover open and descend...
Siqin stumbles away from the Reavers and soon finds herself in a small room with two doors leading away from the Reavers. She picks the leftmost door and is confronted with a small room swarming with disease-carrying rats, with the only door leading out on the opposite side of the swarm. Siqin grabs a gnawed thighbone lying on the ground and uses it to fend off the rats as she carefully picks her way through the room.[2] But things through the next door are not much better. Not only is the room filled with the smell of leaking gas, making Siqin want to get out quickly before she strikes a spark by accident, one of the two doors leading out of this room has a large drum of toxic chemicals balanced on top of it, in the style of a booby trap. Siqin decides that the Reavers wouldn't trap an unimportant door, so she finds a discarded box to climb on top of and carefully lift the drum down from the top of the door so she can pass through. Now she has a drum of toxic pesticides to use as a weapon against anything she may encounter.
Back in the Reavers' lair, Quinn can feel the drugs affecting her mind. Though she doesn't have an instant urge to behave as the Reavers do, she finds herself feeling less revolted by her surroundings, and wanting to help the Reavers get off the planet (if anything, this means they won't be a danger to Osiris anymore, right?). She also can't imagine hurting the Reaver who injected her in her current state. The Reavers show her to another room where they have covered the walls with what appears to be a crude map of the 'Verse, drawn in blood and other fluids - they're asking her to interpret it, since they seem to have degenerated to the point where they can no longer understand what they recorded or why. Quinn allows herself to become engrossed in this problem until she realizes with a start that it's been some time since she felt her unborn child move...[3]
Birgitta, Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris descend into the abandoned waste tunnels and when confronted with three doors, go left just like Siqin before them.[4] They move through a room full of dirty pipes, funneling human wastes and other vile materials to the surface to help make all of those beautiful plants bloom. There are two doors in this room, but when the first one that Nicolas opens leaves him coughing as toxic, horrible fungal spores blow back into his face, he decides to try the next one. What is beyond that is little better, though. A human body lies in a planting tray, with deep wounds cut into his body and beautiful flowers sprouting from them...and then the victim turns his head toward the crew and groans. With Nicolas's permission, Birgitta puts this poor soul out of his misery. The only door that leads out of this room has a rather alarming buzzing sound emanating from the other side of it, but Nicolas flings it open anyway to see what lurks within...
With human femur and chemical drum in hand, Siqin enters the next room, which is just as horrifying as what her fellows are facing. This room contains row upon row of gorgeous purple orchids, each one sprouting from a separate decaying human torso. Three doors lead out of this room, and when Siqin chooses the leftmost one, she finds something rather unusual there: shelves of neatly organized medical and scientific supplies, all bearing the Blue Sun logo.[5] The room next door (booby-trapped with another chemical drum, which Siqin defuses by catching the contents of the second drum in the one she's holding!) is even stranger, containing chemistry lab equipment that the Reavers appear to be able to operate with some modicum of skill. A door from this room leads into something even stranger: a room containing sculptures (all made out of human bones and other disgusting materials) that seem to be an attempt to represent some sort of god-like figure, many of them incorporating the letter "Q" prominently. What this means, Siqin doesn't know.
In the meantime, Quinn slips away from the Reavers and desperately tries to ascertain whether her baby is alive or dead. After a few tense moments, she feels the unborn child moving, but she knows that she can't predict the effects that the drug might have on her child, and that she should do everything in her power to keep from being injected with another dose. This is made harder by the fact that Quinn can feel the drug wearing off; she knows she is going to have to act like a Reaver to allay suspicion. The Reavers are consuming huge hunks of what appears to be human flesh, but Quinn decides she'd rather not go so far; instead, she takes a scalpel and starts carving Reaver-like designs on her legs, which seems to satisfy them. When the Reavers, through gestures, ask her if she learned anything from their map, she says she did but that they need to wait until night falls to leave for Black Cat. The Reavers seem satisfied with that answer, and Quinn is now just hoping she can buy enough time for Siqin to warn the crew and arrange a rescue.
The room which Birgitta, Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris have entered turns out to be full of thousands upon thousands of angry, stinging bees. The crew quickly passes through the room and picks a door effectively at random, and enters another room that contains orchids growing out of torsos, like the room Siqin was in before. A few doors lead out of this room, and the first one that the crew picks turns out to contain a pesticide drum trap over a door leading out (which is disarmed by Birgitta) and, in one corner of the room, a gigantic plant that appears to be carnivorous in nature. Although the just-untrapped door leads out of the room without having to go past the plant, there's another door past the plant, and so Birgitta (who has been sent ahead by Nicolas) decides to investigate it, since Nicolas says he hears some kind of suspicious noises through the other door. However, Birgitta decides to dump the drum of pesticides into the carnivorous plant on her way along, which certainly kills the plant but also creates a toxic hazard even bigger than the plant originally was. Nicolas is less than pleased with this...and it only gets worse when Birgitta throws the other door open without checking and sees a fertilizer bomb counting down in the middle of the room on the other side, apparently triggered by the opening door! Knowing she doesn't have the time or skill to defuse it, Birgitta yells for the others to run for cover as she does the same. The bomb goes off...
In another part of the dangerous maze beneath the greenhouses, Siqin is starting to get frustrated. She can't seem to find a safe direction that will actually lead out of the area she's found herself in. So in some ways, it's actually a godsend when the bomb goes off, knocking her to the ground but also blasting apart the walls of several rooms. Now Siqin and the rest of the crew find themselves in the same large space, with rubble and dust raining down around them. As the smoke from the explosion clears, they see a four-legged form moving on the other side of the room...it's a furious, red-eyed, disease-looking boar that the Reavers were apparently keeping down here as a sort of garbage disposal. Enraged, it launches itself at Nicolas's group (Siqin decides to remain hidden after calling out to the rest of the crew and letting them know that she's alive), where it is quickly gunned down by Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris as it's going for Birgitta.
But the battle is just beginning. Through the smoke, the crew sees a quartet of armed Reavers approaching, apparently summoned by the sound of the explosion. One of the Reavers looks familiar somehow...and as it draws closer, the crew is appalled to recognize that it's Quinn, who has of course accompanied her captors/allies when they left to investigate the explosion. A gun and club fight between the crew and the Reavers ensues, which is made more complicated by the fact that although Quinn herself is not attacking the crew, she's doing her best to keep the head Reaver out of harm's way. The rest of the crew realizes that her mind has been altered when she takes a potshot at one of the other Reavers who ends up near to her and kills it, and the head Reaver's response is to reinforce her loyalty by injecting her again. Still, even with Quinn's intervention, eventually all three Reavers fall beneath Birgitta's punishing fists and the guns wielded by Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris. Quinn's response is to run away in panic, further into the Reaver base. But at the very least, Marsh can now rest easy knowing that the immediate perpetrators of the Osiris dismemberment murders have been dealt with once and for all.
While Marsh hangs back to photographically document the extremely incriminating scene around him (because now the whole crew can clearly see the Blue Sun and Alliance insignia on various pieces of new, totally functional equipment in the Reaver base) and Nicolas tends to the badly injured Siqin (who stayed out of the whole fight by hiding in the rubble), Birgitta and Osiris go after Quinn. They find her hiding under a table, clutching a scalpel and threatening anyone who comes near, in a grotesque mirror of Osiris's deranged behavior during one of the crew's first missions. It falls to Osiris to talk her out from under there even as she quietly and grimly clutches her weapon, repeatedly insisting, "I don't want to go back to the river."[6] In the meantime, Marsh has found a back exit that leads to the surface along with the evidence he claims he'll use to expose the wrongdoing of the Alliance and Blue Sun in the Dionysus Project. The crew scoops up the unresponsive Siqin and the rather damaged Quinn and gets out as quickly as possible.
The crew meets up with Archer at the mule, fills her in on what happened, and leaves for Black Cat right away. Though Quinn is beginning to snap out of her Reaver-like mindset in the absence of her captors and as the drug wears off, it's clear that Siqin has been wounded both mentally and physically, and that she is going to need a level of care that it's not certain Black Cat can provide.[7] But the crew won't know until they try, so back they go. Returning to the spaceport, they are surprised to notice someone there waiting for them - which is not supposed to be able to happen considering the sworn anonymity of this Syndicate-backed landing site. Even more alarming is the fact that the crew's visitors are a ship full of Alliance soldiers and doctors claiming that Sekhmet sent them! However, it quickly becomes clear that these soliders are just following orders - and they were ordered by Sekhmet to collect Siqin and take her in to receive medical and psychological care. Though the crew has no idea how Sekhmet could possibly have known this information, they're not in a position to argue, and at least this way they know that Siqin is safe.
Then the lieutenant in charge of this operation tells Nicolas that he has an additional duty: to tell the crew of Black Cat and Detective Hector Marsh that they are to report immediately to the Alliance cruiser Blue Nile in orbit of Osiris for an important debriefing. The crew is puzzled by this as well, but the way the lieutenant expresses the order makes it sound like Sekhmet is finally ready to answer some questions. The crew says their temporary good-byes to Siqin and boards the ship, with Nicolas piloting since Quinn is in no condition to fly, hoping that things will soon become much clearer.[8]
TO BE CONTINUED...
1 - More than a little silly, yeah, but Siqin's major peanut allergy hasn't screwed her nearly enough in this game.
2 - kyrryn: Is there anything around that would help me defend against the rats if I need to?
gamerchick: There's a human thigh bone. If it's any consolation, it's from someone who was much taller than you are.
dayzdark: That's comforting. It means someone bigger and stronger than you got killed by these rodents.
3 - "You know how we said we didn't care if our baby was a boy or girl as long as it wasn't a Reaver? That wasn't supposed to be a challenge." - dayzdark
4 - Players: they are nothing if not predictable.
5 - dayzdark: Even Reavers shop at Blue Sun!
Noel: And an advertising guy just got fired.
6 - It was really entertaining to see the obvious glee that peloria took in doing the exact same things to dayzdark as his character had done to hers way back when. As for the river stuff, Quinn associates rivers with tragedy and loss because of how her first baby, Calandra, died late in the pregnancy and was washed away in a river on Lilac. Canny readers may find some unintentional yet awesome parallels between this fact and the names of certain important entities in this game...
7 - As I put it: "She's gonna need help. I mean more than just sitting in the cockpit, drinking tea and raising an eyebrow."
8 - The first of several character changes here was necessitated by kyrryn spending the summer abroad. He and thus Siqin will be back in the fall for the endgame. As for the other changes, read on...
Anyway, plot summary!
Previous episode here.
The realization that Quinn and Siqin have been captured by the Reavers responsible for the Osiris dismemberment murders sends the crew into full panic mode. Birgitta, Detective Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris pile into the remaining shuttle and take off in search of the mule, hoping to find some clue of Quinn and Siqin's whereabouts along with it. They locate the mule (and land their shuttle in the middle of four lanes of traffic to check it out) but find nothing other than a couple of small blood splatters and a deliberately sabotaged vehicle. Soon the local authorities have shown up to scold the crew for taking off without permission and for disrupting traffic ("You're lucky no one shot you out of the sky." "We get that a lot."); they talk their way out of it and return to Black Cat, leaving Birgitta behind to repair and retrieve the mule.
By now, Daisy has reached Black Cat safely; when she hears what's going on, she is appalled and says that at least she was able to bring back some information that she hopes will be useful. In consultation with her friends at the University of Londinum, she learned that the pollen found all over José's pants comes from a tree known as the Gold Dust Elm. The Gold Dust Elm is very common on the Rim, but it's seen as an invasive species on most Core planets, so the high concentrations of trees that would be necessary to coat someone's pants in pollen will be few and far between on Osiris. Nicolas asks Marsh if he knows of any places with large amounts of Gold Dust Elm trees, and he immediately thinks of a neighborhood called Gold Dust Hill. Gold Dust Hill is one of the oldest neighborhoods on all of Osiris, so its trees are allowed to stand because they are a crucial part of its history and culture. Also, many of the Osiris dismemberment murders took place in or around Gold Dust Hill, or had bodies dumped there. So the crew decides that Birgitta, Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris will go to Gold Dust Hill in the mule to look for a place where the Reavers might be keeping Quinn and Siqin. Archer will come separately and remain nearby as backup if needed, and Daisy will stay on Black Cat (both because Nicolas wants somebody keeping an eye on the ship, and because he doesn't want her to get hurt).
At the same time, Quinn and Siqin are waking up with no idea where they are, except that it's dark and they're both restrained on tables. They're in a dark room with a huge tree in the center of it that reaches up toward a faint light source and deposits gold-colored pollen onto everything around it. Three figures enter the room, emerging from the darkness - the three Reavers from before. Without words, they surround Siqin as Quinn continues to feign unconsciousness. They cut the typical Reaver scars into her arms and her face, then pull up her shirt and begin pricking her with small needles. Siqin doesn't understand what they're doing until she feels an all-too-familiar tingling and itching on her skin. The Reavers fill a syringe and begin slowly injecting it into one of her veins, and as her throat begins to close up she realizes that the Reavers have discovered and exploited her severe, life-threatening allergy to peanuts.[1]
The lead Reaver, who is wearing a three-piece suit, then approaches Quinn. He shines a light on a nearby wall, revealing a strange mural drawn in blood; it seems that the Reavers are either incapable of speaking or choose not to, so this is how they will convey their wants to Quinn. The mural shows a crude depiction of Black Cat with Quinn alongside it, and of the three Reavers approaching the ship. An arrow then directs the ship to a drawing of a planet with the letter "Q" written inside it, and a humanoid figure depicted in a godlike or holy way standing on the surface of that planet. It seems that the Reavers want Quinn to use Black Cat to help them leave Osiris to find this "Q" planet and the godlike figure they apparently worship. When the Reavers see that Quinn understands this,
they throw in the incentive: If Quinn helps get them off the planet, they'll let Siqin go.
Quinn talks the Reavers into giving Siqin a bit of antidote so she won't die while Quinn considers this, but it's clear that they are ready to start again at a moment's notice if Quinn doesn't take the offer. For that reason, Quinn agrees. The head Reaver nods and gets handed a syringe by his assistants; Quinn doesn't get what's going on until he starts cutting the Reaver scars into her face and hands and she realizes that the Reavers intend to turn her into one of them! Quinn protests that she won't be able to fly the ship if the Reavers do this, but they don't seem to believe her and make it clear that they won't let Siqin go if she doesn't submit to this. Seeing Siqin choking and crying, Quinn asks if they'll give her half. This seems acceptable, and the Reavers inject her with half of the syringe's contents. Then they release Siqin from her bonds and shove her toward the door. Siqin takes off running, knowing this is her only chance to save herself.
Outside, Birgitta, Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris have arrived in the Gold Dust Hill neighborhood and are trying to decide where to start. Gold Dust Hill has no shortage of parks and other green spaces where large amounts of pollen can be seen (as well as no shortage of streets and buildings with "Q" in their names), but to begin with Nicolas is most interested in Gold Dust Base, an old Alliance base that was one of the first built on Osiris after the Alliance's formation. Considering how the Alliance seems to still have its fingers in the Dionysus Project, Nicolas thinks it's logical that Reavers might make their lair in an old base. But when the crew arrives at Gold Dust Base, they can see that it's not really a functioning Alliance base any more and has become more of a tourist attraction; even if the Reavers were hiding out underneath it, they'd have a lot of trouble coming and going unseen. So the crew checks out their second choice, the Gold Dust Hill Botanical Gardens, which are known to have an extensive exhibit on the Gold Dust Elm and thus plenty of opportunity to spread pollen around.
The botanical gardens are for the most part a large open green space in which anyone would have trouble hiding anything; if the Reavers are here, chances are good that they will have to be located somewhere within the "employees only" section of the large greenhouse at the center of the property. The crew enters and waits for a useful moment to sneak in through an opened door. Once inside, they encounter a surprised worker who gets knocked unconscious and hauled around with them in a wheelbarrow after they prove unable to convince him that they're really supposed to be there. The crew avoids any further encounters as they make their way through a bunch of normal-looking storerooms, cultivation greenhouses, and labs - it seems like nothing illicit is going on in this part of the botanical gardens, at least. But in a small room full of compost meant for future disposal, Nicolas finds a heavy manhole cover set into the floor, labeled with a warning sign declaring that the waste disposal tunnels below are unsafe and condemned. The crew thinks this sounds like the sort of place that Reavers would take their victims, so they pry the cover open and descend...
Siqin stumbles away from the Reavers and soon finds herself in a small room with two doors leading away from the Reavers. She picks the leftmost door and is confronted with a small room swarming with disease-carrying rats, with the only door leading out on the opposite side of the swarm. Siqin grabs a gnawed thighbone lying on the ground and uses it to fend off the rats as she carefully picks her way through the room.[2] But things through the next door are not much better. Not only is the room filled with the smell of leaking gas, making Siqin want to get out quickly before she strikes a spark by accident, one of the two doors leading out of this room has a large drum of toxic chemicals balanced on top of it, in the style of a booby trap. Siqin decides that the Reavers wouldn't trap an unimportant door, so she finds a discarded box to climb on top of and carefully lift the drum down from the top of the door so she can pass through. Now she has a drum of toxic pesticides to use as a weapon against anything she may encounter.
Back in the Reavers' lair, Quinn can feel the drugs affecting her mind. Though she doesn't have an instant urge to behave as the Reavers do, she finds herself feeling less revolted by her surroundings, and wanting to help the Reavers get off the planet (if anything, this means they won't be a danger to Osiris anymore, right?). She also can't imagine hurting the Reaver who injected her in her current state. The Reavers show her to another room where they have covered the walls with what appears to be a crude map of the 'Verse, drawn in blood and other fluids - they're asking her to interpret it, since they seem to have degenerated to the point where they can no longer understand what they recorded or why. Quinn allows herself to become engrossed in this problem until she realizes with a start that it's been some time since she felt her unborn child move...[3]
Birgitta, Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris descend into the abandoned waste tunnels and when confronted with three doors, go left just like Siqin before them.[4] They move through a room full of dirty pipes, funneling human wastes and other vile materials to the surface to help make all of those beautiful plants bloom. There are two doors in this room, but when the first one that Nicolas opens leaves him coughing as toxic, horrible fungal spores blow back into his face, he decides to try the next one. What is beyond that is little better, though. A human body lies in a planting tray, with deep wounds cut into his body and beautiful flowers sprouting from them...and then the victim turns his head toward the crew and groans. With Nicolas's permission, Birgitta puts this poor soul out of his misery. The only door that leads out of this room has a rather alarming buzzing sound emanating from the other side of it, but Nicolas flings it open anyway to see what lurks within...
With human femur and chemical drum in hand, Siqin enters the next room, which is just as horrifying as what her fellows are facing. This room contains row upon row of gorgeous purple orchids, each one sprouting from a separate decaying human torso. Three doors lead out of this room, and when Siqin chooses the leftmost one, she finds something rather unusual there: shelves of neatly organized medical and scientific supplies, all bearing the Blue Sun logo.[5] The room next door (booby-trapped with another chemical drum, which Siqin defuses by catching the contents of the second drum in the one she's holding!) is even stranger, containing chemistry lab equipment that the Reavers appear to be able to operate with some modicum of skill. A door from this room leads into something even stranger: a room containing sculptures (all made out of human bones and other disgusting materials) that seem to be an attempt to represent some sort of god-like figure, many of them incorporating the letter "Q" prominently. What this means, Siqin doesn't know.
In the meantime, Quinn slips away from the Reavers and desperately tries to ascertain whether her baby is alive or dead. After a few tense moments, she feels the unborn child moving, but she knows that she can't predict the effects that the drug might have on her child, and that she should do everything in her power to keep from being injected with another dose. This is made harder by the fact that Quinn can feel the drug wearing off; she knows she is going to have to act like a Reaver to allay suspicion. The Reavers are consuming huge hunks of what appears to be human flesh, but Quinn decides she'd rather not go so far; instead, she takes a scalpel and starts carving Reaver-like designs on her legs, which seems to satisfy them. When the Reavers, through gestures, ask her if she learned anything from their map, she says she did but that they need to wait until night falls to leave for Black Cat. The Reavers seem satisfied with that answer, and Quinn is now just hoping she can buy enough time for Siqin to warn the crew and arrange a rescue.
The room which Birgitta, Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris have entered turns out to be full of thousands upon thousands of angry, stinging bees. The crew quickly passes through the room and picks a door effectively at random, and enters another room that contains orchids growing out of torsos, like the room Siqin was in before. A few doors lead out of this room, and the first one that the crew picks turns out to contain a pesticide drum trap over a door leading out (which is disarmed by Birgitta) and, in one corner of the room, a gigantic plant that appears to be carnivorous in nature. Although the just-untrapped door leads out of the room without having to go past the plant, there's another door past the plant, and so Birgitta (who has been sent ahead by Nicolas) decides to investigate it, since Nicolas says he hears some kind of suspicious noises through the other door. However, Birgitta decides to dump the drum of pesticides into the carnivorous plant on her way along, which certainly kills the plant but also creates a toxic hazard even bigger than the plant originally was. Nicolas is less than pleased with this...and it only gets worse when Birgitta throws the other door open without checking and sees a fertilizer bomb counting down in the middle of the room on the other side, apparently triggered by the opening door! Knowing she doesn't have the time or skill to defuse it, Birgitta yells for the others to run for cover as she does the same. The bomb goes off...
In another part of the dangerous maze beneath the greenhouses, Siqin is starting to get frustrated. She can't seem to find a safe direction that will actually lead out of the area she's found herself in. So in some ways, it's actually a godsend when the bomb goes off, knocking her to the ground but also blasting apart the walls of several rooms. Now Siqin and the rest of the crew find themselves in the same large space, with rubble and dust raining down around them. As the smoke from the explosion clears, they see a four-legged form moving on the other side of the room...it's a furious, red-eyed, disease-looking boar that the Reavers were apparently keeping down here as a sort of garbage disposal. Enraged, it launches itself at Nicolas's group (Siqin decides to remain hidden after calling out to the rest of the crew and letting them know that she's alive), where it is quickly gunned down by Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris as it's going for Birgitta.
But the battle is just beginning. Through the smoke, the crew sees a quartet of armed Reavers approaching, apparently summoned by the sound of the explosion. One of the Reavers looks familiar somehow...and as it draws closer, the crew is appalled to recognize that it's Quinn, who has of course accompanied her captors/allies when they left to investigate the explosion. A gun and club fight between the crew and the Reavers ensues, which is made more complicated by the fact that although Quinn herself is not attacking the crew, she's doing her best to keep the head Reaver out of harm's way. The rest of the crew realizes that her mind has been altered when she takes a potshot at one of the other Reavers who ends up near to her and kills it, and the head Reaver's response is to reinforce her loyalty by injecting her again. Still, even with Quinn's intervention, eventually all three Reavers fall beneath Birgitta's punishing fists and the guns wielded by Marsh, Nicolas, and Osiris. Quinn's response is to run away in panic, further into the Reaver base. But at the very least, Marsh can now rest easy knowing that the immediate perpetrators of the Osiris dismemberment murders have been dealt with once and for all.
While Marsh hangs back to photographically document the extremely incriminating scene around him (because now the whole crew can clearly see the Blue Sun and Alliance insignia on various pieces of new, totally functional equipment in the Reaver base) and Nicolas tends to the badly injured Siqin (who stayed out of the whole fight by hiding in the rubble), Birgitta and Osiris go after Quinn. They find her hiding under a table, clutching a scalpel and threatening anyone who comes near, in a grotesque mirror of Osiris's deranged behavior during one of the crew's first missions. It falls to Osiris to talk her out from under there even as she quietly and grimly clutches her weapon, repeatedly insisting, "I don't want to go back to the river."[6] In the meantime, Marsh has found a back exit that leads to the surface along with the evidence he claims he'll use to expose the wrongdoing of the Alliance and Blue Sun in the Dionysus Project. The crew scoops up the unresponsive Siqin and the rather damaged Quinn and gets out as quickly as possible.
The crew meets up with Archer at the mule, fills her in on what happened, and leaves for Black Cat right away. Though Quinn is beginning to snap out of her Reaver-like mindset in the absence of her captors and as the drug wears off, it's clear that Siqin has been wounded both mentally and physically, and that she is going to need a level of care that it's not certain Black Cat can provide.[7] But the crew won't know until they try, so back they go. Returning to the spaceport, they are surprised to notice someone there waiting for them - which is not supposed to be able to happen considering the sworn anonymity of this Syndicate-backed landing site. Even more alarming is the fact that the crew's visitors are a ship full of Alliance soldiers and doctors claiming that Sekhmet sent them! However, it quickly becomes clear that these soliders are just following orders - and they were ordered by Sekhmet to collect Siqin and take her in to receive medical and psychological care. Though the crew has no idea how Sekhmet could possibly have known this information, they're not in a position to argue, and at least this way they know that Siqin is safe.
Then the lieutenant in charge of this operation tells Nicolas that he has an additional duty: to tell the crew of Black Cat and Detective Hector Marsh that they are to report immediately to the Alliance cruiser Blue Nile in orbit of Osiris for an important debriefing. The crew is puzzled by this as well, but the way the lieutenant expresses the order makes it sound like Sekhmet is finally ready to answer some questions. The crew says their temporary good-byes to Siqin and boards the ship, with Nicolas piloting since Quinn is in no condition to fly, hoping that things will soon become much clearer.[8]
TO BE CONTINUED...
1 - More than a little silly, yeah, but Siqin's major peanut allergy hasn't screwed her nearly enough in this game.
2 - kyrryn: Is there anything around that would help me defend against the rats if I need to?
gamerchick: There's a human thigh bone. If it's any consolation, it's from someone who was much taller than you are.
dayzdark: That's comforting. It means someone bigger and stronger than you got killed by these rodents.
3 - "You know how we said we didn't care if our baby was a boy or girl as long as it wasn't a Reaver? That wasn't supposed to be a challenge." - dayzdark
4 - Players: they are nothing if not predictable.
5 - dayzdark: Even Reavers shop at Blue Sun!
Noel: And an advertising guy just got fired.
6 - It was really entertaining to see the obvious glee that peloria took in doing the exact same things to dayzdark as his character had done to hers way back when. As for the river stuff, Quinn associates rivers with tragedy and loss because of how her first baby, Calandra, died late in the pregnancy and was washed away in a river on Lilac. Canny readers may find some unintentional yet awesome parallels between this fact and the names of certain important entities in this game...
7 - As I put it: "She's gonna need help. I mean more than just sitting in the cockpit, drinking tea and raising an eyebrow."
8 - The first of several character changes here was necessitated by kyrryn spending the summer abroad. He and thus Siqin will be back in the fall for the endgame. As for the other changes, read on...