Baseline Contamination
An independent forensic auditor is summoned to a biotech conglomerate to examine the circumstances surrounding the CEO's sudden death. The investigation centers on digital access logs, physical evidence, and the testimonies of key personnel, all occurring within a confined corporate environment.
Initial Crime Scene
The first thing that hits you is the sterile hum of cooling fans, a constant drone that vibrates in the walls. Cold-cathode fluorescent tubes cast a harsh, bluish-white glare across the polished concrete floor, reflecting in the glass partitions. You smell a faint, sharp tang of ozone mixed with heated electronics, the signature of the server racks. Your gaze lands on a biometric swipe-card reader by the door, its small LED pulsing slowly.
Crime Scene Environment
The lighting is a constant, cold-cathode bluish-white that casts sharp, long shadows. The air is dry, cool, and carries a persistent, low-frequency acoustic density from cooling fans. The overall tonal envelope is sterile, cold, and dehumanizing.
Investigation Constraints
The world operates on late-1990s to early-2000s corporate tech: desktop workstations with dial-up/Ethernet, local area network (LAN) servers, physical paper trails and interoffice mail, rudimentary corporate intranet portals, early biometric key-card access for server rooms and executive floors, internal landline phone systems with voicemail, basic digital cameras, and paper shredders. There are no smartphones or cloud computing.
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