The overhead fluorescents in central executive glow red, not yellow-white, the same red as before. There's a hallway leading to a balcony over a room, though it's difficult to see what the room looks like other than it's glowing with even more red light. There are offices to either side of the hallway, that almost glow blue in comparison with the red light from the hallway. Above her, almost low enough for her head to collide with their feet, are several hanging businesspeople, softly chanting. 

The room at the end of the hallway looks to have an upside-down pyramid on the ceiling, and near the room some of the smooth concrete walls are interrupted with haphazard outcroppings of rectangular prisms of concrete jutting out of the walls and floor, which become more prevalent and layer on themselves more as the hallways gets closer to the room. 

She steps out into the red and winces.

The hissing sound that tried to invade me earlier. The... Hiss.

She isn't sure what she'll call it until she does, and then the name feels right, like it's always been this way.

Burrowing into everything in this place.

Step after cautious step, she heads deeper into Central Executive.

Is the Hiss your enemy?

...all right. It's our enemy.

No jump scares so far, but every second feels like it could be the one where the shooting starts. Still, it's good to know Polaris has her back.

She emerges from another of those glass-walled rooms and into the part of the area where things are starting to get weird. There's another of those whispering—hissing—businesspeople, and—

That babble's contagious. It burrows in like an infuriating melody that makes you hum it over and over.

She skirts as close as she can to the weirdly stairstepped concrete as she heads for the inverted pyramid. Maybe it'll turn out to be friendly, who knows. Stranger things have happened.

That thick red light, though, washing out the fucked-up architecture with its harsh alien glare, suggests otherwise.

The inverted pyramid has a lot of glowing light around it, as Jesse nears the railing. There's a seal on the floor, that of the Federal Bureau of Control, but it's partially obscured by haphazard outcroppings of stairstepped concrete which jut out of the ground in piles -- as well as out of the corners and ceiling and walls and other piles, blocking stairwells and doorways. It's rather obvious that the room does not normally look like this. 

Hanging in the air are at least a half a dozen of the tan-uniformed security guards, chanting the same burrowing chant as all the rest, and some of the strange thick multicolored smoke patrols lazily in circles around the seal on the ground, almost as though it's moving with intent. 

Yikes. Just... all-around yikes.

Standing at the railing, she looks up at the security guards, and down at the gun in her hand. With a thought and a flick of her wrist, it blossoms from a solid block into its active form. Some of the pieces are floating in the air disconnected from each other, but it's still fundamentally all one thing; she can feel it.

She takes a deep breath and careful aim and shoots the nearest floating guard in the head.

The guard takes a shot in the head, and is staggered, and falls to the ground in a pulse of red light. All around the room, other floating security guards are doing the same, and all of them turn towards Jesse to start shooting at her, though it takes them several seconds to aim properly. 

The column of multicolored smog coalesces into another figure, this one wearing a different outfit than the rest -- military-looking, and including body armor. His head, unlike everyone else's isn't lolling to one side, but held up straight, and snaps quickly to look directly at Jesse. While the security guards start to get themselves stood up straight, he manages to get off a shot before any of the rest of them get their bearings, and his aim is much more true than Jesse is used to.

"Shit!"

She flattens herself to the floor of the balcony, hiding behind the solid concrete railing. Thank you, architects who clearly spent too much time in the Rectangular Plane. If this place even had architects.

For half a second she indulges in panic, and then she reminds herself that panic will not help her, and focuses. Listens to the sounds of the guards stumbling around—waits for her gun to recharge—peeks up over the railing to the minimum extent necessary and shoots at whoever she can most easily target, then ducks again, hopefully before the smart one can get a bead on her.

Is there a way up here from down there? Not obviously, at least; the sides of the balcony are blocked off by those concrete growths. Hopefully there isn't a second smart one hiding in a corner somewhere with access to stairs that will let him come up behind her. Although now that she's had that thought, she's feeling a little more time pressure about getting these guys put down before any such thing can happen.

Her first look over the edge gets her the position of various guards, who looking in her general direction (heads tilted to one side), some of which are taking cover behind one pile of concrete blocks or another, though there's very much a couple of them who are milling around searching for her outside of cover that Jesse can get a few quick shots off into. 

They'll have to be quick shots, though, because the one wearing body armor will see her poke her head out (the others do not), and immediately turn towards her to start shooting. 

Yeah she figured as much. Okay. That means that she needs to peek up from a different location next time. Ideally without alerting him to her movements.

She scoots as carefully and quietly as she can to the far left corner of the balcony, pauses, listens, and pops up again. Focusing on the dumb ones for now, although she'll take a shot at the smart one if an opportunity presents itself.

The military-uniformed figure does in fact have his gun trained on the spot where Jesse was, and it takes him an extra half-second to train his gun on her new location. Jesse can get several shots off, and she does in fact down one of the security guards, and manages to stagger another one. She has just enough time to see blue dots shower from both before she ducks back down. 

So far so good.

Okay, where to next? Far end? Far end is too predictable. She goes for the middle.

The more heavily-armored one has his gun trained on the middle-right-hand-side of the balcony when she pops up. Not quite her position, but rather close to it. She's only got time for a shot or two before he has her in his sights and starts shooting. 

Fuck. Head games. My favourite, she grouses, flattening herself to the floor again.

If she wants to be unpredictable she should probably do something other than guessing where he'll guess she's going to go and then not going there. Something like... she glances back and forth between the ends of the balcony, visualizing five markers at left, middle-left, middle, right, and middle-right. Eeny meeny miney... middle left? Middle left feels too obvious but the point of this procedure is to avoid second-guessing herself to death. She goes for it, ready to duck down again at the first sign of his attention.

He's got the gun pointing at middle left this time, right at her when she pops her head up. 

His first shot grazes the top of her head, and she can feel a burning sensation at the top of her head and the warm wet feeling of the blood dripping down over her ear as she dives back under cover underneath the hail of gunfire. 

Well that didn't work.

What did she do wrong? —it's important to be unpredictable but it's also important to avoid the obvious places, and he's probably going to be picking middle left or middle right because it's easier to swing his aim from there. So not those. Maybe not the middle either, because that's also a good spot to pick if you want to be able to adjust quickly. Left or right? She doesn't have a coin to flip.

...Polaris has been unusually chatty since she got here, though.

Little help here? she asks, glancing back and forth between the two ends.

She's almost on the point of giving up when the feeling of confusion finally resolves into a familiar flicker of blue. Left.

Thanks.

Probably shouldn't ask for this kind of thing too often, but right now she'll take all the advantages she can get. She scoots a little farther to the left, pops up, and takes out as many of them as she can.

The armored figure she's worried about is pointing in the exact opposite direction of where she popped out, and she manages to down two of them before he gets a bead on her and she has to drop down again. 

From what she could see before dropping down, there's two left, plus the one wearing body armor, though there's certainly space for one or two to be hidden behind the outcroppings of concrete that she doesn't see. 

All right, what are her options from here. Asking Polaris again is out. He was pointing at a far corner last time so maybe the middle-side options are viable after all... the problem is, she can think of a reason why he'd expect her to be in any of the available positions. She was just in left, he was just aiming right, they've both done middle-left and middle-right before... there is not enough balcony for her to subdivide it any more finely...

What other degrees of freedom does she have here?

...okay this is stupid but she's not sure she has any options that aren't. She eeny-meenies her way to a next location—middle—crouches there, and then stands up and blasts as many shots in his general direction as she can manage in a very short time before dropping down again.

He's pointing the gun to the middle right this time, which in theory should let him turn quickly to point the gun at her and shoot, but in fact the first shot hits him in the head and he staggers. Some of her shots go a bit wild, but they're consistent enough that every time he manages to start to get a bead on her, he's staggered again, from a shot to the head or several to the torso. 

That said, though he's clearly being damaged by her shots (sprays of red and multicolored smoke erupt off of him as her bullets contact him, along with small showers of blue dots), even after emptying an entire clip at him (though not all the shots hit) he still hasn't gone down -- though his armor is missing a lot of chunks and he looks quite a bit worse for wear. But the guards have their guns trained on her now, and she has to duck down once more to avoid the hail of semi-automatic gunfire. 

Figures. Okay, that worked. And now...

Where has she seen him aim? Right, middle right, middle left, right, middle right. He likes the middle-sides, he doesn't like the ends, he's never picked middle even after she did—he seems like he's probably learned not to pick the place she just tried because she'll be too smart to go there—

Also, if she shoots first, she can keep him too off-balance to shoot back.

She peeks up low in the middle again, gun at the ready, and tries to take him down.

He's aiming the opposite side he was before, but that hardly matters because her first two shots take him down. 

She's got enough time to shoot at the other two guards who are starting to aim at her before she has to dive back under now -- they're not nearly as quick on the draw as he was.