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You regret not taking a spare voice changer. You chirp out in your real voice,
>"I'm just passing on by to the lower levels. Not Syndicate."
You stay on guard and measure their reactions, Big Iron at the ready. No violent reaction. Good. They keep speaking in tongues quietly until the seemingly nonsense syllables <span class="mu-i">congeal</span> into words:
"Cool, cool -- cool."
"Okay"
"Ok"
"Well well well what do we have here?"
"nice shot"
And so on. Then one laughs. He jabs his fat finger at you repeatedly, with the same robotic thrust each time.
There's no joke, at least, none you can hear, but they all share in the laughter. It's a familiar sound and it gets a rise out of you. Yes, it's one of your own laughs thrown back at you — loud, deep, hard, and mocking, echoing up and down the tunnels.
There's that prey feeling again; predators all around, ready to feast if they turn their dread attention upon you. Then, pure resentment. The thought of instantly killing everyone when you fire your gun crosses your mind. Each bullet is worth more than these scumsucker's lives.
But in the end, you simply don't care enough to do that. All that matters here is reaching your <span class="mu-s">Objective</span>. Just walking away from all this is fine. You're the biggest man here and you could give less of a shit about these miserable lowlifes living around in the bottom of the literal shitter.
Even as they laugh, the hunting party is wading into the water, hacking apart floating chunks of crocodile with decisive cuts from their knives, splashing and murmuring all the while. Scant seconds have passed and they've already lost interest in you. Chop, chop, chop. Everything's fine, get back to work onto the bigger and better projects in our station in life.
There's only one Grey standing on "dry" land. He's glaring intensely at you.
"Go west. Left. Elevator," Spearman says tersely, his voice somehow audible above the commotion. He reaches into a pocket and throws a pristine bruise pack at your feet. You take it. "Payment rendered. Get out of here before we kill you, you fucking insect nigger."
He laughs hard once, then joins his fellows. You get moving. Forget it, LEAD, just keep your cool.
<span class="mu-g">Looks like that's all for now...</span>
