Figure Out What’s Going on in the Base

You recall the vow you made to yourself right before entering the lab, and decide that you are responsible for, at the bare minimum, figuring out what HYDRA’s trying to accomplish with this base. The Technician basically confirmed that there’s an important project that is close to being finished, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to piece together the various clues and get an idea of what’s going on.

You rematerialise next to the large metallic rods that you saw on your first or second time in the base. A crew of workers, hard at work installing some kind of pump system, ignore you as you walk around the area, using your various senses to get an idea of what these rods could possibly be used for. They’re clearly more than just structural in purpose, given the amount of scaffolding and work that is being put into them, but it’s unclear what these pillars extending deep into the ground could possibly be used for.

The first thing that pops into your head is the possibility of some nuclear technology, but a quick scan reveals nothing radioactive in the immediate area, though there is some lead shielding. That section appears to be protecting something other than the pillars, so you guess that this project is not going to be a nuclear threat, at least.

What could large poles possibly be used for? You have a brainwave, thinking that they must be conductors for electricity, or maybe these poles are for grounding some massive lightning storm? It definitely seems plausible, and you decide to interrogate an engineer or two to determine if you’re right.

The first person that you grab, one of the construction workers, doesn’t speak English. Even though you know hundreds of languages, the noises that he makes don’t sound at all familiar to you. Maybe it faintly reminds you of the Igbo tongue, but then again, it has elements that sound Finnish too. The lack of understanding poses no great obstacle as you dive into his mind.

It takes seconds to sift through the entirety of his memory. It is a rather unfruitful effort. You discover that he grew up in Nigeria and spoke some arcane dialect that you can now understand, and that he was **** by AIM for grunt work purposes. Ever since then, he has been working in this facility. Unfortunately, and perhaps wisely for the higher-ups, the lowly worker has never been told precisely what he’s been working on for all this time, only that it is of the utmost priority. Even from the various parts of the project that he’s worked on, you can’t quite piece together what the facility is meant to do.

You wipe the poor man’s memory, and stealth yourself, waiting for another group of workers to come by. When one finally does, you grab one and go through his memories too, but find nothing of import. You try one more worker, just in case, but all of them have no clue as to what’s actually going on here. With their combined knowledge, you get the sense that the pillars are absolutely vital to the completion of the job. Not a very helpful conclusion, since you already knew that.

It’s time to try somebody with a little more knowledge, then. You make sure that you’re in deep stealth, invisible to any conventional sensor, and then you re-enter the lab portion of the facility. You make your way through the area, trying to find a lone technician whose mind you can scrape, but all of them seem to be working in teams, wearing bright green uniforms, gray slippers, and weird metallic collars attached around their necks.

It takes a while, but you eventually spy a technician who is tinkering with some little device in an isolated corner. This is your chance to get the information that you need.

How do you go about this?