2. Angel?
Suddenly an echo of footsteps came from further down the alleyway, causing Rachel to jump back on her feet. "Shit. I was a little too loud wasn't I." She gazed down the alley, towards the sound. It was getting closer. Is this a new enemy? A friend perhaps?
She decided to play it safe by hiding herself. She looked around, all the while the steps coming closer. "Unbelievable", she said frustrated, "How can there be no places to hide in a hole like this?" The steps sounded to be right there, soon whatever was causing them would see her.
A hint of panic creeped into her mind. Then her eyes fell upon a manhole cover.
A group of five men came running at the scene, the running coming to a halt when they saw what was in said scene. Purple blood everywhere, separate limbs and disfigured corpses decorated the ground and the walls. "What the hell?" The men stood there dumbfounded. "The fuck happened here?"
All of them wore the same outfit, it was apparent they followed some sort of dress-code. Black jeans and open leather jackets, with a white spray-painted picture of an angel in the back. No shirt.
They were armed with a various weapons, one man carried an assault rifle, other had a baseball-bat. The variety of weapons was noteworthy in its complete contrast to their same clothes.
But this Rachel could not see as she was in a sewer-pipe, hanging from the holes of the manhole cover. The gritted part of the cover was so small she could only hang from it by one hand. And she couldn't really grab the sides of the pipe as they were covered in slime, making them more slippery than ice.
The pipe was narrow, just wide enough for the woman to be in it without touching its sides. But in order to do so she had to lock her limbs together and not move at all. Deep beneath her, in complete darkness, she could hear the sound of raging water.
"What do you think did this?"
"I don't know but I wouldn't want to meet it."
"Should we tell Angel?"
"Angel?" Rachel whispered "who is Angel?"
"I'm thinking we should" The speaker sounded fearful. "I don't know what did this but whatever it was, it was not human."
"Was it not?"
"Look at these, these fiends have been torn to shreds by hands, no human has that much power"
"Not this one."
"What?"
"This one was killed with a blade, whatever did this could be"
"A ninja?"
"'Fraid so"
"You should be afraid", self-satisfied Rachel whispered to herself. Or should they? They seem to be human. Maybe they were fighting the fiends just as she was.
Then a new feeling snapped her back to attention, her fingers had started to slip. A soft gasp escaped her mouth as the fear of falling suddenly hit her.
She had been so focused on following the conversation that she had failed to notice all the water coming in from the holes of the cover. The rainwater followed her right hand, from which she was hanging, made its way down her body and tipped down from her toes. The last time she had felt this wet was yesterday at home. When she was taking a shower.
"Let's go then, the less I have to look at these things the better"
"Just a moment. I'll take a few pictures first"
Rachel begun to genuinely fear for herself "I don't have a moment, just go". She was using all of her strength to fight the slipping of her fingers but it was no good, she knew she couldn't hold on for much longer. She looked down towards the bottom of the pipe. It was completely dark, looked to be lengthy, with a strong current of rainwater flowing at the bottom. It sounded like an underground waterfall.
"I, I can't fall." She was panicking. "I don't know where that leads to. I might not even fit. I might get stuck there and…"
Then someone stepped on her fingers. She yelped from pain and fear. She had failed to hold on. She fell.