The Rat in the Maze (Poofless-esque)

Hex

You walk up the stairs to the fourth floor, and it takes special effort for you to quiet your breathing. Eight flights of stairs isn't as easy as it used to be... you should really leave your house more often, you remind yourself. You look around for a way into the top of the third floor, but nothing pops out at you. Maybe you should be thankful for that.

You backtrack a bit and see that you can climb up on the rail of the second set of stairs between the third and fourth floors to hoist yourself back up into the vent system. You balance on your ass on the little white saviour beams and slide the tile back into place so you won't have a new friend waiting for you if you decide to come back this way. You make it squarely to the middle of the third floor lobby before you even think about moving a tile to check. When you lift up the corner of a tile to check your location, you watch with chagrin as a dead cockroach falls down past the chandelier to the lobby of the first floor. You wish you hadn't seen how high the fall was.

It takes you a few seconds to recover and remember why you are here. You hear someone shuffling and clicking a little way away from you. You quickly find the bright orange vest of the security guard Preston was talking about and replace the tile before crawling your way over toward the corpse. You feel a little like a ghost as you slide your way through the cut-out in the wall and rest briefly on the little white beams above the room Preston said he was in before you take a look around.

When you lift up the tile, you don't see him anywhere.

Me: Where are you?

Pearston: still in the room

Pearston: how do i know its u?

Me: You had a 17% drop in revenue last month. Your turn.

There is a long pause, and it scares you to think you hadn't thought about this before. The texting sounds just like him, so you don't think this is an issue, but still... You are really rattled about this whole thing. You aren't thinking straight.

Pearston: ur brother read yt comments, shipped us

Here we go with this shit again.

Me: I'm here. Come out so we can leave.

After a minute or so, part of the wall swings open and he sticks his head in. It takes you a second to realize that that part of the wall was clear and made of glass, and was actually a patio door that you hadn't seen. You move the ceiling tile farther aside and he finally notices you.

He looks about as happy about seeing you as he does about the serial killer situation outside the barricaded door to his room.

"I can tell you right now, I'm not crawlin' through the frickin' ceiling like a possum."

"Damn it, Preston. Can you for once just not-"

"I said, I'm not going up there." There is a strange venom to his words that you have never heard before. This is an entirely new side of Preston that you have never seen – and you don't think anyone else has, either.

Do you push it and try to get him to come with you, or do you go outside on the patio with him?

Tell him to stop being an ass and come with you - go to Downtown

Climb down and follow him outside on the patio - go to Geometric