Khaliya, The Swordwind
December 3rd, 2286
New York City Metro - Blue Line
Interacting with - @Dread@darkwolf687
As two of their number ventured into the collapsed tunnel, Khaliya was left with a moment of stillness and a group who seemed once more on the verge themselves. Idleness allowed the demons inside to explore, and while their walk was not quite as eventful as expected or fruitful as most would have desired, it provided a distraction. Now one was shouting at ghosts from a tear in her suit, and others were shifting back to the barely constrained hostility towards one another. Thankfully the suddenly quite talkative westerner spoke up, asking questions about the objective. From the way he spoke, the subtle inflections of a life far from here and the armor he wore that she spotted on entering the subway, it was clear at least to her that he was from some place far to the west.
"The USSR was our rival before the war, yes, but not quite an enemy." She spoke out at last, turning to press her back against the metal of the railcar. At least this could distract the group a little more while they waited, but she kept a keen ear on the radio at all times in case they ran into trouble. "There's evidence of some loose cooperation between our countries, and that the USSR was closer to us than the Chinese. We could have found them a mutual enemy, and in light of that, it wouldn't be quite out of the question for the Russians to have stored away essential documents at the Consulate in case Moscow fell."
To the side Jeremiah was staring at her, his posture questioning as what she spoke of wasn't quite common knowledge even in the Brotherhood. It was information kept within the deeper archives, history that the scribes tended to carefully. She could only smirk behind her helmet as she wondered just what he was thinking, expecting more questions once they found a place to camp for the night. It didn't matter much though, not to her and not right now.
"There have been some vague mentions of an agreement like that, and points to a secured bunker beneath the Consulate to store classified information from both nations. Obviously we can't know for sure what is down there until we get there, but considering the untouched nature of the city it's likely we'll find at least something of value."
Hopefully that would satisfy his curiosity for now and give the rest of them something to think about. Her gaze passed over Monika for a moment, watching her recover and weighing her options carefully. The radiation level here was tolerable, but she wasn't sure if it would be worth the risk to have one of their medics examine her. Especially if their scouts came out of the tunnel in a hurry. Instead, she took the middle ground and gestured towards the smaller girl.
"Give her a glance over real quick. If it's urgent, we'll take up firing positions, otherwise we'll have to wait until first camp to treat any wounds or radiation poisoning."
With every step the local radiation levels increased, already in the red by the time the pair reached the central point of the tunnel and where the first carriage connected to the second. Here it had begun to twist, the violent derailing it suffered so long ago having flipped the entire train on its side. The weight of the tunnel above had also come down harder here, as the sides were not quite as resilient to that kind of pressure. What was presented to them was a crawlspace of crumpled metal and on the other side a darkened carriage.
Inside it was empty, completely devoid of bodies unlike the prior one, vague streaks across the floor to imply there had once been people there. They led in one singular direction, the only one available. By now their geiger counters had stopped functioning, past the maximum reading of a thousand rads. Despite the suits they would both feel a growing heat inside the subway car. Most of it was from the intensity of the radioactive field they were scouting, but something else was clearly at work the deeper they went. That much became clearer when the opening of the carriage was illuminated by a flashlight and the subtle blue glow beyond waxed just slightly.
A glint of something in the beyond caught the light here and there, throwing shadows across the tunnel and drawing their attention to the central rail. Still there was no sign of the bodies except the direction they had been taken, more and more debris formed along the sides of a narrow pathway until it simply spilled out onto the ground at the end of the carriage. Skulls and bones lay scattered across the dirt and stone, snapped and hollow as if drained of the marrow. Some even looked somewhat fresh, and it was on that revelation that a sickening crunch was heard from just in front of the pair.
Light played across a towering figure of hardened black angles, gore dripping from razored edges and pooling at its feet. Now as if realizing the danger before them, the wheeze of long-neglected pistons and gears carried around them. It was clad head to foot in a grotesque parody of power armor, ropes of sinew binding the various original pieces to the shattered frame. From the back, nothing seemed untouched by violence in some way or another. Bullet holes riddled the torso and thighs of the armor, many straight through from high-caliber penetrations that scattered light on the tunnel walls across from them. Scorch marks from flamers and laser impacts showed where at various points someone had tried to torch it or hit the weak joints, some of them obscured by crudely bolted on plates of steel, iron or even bone.
Yet it was the helmet that drew the most attention as the creature was occupied by its feeding, the swept-back structure of it marred by more battle-damage, including one lense blown out from what clearly looked like a plasma impact. To the average wastelander it might have been just another variant piece, perhaps one rarer than the others, but those few in the know would have recognized it immediately. For Devon and Emil however, they would get their revelation as the creature suddenly stopped moving. With a painfully slow turn of its upper body, it turned to regard the two onlookers, the remains of a ghoul in a metal-shod fist with fresh bite marks along the broken bone jutting from the corpse. Regardless of the display of cannibalism before them, everything about the creature screamed out that it should not be, that it should have died long before now. The damage the armor displayed from behind was nothing to what greeted them as it dropped its meal and regarded them fully.
More ramshackle repairs had been done to patch various holes in the chest and shoulder, glowing necrotic ooze leaking from obviously fresh bullet holes, and a still smoldering plasma-burn at the collar. Both gauntlets had the fingers sharpened to a point, the jagged edges showing where it had held them against a grinder and cut them with a torch. A section of its chest was completely missing, glowing blue ribs wet and twitching from the steady rhythm of its breath and now carrying a stench over to the scouts. It overpowered the filters in their hazmat suits, a smell of death rich and pungent, far worse than even the feral ghoul reavers. The creature crunched down on the fragments of bone remaining in its mouth, teeth of broken steel catching the light and dripping with gore. Staring back at them, thick staples held what was left of its face onto its skull, as if at one point it had been carved off and it tried to put it back on. Many hung loosely around the jaw and chin, the simple act of trying to feed itself tearing them loose and showing the necrotized muscle beneath.
Neither eye remained, only hollow sockets that tracked their every movement as if it could still see them, and it confirmed that as it slowly stood to full height, revealing that it had been mostly hunched over. Now towering in the tunnel, a single patch of pristine black paint caught the light. It was the one singular place that seemed untouched by the depravity and horror of the occupant, a brilliant white "E" surrounded by stars on the left shoulder. Then it spoke. Mouth cracking open for a use that was clearly unfamiliar to the abomination, its voice was akin to the first breath of an opened sarcophagus.
"You're not supposed to be here."
