Round 6 Transcript

I grip the lamp base tighter, cold metal digging into my fingers. The rain outside sounds like nails on glass—impossible to hear anything soft over that rhythm. But I feel it, a wrongness in the house's quiet. My own breathing is too loud. The hallway stretches ahead, dark and empty-looking but that doesn't mean safe.

I take one slow step forward, then another. The floorboards don't creak under me—I know this house, every squeak and groan, and I've spent the last few minutes mapping it in my head. Kitchen is at the end of this hall—knives there, back door too. But going there means moving away from the main exit. Stupid. Focus.

The lamp feels heavy and solid in my hands, a good weapon if I need it. But I don't want to need it—not yet. Not until I know what I'm dealing with. I glance toward the front room where the intruder was last seen—empty now, shadows shifting with each flash of lightning outside.

The floorboards in the hallway groaned again — closer this time, definitely inside the house now. The lamp's circle of light dimmed the edges of the room into shadow. The Force moved to the side table without thinking, hand wrapping around the heavy brass base as she stood, her back to the wall. The window beside the chair showed only blackness and rain streaks. No cars outside. No one walking by. Just woods and the house and whoever was making those sounds. Two loaded guns at her sides, but she didn't draw them yet — too much noise, too much risk of a confrontation she couldn't control in a closed space. The house keys were on the wall hook across the room. The hallway behind her was clear for now. She heard her own breathing too loud and moved toward the kitchen, where the knives were, where there were more options than this open sitting room with its big window facing the dark woods.