Conway & Summer
IDN:
CN-13035772,
UT-06211554
<~★~>
The sound of Jaycie's small squeak seemed to echo in the small, dark tunnel, reverberating in Conway's ribs with cold tendrils of fear that wrapped around his freshly Sapient lungs. No, no, no. This was not the time to panic. There was no room for panic. A hand gripped his shoulder with a warm intensity, and he looked back into Summer's grinning face, letting out a breath and trying to absorb some of the radiant confidence in her expression. Resolute, he turned back to watch Jaycie's hand signals, nodding his understanding before returning her thumbs up and fist bump and watching her descend.
When Jaycie reached the first level, a little more quickly than Conway had anticipated, he swung himself down onto the ladder. He had an unfortunate penchant for climbing, considering he wasn't the most agile of dexters, but he much preferred climbing
up to climbing
down. The latter felt a bit too much like controlled falling, which was his least favourite way of getting anywhere. In the passageway, the faintest of noises from below were amplified, the sound of gears and other machinery whispering around him. Dust had begun to plume in the air, displaced from the ladder by their feet and hands, and he tried not to breathe too deeply, tried to reduce the chances he might sneeze. The thought tugged the corner of his lips into the slightest curve, a ghost of a smile as he remembered the Red Panda's antics.
But a familiar sound interrupted his thoughts, so normal and yet somehow so out of place that he found himself stopping, foot dangling, halfway to the next rung. A case of fragile plant bulbs being opened. Conway's brow furrowed, whiskers twitching, and he cocked his head to the side, trying to hear better. There was the sound of movement, something squirming, something writhing, and Conway swallowed the whimper that flooded his mouth before it could escape. Something slid against metal, but the cramped tunnel sent the sounds bouncing around him, and he couldn't figure out where it was.
>>Jaycie, stop,<< he transmitted, after a cold realization that the Jay would still be descending. He looked up, looking at the dark, blurry form of Summer still perched above the ladder, waiting and watching, but before he could transmit a warning, a suggestion, a cry for help, or anything, a smell filled his nose, the uncomfortable tang of machine oil, and he looked wildly around for the Drones.
Impossible, Conway told himself, beginning to shake as he held onto the ladder.
They would never fit in here. He tilted his face down, then up, sniffing purposefully, eyes closed to try and magnify the scent, and he caught something new coming from above, a smell that was jarring for its out of place familiarity. Compost.
Summer smelled it, too, but not until she had blinked a few times, briefly uncertain if the flickering was an anomaly of her vision or some sort of electrical issue with the dim, orange lights above her. The back of her neck prickled, and her instincts told her to look up, but she resisted, keeping her eyes on the passage into which her friends had been descending. Jaycie had wanted her to watch, so by golly she'd do it, regardless of the metaphorical feeling of jaws closing around her. But the smell—her nose was wrinkling, and she covered the lower half of her face with her sleeve. It smelled like death, like decay, and even through her thin sleeve, it seemed to settle in her throat, and she swallowed to avoid gagging, looking up in an attempt to clear her watering eyes—
She froze, terror eclipsing the confidence she had been aggressively portraying as she spotted a talon disappearing from view just as a scuttling, skittering sound began, and her gaze dropped to the darkness before her, or more precisely, the moving shadow that was coming towards her. Clamping her lips shut, Summer leaned over the edge, looking first at the pale, terrified countenance of the Hedgehog, and then below, at Jaycie, and then even lower, her eyes drawn to the movement of another shadowed shape moving up, towards them. If she warned them of what was above them, they might continue to descend. If she warned them about below, they might come back up. Knuckles turning white, she gripped the edge of the metal floor.
For some reason, Conway's thoughts returned to Shilo, recalling the Red Panda's wild sneezing. He wrapped one arm quickly around the side of the ladder so he could press his other hand to his mouth to stifle the hysterical laughter that threatened to bubble forth. Shilo had mentioned an allergy, something about an allergy—why was this memory bothering him? He shook his head, trying to focus, trying to rein in the panic, when a new sound appeared, a sound that set every instinct in his body screaming to
run, to
hide, to curl up into a ball, the skittering, metallic sound of something coming towards them,
fast.
Whatever it was, Summer could see light glinting off of it, as if it were made of something shiny. By the time she managed to shake off the frozen shock, she could see its eye, red and pulsing, and its many, many legs. She couldn't transmit BCT; silence wasn't an option anymore.
"Y'ALL GET OFF THIS LADDER!" she shouted, trying to infuse her words with as much fear as she could, flinging herself onto the rungs above Conway and descending with panicked haste, physically preventing the two other dexes from returning to the level where the first shadow prowled. Her voice echoing around the passageway was gratingly loud, and the Hedgehog shook off his own mental paralysis, descending quickly, just in time to avoid being stepped on by Summer.
>>Come up here, Jaycie,<< he transmitted, clambering onto the floor of the level below where they'd begun, not trusting his actual voice to be loud enough to reach her. Summer followed, immediately throwing herself onto her belly so she could scoot to the edge of the floor and look down at the Jay, ready to pull her up or fight off any unwanted followers should it be necessary.