Take cover!

You look up at her and see that she's opening what looks like a large photograph album. Instead of pictures though, she extracts a handfull of different coloured feathers, holding them carefully but skillfully by the bases.

She's already raising the next one - another green one as your scramble away, scuttling on all fours around the table and taking cover. Luckily all the tables in here are like science benches you realise now, they have central columns where electricity and gas and so on get supplies through, so there's a wall of sorts under every one - crouching down, she won't be able to see you. But she knows the room - she's fought here before.

You keep low and move quickly away from where you think she is, you need to flank her somehow and keep out of her firing line. But she's barefoot - of course - and you can't hear where she is. You need to know where she is, so you try sounding her out.

"So you're the crazy bird lady or something?" You shout. Giving away your own position, yeah, but you're moving all the time. You ease off your shoes and socks and tuck them under a desk so you can move silently too.

"Don't be coarse, I don't think that's the kind of man you are," she calls back. Far away, the other side of the room. Near the windows, while you're near the facing wall. Good. "I'm a chemist."

"Cooking up all sorts of deadly poisons to..."

"Oh please don't be so dense," she sighs, and the disappointment in her voice makes you feel so bad for letting her down that you almost stand up. "There's nothing deadly in this room. Think where you are again, for God's sake! It's mostly aphrodisiacs and paralyzing agents. That green one I tried to tag you with was just a mild nerve serum - it would have slowed you down just a little... made you fun to toy with."

She talked more than you thought she would. In fact you've been able to move around towards her - stooped or crawling between desks - and you might be almost next to her. She looked like distilled femininity - waif-like and delicate as a flower. If you can grab her before she spikes you you can easily take her.