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The Lab has heavier Dieselpunk machinery but it's all much dirtier than Davoust's lab and less organized- no military organization and the cult lets Simon do what he wants. The movie Elysium (2013) can show the juxaposition between the clean of Davoust's lab and this one. Bulldozers, "earth movers," and mining equipment.
Clarissa gets a job in the lab with a taciturn, matter of fact Inner Circle member and Chief Scienseer named Simon (see below for the why of this description). The name Simon means "one who hears" and is Hebrew in origin. It is just him in there and his last assistant died during a patrol clashing with another element cult. They are trying to perfect Infusion and use feral dogs and rats as test subjects. It is not going well. The scienseer is under pressure from the Inner Circle to produce results and he is not sure what the problem is. He does not want to use humans as test subjects until he can make some headway with animals.
As an aside, I want this guy to survive and help the party in the video game combat Davoust as the Pool sets up its own fiefdom of Water elementals forcibly merged with human hosts. It becomes powerful and tyrannical, seeking to master negative and positive energy by trapping Earth and Air elementals in the same way it was once trapped and using their combined essences to plumb the mysteries of the cosmos.
Simon was once a colleague of Dr Silver, but left to join the cult amidst obvious commercialism and a desire to practice as purely a scienseer. A personal tick of his is to cock his ear at a problem as if listening. He is not a mean person, he only appears taciturn because he does not speak often, and when he does, the sentences are usually short and clipped. Have a moment where he speaks for a prolonged period, surprising everyone and saying something important.