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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Catulle" data-source="post: 979208" data-attributes="member: 9942">Sewer Access Tunnels, beneath ManhattanMulligan's hand remained pressed to her arm, curled around it and steering her through the gloom with a prodigious strength. Away from the hosting chamber, the tunnels became wider, slick with moisture, and lit by the occasional flickering striplight.As her eyes forced back the light's intrusion, she could take stock of her companion of the moment; perhaps six feet tall, he would have towered above that had his back not been so sharply deformed; Mulligan was hunched to painful angle, the hump atop his shoulders almost scraping against the low ceiling. He was posessed of a dry, flaking skin which drifted from him with every light, otherwise controlled step. In his other hand, he clenched a sheaf of typewritten papers."We want to know what he's seen tonight. What happened on Staten Island. We must know if these are the predations of Nictuku without exposing the warren. You will be able to tell this, if you listen to him, or so we hope."Their heaving progress took them past other branches some little more than crawlspaces. Once, the concrete all about them shuddered to the passage of something massive above, perhaps a subway train. A dark liquid seeped from  a row of barrels stacked in an alcove, and her guide wrinkled his nose as they passed. Tess could smell nothing, as ever."During the war, the neonate we will be visiting, committed a serious crime; Gemini took note of this. We have arranged that this stay outside of common knowledge in order that one night, such as tonight, we can collect on that hidden favour."They passed through a door, and Tess realised she had long lost track of her position in the confusion of turns the pair had made in the darkness. They could have been anywhere. They were in a utility storage room, ordered, tidy and with an elevator bay at the far end. Mulligan reached back, and with seemingly little effort, pulled a stack of crates in front of the door from which they had entered before leading Tess to the steel lift doors."The janitorial staff are glad of the help we can afford them from time to time; like us, they are trapped in their rut and like us, they often resent living at the bottom of the heap." The doors slid apart, and he stepped in, pressing a button as he went. The room shook as it rose upwards. The hunchback slipped a key-card out of his pocket. "The ignored in a society are often the most empowered in unlikely ways... But you may not have to blackmail the young man - as Calebros' childe, you might ply his sympathies too. But, we must know the answers either way."The doors opened onto a short corridor, carpeted, warm and dry. Like at home, when she had one. Mulligan chose a door, and slipped the card, deftly sliding into the apartment beyond with a minimum of noise and disruption and closing the door softly after their entrance. When he spoke again, moving through to the main room of the domicile, his voice was a sibilant whisper."Keep hidden, if you can - no doubt he will be startled by your presence. I will stay close."</blockquote>

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