The sound that woke me reverberated again. I was close to it, and I could now sense that it possessed a hollow, machine-like timbre. Lacking any better ideas, I headed down towards it.
The carpeted floor before me was damp. Some kind of puddle had formed on it and, while I couldn’t get a good look at it, the wet substance on it did not appear to be water. Rather, it had a murky, greenish quality to it. Using my flashlight, I traced the liquid to its source, which appeared to be an air vent that steadily dripping a small stream of it onto the ground below.
