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Still out of breath, you start moving – not wanting to stay a single second longer in the place than absolutely necessary. Like Finishing, there are more machines in this room, though these look different from any of the ones that you have seen in the Refinery so far. That is promising. And when you see the racks of glass jugs, you almost collapse with relief. Most are empty, but some have filled and corked. You lean in, wipe your eyes, and in the darkness of the room, lit only by the moonlight filtering in from the vents in the roof, you read the label.
Gothorum Grade Flameless Lifting Oil, Quarter Short Ton.
Having found what you are looking for, you actually do collapse with relief, falling to your knees and choking down a sob. Less than two minutes ago – Hell, maybe even a minute and a half – you were about to give up. You –
You need to focus. So long as you are in the Refinery, you are in danger. Honestly, you should just keep repeating that to yourself, because apparently you have the brain of some silver-spoon coquette.
You bolt to your feet. Just looking at the fat jug, bound with hempen rope, you can tell that it is going to be too heavy for you to carry out on your back. And you confirm this when you damn near drop the thing getting it off of the shelf and onto the floor. This is going to be too much to handle, at least, if you are going to want to be able to do any serious running or climbing while you are making off with this, which obviously, you do. After thinking about it for a moment, you decide that the best course of action would be to crack the jug open and use the lifting oil to reduce the load. Conveniently, there is a square depression at the top of the jug, like a tray in the glass, where you can pour lifting oil in so it will lift up without either spilling or ripping the bottle to pieces. That is, of course, assuming that you pour out the correct amount, and you do not slosh it around too much.
Before you pull the cork, you take off the belt that came with the breeches you stole off of the Comptroller, and you loop it through the handle of the jug to make a carrying strap. As you pop the cork, you realize that this bottle might weigh less than a Quarter Short Ton – 200 pounds – which means that as soon as you light up, the bottle is going to try to fall upwards, possibly even faster than it would fall downwards under typical circumstances. Not optimal. But there really is not anything you can do about that. Short of finding some weights, you suppose. Across the room, there are actually some metal … parts? They look heavy enough, and they just seem to be lying around, half in and half out of crates. Probably spares for one of the machines – but you really would not know. You give yourself a few moments to mull that prospect for a bit, but in the end, you decide against it.
