A dank, musky smell hung in the shadowed air, causing him to wrinkle his nose in distaste as he entered the hallway. Once, Tala had come across a wolf den ransacked by hunting dogs, long abandoned, but still reeking of blood and fear and stinking defiance. This part of the Abbey, lower than he usually ventured, smelt the same way.
The cells. The air was poorly ventilated this far into the bowels of the building, so the smell was understandable. If the Abbey were alive, where would he be in relation? The stomach, where food was churned, bubbled down, separating the useful from the waste material? That's all the students who did not survive the cells were: refuse, only good to be digested and then disposed of.
The sound of his soft footsteps challenged the dark stone walls, echoing hollowly. The cells here were empty now, he mused, giving a fleeting glance to each one; at least of human beings. He could hear the faint skittering of rats somewhere in the distance -- perhaps they had found something dead and rotting to feed on. The Abbey was full of dead things, now that the guards and Boris had gone.
The light flickered off a moving object in a cell to his left and he paused for a moment, curious. The illumination was dim, but he could make out a child's abandoned teddy bear, the arm missing and the stuffing strewn, brown and soiled. He continued on his way, ignoring the shivering figure of the rodent he had disturbed. Amusing; that a child's only friend was now just a nest for the rats.
The acidic stench of blood grew sharper as he neared his destination, the far end of the hall. The light here was brighter, not by much, but now the stains in the cells were more than just pools of darker shadow. Ah, so that is where the stink was coming from. Vaguely, he wondered what had taken place here. He had questioned Ian and Spencer, but they knew nothing of the cells. And his other team-mate... well, he wasn't the talkative type. Not that any of them were, of course, at least compared to the foreign beybladers. He barely held back a snort of disgust at that thought, and severed the thread of his internal monologue.
He had reached his destination; the last and closest cell to the labs on this floor, which were through wooden door on his right. They had already been ransacked, of course; anything of value long gone, taken either by the abandoned students or the scientists themselves. The cell itself was empty also, but that was beside the point.
The smell was much fresher here, much more poignant, as if the dying creature that had inhabited it had managed to drag itself somewhere else to die, and only made it as far as the labs. He scanned its interior, taking in every detail of it, from the dried blood seeping into the stark stone floor (a greater amount than the other cells, he noted, and of varying age), to the thin mattress and the corroded pipe half-hanging from the ceiling. A small dark spot on the floor beneath it told him that it had only stopped dripping recently – most likely Boris or one of the guards had turned off the water supply. There were no windows.
He unlocked the metal-barred door with the jingling keys from his pocket and swung it open with a screech. In the distance behind him he heard the rat he had disturbed scurrying away in a panic. Only pausing long enough to take a breath and remark to himself of the door's remarkable resemblance to a yawning maw of ragged teeth, he stepped inside. From the interior the cell was even more cramped, and he could feel the faintest hint of claustrophobia asserting itself to his consciousness, even though the door was still wide.
Taking a further step (there were approximately five to the rear wall), he took a seat cross-legged on the mattress. What must it have been like to be locked in here every day? He himself could not begin to imagine it. While his dorm was small and he shared it with his team-mates, it was nothing compared to this. Lonely, perhaps. Having come to this conclusion, he began to rise, only stopping when he noticed something scratched jaggedly into the stone of the wall beside his elbow. He studied it more closely, running his fingers lightly over it. A word in Russian, etched with what he assumed was some sort of metal implement.
He read it once more before rising to his feet and leaving the cell. He left the door wide open behind him.
His team-mates were waiting for him in one of the rooms at the top of the stairs. Spencer and Ian stood by the room's only table, involved in a hushed conversation that ended as soon as he entered the room. Bryan loomed in a corner, glaring indiscriminately at all of them. Spencer nodded to him, while Ian cast him an expecting look.
"I'm back," he announced, throwing the keys to Ian, who caught them without a word.
He turned to Bryan, trying to read some sort of emotion from his face, but it was futile. His eyes shone like mirrors, and revealed only Tala's own face. He exhaled lightly, pivoted on a heel, and left.
"Let's go."