After being drenched in sewage
water, the drain drops Vera off in the next layer of the sewer. She attempts to
swim to a nearby ladder and barely manages to. As she wipes herself off and her
body expunges the sewage it picked up along the way, she notices that this layer
is extremely darker than the last layer. She can barely see ahead of herself as
her eye adjusts to the environment. This darkness makes her hesitant to move
forward, but she moves forward nonetheless.
Another way this layer is different
is that trash and decaying bodies are left out to rot, however, the sewage
system is only running in certain areas, which makes it possible for Vera to go
down sewage pipes without having to fight against the sewage water. Some paths
are so blocked up that she has to use the sewage pipes to move forward. Some of
the robots and androids who clean the sewers are damaged or destroyed with cut
marks and dried blood on them, however, there are no bodies around them. From
what Vera sees, she assumes that the man that Susurro was talking about destroyed
the robots here and forced the city to shut off parts of this portion of the sewers.
This entire layer appears to be empty after many minutes of wandering around. That
is until Vera sees a light flickering in the distance.
She heads towards it and finds a
door with a lantern outside of it. Tinkering with it, she finds that it can
only flicker and not light up. Trying out the door, she finds that it’s locked.
There’s no one around and the lantern has to be manually operated to flicker. When
she puts her ear to the door, she can hear voices behind it. The door then
immediately opens to reveal a naked man with an orgy happening behind him that
stops when the door opens.
“Ah, I’m sorry that if I disturbed
you,” Vera says.
“No, you didn’t disturb us at all.
When I saw you, I flickered the light so that you know that you can come in and
join us.”
“I’ll pass.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing
out on.”
“Trust me, I do.”
“Are you new here?”
“Yeah. How did people like you get
passed the previous layer?”
“We got passed by going down the
sewer drains before they were being covered. Some of us even managed to cut our
way through the coverings and get into the drains that way. I’m assuming you
did that.”
“Is there any other entrance to
this layer?”
“Not that I know of. All the other
entrances are severely blocked with rubble, trash, bodies, you name it. Do you
have someone chasing after you?”
“Kind of. I’m trying to get to the
bottom of the sewer.”
“Good luck with that. I think it’s
better if you stay with us.”
“No thank you.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Can you tell me where the exit is
to this layer?”
“It’s past a guy named the hollow man.
If you’re lucky, you’ll never encounter him. He’s a guy that scares even
Susurro because of how well he’s able to use the darkness to his advantage. The
guy finds people via sound so throw something in a different direction to distract
him because if you see him, you’re dead. He leaves us alone for the most part
as long as we don’t enter his area.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“You’re welcome to always come back
or you could go into one of the other rooms with lanterns near them. We meet the
other two groups of people for some group fun.”
“I’m not even going to consider it.”
Vera walks away and enters what feels
like a darker area of the sewer because there’s nothing around here except
blood, body parts, and trash. The sound of bare feet walking on the concrete
floors of the sewers perks Vera’s ears as she now knows that the hollow man is
nearby. She picks up a nearby finger and throws it far in the opposite
direction of where she is walking. Before moving on, she closely listens to the
sound of the footstep to hear if they changed direction and they don’t. Using
her abilities, she cuts out a piece of concrete and throws it. This louder
noise gets the hollow man walking in a different direction.
The sound of the hollow man gets
further and further away for a while until they stop then turn to head back into
Vera’s direction. She assumes that her own footsteps are too loud despite how
quiet she’s being, so she repeats what she did and tries to walk quieter this
time. The same thing happens again. Vera now assumes that she has to do this
repeatedly, however, the next distraction doesn’t cause the man to move in a different
direction. This time he moves faster in Vera’s direction. It appears that he’s
learned that the pieces of concrete are being thrown and focuses on the sound
of the direction that they’re being thrown in rather than the sound of broken
concrete hitting the floor.
Unsure of what to do now, Vera quickens
her pace. As she keeps moving forward, she comes across a clogged exit. Looking
around she finds what appears to be part of Susurro’s body, but it’s cut off. Hearing
the man getting closer, Vera hides in the crevice. She tries to remain as still
and as calm as possible as the sounds of footsteps get louder and louder. The
sounds come to a halt close to where she is, and a deafening silence ensues in
Vera’s ear as she is too nervous to do anything. After a couple minutes of
waiting, she turns her head to look out of her hiding spot to see nothing. She then
peaks out of the spot to see the hollow man for a second before being knocked
unconscious.
She wakes up chained to a wall
while feeling as if every part of her body had been cut. Looking forward, she
sees what looks to be her husband who is dressed normally and looks normal.
In a daze, she says, “I’m sorry.”
Vera kisses his face then wakes up
to see the hollow man. She immediately jolts back in her transformed state,
which breaks half her chains. The hollow man pins up her against the wall and
now that she has a better look at him, she doesn’t know what to make of him.
His head is split in two along with his legs, and arms. There are holes in his
body where vital organs should be. The man’s appearance alone suggests he
shouldn’t be alive or functioning, but he is. He’s able to hold Vera’s hand
against the wall ever so gently as she struggles to free herself.
As the man looks down at her, Vera asks,
“W-what do you want from me?”
The hollow man leans his head forward.
“Oh.”
Vera hesitantly kisses the man’s
head again, but this is not what he wants as he shakes his head.
“Huh? Do you want me to say that I’m
sorry instead? Why?”
The hollow man doesn’t move.
“Okay, well, since there’s no getting
around it. I’m sorry.”
The hollow man then softly embraces
Vera. She racks her brain to try to find an answer as to who this man might be
that he wanted to hear her say sorry and only one answer comes out.
“It can’t be…”
Vera holds the face of the hollow
man who holds her hand. The hollow man then jolts back as if fighting over
control of his own body. He beckons Vera with his hand in a cutting motion
around his head. Understand what he wants, Vera cuts off the hollow man’s head
who violently spazzes around before falling to his knees while holding out his hand
for her. She feels a need to hold it and she does so. The two hold hands until
Vera no longer feels the man’s grip. She then let’s go as the hollow man’s body
crumbles.
“What happened?” she asks herself
as she frees herself from her chains. “It couldn’t have been…was it really…”
Knowing the only answer in her head
without any real confirmation makes her want to avoid it, so she moves on and
finds a sewage drain that leads further down. She follows it until she comes
across running sewage water.
“Tch. Here we go again.”
Vera halfheartedly leaps into the
running water as she is carried by it into the next layer of the sewer. Unfortunately
for her, the drain drops her off into the hands of Belladonna who’s been
waiting for her at the drain’s exit. Vera is impaled by Belladonna’s blade as
she falls from the drain and struggles to move but can’t find the strength to.
“I knew you’d make it,” Belladonna
says with her transformed form smiling ever so greedily.
This song, Beauty Through the Eyes of a Predator by Demon Hunter, is the song that I closely associate with this story. I think it does a good job of describing people in the story.
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