When the subterranean river of slime was first discovered, along with its unearthly fauna and mysterious crystalline growths, a nameless branch of the government scrambled to install a research facility to explore its potential for military applications. Soon after construction was completed, the installation suffered structural damage due to the inexorable growth of the crystals embedded in the surrounding rock.

Warning/apology: I got a little carried away with the scope of the various Lab17 levels, and eventually gave up all hope of keeping the r_speeds respectably low (mostly because I'm spoiled by having good machines to run them on.) Consequently this level is a bit of a hog, and it won't play properly under HL's software display driver. It runs fine on a 2GHz Celeron with OpenGL. You have been warned!

This level is the post-disaster variant of Lab17: Storage. Persistent earthquakes have caved in a section of the subterranean river, and the slime level has risen dramatically, flooding part of the complex. Much of what remains is running on emergency lighting: this is a much darker level than its predecessor, although quite a bit of effort has gone into ensuring it is not too dark...