Nite Owl was heavier than Rorschach, bigger and wearing armor. Rorschach went across the old floor with only a creak and Nite Owl followed. One of his feet went through with a crash. He lost his balance and fell, and the rest of his weight crashing down sent him all the way through the floor. He fell for a short ways and landed hard in a clinking, stinking heap in the dark. He slid and the pile fell over on him. It was cold and hard and wet like slimy tree branches underwater.
He heard Rorschach call out to him, but when his mouth opened to answer something fell into it. It was so old and rotten that the only taste was decay. He spit it out and tried to get his feet under him.
He got a hand free to adjust his night vision and found himself half buried in a pile of severed limbs. Arms and legs, in various stages of putrification were stacked like firewood. He scrambled backwards, clawing for purchase, and knocked over a pile of heads. One still had a Mickey Mouse heart-shaped barette in its tangled hair. The face was as abstract as Rorschach's, just empty patches of black over papery skin.
Rorschach could hear him moving and was waiting for him to say something . Maybe it was best that he didn't call out in case their targets were in hearing range. As soon as that thought had occurred to him, Nite Owl ruined it by screaming.
"No!" he gasped. "NoNoNo!"
"Nite Owl?" Rorschach whispered back. His hackles were bristling in alarm. He had never heard his partner wail like that before. The drug runners they were following would be long gone by now. While he tried to slap some light out of his flashlight, Rorschach was nearly run over as Nite Owl came barreling back out of the hole. Nite Owl didn't speak, just sprinted back towards the ship.
Rorschach nearly followed, but hung back to shine the light down into the hole. Thoughts of smuggled drugs dissolved under the sight of what had to be at least a dozen dismembered bodies. His brain immediately began to look for connections between this address and any recorded disappearances. Outside, he heard Archie's engines roar to life. He would have time to think about this on the long walk home.