Rogue: From The Shadows

Chapter 2

He tumbled roughly down the stone incline, hitting a ledge and effectively knocking the wind out of him before sailing through the darkness somersaulting multiple times before crashing face down into the water. Dakota pulled himself up from the water heaving for air as a pair of strong hands gripped his shoulders and brought him back to his feet, once his ears stopped ringing, he could hear Rae's internal Geiger crackling loudly. He whipped his head around and looked up in utter confusion, as far as he could see there was nowhere, he could have fallen in from not even any source or form of light. Just crushing darkness. His eyes, after some time of looking around, locked onto two glowing aquamarine orbs in the darkness. The eyes brightened just enough to illuminate both Dakota and Rae's faces in the oppressing darkness, she flashed him a smile and his rage rose over his confusion.

"Fancy meeting you down- "

The moment he recovered from his dazed state the hyena's fist shot out and rocked the synth as his eyes began to adjust to the darkness. Her head snapped back in pain as his fist connected with her jaw, she nearly toppled over into the water, "What's your major malfunction? The hell were you thinking?! You drag us through a damn warzone and now we're stuck in wherever this is!"

"If you shut the hell up a minute, I'd tell you." He could faintly make out the wolf massaging her jaw, "You been working out? Sorry. Right. Although that didn't go as planned, thanks to you rushing my explosive work... We're right were the Minimap SatNav says we should be. Though... This place isn't on any maps almost like this underground passage doesn't exist, well it wouldn't exist on Imperial maps at least. I know this place, old Hellfire smuggling route. We used to run data chips and guns through here. They just stopped using it a few years back though, always wondered why."

His rage slowly ebbed as he took a few deep breaths.

"So, then this is what that AI intended to happen?"

"Looks like it." She sounded quite annoyed now and pointed off in the dark, "I came down the same alley, took the same tumble you did. If we fast march due about... say that way, we can easily get ourselves outta here."

"This place is also flooded with radioactive water and we're about waist-deep in it. I'd rather not die in an irradiated hole."

There was something that both could come to an agreement on. They began to trudge through the water in silence, Dakota up front leading with the flashlight on the barrel of his gun and Rae on his tail monitoring her motion tracker. The combined echoes of the churning water and the Geiger began to make the cavern seem to stretch endlessly. The hyena wanted nothing but to fill the permeable silence with some kind of conversation, but something didn't quite sit right with him, the cave was devoid of life as far as he could tell but he felt the glare of something watching the both of them and if it lived down in the dank hole they were in it couldn't be friendly. The cavern seemed alive, the darkness breathing, it made Kota's skin crawl. They could both feel the unnatural silence. It felt alive, moving just beyond their vision and slowly constricting them. Oddly enough, Dakota noticed his flashlight seemingly becoming dimmer, yet he kept this to himself as Rae had no need for a flashlight. 

No need to worry her with a trivial matter, he thought absentmindedly.

"Wait!" Rae hissed sounding on edge, "You hear that? Like someone's- "

"Using the cover of our movement to converge on us? I had a suspicion." At this point, the hyena was already getting slightly nauseous, but the feeling evaporated when he heard the movement this time.