T-013 Cold room

Threshold Institute · Case file T-013

Number

T-013 in the catalogue

Kind

Room

Class

Class I: harmless while it is left alone

Found

Year 18, month 12, day 5

Where found

The biology lab of the sealed level

Status

Unchanged since the breach; it does nothing to anyone who stays out

Now

At the lab and in the rift

Part

Part II: The rooms turn

Containment procedures

The biology lab is emptied, sealed and numbered. No one enters T-013 for longer than one minute, in the burn crew's heavy coats, with a timekeeper at the door. Nothing that needs to be kept warm is ever stored in it. The names of the two researchers who died in it are the first on the memorial wall in the Institute's hall.

Description

A room where every heat source dies: heaters with power on their lines, a lamp's warmth, a stove, and the heat of a body. A person inside loses their warmth fast, faster every minute they stay. The thermometer on its wall reads nineteen degrees throughout and is wrong.

Discovery

The biology lab held the Institute's samples of the growth (see T-006), cut back in the burn and kept warm for study. On the fifth day of the twelfth month of year 18 the lab's six heaters were found cold, and the two researchers of the night shift, Dr Arvid Sjö and Dr Maj Ekelund, at their benches. They had died of cold. Tomas Rehn went in on his rope for a minute at a time, with Dr Selma Kader timing him from the door, and came out shaking each time. The Institute learnt that the rooms could kill without a creature in them. The heaters were taken out and tested above ground and worked; carried back into the lab, they cooled within minutes with the power on. A burn crew's torch lit in the doorway burnt with a short blue flame that gave no warmth to the hand held over it.

Addenda

Addendum T-013-A

the last page of Dr Sjö's lab notebook, found on his bench

01:40. Heaters ticking. Cold in here. Maj has her coat on.

02:15. Heater 3 cold to the hand. Power on. Heater 4 too.

02:30. Growth samples have stopped moving in the jars. First time in four years.

02:50. Thermometer says 19. My hands say otherwise. Maj says we should go up. One more reading.

03:05. One more

Addendum T-013-B

note, Dr S. Kader, Year 19, month 2

The growth's samples, kept in this lab for years, died here. The growth in the chamber came back slower that winter than in any winter of the burn log (see T-006). I think T-013 and T-006 are linked: the cold takes what the growth lives on. I cannot prove it, and no one is to put a burn crew in T-013 to try.

What followed

Director Varga stepped down in year 20, after twenty years. Her successor, Director Hanne Lind, took the sealed level with its three rules and its numbered rooms. The next room came under her, and it turned everything over (see T-014).

Previous fileT-012 Quiet roomPart II: The rooms turn Next fileT-014 Upside-down roomPart II: The rooms turn

In the file

• People: Director Ilse Varga, Tomas Rehn, Dr Selma Kader, Director Hanne Lind, Dr Arvid Sjö and Dr Maj Ekelund.
• Places: The Institute’s site, The containment chamber and The sealed level.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 18, month 12, day 5. Found in the biology lab of the sealed level, where the growth's samples were kept warm for study: its six heaters were cold in the morning, and the two researchers of the night shift had died of cold at their benches. Tomas Rehn went in on his rope a minute at a time, with Dr Selma Kader timing him from the door, and came out shaking each time.

A sealed room on the lab's lower level whose air stays at thirty below in every season and every weather. Its doorway is not part of it.

No warmth that is made lasts inside: a fire, a stove or a suit's heater carried in gives none. Clothes keep a body's own warmth in a while, but a body cools there three times as fast as it should. Found behind a warning plate that bears its code and a snowflake.

Status: unchanged since the breach; it does nothing to anyone who stays out.

Today it is found at the lab and in the rift.

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