>>6320221<Ladies first.>
"Wuss."
INSIDE (The White Chamber OST - 02. Station Ambience [2005])
https://youtu.be/T4TN5O24L_EYou follow your employer down a maintenance tunnel and it feels like burrowing under the skin of the city. The sunlight and the noises of life and activity fade away behind you. You follow, matching your employer pace by pace. The only sounds you hear are the hum of lights and the sounds of footsteps. Twists and turns with no end in sight. This isn't a part of the city you're used to, but this feels... familiar. Intimate, bizarrely, disgustingly enough. Almost like the station, but you feel as you can hear the rumbling of machines through the miles of concrete and steel and metamaterial in every direction. Garcian ducks under another hanging section of disemboweled pipework and grumbles. Somehow, Mr. Foster navigates this mess with the unbroken pace of someone confident in knowing where he's going.
<God fucking damnit, Dan where the FUCK are we?>
"Relax. Just wait for Mr. Foster to tell us."
<... I don't even know if a Teleport can bring us out of here. We're really deep in...>
Before you can tell off Garcian for leaking his agitation all over the place (which is your mind), the gas-masked banker stops in front of a seemingly indistinct section of corridor and takes a right into the darkness. The corridor narrows further to the width of two men as you follow him.
This place looks like it was abandoned in a hurry. Lots of paper trash and other debris are scattered about haphazardly down this hallway. A few of the garbage 'mons should have gobbled it up by now, but this place is oddly lifeless...
There is a doorway here, illuminated by the only light in the entire hall. The metal door looks like has been forced open from the inside through sheer force, right down the middle of its interconnecting "teeth," then roughly forced back into position. Through the open mouth, a cool air blows and you wrinkle your nose at the faint miasma wafting down. This stench of decay is familiar; you've smelled it before, back on the station.
There are smells that stick with you for the rest of your life, and the scent of a human body rotting in a sweltering back tunnel is one of them.
<...>
"..."
Mr. Foster turns to you two and says quite blithely, "Have I ever told you lot how much it suck being a landlord? You get it all set up right and then the tenant up and dies."
Garcian cracks up first, then four of you all share a hearty chuckle at the crummy joke.
