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Of course, now that you think about it, that is not a good thing. Well, obviously, yes, it is a good thing – as it stands, a lot of people have died tonight, and if things get any worse, then it is likely that even more will … but if the situation here stabilizes, then it seems inevitable that more people are going to be making their way into here, looking to help. That thought is enough to get you back on your feet.
With your feet underneath you again, you start walking – or more accurately stumbling – your way into the room. As you do, you are alternating wiping your tears away from your eyes and your blood away from your nose on your shirt sleeve. Well, the dead Comptroller’s shirt sleeve, who you are even more certain after that horrific experience back there must have died of smoke inhalation.
What really gets to you is that, assuming you are right, and it was breathing in smoke and foul humors that did him in … is that he managed to get out, to walk away. Just like you are doing right now.
Maybe. Oh, Pattern’s Perdition, what the Hell do you know? You managed to cover all of that distance without breathing anything in. Did he? You doubt it. You sincerely doubt it. And considering where you found him, and how many little fires seem to be all over the place, the odds are pretty poor that the smoke that did him in came from the room you just left … if it was smoke that killed him, and after all, what the Hell do you know?
Still, what a way to go – being smoked like a filet of salmon or something.
The unbidden image that comes to you, of you and the Comptroller up on hooks in a smokehouse, is so gruesomely absurd that you have to laugh. Which makes you cough. Which somehow makes the image even funnier. Of course, with the enormity of your situation bearing down on you, it does not take long for you to recover from the fit of coughs and giggles, but by the time that you do, you feel as if you are breathing normally again for the first time since you charged into that mess. Your sight is continuing to clear as well, and by the time that you are on the other side of this room, pulling the largest bay door you have seen in the Refinery since you left the tower, you notice some writing on the wall, half obscured by stacks of supplies partially resting against it.
You start pulling the crates and whatnot off of their neat stacks. To your surprise, the first thing you uncover is a pictogram, which appears to depict three Moon and Suns, fanned above a drop of fluid –presumably Lifting Oil. There is an arrow, pointing in the direction of the room whose door you have just slid open. Underneath that there is one word written in large, block text: Finishing. Pattern’s Perdition, you do not know if you should be raging or start laughing again. All this time, there were directions, but you could not see any of them, because the fraying idiots stacked their shit right in front of them.
