Stairs of darkness.

I pick up the sheet that was handed to me yesterday, the last checks being made by the three of us.

CONFIDENTIAL

For the eyes of MTF Unit - The Descendants only

Role: Recorder. Agent: Rake

Role: Courier. Agent: Hardy

Role: Gunner. Agent: Sharp

Role: Medic. Agent: Clep

Standard Equipment (ALL AGENTS WILL RECEIVE THE FOLLOWING)
- Night Vision Goggles, battery life duration: 24 hours.
- Audio headset for communication with Dr. Gestalt
- 95 Watt Floodlight with accompanying battery lasting for 24 hours.
- Stanard Issue, 11mm Pistol with 7 magazines.
- Cross sectional GPS to enable tracking between members.

Role Specialised Information:
Recorder
- You are effectively the leader of the group, decisions made by your team will be confirmed through you and then Dr Gestalt.
- Additional handheld camera
- 3 motion capture, deployable cameras.
- 15

Courier
- You are to follow orders made by "The Recorder"
- 4 thermal blankets
- 4 standard medical kits
- 8 energy bars
- 8 sports drinks
- 4 packaged meals
- 20 deployable LED lights

Gunner
- You are to follow orders made by "The Recorder"
- Standard assualt rifle, 7.62 rounds. 20 magazines of ammunition, each magazine contains 40 rounds of bullets.
- 3 breaching charges.

Medic
- You are scond in command behind "The Recorder", if anything happens to the recorder you are too assume the position of leader
- 4 medical kits
- 2 adrenaline shots
- 1 instance of SCP-500

My expertise in explosives must have landed me the role as gunner.

Rake barges in between my reading after lowering his hand from his headset, "alright listen up lads audio debrief is coming in".

Dr. Gestalts voice can be heard in our ears, "Ok to begin with your mission is to find the source of the crying, hopefully, you've all read up on the the staircase and are aware of 087-1"

"we've armed you with those pistols so use them at your own discretion however radio into your team and us before firing"

"we're carrying out this operation after recordings of metal crashing and scrapes have been heard coming through the door, with proper training and equipment we believe that the bottom can be reached after what was shown by D-9884's efforts. We might be able to find out what happened to her as well"

"that's about it fellas, neither I or you know what we're gonna find down there so keep your eyes out, also watch your footing, those stairs have known to not be stable"

"oh yeah, one more thing. Clep isn't here because of a breach with 553 and he's needed in the medical wing"

Rake pitches in "this is a massive set back so don't get yourself injured Hardy or yourself, Sharp"

Dr. Gestalt continues "alright we're administering the shock now, recorder get ready"

Rake goes and places the key into the metal door, turning it counter-clockwise, after some screeches of scraping metal the flight of stairs are in view, the door fully open.

Upon first entering the crying ensues. it sounds like a female or young boy in tears, the patterns of his/her crying changing with each shriek.

We immediately begin our descent, 13 steps after 13 steps, it's after 4 flights that we see the damage and the source of the scraping.

Rake immediately reports what is seen by us "alright Gestalt, I think we've found the cause of the metallic sounds, you sure you want us to continue past here". There is not even a moment of silence before Gestalt responds by saying "yes recorder, we have fully equipped your team and yourself better than any d-class before, let this not be wasted".

About half of the stairs have corroded and fallen below to the next flight of stairs, we drop our packs and let them fall to the area below and shimmy across what remains of the staircase.

Gestalt's warnings of "watch your footing boys, we can't afford losses at any point, especially not now" ring in our ears as we go across.

The feat is met with no reward other than more flights of stairs. The 95 Watt flood lights continue to shine down the stairs illuminating the same unchanging pattern of rusted steps going down and down. by the 25 flight, Hardy opens an energy bar and splits it into 3 chunks, giving us one each.

Some time passes and we reach the 78th. Rake places down one of his motion capture cam and sets it up along the wall. He radios in his private channel between him and Gestalt to check if they are receiving transmissions from the camera. Gestalt responds with a yes and we continue.

While Rake is going this Hardy and I discuss the fact that neither of us were informed of the private communication channel the two had, this was even left out of the audio debrief where we were meant to have known everything by that point.

The 100th flight is soon met and we share an energy drink among us, our greed affecting our rations. We decide to better savour our food.

After an hour or so the 200th flight appears. another energy bar and drink down we continue on. cracks, rust holes, are starting to become more prevalent and noticeable there hasn't been a repeat of the 4th flight for a while though.

By the 210th we decide to individually consume a sports drink and energy bar and take a break, Hardy is already showing signs of fatigue by carrying nearly double of what Rake and I are.

We discuss a few things about what we were told, now having the new found time to do so, we all switched off our coms at this point because Gestalt was not impressed about our constant breaks and kept verbally expressing this.

Hardy asked about 087-1 and why "we haven't seen it yet" and we all just shrugged, rake pulled out his firearm and pulled the hammer back and inspected it to imply that we had a weapon or tool that hadn't been tried out before, on our unknown enemy, I too hoped it would save our backs as it usually did when dealing with other entities.

it was at this time that a large metal creak was heard about 5 or 6 flights up, all our heads simultaneously craned up at the sound and listening out for any proceeding ones, we each turned our comms on to Gestalt saying, "yes we heard that here too, the motion sensor camera has caught nothing on the 78th flight so I think we can assume that it's not 087-1.

Relief floods me and I agree with this logic, however it is all to soon before disaster strikes again, with this new information we are still very eager to keep moving after feeling like we had danced with death there but unfortunately when Hardy stood up with his pack on the sudden wait on a rusted step caused it to snap under the pressure, the side of his leg being sliced open quite badly up until his knee.

Blood immediately streams down his leg and onto his sock, his groans of pain when we hoisted him up from his sunken position only confirming our worries that he might not be able to walk, he tried standing up again but to only let his grunts remove oxygen and cause him to slump back down.

Rake and I clawed to Gestalt for guidance, his only offering was for us you use one of the medical kits and clean the wound, luckily Hardy had his tetanus shot shortly before we began so that was not a worry.

we bandaged up as best as we could the open wound, blood still seeping out from untightened edges, but it was all we could do. We decided to continue our descent with out hardy and leave him on the 210th flight to return to him, due to the fact that we had still not seen 087-1 on our descent and the 78th floor had shown us nothing Gestalt and Rake decided this was the best option and well I could not refuse, Hardy seemed fine with it as well deciding he still needed to recover, his pack had food and liquid so we thought he'd be fine anyways.

Rake and I soon set off deciding the sooner we found the source of crying the sooner we could help Hardy and not have repercussions from Gestalt.