(Location: Badlands Research Institute Headquarters, Capside City.)
The Capside City Badlands Research Institute Headquarters was not a loud building.
It was large and well lit and precisely organised, the kind of building that communicated its purpose the moment you walked into it. Everything about it said serious work happens here and has been happening here for a long time.
The corridors were clean and the signage was clear and the people who moved through it carried themselves with the particular purposefulness of individuals who understood what they were there to do and took that understanding seriously.
On most days it ran with a quiet, steady hum that its longest-serving employees barely noticed anymore. The rhythm of reports and research and carefully documented findings moving from desk to desk and floor to floor and eventually into the broader system that tracked and monitored everything connected to the Badlands.
Today the rhythm was off.
