Places of the Institute

The case files keep coming back to the same 12 places. Each has a page here that gathers the thresholds found there, the files whose containment procedures name it, and what the journal’s finds say of it. Where a place is one you can walk into in the game, its page says so.

The Institute’s site

The Institute's siteThe lab the state built over its deepest mine shaft in year 1: the buildings above ground and the yard, and under them the sealed level and the containment chamber. The shaftThe state's deep mine shaft, 1,140 metres down, where a shaft crew broke into the cavity that held the rift. The containment chamberThe concrete room poured round the rift before anything else was built, with one door that opened only from its anteroom. The sealed levelThe level dug round the containment chamber, where the Institute held what came through, and where the rooms themselves began to turn. The cellsThe cell block of the sealed level: standard cells built to the size of a rift stalker, one reinforced cell, and the sealed object cells. The observation wingThe wing built in year 8 so that the cells could be watched through one-way mirrors, with the archive room under it and an anteroom of its own. The service tunnelsThe unlit tunnels dug under the sealed level after year 2, where the shade took a maintenance crew of four in year 4.

Outside

The land beyond the riftThe land on the far side of the rift, which shifted under every map: the anchor, the held zones, the grey flats, the gorge, and the void below it all. The lost expedition's campThe last camp of Anneli Sund's expedition of year 32, round an old building past the gorge, where the land did not turn, and where the key still lies. The launch siteThe space agency's launch site, where the flights to the planet left and landed, and where the pollution began in the hangar. The colonyThe agency's colony on the planet, kept since year 39 and silent since year 43, with its lab dome and, out past the domes, the crater where the source lies. The nuclear plantThe nuclear plant on the coast, where the pollution field read highest and made creatures of its own in the turbine hall, the yard and the reactor building.