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Roman pressed the stone a few more times, just to make sure that it hadn’t triggered anything, then he looked around the room anew.

He’d been on autopilot just now as he’d let his mind wander, but with the realization that there was indeed something to be discovered here, he was suddenly eyeing every single stone much more carefully. Surely, there had to be some sort of visible clue.

But no. He still couldn’t see anything. Even upon closer inspection of the one stone that he knew to be some sort of switch, he still saw nothing peculiar about it when it was in its default position.

“Goddammit,” he mumbled. “Who fucking built this shit, huh? It looks completely seamless. No gaps between the stones where the switch is. How’d they even manage to pull that off? That seems impossible.”

‘You’re talking aloud,’ said Voreese, privately.

‘Oh. Sorry.’

The reaper hovered around his shoulder, eyeing the same spot he was. ‘But on second thought, maybe Stasya sneaked this into the building plans. You’re right that this seems suspiciously well-crafted.’

‘If she did, then why didn’t you already know about it?’

‘Hey, it wasn’t like I stuck around her every second that she was building it. She was working on this place for a long ass time.’

‘Ah. And you got bored and went off on your own for a while, didn’t you?’

Voreese made no response.

Which was strange enough to make Roman pause and look at her. ‘Voreese?’

Rather than biting back at him with another insult, as he’d been expecting, she shook her head, and her tone turned somber again--even more so than before, in fact. ‘Yes... I did leave her alone.’

Roman was confused. What was she--?

Oh.

‘I’m sure that didn’t have anything to do with her going mad,’ said Roman, trying quite hard to not sound like a sarcastic prick. ‘There’s no sense in blaming yourself, if that’s what’s bothering you.’

But again, Voreese merely remained quiet.

Well, shit.

Now he didn’t know what to say.

He decided to begin blindly pressing stones again. If this one by itself hadn’t done the trick, then there had to be others around here somewhere. Maybe they needed to be pressed in some sort of sequence.

He kept at it for a while, though, and eventually became discouraged when he still hadn’t found a single new switch.