Quoted By:
>Second best
Incredible what you can perceive when you just stop for a minute, and double-incredible that none of it's good. Ominous gurgling? The stench of death? You've already dropped in on <span class="mu-i">one</span> abomination, so what the fuck else is down here? Well, you shouldn't think about it too long— don't want to give the dark any ideas. The weird rattling noise to your right seems least likely to be hitched to something horrific. Go with that.
You feel your way over to the associated ladder, hook your legs over, and descend without a word to the Lester-tentacle. (You're not going to <span class="mu-i">encourage</span> the fucker to follow you around, alright.) Your climb down is uncomfortably noisy, but not enough to drown out the rattling, which pervades from nowhere in particular— is something built into the walls? Something with a couple loose screws? You've never been all that savvy when it comes to machines, particularly if they're busted, so if you have to turn fucking repairwoman...
You're not that lucky. Down at ground level, the darkness is thick as tar, and you have to prod the floor with your foot a couple times to be sure you're not going to tumble straight through it. (You've had enough long falls for today.) Eventually you take a tentative step off the ladder. The rattling stops. Something screeches, metal against metal.
Then you swear and recoil: yellow light, like a punch to the face, pours suddenly from a far wall. Your squid eyes seize, swivel, and slam down to the size of pinpricks, turning the remaining darkness into fucking solid asphalt— but at least you can see through the light, which is being emanated by a large rectangle. Like a broom closet, if broom closets tended to rattle and screech, which'd—
There's a figure stepping out of the light. And you can't see all that well, still, but it doesn't take a fucking genius to guess who around here 1) is shaped like a human person and 2) might be exiting mystery rectangles at this time of night. <span class="mu-i">Fuck!</span>
The rectangle isn't directly in front of you or the ladder, it's down a ways— so you can't have been seen yet. Emphasis "yet." The yellow light has illuminated a cone-shaped area around the rectangle, but outside that darkness remains.
(Choices next.)
