She's already in the basement

Donna decided to start where she was, in the front-right corner of the basement. She turned along the front wall, straining to see the spines of the books on the shelf to her right as she slowly made her way down the aisle. Nothing here seemed to be in the category she needed, which somewhat helped the speed of her progress as she made her way to the left wall.

The next aisle also yielded no results, and she turned back through the third aisle, passing where she'd found the chair as she did so. As she crossed the center aisle, though, a couple of things grabbed her attention. First, there was a rather sizeable hole in the wall, easily large enough for her to just walk through, with a few dim lights casting small, yellow spheres of illumination intermittently through the space. Farther back, there seemed to be a better illuminated space, though she had no idea what was down there. Second, the floor had turned to mud beneath her foot, with shallow pools of water in places. She couldn't tell where it was coming from, though it did seem to head into the mysterious tunnel before her.

A brief moment of curiousity grasped her, and she took a couple of tentative steps forward, before a bit of suction against her left flip-flop reminded her that mud and these shoes really wasn't going to mix well. She carefully turned back, and almost made it free of the mud again, before the front strap on her left shoe was pulled free of the sole. She stumbled out of the mud, biting a curse back as she regained her footing, luckily having not snagged anything this time. Grabbing the flip-flop, she fixed the strap, which went back in pretty easily, though still with much more effort than the straps of the other flip-flop.

Replacing her shoe, she rapidly made her way back to the center aisle, then went a few more aisles back, noting that half of at least four aisles, and most of the left side aisle, had been rendered a muddy mess by the leak. She decided, then and there, it would definitely be better for her to search the other two floors first, and only come back down here if she had to.

Her mind made up, Donna headed back to the stairs, ascending them, trying to refocus her attention on finding the book, instead of either her lust or her curiousity at the tunnel, and where it led.