The stairway down was dank and covered in muck. It was so thick that at first, they all thought it was the filth. As it turned out, some of the dirt in this world was still just dirt, blessedly. They had all seen enough to believe otherwise. The doors and wooden panels they had been hammered shut with had been forced ages ago. Since then, squatters had taken over. Peter could see traces of living everywhere. A discarded radio, a moldy mattress on a platform along the staircase, empty wrappers of candybars, bottles, noodle cups, syringes. But no sign of the squatters themselves.
But Peter, Florentine and Joe had bigger worries on their minds than the portents of some slime on a staircase. What lay beyond it all the more. "This used to be a subway station", Florentine explained as she lead on, tracing an Illuminati map on her tablet. "Fascinating", Peter's tone of voice left little doubt as to his meaning. "You can go ahead and get lost then", Flor returned just as snidely.
"Look at this poor bastard", Joe interrupted the bickering of the two. He had gone ahead a few steps and prodded a dead man with the barrel of his shotgun. The body sat with its back against the stone wall of the underground staircase, eyes wide in frozen terror, a blossom of oily black erupting from his mouth. Joe turned the cone of his flashlight further down, tracing the steps to where another men lay sprawled over the staircase, arms stretched to reach the exit far above. Around his legs coiled black tendrils, tracing up to curl around his midriff and then burrow into his chest. "Weird", Peter muttered. "Filth don't usually kill people like that." "No", Flor agreed. "It takes them over. Wants to own them. This is different." She didn't want to admit it, but it scared the living daylights out of her.
They continued down, following Joe's flashlight and Flor's map. Peter was well bothered by the fact he could contribute neither, after having left Griffith's flashlight behind. He had tried to go back for it, but the first step into the Griffith homestead has sent its guardian roaring after him again. It was only by virtue of it minding its spot and going back to it that Peter got away a second time. "At Griffith's place, that guardian", he observed. "It keeps to its spot. Filth don't usually do that neither." "D'you think it's being controlled?" Joe suggested. "Nah. Impossible", Flor objected. "That's all filth is. Wild. Uncontrollable." "But look at them", Joe insisted, pointing his flashlight to another body. He stopped.
"Filth didn't kill this one", Peter said. It was true, there was no filth showing on this unfortunate's body. Florentine handed her tablet to Peter and knelt over the body, craning its head back and tearing open the tattered t-shirt the victim had worn. "Cold, been dead for days at least. By decay I'd say weeks", she said. "How many?" Peter asked, standing over her. "Three. Maybe four", she said. "First sightings of the filth were just under three weeks ago", Joe pointed out. "He's got traces of blunt force trauma", Flor went on with her impromptu autopsy. "Took a tumble down the stairs, broke his neck?" Peter suggested. "And still show it after three weeks? Nah", Flor shook her head. "This is what killed him." She turned his head sideways. It showed a gaping mess of blood and bits of skull. "Bullet?" Joe asked rhetorically. Flor nodded. "He took a beating, and then he was executed."
At the bottom of the stairs they found more bodies. Some had been swarmed by filth, more had been beaten, stabbed or shot to death. Often it was a combination of those three. "Slaughtered like dogs", Flor shivered. "Who would do this?" "We would", Peter said, but his voice was quiet, almost reverent for the dead. "Templars would. Illuminati. Dragon. If the secrets were big enough." A large number of the bodies had been piled around a news kiosk of rotting wood that faced the stairway. On it was a symbol sprayed in grafitti. A red square, a blue triangle, a green circle and a purple diamond, all intersecting over each other. "That looks like a big secret to me", Joe said. "The red square is Templar. Blue triangle for Illuminati. Green circle of the Dragon." "And the diamond?" Flor asked. "Phoenicians", Peter said. "But what is this doing here? Is this something these people made? Were they killed for it?" Flor ground her teeth, hands shaking as she clenched them into fists. "We find them", she said. "We find them and we make them say why before we kill them." "Whatever you say", Joe said. Peter didn't think it was a bad idea at all.