08-12-2013, 06:49 PM
It was surprisingly a rather uneventful walk. The fact that the three of them didn't talk much along the way was testament to just how tense it was. Rune certainly expected to find something horrible around every corner and down every ladder. The fact that they never crossed paths with another living being, well, it only made her more wary.
Like the streets around Hood's neighborhood, they eventually walked through clouds of stench: old violence or recent, it tickled the back of Rune's neck with the urge to run after them all. Somehow she managed to keep herself from doing so, even if she felt like a dog tugging on the end of its chain needing to chase after rabbits.
She heard the skattering of rats and the howling of dogs. Such sounds of motion always thrummed the cold shiver of caution down Rune's spine and several times she paused dead in her tracks and motioned that Hood and Aria stand perfectly still. She wanted to make sure those footsteps were from quadrupeds of normal size: chupakabra for instance lumbered about with long, lean strides with claws that clicked as they tapped on the hard surface. Their human counterparts were not much better.
There was a sudden echo of yells and noise once or twice, and Rune's flashlight whipped around to see if there was anything to see. Yet there never was. Sound simply echoed in these tunnels what with nothing soft or natural to diffuse it.
There was also evidence that people lived here. Sometimes there was disturbing evidence. Like of a dingy doll propped up against the wall like it were sitting around waiting for its bus stop; positioned way too precisely to have simply been discarded like that. An old blanket was thrown across a caved in beam and wedged into the shape of a tent by elevated cinder blocks like some creepy underground teepee.
When they came to the crossroads, Rune seemed to almost relax. She let the SMG go limp at her side. Her shoulders drooped and she went to the center of the two intersecting tunnels and turned in a slow circle, eyes closed. She even flipped off her flashlight to cut off the distraction of the extra sense, and breathed deeply. Very deeply. And as she did, her expression contorted more and more into that of disgust.
"Fear.." she said quietly, careful to keep her voice from carrying on the waves of echo. "Determination." She added with a small measure of pride. Then she went quiet for a while. It was like trying to decipher all the ingredients in a bowl of stew, when that stew was cooked three days ago and all you had left was the dirty pot it was boiled in.
"There were definitely more than one." She suddenly stopped her slow meandering around, flipped on the flashlight again and shone the beam downward, directly in front of her feet. Where she then squat and scooped up a palm full of empty shell casings. She showed them to Hood.
She glanced at Aria, finally noticing her distress and thought back to the girl's time on the street above. The girl practically freaked out over bumping paths with strung-out Moscovites late for work. From the potency of stench Rune was picking up, Aria must be due for a melt-down. She shared a glance at Hood, then repositioned her grip on the gun and motioned that they take the corridor to the left.
She quickly tapped a few commands into the screen on her glasses, and a streak of small blue lines suddenly filled the left lens. Of course, from far away it looked like a pale blue haze, but close to her eyeball, she saw a reconstruction of the streets overhead based on their signal.
She wasn't sure how long the GPS would be able to track them. Especially if their Atharim comrade had lost signal somewhere near here. Or maybe his tracking device was simply destroyed in the fight? Its possible, but Rune didn't care to take the time to canvas the dark floors any further to look for broken bits of tech and plastic.
For now, at least, she kept the glasses going.
Like the streets around Hood's neighborhood, they eventually walked through clouds of stench: old violence or recent, it tickled the back of Rune's neck with the urge to run after them all. Somehow she managed to keep herself from doing so, even if she felt like a dog tugging on the end of its chain needing to chase after rabbits.
She heard the skattering of rats and the howling of dogs. Such sounds of motion always thrummed the cold shiver of caution down Rune's spine and several times she paused dead in her tracks and motioned that Hood and Aria stand perfectly still. She wanted to make sure those footsteps were from quadrupeds of normal size: chupakabra for instance lumbered about with long, lean strides with claws that clicked as they tapped on the hard surface. Their human counterparts were not much better.
There was a sudden echo of yells and noise once or twice, and Rune's flashlight whipped around to see if there was anything to see. Yet there never was. Sound simply echoed in these tunnels what with nothing soft or natural to diffuse it.
There was also evidence that people lived here. Sometimes there was disturbing evidence. Like of a dingy doll propped up against the wall like it were sitting around waiting for its bus stop; positioned way too precisely to have simply been discarded like that. An old blanket was thrown across a caved in beam and wedged into the shape of a tent by elevated cinder blocks like some creepy underground teepee.
When they came to the crossroads, Rune seemed to almost relax. She let the SMG go limp at her side. Her shoulders drooped and she went to the center of the two intersecting tunnels and turned in a slow circle, eyes closed. She even flipped off her flashlight to cut off the distraction of the extra sense, and breathed deeply. Very deeply. And as she did, her expression contorted more and more into that of disgust.
"Fear.." she said quietly, careful to keep her voice from carrying on the waves of echo. "Determination." She added with a small measure of pride. Then she went quiet for a while. It was like trying to decipher all the ingredients in a bowl of stew, when that stew was cooked three days ago and all you had left was the dirty pot it was boiled in.
"There were definitely more than one." She suddenly stopped her slow meandering around, flipped on the flashlight again and shone the beam downward, directly in front of her feet. Where she then squat and scooped up a palm full of empty shell casings. She showed them to Hood.
She glanced at Aria, finally noticing her distress and thought back to the girl's time on the street above. The girl practically freaked out over bumping paths with strung-out Moscovites late for work. From the potency of stench Rune was picking up, Aria must be due for a melt-down. She shared a glance at Hood, then repositioned her grip on the gun and motioned that they take the corridor to the left.
She quickly tapped a few commands into the screen on her glasses, and a streak of small blue lines suddenly filled the left lens. Of course, from far away it looked like a pale blue haze, but close to her eyeball, she saw a reconstruction of the streets overhead based on their signal.
She wasn't sure how long the GPS would be able to track them. Especially if their Atharim comrade had lost signal somewhere near here. Or maybe his tracking device was simply destroyed in the fight? Its possible, but Rune didn't care to take the time to canvas the dark floors any further to look for broken bits of tech and plastic.
For now, at least, she kept the glasses going.