Concentrating on staying silent, you continue on in what was hopefully the direction of the elevator. As you grow closer to where it should be, something small skitters past you, a set of whiskers brushing against your leg, but you thankfully manage to keep from making any sort of startled noise. Whatever the thing had been, it left a musty, organic odor in it's wake, far less powerful, but very similar to what had been in your room.
After what seems like an eternity of listening to the two larger creatures fight nearby, your outstretched fingertips finally touch smooth, cool metal. Feeling along the wall, you locate the elevator buttons and jam the up one repeatedly. You strain your ears to pick up any sign of the elevator running, but with the confrontation starting to drift your way and not so much as a creak from the lift, you continue feeling about for the stairway entrance. With the quiet, erratic footfalls of the monsters steadily approaching, you eventually find what you were looking for and dart in, feeling the smooth laminate floor sharply transition to rough concrete beneath your toes. Once inside, you lean back against the door to keep it closed, thankful that it opened inwards. None of the latches on the doors seemed to be working, so the only way you could keep one shut was to hold it shut. Listening to the situation outside, you hear the two creatures pass worryingly close, one right behind the other, followed by a few last pained howls as one subdues the other and begins to feed. You shift your focus to the noises of the stairwell, though, as you realize that popping sound you were hearing was that of bones cracking.
The echoes reverberating up and down the stairs are hard to decipher: rumblings, splashing, gurgling, yelps, shrieks, howls, and groans. You could have sworn one of the sounds was water lapping against a wall some ways below, but that seems impossible. As near as you can tell, the majority of the vocalizations are below you as well, but the mechanical rumbling was definitely coming from above. Oddly, the air in here seems cleaner and clearer, and there is an almost imperceptible breeze running past you. Perhaps they still had power up on Levels 2 and 1, and what you were hearing and feeling was the air circulation hard at work.
For the moment, you take a break and think back to your phone. Chances were that you'd still get reception in here, but there was still the problem of you not being able to see the screen. Punching in Reuben's number earlier had just been a matter of feeling for the little bump on 5 and going from there, but navigating to and through your contact list would be a bit more difficult. You feel you would have a better time of it by just sticking to numbers you knew by heart. You have no idea how much battery power you have left, and you want to use it wisely.
Going down your mental list of phone numbers, the contacts included people both inside and outside the facility. You know that no one you knew on the outside would be much help for anything other than information, if that, but there was always good old 911. It would probably break all number of Non-Disclosure Agreements, but you were starting not to care. As for people on the inside, they probably had a better idea of what was going on, but reaching them would be a problem. Cellphone reception peetered out between Levels 4 and 5, not even halfway down, depending on the carrier. The intercom would be more efficient to round up the survivors, but that would require turning the power back on. You have both the knowledge and acess codes to do so, but it would require going deeper into the facility...
