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He let himself be pushed, and it was only at the realization that Kostya would go whether he did or not that he relented at all, although he was still taut as a guitar string. Whether he might, at the ultimate moment of truth, decide against it after all remained undetermined. Had he known that she was there, had he known her to be underneath the base, had he known, he would not have hesitated: he would have been underground long before this. But he knew nothing, except that he was afraid, so afraid, to go underground again.

He did not know either. They would have to look. So they started looking.

There'd be an elevator.

He was bewildered by how much nostalgia the notes gave him. There was a reason why a label-maker was officially banned from house premises (for now).

Kostya stared at the elevator, sliding a glance to Taym. There was a lot of that. They had spoken more in the last hour or two than they had in ages, but it was like slipping into familiarity. Something reliable.

(Idly, he wished for Jane's presence, because if anything, she was unflappable, and always knew more than she let on. But it had been quite some time since he'd seen her.)

"Are coming vith?"

"I know," he said, and did not sound condescending or cajoling in the slightest. Perhaps for the first time.

Kostya called the elevator, waited, and stepped inside. "But they vould not say, and she vould not say, and there is nothing to do but see."

He halted, closing his eyes, breathing deep again despite the stink that made breathing deep so wretched.

"I'll kill them," he said shakily.

They are lined up neatly on a plastic sheet, blood still glinting with a sticky sheen where it had pooled too thickly to dry up just yet. Kivi, the Moon Hunter was barely recognizable. What wasn't missing had been brutalized with a combination of animal fury and very precise cuts. The remains of his face was a twisted horror of stretched muscle and broken bone. Boris was easier to identify, only a few pieces cut and torn from his body. Head turned at an unnatural angle, he stared up at them in frozen confusion, a mottled bruise across his throat, the shape of chain links clear as a signature or a cheerful little story note directing them down a hall.

There was a woman on the far side of the other two, and eventually she would be identified as Margery Bell. Her body was an abstract the violence. Here lies the act of rage. The culmination of hatred. Here is that which we would claim as animal in nature, shutting our eyes to the cruelties unique to mankind. Writ across her form was the reminder of what human hands, their hands, are capable of.

Under the blood, the figure's hair was blonde.

All the scent of cleaners above, and they had not bothered to dispose of the bodies down here. Although, he supposed, there was no semblance of normality to uphold down here, in the lost ruins of some society long since extinguished.

Obadiah moved fast, and his ideas matched up with Kostya's, leaving the Russian with idle hands. He took the time, instead, to observe, not shying away from the gore. He had seen (and done) worse, although in a more clinical manner.

Or, at least... Not like this, pieces torn away and peeled and ravaged. Not like this, where fury had been the motivator. Never quite like this.

"So many qvestions," Kostya murmured, keeping his weapon summoned, the electric whine of Syntax still humming in the dead air.

"I am assume you have theories." Because he did. Bodies dismantled in the snow, gore along the walls, a red O painted to cover up the origins. "The only vun I care to know, is if you think she vill be herself vhen ve find her."

When.

Not if.

Because they would, dead or alive.

To that, Kostya could only shrug. "Because," he said, staring at the marks of chains wound tight around a neck, struggling to find the words. To distill down the sensation of being at war with not your body, but your mind. "Ve do not know vhat ve deal vith. Who know vhat they find down here? Vun seem so excited to send us down and down, but the other say: not yet. So vhat did they find?"

It was rhetorical, obviously, and Kostya looked back at the maimed one, at the exposed bone and torn sinew, with no more words to share.