>>5832947That changed as you found your way out of the crowds, and you found yourself suddenly out of your depth. Where was there to hide in long, straight corridors? There wasn't any, and instead you opt to use your previous strategy and pretend like you were supposed to be there. When they glanced back to look, you would intentionally keep going straight, or take a different turn than them as if you had your own business.
If you spied them at a distant intersection, you would intentionally avoid them and loop around, forming a search area for you to narrow down. This strategy takes you far, and you begin to find blocked off and sealed sections of walls, yet again breached and closed to create the perimeter that seemingly enclosed the grinders. From this side, the barricades were flat expanses of welded metal, clearly intended to be difficult to find purchase on, but it only reminded you that you were on the side of whatever they were designed to keep out. They had clearly been battered by years of use, with scratches and the occasional pockmark from firearms present... although some were so old that you wonder if they had simply been part of whatever metal was repurposed for them.
As you travel deeper, the hab lights become more irregular. More of the walls become stripped, and the floor is occasionally damp with collected puddles of condensation that your boots leave ripples in as you walk. Finally, though, you catch sight of what you've been hoping for: the unmistakable shadow of one of the merchants traveling in the <span class="mu-i">opposite</span> direction than you. They were heading back, and that meant you could close your search area.
You close your loop, moving deeper into the underhive - the <span class="mu-i">bilges</span>, if you recall - to create your zone of searching. All you needed to do now was systematically close down these blocks, one by one, until you found one of the stashes. And if you were lucky, the person you saw had only just turned back around, with the stash being nearby.
Down each hallway you come across, you open each and every locker you find, followed by searching every sub-hall and maintenance closet, along with the rare storage rooms. They were all abandoned, likely the Suns work trying to keep their guard perimeter clear. Your eyes adjust to the darkness of the intermittent lighting as you rummage, and you're soon moving at speed, aware of how as you get closer to the city, the likelihood of actually finding one of these stashes goes down.
It soon becomes clear that whoever it was had intentionally taken a convoluted path - likely to foil people like you - and they had deposited their goods somewhere away from where you had seen them, which forced you to be thorough with your searches. You pull rags and discarded hypodermic needles, bandages, broken equipment and who knows what else aside, gripping it through the cloth of your coveralls to avoid touching them directly. You feel the metal siding, rattling on it in case it was loose or-
