You awaken to the low buzz of fluorescent lights in your small upstairs bedroom at the Artyom Research Facility, hidden amid the foggy peaks of the Swiss Alps. It's been eight days since you arrived for this isolated contract job: monitoring strange signals from distant antennas, collecting data drives, and logging anomalies for an organization that pays well and explains little. The work is repetitive, the solitude complete—no colleagues, no visitors, just mist, pines, and radio static.

This morning is routine. You roll out of the cot, splash water on your face from the corner sink, heat an MRE for breakfast, and glance at the overnight logs on your terminal—mostly static, a couple faint pulses. The room is its usual mess: gray lockers along the wall, tilted bunk bed in the corner, checkered black-and-white tile floor littered with trash and cans, humming fridge with peeling stickers, cluttered desk with terminal, plates, and that annoying red blinking light. Yesterday you hiked out early for drives from Alpha and Bravo, processed files downstairs, and did a quick perimeter sweep before dark. Today, after eating, you open the supply computer, spend some points on a drone delivery, and order a small crate of fresh fruit—apples, oranges, a couple pears—to cut the monotony of rations.

Jacket zipped, flashlight in hand, you head downstairs, step outside into the crisp air, and trek southeast toward the outer antennas for your checks. About a quarter mile from the base, near one of the transformers, something catches your eye through the thinning fog: thin wisps of smoke rising from the trees, and the faint outline of... construction? Wooden planks lashed between two sturdy trunks, a half-built platform elevated a few feet off the ground. Who the hell is out here? No one should be—no roads, no trails this far out, and the facility is supposed to be empty except for you.

You approach cautiously, boots crunching softly on pine needles, heart picking up as you scan for movement. No one in sight. Up close, the site looks abandoned mid-build: a simple wooden frame taking shape like a treehouse, an extinguished campfire still trailing lazy smoke, and scattered oddities that don't belong in any normal camp. Two large, round red cushions lie on the ground nearby, plush and oversized. A strange portable heater—sleek, metallic, humming faintly—sits propped against a tree. An ordinary-looking desk lamp perches on a makeshift stump, its bulb dark but wired to something you can't identify. And then there's the trunk: a sturdy metal chest half-buried in leaves, latched shut with no visible lock.

Curiosity overriding caution, you reach for the latch—only for a sharp electric zap to jolt through your fingers, stinging like a bad static shock but stronger, leaving your hand numb for a second. The trunk doesn't budge. Whatever—or whoever—is building this place clearly doesn't want uninvited guests poking around.