Oh good.

This is going to be easier now but it's still not going to be easy and she could still die if she fucks it up. She scoots to the far right, pops up, and starts taking down guards, keeping an eye on their aim so she knows when to duck again.

It takes a few more iterations, but given that she's up high and they're down low and they can't get at her, and it takes them some time to aim at her properly, she downs them with relative ease. 

After a few moments of silence and lack of movement, Jesse sees the shade of the dead man fade in, overlaying her vision, and he once again starts talking to her in short broken sentences broken apart by static once more. 

".....must cleanse control points..." 

"..an enemy..." 

".corrupt.."

".....spreading.."

'Cleanse the control point'. What does that mean...?

She vaults over the railing, lands in a crouch on the ground. Gets up and dusts herself off, and heads for the center of the big logo on the floor, where the lines of tape intersect. There's—something going on here—

Help me fix it.

She crouches down and presses her hands against the ground, trying to feel for the place where Polaris needs to be.

When she lands on the ground, several of the blue dots fly up to the top of her head, quickly healing whatever pain was left behind by the bullet grazing her. The blood dripping down the side of her face quickly dries. 

It takes an effort of will, but Jesse can feel herself come into contact with something and then the light in the room immediately switches from the deep overwhelming red light into something far more natural. What feels like a wave emanates from the center of the control point, and the out-of-place blocks of concrete retreat from it, slowly at first but more and more quickly, until the room is in a configuration that looks like how it is probably supposed to look, with stairwells and doors accessible and everything visible. 

The room is large, and still has the overhead upside-down pyramid, but is much friendlier and welcoming now. There's a short set steps on every side of her that leads down into the seal beneath her feet, and then a red-carpeted hallway all around, and then another short set of stairs to the rooms on the first level above her. One side of the room has a wooden set of double doors reading to a bronze-letter-labeled "Board Room", other doors seem to lead to smaller offices, and there are stairwells that lead up to balconies on the floor above, where Jesse can more doors and more offices. 

Tucked in a corner on the first floor, however, is another SHELTER like the one Jesse saw before. 

"Hello?" comes a scratchy voice, as though coming through a speaker, emanating from the direction of the shelter.

She collapses onto the floor with relief as soon as the red light turns off, and rolls onto her back so she can watch the architecture pull itself back into shape, breathing deeply and glorying in the absence of that terrible pressure. Holy shit. You did it. We did it...!

Okay. Focus. There's still things to do. She hauls herself off the floor.

Can the Hiss-people even use normal human words? Something tells her they probably can't, but she's still cautious as she heads for the SHELTER.

"Can you hear me?" says the slightly scratchy voice as Jesse approaches it. "Are you with us? With the Bureau? Are you still sane?" 

Unlike the last one, this shelter is locked when she arrives -- the button that opened the last one is glowing red and won't open when she tries it -- but there's an intercom with glowing button that she could press to (presumably) talk to the people inside. 

Polaris indicating the speaker system seems like a good sign here. She leans in and presses the button.

"I can't tell you how happy I am to talk to somebody sane."

"The feeling's mutual," the scratchy voice replies. "I'm Pope. Emily Pope, Dr. Darling's assistant." 

My turn.

Should I lie?

She takes a breath, leans in again.

"Jesse Faden. I'm just visiting."

...I should've lied.

"Shit! You're the new director! Hold on. We're coming out." 

The giant heavy slab of stone starts sliding aside, making a clicking noise as the gears shift the giant door out of the way. 

Inside is a security guard carrying a rifle, a man in a business suit, and a woman wearing a blouse and carrying a clipboard with a slightly excited smile on her face. All three have a strange device resting on their stomachs, attached to them via a harness made of straps. There's wires running from each of the devices to a small black box on their right shoulders, where a green LED glows. 

"Director... Faden?" says the woman, turning towards Jesse as she exits the shelter. 

"...call me Jesse." Please. Please call her Jesse. 'Director Faden' sounds... like a stranger, like someone she isn't and could never be. The title fits around her like an expensive tailored suit around a pigeon that got into somebody's wardrobe by accident.

She smiles. "Okay. Jesse. I'm Emily." Her expression darkens slightly. "Somehow, this hostile force, this.." she pauses, trying to think of a word. 

"Hiss?" she suggests.

"That works. Somehow the Hiss managed to infiltrate the building without any warning." 

And just like that, my name for it is official. The Hiss, like the sound of poison gas leaking in.

She suppresses a shiver at the memory of what it felt like trying to leak into her.

Emily does not notice the shiver, she's caught up in explaining things. "We're in full lockdown," she says, mostly suppressing the edge of giddy excitement in her voice under the feelings of worry and concern (though it does leak out in some places as she continues talking). "It seems to have spread everywhere and to everyone not protected by an HRA, and, extraordinarily, you. You are the Director, and that makes you special by definition. Trench is no longer the director, obviously." She takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I'm talking too much. This situation is just a lot." 

Does she even know...? Jesse should maybe tell her.

"Trench is dead. Shot."

"Ah." 

"I found his body, and the gun."

Do I tell her it looked like a suicide...?

Not that Polaris is going to have any good advice about that. Probably. She's surprised Jesse before.