3

You step forward, daring the tunnels to move around you. They remain motionless. You wonder if that's because of your influence.

Time for something more difficult, then. You close your eyes and whisper, telling the tunnels to guide you, guide you, guide you. Telling them to deliver you safely to your destination—whatever that is.

Again, you hear that grinding sound around you. When you open your eyes, the tunnel has become one long, straight route ahead of you.

Excellent. You walk along it, until it opens out into a large room.

Next

You are standing in a warehouse—the cold-storage warehouse you visited in July. Some distance from you, you see Anaru Katariki standing over three men strapped to gurneys, moving from one to the other. And yet all four figures are indistinct, insubstantial. Ghosts, memories, or the ghosts of memories.

Between them, even more insubstantial, moves a spindly black figure. One of the Surgeons.

Salem Masfiwi's voice comes to you once again. "Call that first step through the tunnels a test of initiative. This, however, is a test of truth. Please, answer this question: who first brought the Surgeons to this world?"

"What's the point in this?" you ask. "I won't answer anything unless you show yourself, and tell me what purpose this interrogation serves."

A few seconds of silence, and then Masfiwi's disembodied voice once more. "But you are the one who has created this test. And you must answer because…that is what is required, in order for you to move on. If you do not answer, you stay here. Now, who brought the first Surgeon scouts to this world?"

Somewhat confused, you regard the figures before you once more.