iStory:The Private/chapter 303 alternatives

This page notes the different possible versions of chapter 3 of The Private.

All cases (I)

Pausing her story of what happened during her last tour of Iraq, Rachel Mills notes that what she is going to say now is not what the official account says. The interviewer responds that they expect the truth, and Rachel says that is what she is telling. He replies that warnings should not be necessary, then, and Rachel says that he should remember he said that.

In Rachel's recollection, Rachel gets to know more about the Special Forces lieutenant. She learns his name is Sam, that he was born in Syria and grew up in Cleveland. His parents were originally from Iran, and he claimed that he was still in high school when he decided his options were either to spend his life getting shaken down at airport checkpoints or to enlist. Sam complains about spending so much time wandering the wildernesses of the Middle East, looking for bad guys, but Rachel can tell he loves his job even if it might kill him.

The contents of the compound Sam and his men are to destroy seem to scare them more than the Iranian army base in the distance. Rachel learns that they had never gotten too close to the facility, though they had stopped a truck once. Sam warns Rachel that he has never seen Iranian forces on this side of town, but expects them to come quickly when their charges go off. Rachel replies that they will be ready to run, and Jim nods in agreement. The squad had decided he was CIA, but Rachel still isn't so sure.

Rachel and Jim watch from a rocky hill as the Special Forces squad sneaks down to the compound. The main building dominates the facility, one set of doors on the front and two sentries sit on rocks nearby. Rachel tells him that they are going to talk when the mission is over, and Jim says that sounds hot. Rachel replies that it will only be hot if he doesn't give her some answers, and they spot a man in a lab coat leaving the building out of a camouflaged door, around the corner from the front entrance. Rachel wonders aloud why a hidden door, and the squad takes out the sentries and reaches the front entrance. Sam's squad doesn't appear to see the hidden door and Rachel says to stop them. However, Jim says it's too late. Sam grabs the handle of the front entrance and then he and the squad disappear in a white flash and chest-rattling boom.

Rachel and Jim immediately take off running, though in different directions. Jim catches up with Rachel near the edge of where the dirt had been blackened by the explosion, and tells Rachel that they are dead. He tells Rachel they need to run, but she just tells him to get away from her. Rachel looks down a Sam's body and Jim grabs Rachel's arm. Rachel responds by tackling Jim to the ground, and planting a knee in his chest.

Rachel then tells Jim either that the mission is incomplete, to shut up, or that someone's going to pay, but in all cases Rachel continues that she is finishing the mission. She instructs Jim to go back to the camp, find a radio, recall codes, something. Jim says that is crazy, and just then the secret door around the corner slams. Rachel spots the guy in the lab coat and runs after him. She finds that the door is just an outline in the building's metal siding, so she pulls it open and steps through it into a small, dark room.

Once inside, Rachel notes the room's rotting odor, that there are rubber seals around the doors, and gas masks lining the floors. She spots the man in the lab coat trying to use the inside door, and takes his pistol from him. The man, who looks possibly Indian to Rachel, screams as something pops in his arm. Rachel must then choose to either take him hostage or knock him out.

Options (I)

Option 1 (hostage case): take the man hostage and force him to be a guide; click "show" to view summary

Rachel points the gun to the man's head and asks if he speaks English, daring him to say no. The man then admits to speaking English and says he is just a helper. She asks what the place is, and the man just says that she shouldn't be there. Rachel replies that she couldn't agree more and asks him to show her around, pressing him through the inner door. Rachel and her hostage head through the inside door, finding the next room also dark, as though the power is out. Even though she is wearing a mask, Rachel smells an overpowering odor of rot and chemicals. She finds a giant metal cylinder with hazard and no-smoking warnings painted on it, and she see pipes running out of it into the walls. Ahead, Rachel sees a glass door into what looks to her like a hospital ward, except that it is built from warped plywood and concrete and metal instruments glitter in black buckets of liquid. Her hostage points to a steel door down the hall and says it is the main office. Rachel gets him to take her inside the office. She finds the office has a small desk, low ceiling and dozens of filing cabinets. Files are open on the desk, along with piles of photographs, and Rachel studies them to make sense of things. Rachel notes that the images show what used to be people, but all of them had either been been deformed, contorted, enlarged, reduced, or discolored. To Rachel, some of them appear blackened and torn by some kind of internal explosion. Rachel asks what happened, but her hostage just says they had problems. She asks him if there are people alive in the building, and he notes that they are not people. Rachel must then decide to either have her hostage lead her to some of the captives or to find her file. Option 1A (prisoners case) Option 1B (file case) Rachel asks to be taken to the captives, and her hostage leads her to a dim room filled with cages. In each of the cages were things like Rachel saw in the photographs. Rachel immediately notices a stronger stench of chemicals and feces, as well as a hum of groans, calls and banging metal. Then, Rachel hears a rumble under her feet and realizes trucks are outside. The hostage says he thinks it must be the Iranian army, and notes that they must not see what has been done there. He asks to be let go, claiming he will lead her out. Rachel tells the hostage to find her file, but the hostage says she's not a prisoner. Rachel tells him her name and he produces a file folder with her name on it from the last filing cabinet. However, Rachel finds that the folder is empty. The man says she is not a patient, and explains that they grab many women. Rachel replies that they will see about that, and then she feels the rumbling of trucks getting close outside.

Option 2 (solo case): knock the man out, taking his coat and mask; click "show" to view summary
Rachel chooses to go it alone, knocking the man out, and taking and putting on his coat and mask. She heads through the inside door, and it is still dark, like the power is out. Even though she is wearing a mask, Rachel smells an overpowering odor of rot and chemicals. She finds a giant metal cylinder with hazard and no-smoking warnings painted on it, and she see pipes running out of it into the walls. Ahead, Rachel sees a glass door into what looks to her like a hospital ward, except that it is built from warped plywood and concrete. Inside the ward, she spies metal instruments glittering in pans of liquid but no patients from where she is standing. Opposite the metal cylinder, Rachel sees a staircase going down into an even deeper blackness and notes to herself that it has an even stronger smell. The feeling Rachel has reminds her of one of her nightmares, where she found herself on a giant roller coaster with no safety bars. Now, Rachel needs to choose between heading down the stairs or into the ward. A third option is specified to instead wire charges to the chemical tank, but attempting to use that option just leads to Rachel hearing a low teeth-clenched moan from the hospital ward area that draws her to head inside to see if there is a female person there.
Option 2A (stairs case); click "show" to view summary Rachel chooses to explore the basement and heads down the stairs. Arriving at what Rachel describes as a mortuary for things, Rachel notes that the next couple minutes played too fast and are a blur in her memory. Rachel guesses the things had been people once, but had been deformed, contorted, enlarged, reduced, or discolored. She continues that some appear blackened and torn by an internal explosion, and that all of them are in cages. Looking closer, Rachel notes that some hadn't been dead before they ended up there. Rachel must now choose to either explore further or go back and attempt to destroy the place. Option 2A.1 (explore case) Option 2A.2 (destroy case) Rachel goes deeper into the basement and finds a man alive in one of the cages. The man looks small due to malnutrition, and is laying on his back. At first, Rachel sees him hanging onto the cage bars overhead and realizes he is slowly bending the metal. The man looks at Rachel, showing his teeth and she notices his eyeballs are solid black. Rachel then prepares to shoot him when she feels a faint rumble. She guesses heavy trucks must be arriving outside. Deciding to destroy the place, Rachel heads back up stairs and considers where to place one of Sam's charges. She hears a low teeth-clenched moan from the hospital ward area. Rachel thinks it sounds female, but looks into the room and can't see anything. Rachel then hears a faint rumbling that sounds like trucks getting close.
Option 2B (ward case); click "show" to view summary Rachel chooses to explore what appears to be a hospital ward. Once inside, she notices the smell seems to be chemical in nature, like antifreeze but with a burnt after-scent. Rachel finds a girl she guesses is around her own age laying in a tangle of wires and tubes on a table on the far side of the room, but she cannot tell her nationality. Rachel sees that the girl's "table" is a tray, half-full of a blue-ish chemical that is being pumped in through a tube like a garden hose, with her arms and legs swollen and bulging, as if full of liquid. She notes the girl has IVs in both arms; and although she seems unconscious, her eyes are half-open. Rachel decides to stop what's being done to the girl and must choose to either pull out the IVs or the hoses. Option 2B.1 (IVs case) Option 2B.2 (hoses case) After pulling out the IVs, the girl suddenly awakens. Rachel notices the girl looking at her and tells her to lie still, that she will be fine. The girl ignores Rachel and tries to get up, but finds she is restrained by metal bands around her limbs, which pin her to the table. The girl then makes a deep-sounded groan and breaks the straps. Moving faster than Rachel thought possible, the girl makes her way onto the floor snapping her limbs like whips. Rachel backs up, asking the girl what happened to her, but doesn't get an answer. One snap of the girl's limbs then sends Rachel into a table, sending chemicals flying and surgical tools spraying around her. After collapsing to the ground, Rachel sits up and hears a screeching coming from the man that Rachel had found, who is now hiding behind a table. Rachel notes that she really wants to wake up now and hears a rumbling noise outside that sounds like trucks driving around the building. Rachel pulls out the hose pumping the chemical into the girl, dropping it on the floor where it begins forming a puddle on the concrete floor. Inside the tray, the chemicals begin draining somewhere and the level of fluid drops. The girl tenses against metal restraints, but begins to relax as the fluid drains from her into the tray. Then the girls eyes close, and Rachel asks if it is better. A voice responds that the girl is dead, and Rachel turns around to find another man in a lab coat there. Rachel doesn't recognize the man's accent, and decides to question him. She points her gun towards him and asks what the chemical is. The man then points at Rachel's gun, saying it is a gasoline additive that is randomly mutative and high flammable. He start to warn her about shooting, when Rachel asks why they are doing this. The man replies that it is to see what would happen and Rachel slugs him. Rachel then notices that trucks are arriving outside.

All cases (II)

Running out of time, Rachel realizes she must make another decision. The player is given the following choices for Rachel to follow, each of which lead into the next chapter:

Get explosives and blow up the vat... Investigate the weird moaning in the ward (official conclusion)... Open the cells...

Notes

• Using Option 1A appears to lead to the optimal case as it allows Rachel to discover that her records have either been removed from the facility or never existed as her hostage claims. Rachel rescues the moaning girl in the next chapter.

Trivia

• In the original version of Chapter 303, released January 28, 2009, the chapter ended with Rachel noticing that trucks are arriving outside the facility. The player was then given the opportunity to vote to affect what Rachel did next with the following prompt:

Vote for the plan you want to follow... Get explosives and blow up the vat Investigate the weird moaning in the ward Open the cells Burn the files Run for the desert Select the plan you want to follow. Vote carefully: your choice affects what happens in the next chapter. Discuss your choice at the 9th Wonders "Friend or Foe" forum. Poll ends and story continues on Tuesday, 2/3/09.

• The above poll was originally set to end on Friday, January 30, 2009. The date was changed on Thursday, January 29, 2009, when a bug was fixed that had one of the choices leading to a blank page.
• On February 3, 2009, the polling was set aside and chapter 303 continued with Rachel choosing to investigate the weird moaning in the ward as the official choice. However, players could also see the outcomes for what would have happened if Rachel blew up the vat or opened the cells.