Femininity, liquids, and drowning

Meanwhile, the cellar flooded.
It's nearly pitch black down here and you can't hear her by the door anymore. She's probably left. You're incapacitated by pain for a good minute or two while the sound of rushing water gets louder and louder; where's it coming from? Is there a broken pipe down here? Your ankle is broken or sprained, it feels like. The sounds of people outside are becoming distant-- softening with every passing second, so you scream and yell for them not to leave. You yell until they're not audible anymore over the water. And then nothing, no one's there, you don't even know if they know where to look. Fine-- you've done everything else alone, you'll save yourself. There's a thin metal ladder back up to the trapdoor you try, rusty, corroded, but it should hold your weight to get to the opening. And it holds, until it doesn't and something creaks and snaps, sending you crashing back into the pool. It's up to your chest now when you make it painfully above the surface and you're half treading water. Here, in the black and the freezing wet, you're so, so angry. You've been angry for so long. And now you're just a victim. The thought sets in and you scream again, not for someone to help, but because you need these deaf walls to hear how much you hate her. You want Nikolai to drown here with you. Trigger. 

As they're running back to the buses to retrieve their things, Nikolai's friends first notice her stop dead in her tracks and just stand in the downpour, swaying a little. She drops the coat she was holding over her head, eyes vacant, before turning and running towards the bunker. They chase after as she enters the building and retraces her steps to the cellar. It takes a decent amount of effort to lift the door and she's left kneeling at the edge, staring at the dark, empty water below while her friends call out approaching a little ways behind. For a moment all she sees is her pale reflection in the mirror-like surface, before someone lunges out of the water and drags her below.
No one dies. Hours later, Nikolai and Valerie are admitted to the hospital, both unconscious; Valerie is the one who wakes up, while Niko dreams.

You find yourself in a strange building, too dilapidated to call a home. It's raining outside, but that's the only thing you can tell through the dozens and dozens of windows, otherwise it's just swirling mist. The windows don't open, and you'll later find out they don't break either. As for doors, the place seems full of them. There are hallways and entire crumbling rooms filled with doors, but none of them lead outside. More often than not, they lead into rotting spaces with things written on the walls in marker. This place seems to be filled with puzzles, or clues, pieces of words and phrases and directions that lead you through the building in agonizing trails only to leave you stumped in one room filled with books, or markers, or paper. Still, you can't shake the feeling you're getting close. To what, you're not sure. You assume it's the door, the real door that leads outside. Time is an amorphous thing in this place, but it's undeniably passing because the rain is getting heavier, and the light outside is dimming. You hear a crash and look back into the hallway to find water cascading down the stairs and pooling over the floorboards. Gathering your work of half finished puzzles and ciphers, you try to climb the stairwell but the water just comes in faster torrents. And then the ceiling crashes in, and you're swept downstairs. When you get to your feet, you realize it's a bit drier down here but that sound of rushing water still lingers. You need to get out of this place, but you look at your trail, the map of the house, and it yields nothing. There's got to be some clever answer to this, if you're fast enough. And eventually you reach the basement. It's pitch black in here without any windows, and even if there had been the light outside had been dimming as the rain got heavier. The best you can do now is go over the clues in your head again and again, trying to see what must be so obvious but is difficult to keep straight in the pressing darkness. Water is now pooling around you, and it strikes you as odd that the basement is the last to flood. Just another thing that doesn't make sense, isn't it?. It's rising faster than you can think. Think. THINK. You're missing something, you're missing one part, or it'll all click together any second now. The water's already risen to your chin so you begin treading. It's too dark to tell how high the ceiling is but after a few more seconds your head hits it and the panic in your chest spikes, clenching itself around your throat. You're swimming, hitting the ceiling over and over as waves lap over your upturned face and you snatch one more gasp of air before everything's just. Water. It's mercifully silent without the constant thrashing of distant rain. And that's your last thought when the final bit of air escapes your burning chest. 

And then you inhale and it's air. You open your eyes a crack-- it's bright, too much so to make out anything right away. Relief floods you as you realize you've woken up alive and that nightmare, whatever it was, was just that: a nightmare. And then you sit up, opening your eyes fully to the day and realize this is not your house, this is a strange building, too dilapidated to call a home. It's raining outside, but that's the only thing you can tell through the dozens and dozens of windows, otherwise it's just swirling mist. You're on the floor in a house filled with rooms and doors and halls and rooms and it's raining and you scream.