[indent][sub][i]featuring [@Odin][/i][/sub][/indent]
Laura took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before nodding. “Yes, sir.” Everything about the dark pit that yawned in front of them felt [i]wrong[/i], but it would be equally wrong to ignore it. What would they tell the Paladin? [i]‘We found a giant hole that led underground but we were too scared to explore it?’[/i] They were Brotherhood, damnit, and that counted for something. If Knight-Sergeant McDowell wasn’t afraid then neither was she. 

That said, she couldn’t follow him exactly the way he did, for Gregory threw himself into the pit feet-first, the battle cry of the Brotherhood of Steel echoing off the warehouse’s walls -- and the underground tunnel’s shaft as well. “Ad Victoriaaaaaaaaa...aa..aa..m...” She waited until she heard the satisfyingly loud and earth-trembling [i]thud[/i] that indicated that he had hit the bottom before she turned around and began to climb down the hole. She wasn’t exactly a natural-born rock climber or anything, but there had been plenty of rough terrain to cross on her way to Washington and she was limber enough to have relatively little difficulty making her way down. The walls of the shaft weren’t smooth and provided plenty of hand- and footholds for her to use. 

She reached the bottom and wiped her hands on her trousers before turning back to face the looming darkness ahead. Beyond the armored shape of McDowell a tunnel stretched away from them, surprisingly large -- wide enough for them to easily walk abreast and so high that the Knight-Sergeant didn’t have to crouch -- and remarkably… natural. The word popped into her mind and Laura took a second to ponder why. A soft ‘ah!’ escaped her as she realized why; it wasn’t just the shaft that led down to this level that was hewn roughly from the dirt and rock, but the tunnel too. The difference between this and the underground Vault that had been her home, her whole world, for most of her life, was remarkable. It was almost as if it hadn’t been carved out of the earth by human hands. 

That thought did nothing to assuage her anxiety. She brought her laser rifle to bear and it hummed to life as she flipped the safety off. Without looking at McDowell, her eyes fixed on the gloom, Laura cleared her throat and said: “Ready.” 

The bad juju vibe McDowell had been feeling hadn’t gotten any better, and seemed to only progressively get worse. It was like he’d swallowed a stone -- probably not outside of the realm of possibilities when McDowell was involved -- and it had firmly lodged itself both in his throat and his stomach. But the switching off of the safety of Grimshaw’s weapon pulled him back to where they were, which was to say a giant cave in a warehouse which looked suspiciously like a tunnel dug by fire ants, or something to that effect. There had been reports once, of a crazed scientist in a sewer somewhere asking for help with his crazy fire ant experiments. Perhaps they had escaped and moved here?

McDowell’s armour slowly whirred up and he began moving forward, the incessant thumping of his armour alerting everyone and their mother in the tunnel that he was arriving. Something like a knight in shining armour, or a tank rolling into a village. No matter the analogies he would come up with, it didn’t take the edge off. Whatever they were about to find was… [i]bad[/i]. If even McDowell could realize that, it meant they were really in the shit. 

After a few minutes of walking, things had seemed to be quiet enough for McDowell to presume that perhaps the place was safe after all, but he couldn’t have been further from the truth. The sound was characteristical, at least to McDowell, who had heard the sound a hundred times while he still lived out here in Boston. The burrowing under ground, that annoying screeching sound they made when they surfaced. He raised a hand momentarily, signalling to Laura that they were to stop. “Rats. Molerats,” he warned her, before mumbling off to himself, “fucking dirty creatures.” Well, no hammer to smash them. He pushed one of his feet back through the dirt, getting ready to start using his fists.

What came next was a group, no, a [i]horde[/i] of molerats scurrying through, their sound drowning out any command or order McDowell could have given to Laura had he seen the need. There must’ve been ten, twenty, maybe even thirty of them, large and small, and even a broodmother somewhere in the mix. But rather than fight the would be intruders that were Laura and Gregory, they just sort of ran past them as fast as they could. In the distance, a soft humming noise was barely audible, just barely. More of them?

“What the…?” Laura breathed. Her finger was so tight around the trigger that the laser rifle could have gone off at the slightest provocation, but the sight of the molerats avoiding them, swarming past their legs, and even climbing on top of each other along the sides of the tunnel in their haste to get away, was enough for her to stand down. If they weren’t going to fight her, she wasn’t about to turn them into ash. But that left a burning question in her mind: what were they running [i]from?[/i]

Slowly Gregories head turned back to see if Laura had come out unscathed, and once he confirmed it for himself, he lowered his hand and pushed onwards through the hundreds of particles of dust the molerats had kicked up. Disgusting creatures. Probably wallowed in their own shit, probably even used it to tunnel their disgusting little tunnel networks. He pitied Laura, who was probably breathing in shit particles as they moved.

Slowly but surely, they came closer to their mark, and slowly but surely, the markings on the wall would become clearer, more fresh, deeper too. 

Laura stepped closer to the wall and ran her fingers along a jagged edge in the bedrock. “Sir,” she said, even a whisper almost deafeningly loud in the confines of the tunnel, and turned her head to look at McDowell. “These markings… don’t they look like… like claw marks to you, sir?” She took a few steps back to behold the wall in its entirety and followed a grouping of lines in the stone with her eyes. One, two, three, parallel to each other, four inches deep and six feet long. She had to crane her neck and look up to see where they ended, near the ceiling of the tunnel… easily ten feet from the ground. 

All Gregory could do was shrug a shrug that went hidden by his armour. “Dunno.”

A memory flashed through her mind’s eye and she heard the words of men she used to know echo through time. [i]A demon.[/i] 

“I think we should turn back,” the Initiate whispered. Now, she was well and truly afraid. 

For a moment Gregory would hold back while Laura worked on her little theory. He couldn’t deny that he felt the same way, or at the very least, that there was something to be wary about here. Fear did not consume him -- that was not his way -- so he held his ground as she studied the markings. The humming noise continued, as if something was deeper down, breathing. Perhaps a dragon, like the Grognak comics used to show, but minus the fire.

“Claws, maybe,” Gregory responded, “turn back, no. If paladin Moss wants to make camp here, the last thing we need is a horde of shit-tunnelers underneath us, disturbing the earth where we sleep.” He thought about what he said, his head slowly turning back towards the deeper end of the tunnel, where the breathing sounds came from. Admittedly, whatever was down there seemed a little bigger than a molerat. Maybe an overgrown one? With giant claws? It must’ve been pretty obvious to Laura what they’d find here, but McDowell did not seem to give the impression that he knew, or even that he cared. 

After a meaningful silence of a few seconds, he turned back to face Laura. His entire body turned with it, the power armour whirring loudly. “You should go back and inform paladin Moss of what we’ve found,” he ordered her, and while his wording was friendly… enough… it was very clear from the way he used his voice that he wasn’t asking her, he was telling her. This was unusual for McDowell, who would usually be the first to resign command to someone else, preferably more senior and older and… just generally more like the leadership of the Brotherhood. He followed orders, that’s who he was and that’s what he did. But this whole situation stank. Maybe if Laura had been a lancer or scribe, or even a knight, he might’ve ordered her to stand her ground and fall in line. But sending an initiate to face off unknown threats was hardly realistic, even for a man like McDowell. 

He turned back to face that great unknown darkness in front of him. If there was one way to convince paladin Moss and elder Maxson just how capable he was, Gregory figured, this might just be it. If only Atomic Annie was here. “I’ll hold the line here, see what I can’t find out. Ad Victoriam, Initiate!” He thumped his chest again, saluting her, and then turned around.	

Laura straightened to her full height, as short as that might be, and cleared her throat. She wasn’t one to disobey orders readily but this was beyond foolish; it was suicidal. “Respectfully, sir,” she said, the sudden loudness of her voice even more penetrating than her whispers, “you don’t even have a weapon, and the only creature I know of that’s tall and strong enough to do [i]this[/i] to bedrock,” she continued and gestured to the wall, “is a Deathclaw. I don’t say this to diminish your skill, Knight-Sergeant, but if that’s what’s waiting for us down there… I don’t fancy the odds. Our orders were to explore the warehouse, not to exterminate whatever we found. We should return to the Paladin. Both of us.” 

Without any further commentary, he stepped forwards again, slowly but surely fading from Laura’s sight until all she would hear was that mechanical whirring of the pneumatic joints of the power armour, and the low bass of the breathing further down the tunnel.

“McDowell!” she hissed, using the man’s name for the first time. She almost set off after him, stopped, took another step and stopped again. “Fuck!” A hot flash of anger at Gregory’s dismissal of her words flared up inside her gut and that which had been made weak by fear in her mind turned to steel. “Oh, no you don’t,” Laura said through gritted teeth and raised her rifle to her cheek, her heart pounding against her ribs and her fingers tight around the grip of her weapon to stop them from trembling. She followed the Knight-Sergeant. The big dumb idiot wasn't getting a hero's death. 

Not on her watch.