The buzzing noise levels off somewhere below your level. Those that peer over the edge can barely make out the outlines of the form below. At first it seems like a huge, droning, shifting mass, until you realize that what you are seeing is the result of a great number of lesser forms moving in a swarm. Vision magnification allows you to focus in on it even closer, and the sight is repulsive. Most of the swarm is composed of hideous crosses between metahumans and bugs, insects with the occasional very human arm, leg, or head. Sprinkled among them are a few perfect wasps that move around the edges, seemingly on guard for something.
It almost feels like something clicks in your heads as you recognize the wasps spirits. You know they can be dangerous, but somehow, the sight of them is almost comforting. For a reason that you can't quite place, the fact that they are around suggests that things are not as bad as they could be. The swarm is moving slowly among the arcs of water coming from various pipes along the walls. It looks like they are carefully trying to avoid touching the water spilling from most of them.
They approach one arcing stream after a while, two of the hybrid bugs flying forward, apparently spending a few minutes testing it. It seems to meet their criteria, because the rest of the swarm starts to gather around it, and you realize that almost all of them are carrying a various assortment of containers, which they fill from the spray.
Fade isn't privy of this, his attention occupied with getting the maintenance hatch open. It's difficult. The manual mechanism is stubborn, and hanging off of the wall gave him precious little leverage to attempt to work it. He gets it open a third of the way when the mechanism jamed, and as he struggled, he got a whiff of what's on the other side. Rotting meat, like an entire slaughterhouse compressed down to fit into the smaller space, and a sudden sound of scrabbling movement. At that moment, the mechanism came unstuck, and the sudden shift of weight almost pulled Fade from the wall. He hung by one hand for a moment, facing out into the chasm as he scrabbled to try and get his gecko gear to grip the wall again.
Because he was facing away from the wall, he saw the silently falling white things first. There were dozens of them, man sized, but moving too fast to see in detail. Those looking down at the swarm become aware of them when the first one comes close enough for you to feel the wind of it's passage. As it continues to fall, its head whips out on a long, flexible neck, arching back over it's shoulder to stare up at you with a blank, expressionless face. It's the same face that belonged to the head that
Ace found when you all awoke. There is a burning, acid feeling of hate in your minds as you recognize your enemy.
The shapes fall admidst the swarm, some fastening onto the starteled hybrid wasps, falling out of sight in a flailing mass, others leaping from hovering bug to bug, ripping and clawing, the last few somehow attaching themselves to the metal walls, slicing into everything they can reach with limbs that seem to telescope out as the swarm explodes into furious response.
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[ Spoiler ]
The situation is:
Fade is holding onto the wall again, no worries about falling. The hatch is about 1/3 open.
Greven has his back to the wall and is on top of the pipe.
Gromitz is lying prone at the mouth of the pipe.
Ares is covering back the way they came, standing beside Gromitz.
Ace is also at the mouth of the pipe (it's a little crowded with the three of you there, but not dangerously so).
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Ace/Ar/Gro
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-----| \/ Bugs about sixty meters down.
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