American Courage pt. 1 and 2

What is going on here?

Something is going on at a small military base here in Millennium City. A ship has come into the port and is currently blocking off other ships from passing, and even more strange, the water around the ship appears to be boiling. I suppose this warrants a look.
 
Wildthing, Cypher, Sandcrab, Wind Walker and I make our way to the docks. A couple of the team members have already done some reconnaissance around the ship, and Wildthing has determined that getting too close to the ship, at least under water appears to turn organic material into metal. Hmm, a true Philosophers’ Stone of sorts. Cyphers little widgets have given us a good view of the ship, and there appear to be well-armed troops on board, as well as some technicians that appear to be at the water level outside the ship, in special suits.
 
Given this intel, the group decides to enter a couple of the out-buildings near the bridge to see what we can find out. Sandcrab leads the way tunneling us into the first building and taking the occupant by surprise, but he does not go down quickly. Their advanced tech makes them pretty resilient to damage. Sandcrab and Wildthing eventually subdue the occupant and we begin looking around. I examine his helmet in hopes of tapping into their communications easier, but like their communications, the helmet security is too advanced for me to try and get through this quickly and I hand off the helmet to Cypher and keep an eye on him while he does a more “cerebral” dive into it. We also found what appear to be large underground drill bits.
 
During our investigations of the area, Sandcrab found some notable power cables going underground, so we follow the cables and Sandcrab tunnels us down into what appears to be an underground villain lair, or at least the subterranean front door to it.
 
Wildthing was able to determine there are many heartbeats in the area ahead of this…which I find somewhat disturbing. Not the number of potential enemies, but that she senses heartbeats. Creepy…
 
We decided, rather than going through the door, and taking all the time needed to break security, which they seem to be exceptionally good at, going through the wall would be our best option. Sandcrab led the way with Wildthing following behind. By the time I got in the room the 2 guards were on the floor but were still active, so I blasted one of them full force, knowing they are very resilient. The arc of lightning hit him hard and slammed him into the wall, but it wasn’t enough to take him out. He then stood up and shot at Wildthing and missed, taking out a large chunk of the wall. Sandcrab was able to take the table he was holding and slam the two guards knocking them unconscious.
 
We let the two scientists, who appeared to be chemists, run away. I removed the helmet off one of them and again had no luck getting anything useful in the way of communications from them due to their security. Cypher again decided to take a dive into one of the helmets and I hung back to keep an eye on him and break the connection if I noticed anything unusual.
 
Sandcrab and Wind Walker advanced into the next hallway. After a few moments, Wildthing called for them to get out of there, as gas started filling the room. Sandcrab and Wind Walker were able to tunnel their way back into our room, but Wind Walker appears to have reacted badly to the gas.
 
It was then decided we would tunnel our way to the next large room area. As we entered the corner of the room, it appeared to be an experiment type of room, as a couple people were lying on tables and one was getting what appeared to be “scanned” by some sort of laser. There appeared to only be one scientist in the room, and he was very intent on his research and very annoyed that we were interrupting and perhaps a bit frightened when I threatened him with hand wreathed in lightning and made him step away from his console and began looking over what he was doing. It appeared they are doing some sort of experimentation with the unusual effect that is surrounding the ship.
 
For now, no solid answers on what is going on other than some research on what is happening to people that appear to have been in the water, but no information on what is actually causing the “effect” or the boiling water around the ship.