Somehow, that doesn't surprise her.

She pauses at the threshold, just for a moment. Then she strides inside. Stops again, just shy of the logo on the floor.

I'm here.

Why did you bring me here?

Figures.

She glances around, then keeps walking.

"Hello?" she says, without much hope of a response. "Anyone here?"

The response she wasn't hoping for doesn't materialize. She heads for the unmanned metal detectors on the right. There's a piece of paper, which she glances at.

The paper is clearly new, but looks like it was printed from an older printer, the kind with the tearaway strips down the sides. It reads as follows:

FEDERAL BUREAU OF CONTROL

REMINDER!

Certain objects are not allowed inside the Bureau. Recent incidents have necessitated an issued reminder on prohibited materials.

- Unauthorized Weapons
- Pagers
- Laptops
- "Smart" Watches
- "Smart" Phones
- "Smart" Gaming Devices
- Anything "smart"
- Number 2 Pencils
- Any objects considered iconic representations of an archetypal concept (e.g. rubber ducks, ketchup bottles)

All material under Bureau investigation is to be brought in through the private entrances. If you see any lobby personnel in breach of these policies, please notify your supervisor immediately.

...ooookay. In case she'd had any remaining illusions about this place being normal, note to self: no.

The empty frame of the metal detector bleeps angrily at her as she passes beneath its arch. She wonders if these ones detect number 2 pencils. Not that she brought any.

Just past the detectors there's a door, with a handy green light by the top left corner that helps her pick it out in the gloom. She tries it. Unlocked. What's on the other side?

It's a security office, with glass windows filled in with wire so that the security guards (who don't currently seem to be present) can observe the people passing through the checkpoint. 

It's relatively small, but still cozy, with enough room for a small desk and a chair and some shelving, but the decor and technology of the items inside is likely not what Jesse would be expecting; it looks like everything here is out of the 60's. Most specifically, and likely the first thing to catch her eye, there are three very old CRT monitors resting in the corner of the security office, between the two panes of wire-filled glass, stacked atop one another, displaying letters in a glowing red font against a black background. 

INTERNAL LOCKDOWN
IN EFFECT
---
BUILDING LOCKDOWN
IN EFFECT

MULTIPLE CONTAINMENT
BREACHES DETECTED
---
MULTIPLE BUILDING
SHIFTS DETECTED

HEAD OF RESEARCH
OVERRIDE
---
HRA PROTOCOL
ACTIVATED

Well, none of that sounds good, but she could already tell something was very not right from the lack of any human beings at the front desk or the security checkpoint. Okay. Moving on. Stairs.

The lighting on the single flight of concrete steps is harsh, but oddly welcoming. At the top there's a red-carpeted floor, a wraparound balcony overlooking the front hall where she came in, and another of those greenlit doors. She checks this one too.

The lighting in this room isn't working properly, and is dimly lit by the flickering static of another ancient CRT in the corner closest to the door, sitting on a desk with a strange 60s-ish looking typewriter of some kind. At the far corner there's some kind of device with tubes branching off of it and up into the walls and ceiling, and some sort of canister storage adjacent to it. On the desk and on nearby filing cabinets, there are various papers and documents. 

There's no one here, either. 

The logo on the papers is the same as the one on the prohibited materials notice, the same as the one on the floor of the entry way.

This seal. I saw it a long time ago. I keep seeing it in my dreams...

She flips through a few files, but the documents are too heavily redacted to be useful. Maybe she'd understand them if she had any idea what she was looking at. She doesn't. What's the significance of Mold Removal on an expenditure summary? How about Janitorial Costs? Probably they blacked out all the interesting stuff. Must make accounting an adventure.

So much for that room. What else is there around here? Concrete. Wood paneling. An incredibly generic bathroom. Offices with glass walls so clear she feels like she understands why birds break their necks on windows; if it weren't for the blinds she'd have tried to walk right through one.

"Hello?" she says again, not optimistically, as she proceeds deeper into the building down a hall that seems to darken with each step. There's a corner up ahead; she turns it.

There's a man there, in a navy blue janitorial outfit next to a universally-recognizable yellow wet floor sign, bent over and mopping the floor. His back is to Jesse, and he's softly humming to himself to some tune only he can hear, likely because of the headphones in his ears. He doesn't do anything to indicate he's seen or heard Jesse approach. 

Wow, a human being! Probably!

"Hey," she says more hopefully, crossing the floor to stand a few feet behind him. "Hey, excuse me!"

The man straightens up from his mopping and turns to look at Jesse. He speaks in a clear but unusual accent, one that Jesse likely can't place. 

"There you are!" he says. "You are here about the job. Janitor's assistant. You need to go to the int-er-view." He turns to point down the darkened hallway in the direction that Jesse was already heading. "Go that way to the elevator." 

If she's here about a job, that's news to her. But hey, there's worse gigs than janitor's assistant. Nice straightforward job, cleaning things up and setting things right. She can get behind that.

"Thanks," she says, looking past him toward the glimpse of a brighter-lit space at the end of the hall. "Elevator that way. Got it."

He turns back towards her. "Very good," he says. "I'm Ahti, the janitor, by the way. You'll work for me. You can say I sent you. If they don't hire you, niin johan on helvetti. There be work for the axe, take them behind the sauna, jumalauta." Some of these works are in a foreign language that Jesse likely does not recognize and almost certainly does not understand. Finished speaking, he turns back to his work. 

Yep. It's fine. There's a substantial chance he just threatened to axe-murder the hiring manager of a federal organization but you know what, it's fine.

I've done enough nightshift loner jobs to know it makes us come off weird. Ahti the janitor is a friendly face in my book.

"Better than somebody with no face at all." 

She's a few steps past him before she replays that interaction in her head and wait what—

She glances back, hesitating.

"Think about it," he says, still mopping the floor, "no face." 

Should she... no. No, she thinks she'll just... leave that one alone.

She heads for the elevator. Wait, is this... the same place she just came in through...? But now there's wet floor signs all over the place. You know what, just roll with it. Into the elevator, press the button. The doors slide shut and she leans back against the wall and thinks.

The Federal Bureau of Control...

Memories she's kept, cherished, guarded against those who would take them from her. Memories of what else the Bureau has taken.

Memories of what she'd like to take back.

The elevator dings and she straightens again, waiting for the doors to open, trying to be ready for whatever she'll find on the other side.

The elevator door opens on a small waiting room that narrows into a long-ish hallway, with red carpet leading down it from the elevator. On the right, there's a tree in a concrete planter, and a sign that tells her that further down the hall is the director's office. On the left is a vending machine, and a security office built into the concrete. There's also various tables and benches in this small waiting room, presumably for people to sit and wait at. 

Further down the hallway, if she can squint and see it, is a large set of double doors set under a large metal embossed crest of the Federal Bureau of Control. 

Seventeen years since they took Dylan.

She takes a deep breath and steps out of the elevator. Smiles briefly at the tree on her way past. Tries a door, fails at the door. Apparently it wants CLEARANCE LEVEL 01, which she doesn't have. It brrrps disapprovingly. She moves on, pokes her head into a darkened office, glances around at the faint silhouettes of desks and chairs and filing cabinets. Nothing catches her eye. It's so hard to tell what's useful and what's a waste of time.

The Director's Office does seem like a good place to start, though.

She eyes it from the shadowed threshold of the abandoned office. No clearance required here. Just those big o' double doors, flanked by another pair of trees, some benches, a planter, and a receptionist's desk. The receptionist's desk is also abandoned. Is there even going to be a Director? Is she going to open those doors and find Ahti with a carpet cleaner, humming along to his music? Or just an office, bigger and shinier than these but no less empty?

Only one way to find out.

She steps out into the light.

As she approaches the director's office, there's a bang. Muffled by the big double doors off the office, but it obviously comes from inside, and sounds like what Jesse would expect a gunshot to sound like. 

She jumps slightly, startled and alarmed, and hesitates for only a moment before crossing the rest of the distance in a half-jog and pushing open the door.

What immediately catches her eye as she opens the door is the dead man lying on the floor. It's also a large office with a large desk, bookshelves on either side, filled with books and other knickknacks, but her attention is drawn to the man lying on his back with his legs hidden behind the desk but his torso and head and the pool of blood growing around it clearly visible. Nearby the body 

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. 

< Destroy the Copies/Targets >

< Earn/Become the position > 

Okay. She can do this. Probably.

Taking aim feels as natural as breathing. More. As natural as having a heartbeat. She focuses, lines up her shot, squeezes the trigger and has a split second right after it's too late to stop when she remembers what's in her real living hand and wonders if she's just killed herself with carelessness—

The cylinder rotates and a puff of dust kicks up from the glassy rock at the figures' feet, and she can see a little break in the smooth golden curve at the base of the barrel, and she can feel, like it's a part of her own body, the way the pieces of the gun are spread out hovering tense and ready to fire at her command, the arc of that—ammo indicator or whatever it is, those slivers of rock aren't nearly big enough to be bullets—clicking down to show how much of it she's spent. She shoots again. Nicks a creature's elbow, this time, which isn't quite enough to take it out. Again. She's never held a gun before in her life and at some point she's going to take a moment to freak out about suddenly being so attuned to this one but now is not that moment. Again.

The final shot hits it in the chest, and it shatters into dust and rubble, falling to the ground in a pile of rock and small blue dots. The rocks and dust dissipate soon after, but the blue dots remain. The other figure does not seem to react at all to the death of his companion, pacing back and forth as though doing so will help it find a way to get closer to Jesse so it can attack her. 

She shoots at the second one. Misses, tries again. Hits it once, twice, feels the ammo indicator spinning into the empty space left behind by each shot. How many of these does she have left? It's hard to count them. Plenty more to take down one rock-thing with, anyway. She hits it for the third time and watches it crumble. Wonders what those little blue specks of light are supposed to be.

When the second figure falls into rock and rubble and dust and nothing but glowing blue dots, another bridge forms up out of white mist, leading her to the platform where she just cleared away the figures -- though it's a bit of a drop to get there. Moving near the blue dots laying on the ground does nothing, and touching them (if she chooses to) is like touching a warm bit of ground. 

When she moves past the blue dots, four more figures come out from behind various pillars, one at a time, to move towards her with menace and ill-intent. 

The other interesting thing that happens is that once the gun has been dormant for a couple of seconds, the ammo indicator starts clicking back toward full. If she concentrates, she can feel the little slivers of rock sliding back into existence at the end of the arc as it rotates back to make room.

It turns out it's harder to hit things under time pressure. She misses her first several shots and has to back away and regroup. But then they're coming in plenty close, close enough that she manages to get one in the head for the first time.

A headshot is sufficient to make the figure crack, and break, shattering almost instantly from the impact, leaving nothing but blue dots behind like all the rest. 

The other three continue to shamble towards her. 

She takes a deep breath that doesn't quite feel like breathing and keeps backing away slowly. Wings the second one in the shoulder, then the other shoulder, then gets it solidly in the chest and turns toward the next—but it doesn't go down and she has to turn back and hit it again. Two more misses. She's getting a little frantic, putting shot after shot into the air around the thing which doesn't help at all—and finally she nicks it again and it goes down. So, assuming they're consistent: one headshot, or two solid hits and one glancing, or one solid hit and three glancing.

The third one is getting really uncomfortably close now, but uncomfortably close also means a nice big target, and rather than fucking around with headshots she just steadies her aim and hits it three times in the chest.

It goes down like all the rest in yet another pile of rubble which quickly dissolves into dust, and for a moment, there's nothing but the sound of her own breathing. 

And then another figure steps out from behind a pillar and aims a gun-shaped object at her, and starts shooting. 

"Ow! Fuck!"

She ducks behind the nearest obstacle, a low stone block. Her hand lands on one of those mysterious blue lights.

When she moves near enough to the little blue lights now, they fly up towards her, specifically the wound in her shoulder. They move into the wound, press against it, glow brighter, warm and gentle and lessening the pain from where she was shot. 

If she looks at the wound, she'll realize that the pain is less because the wound is smaller, and starting to heal/scab over. 

There's still several more blue dots scattered nearby, not within range of whatever made them jump towards her, though she can move a little closer if she wants to see what will happen. 

She leans toward the nearest one and holds out her hand, hoping that that'll be enough and she won't have to shove her injured shoulder directly at it.

It flies towards her shoulder once her hand gets near enough, moves into her shoulder, glows in a warm and gently numbing sensation, and now her wound is almost entirely healed. 

This place is weird. But I guess I'm not complaining.

Okay, time to handle the last one. She peeks up over her stone block to look for it.

It's slowly shambling towards her, weapon ready to fire. It turns towards her when her head pokes out, but slow enough for her to duck back if she needs to before it takes another shot. 

She fires off a shot and then ducks back down without waiting to see if it hit. Thinks for a second, considering where exactly it was standing when she saw it, and then rolls out from behind the stone block and aims in its direction and just keeps shooting, tracking it as best she can but not counting shots carefully the way she did with the ones that couldn't shoot back.

The figure takes a moment to get oriented properly when Jesse starts shooting, and only gets off a couple shots (one of which manages to graze her) in her general direction before crumbling into dust and more healing blue dots. 

She collects dots until her shoulder feels all better, and the arm it hit on the other side. Once they're done with her body they fix up her jacket too, which she appreciates.

If she looks around she'll find a... column of white light, barely the width of a pencil, in the middle of the platform, reaching down from far above her stopping a foot or two above the platform. Or more accurately it's rising slowly out of the point a little above the platform, sending bits of broken light and very small cubes of dark stone floating gently upwards. 

She waits a moment, to see if she'll get a hint, but she guesses she doesn't really need one. And she's not sure Polaris can even hear her right now.

She touches the light.

< You/We wield the Gun/You > 

< The board appoints you > 

< Congratulations, Director > 

There's a squeal as though hearing audio interference patterns, which solidifies into a voice and a shadowy face, a face she might recognize from where she saw it lying sideways on the floor leaking blood a few moments ago. The voice and face speaks a few words understandable through the interference, and then shifts back to fuzz and incoherence before becoming intelligible again, several times in a row: 

"...something's coming...."

"...this threat....."

"....an attack..."

".....duty as Director..."

".....keep the Bureau safe...."

And then she's standing in the Director's office, leaning over, having just picked up the Gun. 

But wait—wasn't she just—and that—but then—what??????

Did you hear that? It's the dead man. Right after the pyramid spoke to me and it was just noise and I understood every word. And this gun's... alive.

And the chair she remembers sitting in is lying on the floor, right where the dead man left it. She doesn't remember picking it up. She definitely doesn't remember putting it back down. But she was there, she was in it, holding the gun at her temple and staring straight ahead into nothing. And then she was in the mist world fighting the rock people, and... now she's back.

Well. That last bit seems like the most important part.

You know what? I'm happy. Happy to be here.

She steps away from the dead man. Looks around the office a little. It doesn't feel like there's anything left for her here, though. It feels like she's got what she came for.

Back on the other side of the desk, she pauses before approaching the doors. Last time she went near those, somebody got shot.

But it's ridiculous to think that could've been her fault, right?

Almost as ridiculous as a gun that's alive, or a floating pyramid that talks about bubblegum... no. Come on.

She steadies herself and does her best to walk straight to the doors and open them without flinching.

Where before she had to open the door herself, now it swings open freely as she approaches them. 

Before, the hallway outside was well-lit by overhead fluorescents. Now all the lights are off, and only the waiting room in the distance is lit, suffused with a blood-red glow. 

In the waiting room are three human-shapes, hanging in the air like they were absently tossed on a coatrack. 

There's a faint hissing sound, of words, just out of hearing range, the kind where you can almost understand what far-away people are saying, but can't quite make it out. 

—she flinches.

"Fuck!"

Hesitant, unnerved, holding her new friend at the ready, she takes a step outside the office, into the red.

The words get louder as she approaches, and there's a bang

and the rooms to her left and right fill up with red light and she can hear them 

drilling into her head and the banging continues 

and she can hear the words 

and the room all around her lights up bright red and fills her and

you are a worm through time

"Ah! What is this?!"

It feels worse than getting shot did. It feels the way she imagines a heart attack might feel. It's bad, elementally bad, the pure distilled sensation of badness.

You can't let this happen.

She's clutching her head, trying to cover her ears, it's not helping at all, she's dizzy and in pain and everything is bad and

You can't let this happen—!

the thunder song distorts you

you can't

let this

The pressure lifts, all at once. She takes a deep shaky breath.

You stopped it. You—thank you—

The red light is fading and she's breathing and lowering her hands from her head and loosening her white-knuckled grip on the gun/sword/intentionally-left-blank.

That was—horror...

And her vision clears, and the floating figures are still there, and she should have some sort of reaction to that, probably. Are they okay. Do they need help.

The red light suddenly blinks away and the rooms and hallways are lit normally by fluorescents once more. The hanging figures hang there for another second, and then quickly drop to the floor in quick succession. In the more normal-colored light, Jesse can see that they're wearing some sort of tan-colored security guard outfit. She can also see it as they draw their weapons from their holsters, point them down the hallway at her, and begin to fire. 

"Fuck fuck fuck!"

She dodges to the side, flattens herself against the concrete column at the corner of the row of offices. Peeks past it to see what the strangers are up to. They kind of don't look like they're okay, actually. But if they wanted her help with that, the time to ask was before they started shooting at her.

Her new friend is a comforting solidity in her hand. She raises it, and it opens up into its ready state, blocks of stone sliding past and through each other, uncovering the gold ring of the ammo indicator wrapped around the base.

Is she really going to—?

Well what else should she do, stand here and die?

She leans around the pillar, takes aim, and starts shooting back.

The three security guards are now marching towards her in a somewhat uncoordinated fashion, and while the are aiming at Jesse, their aim is not particularly great. When Jesse hits them with bullets they stagger, sending sprays of reddish substance into the air which quickly dissipates into puffs of multicolored smoke. 

When the figures come closer, she can see that their heads loll slightly to one side, as though they're too heavy to keep entirely upright, and their faces glow with an orange light coming from deep under their skin. Their entire bodies do, in fact, though all Jesse can see at the moment is their faces and hands. 

Wow. They're even less okay than they looked.

Okay. It's just like fighting the rock people, except for how it's absolutely not like that at all.

She focuses on the pure mechanics of the situation. Where they're walking, how fast, how close, the sensations of the gun firing and recharging. There's a kind of click or hum, a soft note of rightness, somewhere inside it when she aims it directly at one of the glowing people. Shots she takes right when she feels that subtle cue always hit their target, although not always dead-on. She pays attention and tries to take them all out as efficiently as possible.

She manages to almost entirely take them out without injury, but one of them gets her in her left thigh before the last two shots finish it off. 

The corpses sit on the ground for several seconds before dissipating into the strange multicolored smoke she's seen before... as well as some familiar-looking glowing blue dots if she looks closely. 

Wait what? Those are real?

Honestly, what even is reality at this point?

She limps over to the dots, hoping they'll have the effect she's familiar with from the misty corners place.

They do in fact have the same effect! A number of them fly towards the wound on her leg, feeling warm and comforting as they numb the pain and close up the wound until it's nothing but smooth skin and it feels just as good as it did two minutes ago, and then for an encore they patch up her outfit on top of it until it's like she was never shot. 

Sure. Okay. That just happened.

That... all... just happened.

She proceeds much more cautiously back down the hall toward the elevator that she took to get here. Broken glass crunches underfoot. Out of curiosity, she tries the CLEARANCE LEVEL 1 door again; it still isn't happy to see her. The door across from it works, though, and leads to another of those little security offices like the one she found by the front door. Doesn't seem useful. Where's that elevator again—?

There's no elevator that she can see, just a smooth concrete wall and a hallway going off to the left. On the concrete wall where no elevator is are a pair of signs set into a holder attached to the wall. One of them is labeled "Executive Affairs" and the one below it is labeled "Central Executive", and both of them have arrows that point down the hallway. 

That sure is a distinct absence of an elevator.

She stands for a moment, staring at the place where the elevator isn't, and then sighs and follows the signage, moving slowly and peeking around corners before she turns them.

There are wood paneled walls, and glass windows into meeting rooms and offices, a red carpet as she walks, and the walls have paintings and clocks and benches and other high-end office accoutrements, the aesthetics still looking like something out of the 60's.

After she's gone down the wending hallway a short ways, the same crackling disturbance she heard on the way back from getting the gun is heard again, and the same shadowy outline of the dead man in the office is overlaid on top of what she sees. The voice fades in and out again, like something trying to communicate with her and having a lot of trouble getting through the static, though there's no sense of urgency or difficulty in the voice itself. 

".....the Hotline...." 

"..secure line of communication...." 

".....guidance....."

".....reach the Hotline.."

Can you hear that? Weird. Wish I knew what he was talking about.

She keeps moving. The place looks very peaceful but after... whatever that business was with the red light and the glowing zombies... she doesn't trust this charmingly antique office any farther than she can throw it.

A short distance further past a turn in a hallway, she comes to a more open area. In front of her, in said open area, is a large meeting room, and in the meeting room is a person in a slightly-outdated-looking business outfit, a button down shirt and slacks, floating in midair like they're hanging on a coathook, much like the security guards had been, before they dropped down to try and kill her. 

...she squints suspiciously at them. Unlike the security guards, they don't look equipped to do battle, but honestly that kind of makes her feel worse about the prospect of them suddenly trying to kill her.

As long as she doesn't move any closer, they don't make any sort of movement, simply hanging in midair without any sort of sound or gesture. 

All right. Fine.

She takes a few more steps, holding her new friend ready by her side.

The floating businessperson does not move or fall from its hanging perch. 

What does happen, however, is there are several strange sounds and red flashes in the open office area barely visible to her left, and then several more tan-uniformed security guards come towards her with their weapons drawn, their heads lolled over to one side as they jog. 

"Fuck!"

Cover, cover, where the fuck is cover—she dashes for the concrete column at the corner of the meeting room, leans out around it and starts shooting. The wood panel next to the column looks comfortingly solid to her eyes but her brain is uncomfortably aware that a bullet would go through it like tissue paper. At least they can't see her through it, though.

They cannot in fact see her through it but they are aware of where she is. Or at least, appear to be aware of where she is, it's unclear where their seeming intelligence is coming from. A bullet whizzes through the wood paneling past her right side and she can feel the hairs on her arm move and there's now a giant crack in the paneling. Another bullet makes the crack wider, knocking a chunk of the paneling out so she can now see through it to see one of orange-glowing security guards approaching her via the meeting room. 

"Shit," she mutters, trying to line herself up more tightly with the column so there are no bits sticking out for them to shoot at. But it's a pretty thin column and she has to be at least a little exposed if she wants to shoot back and why is there not better cover around here? Probably because whoever designed this office wasn't thinking about conducting firefights in it!

They're close enough now that it's worth trying for headshots. How many of those does it take to put one of these guys down? Let's find out.

It takes about two headshots, it turns out. Or a headshot and a body shot, if she misses her second (or first) headshot in a correct direction. Hitting an arm and then the head won't do it, though. 

The guard approaching from the meeting room is close enough so that she can easily get two shots off right in the head, and as an added bonus, the glowing blue dots are near enough that any wounds she takes from shooting the other security guards are quickly healed away. 

Once she manages to down them all, she has time for a single breath before there's a couple more red flashes and whooshing popping sounds, and two more security guards appear at the far side of the room, coalescing out of the strange multicolored smoke, before turning towards Jesse and marching towards her with their weapons drawn. 

"Fuck you!" she hisses at them, retreating behind the column again to shelter herself while she takes them out.

Being only a couple of them this time, Jesse manages to take them out without difficulty. 

This time no more security guards with glowing orange light under their skin make themselves known, and Jesse is free to wander around and explore the space. 

It's a rather large space, full of, well, 60s office equipment. There's a large red-carpeted area with dozens of desks in neat rows of three, each with its own typewriter and reading light and inbox and outbox, a couple with binders stacked precariously high, but most kept reasonably neat and tidy. There's a column with decoration and planters and benches on either side, and other benches placed against the walls of the room in various locations. There's an area somewhat out from the wall made of a dark stone that looks somewhat like the stone from the astral plane, though this one is slightly less shiny and has white speckles instead of gold veins; the outcropping is large and rectangular and labeled SHELTER in large white painted letters, which underneath written in the negative space in a yellow strip in slightly smaller letters is written "MAX OCCUPANCY 6 PERSONS", and further even smaller white-painted lettering beneath in small blocks. There's other desks in various positions throughout the room, most of them larger and clearly more important than group of smaller desks. There is a wall covered in filing cabinets, with tiny paper labels that Jesse is unlikely to be able to decode at the moment. 

Oh, and there are people, hanging in the sky, in business outfits, both male and female, and all of them and chanting something very quietly in unison, so that it sounds like whispers gently from behind a door. Whispers that feel like drilling in the back of Jesse's skull -- muted for her now, but still incessant and unending. Whispers that remind her of how she felt when she first heard it, the pain and the drilling and the horror. 

Wow, those whispers are really viscerally uncomfortable to listen to. She does her best to ignore them.

After a slow circuit of the room to make sure there aren't any more glowing people lying in wait, she tries opening the Shelter to see what's inside. Is it going to be more glowing people? She hopes it's not more glowing people. She could do with fewer glowing people.

The shelter might be a second to figure out how to open, but the button is labeled properly. It slides open with obvious mechanical sounds, and Jesse can see that it's a block of this stone set in more of the stone, being moved by a gear underneath the large block of stone. It sounds big and heavy to move, and likely is. 

Inside the shelter are some supplies, and a floating whispering businessperson. 

...she can investigate the supplies while keeping half an eye on the floating businessperson. Why are there floating businesspeople. Why is this a thing.

There's food (MREs), water, and clothing (including a set of six hazmat suits), along with some ammunition (but no guns), and a chemical bucket for going to the bathroom in.

Are there regular incursions of glowing people around here? She feels like... not. She feels like this is the sort of shelter you build when you have no idea what you're going to have to shelter against and you want to be prepared in general as opposed to prepared for the specific bad things you're expecting.

She gives the floating businessperson a wide berth on her way back out. (She still can't make out the words, and it's like an itch inside her skull, the not-quite-sense of them.)

Okay, what now?

Near the shelter there's a sign labeled "Central Executive" with an arrow pointing to a doorway out of the room. She could also look around "Executive Affairs" a while longer if she wants to. There's some posters on the walls, and there may be useful files around on people's desks for her to read. 

Sure, okay, what do these people's motivational posters look like. Is there going to be a kitten hanging from a branch.

There are no kittens hanging from branches. 

The first one is a white crosshair against a red background, with large letters exhorting the reader to "Avoid Modern Technology!" The bottom of the poster says "Synchronicity research department". 

The next one has a creature named "lumpy" which looks approximately like a greenish-brown lump of fecal matter against a red background, with a nametag and bowtie and arms and legs and heels, with the admonishment "Don't Let Mold Hitch A Ride!" and then beneath explaining to the reader than they should "perform daily body checks for foreign plant matter". 

A third one has a stapler that is standing up and winking, with arms and legs, with large text asking the reader "Is that a stapler or an altered item?" and then below telling the reader "Don't take office equipment outside of the building". There are even more posters, if she wants to look around for them. 

Still better than the kitten.

But she thinks she is done with the posters now.

After a brief glance around that doesn't turn up any more obviously bizarre things, she heads to Central Executive.

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. 

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.

"The Service Weapon," she says, acknowledging, explaining. 

She tilts her head slightly in acknowledgment, hesitates, then says, "Also—and this can sound crazy—he keeps appearing to me, saying things. It's hard to make out, but he told me to cleanse the control point? Push the Hiss out. The whole room shifted around." And she is not going to explain that she did that with Polaris's help.

"You did that?" Emily replies, surprise and delight twisting her face into a further smile. "And you entered the building when it was already in the lockdown, before you became the new director? How??" 

I'm not ready to tell her about you yet. That much she's sure of.

"A janitor let me in," she says, which is at least somewhere in the vicinity of a true statement.

"I love it!" Emily laughs, her confusion and delight showing on her face, still laughing a little as she continues. "This is fucking unbelievable. It's- I can't even-" She takes a breath. "Look, Jesse, I have a million questions, you probably have a million more." 

Like: Do you know my brother Dylan?

Not yet.

"But there's something I need to ask you to do first," Emily says. "If you can cleanse a control point, then you can maybe cure those infected, possessed, by the Hiss. Because if that's possible," she takes a hopeful breath, "our options are very different." 

Yeah, they would be, wouldn't they.

I don't know her, but I like her already. She's the opposite of the faceless agency I've blamed for what happened to me for so long.

But I can't trust her yet. Or rather, the Bureau she's a part of.

"Yes," she says firmly, then amends to a slightly more hesitant, "I can try."

Emily nods at her in grateful acknowledgement, watching her as she goes to try. 

I'm speaking for you, of course. She smiles, just a tiny bit, as she turns away. We can try it together.

The nearest floating businessperson is... there. (It's weird how fast they become part of the background.)

Okay. You with me? We did it before. Pushed the Hiss out.

She reaches for the stranger's head, trying to feel through the air the way she felt along the concrete floor for the right place to push when she and Polaris cleansed the control point.

After a moment, the floating woman whose head Jesse's hands are around starts shaking violently in midair. 

It's hard. Even though Polaris is doing most of the work. Just keeping her hands in place feels like straining against a strong wind, and the sound/not-sound of the Hiss makes her feel a little like her bones are trying to vibrate right out of her body, but she sticks to it grimly until all at once, like last time, the red noise collapses and the soothing light of Polaris floods back in.

The woman falls to the floor, clean and free of the hiss, no longer softly chanting into the air. 

And then after a few moments, she dissipates into multicolored smoke, disappearing entirely. 

Well fuck.

It didn't work. The Hiss has burrowed too deep. Ripping it out rips them apart.

She heads back over to Pope.

Emily looks forlornly over at Jesse as she approaches, though with a curious and quizzical look in her eye. Still, even as curious as she clearly is about what just happened, there's a part of her that feels the worry and loss of all of the people who are now lost. 

"I can't cleanse them."

"I saw." She sighs softly. "It was worth a shot. Thank you, Director. Jesse." Motioning for Jesse to follow, she walks towards the board room, and the door opens as both of them approach, letting them inside. She sits down at the side of the big conference room table, letting Jesse take the seat at the head. 

She has that pigeon-in-the-wardrobe feeling again as she sits down.

I'm gonna tell her why I'm here. I'll risk it.

"Listen, the Bureau is involved in an incident in my home town, Ordinary, seventeen years ago. The Bureau came in and covered the whole thing up. I've been looking for this place for a long time."

That's enough. She sits back, trying to hide her nerves. Maybe that's too much already. I can't tell her about Dylan and the rest yet.

"I've seen mentions of an Altered World Event case dealing with Ordinary." She leans forward in her chair towards Jesse, face alight with curiosity and excitement. "You were at ground zero as a child? It was one of the big ones. And before my time. And very classified," she adds, leaning back into her chair. "I can try to dig out some old files for you. My boss, Casper Darling would know, but he's missing. I think he knew this was coming, or, suspected. He came up with the HRAs, the Hedron Resonance Amplifiers," her hand moves to indicate the device on her chest. "I think they're what saved us, or a few of us. And Director Trench would know." 

So far so good. Seems Pope is too caught up in the excitement of it all to have qualms about Jesse's agenda.

That last name catches her attention. "Trench. The... ghost, or whatever he is... he mentioned something called the Hotline, said I should find it."

"It's another Object of Power like the gun, an old Bakelite telephone, a direct line of communication between the Director and the Board." She leans forward again, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Maybe he can talk to you more clearly through that. Trench has years and years of experience. He might know how to destroy the Hiss." 

So the question is, "Where is the Hotline?"

"It's kept in the Communications Department, through the Mail Room. It's part of this sector so we can access it even with the lockdown in place. We'll get the door open for you." 

"Okay," she says, nodding firmly. "That's my next stop."

"...that's Tommasi's department. He's Head of Communications. I... don't think he had an HRA. He kind of made a point about not wearing one earlier. Keep an eye out." 

She nods again, thoughtfully, picturing the journey ahead. Onward into more of these boxy concrete halls, getting shot at by more glowing red people, walking like a ghost through more abandoned offices with the middles of a hundred strangers' workdays scattered across their desks. It should feel creepy, frightening, and to be fair it does. But at the same time...

No matter what they told me all these years. I know it's real now. I didn't imagine this.

What scares me shitless, is that I finally found it. Only to see the Hiss destroy it all.

Her hands grip the edge of the table like she's about to push her chair back and stand, but instead she finds herself hesitating, scattered and uncertain and trying not to show it.

Emily does seem to pick up on this, at least a little bit. "You're the Director," she says, "I know this might be a lot right now and all of this is rather new to you but I'm sure you can handle it. Don't hesitate to ask me any questions about anything you want to know. There are no stupid questions."