is a gun, lying just in reach of the dead body. 

"Shit."

She takes a couple of cautious steps forward.

"Shitshitshit."

"You want me to pick it up? The murder weapon? Really?"

She steps up to it, hesitates, turns halfway back toward the door, hesitates again—she came all this way—if she can't trust Polaris, who can she trust—?

Nervously, she reaches down and picks up the gun.

< Testing testing testing > 

That's

not

she doesn't

what

< We are broadcasting from the Pyramid/Other >

< Only the Director can wield >

< The Gun/Sword/Intentionally left blank >

She is

sitting

at the desk.

Blinking. Slowly. Mechanically.

The

murder weapon

is in her hand—

(her hand?)

—and at her temple.

She is. Still. Blinking.

Her body is a statue. She can't tell if she breathes.

Her finger rests lightly on the trigger.

< Your Application will be processed > 

What

is

happening—

< Only the Director can bind >

< The Service Weapon and Live/Die >

< This is your Ritual/Challenge > 

< You must choose to be the Chosen One >

Jess is standing in a long corridor of outcroppings of stone, the floor and walls colored something nearly-but-not-quite black and yet shiny and reflective, all of it suffused with gold-colored veins that shimmer in the light that comes from the sky, becoming visible and invisible as she moves her head and the light catches them. 

The corridors are not a single flat piece of stone on either side, but appear to be made up of rectangular prisms jutting out from the floor, rectangular prisms that overlap and intersect, though she can of course only see the outsides of them. There are no angles other than right, here, not unless you count the curlicues of golden veins, everything line is perfectly straight and every corner is square and as sharp as the point of a knife. 

Off in the distance are more blocks made of intersecting rectangular prisms, seemingly floating in the void of white mist which stretches off as far as Jesse can see, and even further off in the distance and a difficult-to-determine distance above her is the great inverted pyramid (which is not at right angles, unlike everything else she can see) that communicated to her before she was transported here. It's partially obscured with a white mist, but it's still clearly and utterly the same object that was communicating with her in her mind, the same image which appeared to her then is visible to her actual eyes now. 

This answers LITERALLY NONE OF HER QUESTIONS.

Look at this place.

Where am I?

But that question isn't answered either.

She takes a hesitant step forward, then another. The stone is so glossy that it almost looks like the walls extend down into the floor, but it's solid under her feet.

< Bubblegum/Polaroid > 

< All/None of the above >

< These are the Concepts/Tattoos we see in your Minds >

< The Service Weapon > 

< It has many Forms >

< Like the House/Prison you occupy > 

As the inverted pyramid entity communicates with Jesse, she moves down the corridor, which opens into a large seemingly infinite void of white glowing mist, and further glossy stone platforms made of intersecting rectangular prisms with very similar height. The only way forward is via another such platform directly in front of her and a few feet below this one, which she moves down onto, and then another one to the right of that one, which is also a few feet below the first. 

There is another platform after that, at the same height as the current one, if she goes straight, connected to another large floating island made up of dark stone prisms. But unlike before, the platforms are not connected by these glossy stones, instead there is a gap between them. Only a couple feet wide, but a gap nonetheless.

If Jesse looks down the gap, she will see nothing but white mist, as far as the eye can see. It's impossible to tell if there's an island a hundred feet below her for her to shatter her body on if she falls, or if the nothingness goes on forever. 

The only obvious way forward at the moment is to jump the gap. 

She looks at the gap. She looks around. She looks at the gap again.

Fine.

With a deep breath and a couple steps of running start, she jumps it.

She jumps it without difficulty. 

There's very little light here on this platform, to the point where it's shrouded in shadow and dark, and no veins light up with reflected glowing golden light as she moves around. On two sides (behind her and to the right as she lands) there is nothing but empty air and the unknowable gap between the current platform and the void below, and on the other two dark and shadowy stone rises before her. 

While in front of her the stone goes up quite a height, to her left, if she jumps, she should be able to grab onto the ledge and pull herself up onto the platform there. 

Gotta say I'm not a fan.

But what is she going to do, stand here forever, while back in what she might optimistically call the real world she's still sitting at a dead man's desk with the gun that killed him aimed at her head?

She hoists herself up onto the next platform. The stone is unnervingly neutral under her hands, neither warm nor cold, flat and smooth but without the glassy slickness that her eyes lead her to expect. The corners feel sharp enough to cut, but they don't mark her fingers at all.

After another couple similar obstacles, Jesse walks around another large stone block rising from the platform she is currently traversing and just before she turns the corner there is a strange whooshing electric sound. When she does turn the corner, there is a figure, surrounded by a cloud of settling dust. 

The figure is human shaped, with arms and legs and head but no features, and seems to be hewn roughly out of the same stone that she's standing on -- but there is no sheen or shine to this rock, it looks unpolished, almost hastily carved. 

The figure walks towards Jesse in a manner that seems slightly menacing despite (or perhaps because of) the figure's lack of features, and when it gets within around 10 feet of her, it leans over slightly and runs at her, arms outstretched in a violent fashion. 

Behind the figure is a stone platform, slightly raised above the current one, and floating high above it, higher than she can reasonably jump and grab, is the same weapon Jesse saw in the director's office. 

"Fuck this," she mutters under her breath, sidestepping the creature's charge.

Okay. That's the gun. Probably she is supposed to... get the gun? By, what, beating up this half-baked mannequin who is incidentally made of rock??

...screw it. At this point, what's she got to lose?

She turns back and punches the lumpy humanoid in its nonexistent face.

It shatters and crumbles into bits. 

Several blocks rise up out of the platform underneath the gun, to a height that is easily climbable by Jesse with a bit of stretch, and leaving the previously-too-high weapon floating at approximately chest height (relative to the new platform), easily in reach for Jesse to go and grab and take it. 

She climbs.

She reaches out her hand.

(She hesitates again, just for a moment—)

Her hand wraps around the grip. It feels familiar. There's the ghost of an impulse to slide her finger into the trigger guard, to hold it in the way that feels right, but she ignores that. The gun doesn't want to move, or the air doesn't want to release it; she has to strain to pull it free.

But pull it free she does. 

In front of her, rectangular blocks of dark and shimmering stone rise up from below, moving too fast for her to tell if they were always down there or if they simply rose into being, intersecting each other as they do without colliding, forming a bridge in front of her for her to walk down. 

Rather than leading all the way to another platform, the bridge simply stops in midair. There is an island in front of Jesse and below, but much too far for her to jump. 

On the far island, there are a pair of roughly-hewn stone figures, moving menacingly back and forth with their faces pointed at her as she looks down at them.