Bak left Gilliam alone to deal with the threat in that room and continued on down the hallway alone, sweeping her eyes around the doorways to catch any hint of presence. It was lucky the most of the doors on this floor were intact. She could see them, cold little clumps huddling in some of the rooms doing god knows what. Whatever it is imps did with their free time. There was no way they didn't hear her, feel the tremors of her footfalls, but they were cowardly. Clearly whatever was out beyond the boundary of their chosen rooms was bigger than them, and vicious as they were they had a primal sort of intelligence that told them to wait for easier prey. 

The ghosts were a different story altogether. She could see them too, sort of. They devoured all the heat around them, turning them into indistinct blue clouds to her eyes. Occasionally one would glide wistfully through the walls n a path from from one room to another. She would wait if she saw a cold spot coming, hold her breath, and stand stock still so that they wouldn't notice her in the dark. She would look at them though. She'd turn off her thermal vision to catch the transparent specters. They looked like emaciated corpses, their faces sunken and skin either leathery or pale and bloated to a disgusting degree. Some of them had visible wounds, a stabbing here, a blown out stomach there, one drifted by with an ice-pick jammed halfway into her head. None of them seemed to notice her, but that was because she kept her distance. If one managed to surprise her...she had to be careful.

She continued on to the end of the hallway, her vision still not piking up the tell-tale red of a living human body. What she did find, however, was a door set into the end of the hallway. A stairwell, from the half-broken sigh that hung above it. She pushed it open. There were plenty of people searching the second floor, it was better for everyone if she continued up to the third. There was no telling how soon the Laurels would make their way up here.

She walked into a dimly lit concrete stariwell, the steps spiraling around the wall going up and up into the darkness. "Hello, nemesis." She whispered, squaring her big clompy metal legs with the bottom step like a gunfighter at high noon. "We meet again." Bak had a bad history with steps. Her lower legs had long ago grown over with almost 100% machinery in order to better support her weight. Her feet in particular were clumps of steels fashioned into something that resembled chicken feet, something that the adults of her village took as one of the many signs that she was a demon witch from the bowls of the underworld and the other children took as inspiration for their taunts. One of the common chants was simply "BAK BAK BAK" repeated ad nauseam until she either went away or started shooting. Their wide frame and long toes were really good for keeping her balanced on solid ground, but climbing stairs was a different story when half the thing was hanging off the back of the step. Combined with the backpack throwing off her center of balance and making it so standing on one leg for any period of time was a risky proposition and stairs became a dangerous balancing act. You just had to get a rhythm to it, that's all. You had to move quickly and carefully and try to keep leaned forward at all times. Not too forward though, because that would send you slamming face first into the stairs. She had gotten the hang of it at this point, but her first seven months at St. Lucifer's had been a nightmare for this. 

She was most of the way up the first flight when the ghost fell, screaming like a banshee and scaring her half to death. She only caught a glimpse of its plummeting form as it flew past down shaft of the stairwell, but that and the sudden noise was enough to make her scream out loud and instinctively swivel her guns in its direction. This caused her foot to slip right off the step, and gravity took over from there as she tumbled with all the grace of an out of control landslide back to the start. 

She was just starting again when it dropped through the middle of the stairwell again. This time Bak swiveled around and rushed to look over the banister to see the ghost plummet into the concrete floor below and vanish in a puff of ethereal dust. She waited this time. A few minutes later the ghost plummeted again. And again. And again. Every few minutes the ghost, a women with long black and a grossly bruised and swollen neck, dropped down the stairwell to endlessly repeat what had to be her own death. Bak shook her head. What in the world had happened to this apartment? What had made it such a focal point of pure misery, and what had a bunch of goodie two-shoes St. Laural's kids been up to when they went missing in such a place?

By the dozenth time Bak saw the women go past she was over it, and calmly trudging her way up to the third floor. "Shut up!" She said as the woman went screaming past once again.