A recovered alien canister (glowing core, centre) sits inside
a spherical containment field. When the field is weak — or the
canister is fully breached — unidentified xenomatter (violet
motes) leaks out, drifts on the lab's air current, and either
gets pulled into the decontamination vents or lands on one of
the four specimen pods around the room, corrupting whatever
is stored inside (pod colour shifts green → violet → black).
leak = severity × (1 − field/100) × (breached ? 5 : 1)
airborne' = leak − decon × airborne
integrity → target = breached ? 0 : field (smoothed over time)
corruption'_pod = k × (spores landed on that pod)
- Leak severity — how compromised the canister itself is, before any shielding.
- Containment field — an active EM/plasma shield around the canister that suppresses the leak; 100% ≈ near-total suppression.
- Decontamination rate — lab air scrubbers pulling airborne xenomatter into the vents before it reaches a specimen.
- Sealed / Breached — a full containment breach drops the field to 0% and multiplies the leak fivefold, regardless of the slider.
This mirrors real biosafety-lab protocol thinking (BSL-4
containment, HEPA/decon airflow, sealed access) applied to a
hypothetical worst case: material of unknown, non-terrestrial
origin, where no established exposure limits exist.