He reads the challenge in the man's expression and doesn't shrink back from it--instead he blinks, once, and kind of resolve settles over him.
Dick steps into the hall and listens, patient and attentive. Willing to wait for the place to reveal itself. He hears nothing familiar, nothing human: a low drone, the rush of air and beneath that a quiet whine.
He glances left and right. Identical doors line the corridor. He wishes he had something (remembers his fingers closing around a piece of chalk, the ghostly inverse shadow it left on his palm) to mark his. After a moment he aims a solid kick at the corner of the door and, satisfied with the resultant scuff mark, picks a direction.
The hall widens into a high-ceilinged room ringed with machines black and glossy as beetles. A tang of sweat in the air. Realization breaks over him in an awful wave.
"Are they for torture?" Dick whispers, eyes locked on the machines, the word "captors" looming large in his thoughts.
[visual]
Dick steps into the hall and listens, patient and attentive. Willing to wait for the place to reveal itself. He hears nothing familiar, nothing human: a low drone, the rush of air and beneath that a quiet whine.
He glances left and right. Identical doors line the corridor. He wishes he had something (remembers his fingers closing around a piece of chalk, the ghostly inverse shadow it left on his palm) to mark his. After a moment he aims a solid kick at the corner of the door and, satisfied with the resultant scuff mark, picks a direction.
The hall widens into a high-ceilinged room ringed with machines black and glossy as beetles. A tang of sweat in the air. Realization breaks over him in an awful wave.
"Are they for torture?" Dick whispers, eyes locked on the machines, the word "captors" looming large in his thoughts.