xp_logs | Day Zero - The Tunnels

Down in the sewers, a deadly game of cats and mice begins.

"Stop," Amanda panted, sagging against a wall. "Need to catch my breath." They'd been stumbling through the tunnels for what felt like hours. They might not know exactly where they were, but Amanda's growing headache and disorientation was as good as a compass pointing for the Citadel.

Julio nodded and rested an arm against the wall, ignoring the cold slime coating it. He was grateful for the momentary rest. He sucked in another breath of dank air and almost choked. "Mierda," he hissed. He could sense what was behind them, the feeling of them--the way they moved-- crawling along the back of his head like spiders. They weren't too far behind the group. "Please tell me we are almost there, because whatever-the-fuck-it-is is still coming," Julio said, in-between trying to catch the rest of his breath.

Forge looked back, cycling through different viewing modes in his goggles. He could feel Jan on his shoulder as he looked down the tunnel, trying to catch a glimpse of anything moving. "What were those?" he asked. "Rats? Do rats get that big down here? I don't know anything about rats."

"Rats grow as big as the cage you keep them in," Sarah deadpanned, a hand running along the stone wall beside her. They didn't, but nobody needed to know that. Sarah wasn't feeling particularly charitable towards her companions. If they'd been by themselves, she and Callisto might have figured out where they were supposed to go by now. "Just kick it if it comes near you."

In the short silence that followed, however, there was a noticeable change in Callisto's stance, as she finally heard what Julio had been sensing all along. What the fuck is... "Okay, they don't come that big. Or that... break's over, c'mon."

Not waiting for protest, Callisto took back off at a trot which stopped dead a matter of seconds later as she rounded the bend in front of them.

"Fucker..."

Which, the rest of the team found on turning said corner, summed it up pretty nicely. A handful of yards in front of them, in the same big, old sandstone slabs as the tunnel system they were currently in, was a solid wall. Whether or not they had been moments before, they were now at a dead end.

Jan observed the wall in front of them. "Um, is that supposed to be there? Or, I guess, are we supposed to be wherever that is? Because I'm thinking we really don't want that to be in front of us right now. You know, with the might-or-might-not-be-rats probably wanting to eat us."

"Oh, not good, not good," Julio said, approaching the wall and feeling along it, searching for cracks. It was thick, and solid. He backed up and swore. "I can't get us through, not without bringing the rest of the tunnel down on us."

"Can't run, can't hide..." Amanda joined Julio and lay her hand on the wall, wincing slightly as her fingers made contact. "Rats in the maze." She glanced back at Sarah and Callisto. "Doesn't mean we have to stay that way."

Sarah stared back at her, unsure what to make of her friend's babbling. She never could make sense of her when these sort of things happened. She pushed her way back up to the front of the group. "I guess we'll have to go--" In front of her appeared three "rats". They looked oddly familiar, even though their monstrous shape meant they were barely recognizable as rats, and it took a second before her memory kicked in. "Shit. We've seen this before. Amanda and I. We've fought meatspores before."

"Good. So how do we kill them?" Callisto asked with her usual bluntness, without waiting for an answer before retrieving a knife from somewhere about her person and sending it flying into one of the ex-rats. The knife disappeared with a sucking sound, and the 'meatspore' continued to move.

Callisto scowled. "I'm getting that back," she said matter-of-factly.

Jan zipped towards the meatspore-rat-things, her hands outstretched and blasting at them. She alternated short, quick bursts with longer ones. Unlike Sarah and Amanda, she'd never fought meatspore-rat-things before, but she'd taken down both zombie animals and humans before, even Mystique once, so she hoped her blasts were enough to kill or at least heavily damage the trio of whatever-a-meatspore was.

As much as Jan was blasting, the zombie-like meatspores kept moving forward, inexorably forcing the group back against the wall. Forge shuffled backwards, hearing an unusual clank as his metal foot contacted something else metallic. He spun around and knelt, scraping grime away from what looked like an access panel, rusted over and bolted into the concrete. Banging on it sounded hollow - "Tunnel back here! Help me with this!" he cried out, reaching into one of his many pockets for a small reciprocating saw and attacking one of the bolts.

After less than a minute of frantic cutting and yanking, the panel fell free, revealing another narrow conduit leading into the darkness. Forge looked back at the advancing meatspores and called out to Jan. The inch-tall woman zipped back past his face and into the tunnel, followed by the rest of the group. As they fled, Forge reached back to slap a puttylike substance against the edge of the hole, scampering down the cramped tunnel after his friends as a low *whump* sounded behind them, followed by the noise of collapsing concrete.

The tunnel now closed off behind them - the only way was forward.