Document #1 Data
Oppy:
"Driver, you hit the jackpot. We've got a lead on what you're heading toward in the Deep Zone."
Oppy:
"Tobias, give us the rundown about the Well."
Tobias:
"ARDA classified it as a hotspot of ultra-high energy gamma radiation. Its eruptions were spontaneous, and ultimately, ARDA made no conclusion about what caused it, when it would blow, or how destructive it would be."
Tobias:
"ARDA, of course, wanted to control this bottomless Well of energy. So they brought in Dr, Cay and Allen to research activation and containment. They discovered a way to reliably trigger the Well, and that was the Remnants."
Oppy:
"And that's what the Remnants have been leading people towards: the Well."
Document #2 Data
Oppy:
"This second report's a good one."
Oppy:
"Ready to hear where the Remnants came from?"
Oppy:
"The original Remnants were created in Dr. Cay's lab. They aimed to create a trigger for activating the Well. By infusing objects with a carefully calibrated LIM wave, the ones that shared a resonant frequency would-"
Tobias:
"Yeah, yeah, just get to the good stuff."
Oppy:
"You know, you'd be a much better ghost hunter if it weren't for that unfortunate attention span. Reading this makes it obvious how the Remnants ended up in the wild."
Tobias:
"What? How?"
Oppy:
"The gamma-ray surge that caused the Mass Hallucination event. That energy irradiated everything within a 10-mile radius. Objects with the right characteristics absorbed that energy, and became the Remnants people found out in the Zone."
Tobias:
"Wow."
Tobias:
"Francis would get a kick out of that one."
Tobias:
"I'll tell him later."
Document #3 Data
Oppy:
"I've reviewed Dr. Cay's lab notes. And now we know what he was doing in that lab after the accident: spinning in circles for years."
Tobias:
"His injuries were real. Dr. Cay's radiation exposure should've been fatal."
Oppy:
"And the minute he could stand on his own feet again, ARDA shuttled him right back to his lab and bid the monkey to dance."
Tobias:
"They allowed him to carry on in the hopes that he would reproduce anything useful. He worked for two whole years before they quietly retired him from his post."
Oppy:
"Sorry we scrambled your brain, here's your pension, bye."
Document #4 Data
Oppy:
"You've got that accident record ready, Tobias? It's time."
Tobias:
"Okay, then. September 14, 1961. ARDA's finalized report on what happened that night."
Tobias:
"Dr. Cay and Allen were testing the activation potential of lab-created Remnants."
Tobias:
"That night was a run-of-the-mill Remnant test, nothing out of the ordinary. The Remnant in question was a tungsten cube."
Tobias:
"At 3:23AM, the cube was brought toward the Well, and the Well reacted at nominal levels. However, at the 500-meter distance, the cube was sucked into the Well and triggered the gamma-ray surge. The energy output continued ramping up, and at 15 seconds, showed no signs of stopping."
Tobias:
"Then, Allen..."
Oppy:
"Go on. I can handle it."
Tobias:
"Dr. Cay testified that Allen engaged the suppression protocol, then the kill switch, both of which failed. Dr. Cay ordered Allen to get to safety, but Allen insisted on staying at the controls. Only when he flipped the radiation polarity, did the energy output plateau, then collapse back into itself."
Tobias:
"Allen's gamma radiation exposure was fatal due to his proximity to the Well. But if it weren't for him, the entire Zone might've gone under."
Oppy:
"That's who Allen was. Loyal until the very end."
Tobias:
"I'm sorry, Oppy."
Oppy:
"I'd expect nothing less from him."
Keep Going
Oppy:
"Once that car gets to the Well, we can expect another gamma-ray eruption. We'll need a way to cut it off."
Oppy:
"And I may have found the answer in Allen's lab notes. His work on that suppression technique is- was- top notch."
Tobias:
"What's interesting is Dr. Cay and Allen didn't know any more than we do now. They had no conclusions about what the Well is."
Oppy:
"Or what the Remnants did, or how they interacted with this Well. Maybe they're ladles that scoop out a metered amount of gamma radiation. Maybe they trigger an eruption that we can't stop, and will destroy the Zone if we get it too close."
Tobias:
"That's a hell of a range. What are we going to do?"
Oppy:
"We keep going."
Tobias:
"But if it's an eruption..."
Oppy:
"I already sacrificed the Olympic Peninsula once for LIM tech. How many chances for total and utter fallout does a gal get in her life, huh?"
Tobias:
"Oppy. In another life. We would've made a fantastic team."
Oppy:
"In no universe would I not have murdered you in your sleep."