[ Metzger’s voice stirs low beneath the heft and clank of great metal teeth grinding past one another in the middle distance. Acrid steam clouds the senses; flashes of heat bleed red through closed eyes. Water rushes below, chains rattle above, bound thick about the ankles, clicking bones together and tingling at toes.
Up is down.
A grumbled swear slants into German and then abruptly back to English: ]
Throw me that bucket. [ There’s a doppler fade of boot heels striking away over steel, and then a splash.
The next splash sends half a gallon of hot water smashing up through the sinuses.
On the opposite end of it, Metzger stands scowling, expectant, with bucket in hand: wiry, compact, greying at the fringes and distinctly familiar, for anyone who’s been in Zion long enough to know what bad news looks like. He’s also flipped one-hundred-eighty degrees at belt level and just out of arm’s reach, planted safely at the end of a catwalk that terminates some feet short of the girder he’s hung his victim from.
By their feet, of course.
Assuming one were to fall, it’s difficult to tell if they would land directly in an open furnace at the end of a quarter mile drop or into the massive pool of boiling water roiling next to it. ]
Simon Metzger | OC
-- should be awake by now.
[ Metzger’s voice stirs low beneath the heft and clank of great metal teeth grinding past one another in the middle distance. Acrid steam clouds the senses; flashes of heat bleed red through closed eyes. Water rushes below, chains rattle above, bound thick about the ankles, clicking bones together and tingling at toes.
Up is down.
A grumbled swear slants into German and then abruptly back to English: ]
Throw me that bucket. [ There’s a doppler fade of boot heels striking away over steel, and then a splash.
The next splash sends half a gallon of hot water smashing up through the sinuses.
On the opposite end of it, Metzger stands scowling, expectant, with bucket in hand: wiry, compact, greying at the fringes and distinctly familiar, for anyone who’s been in Zion long enough to know what bad news looks like. He’s also flipped one-hundred-eighty degrees at belt level and just out of arm’s reach, planted safely at the end of a catwalk that terminates some feet short of the girder he’s hung his victim from.
By their feet, of course.
Assuming one were to fall, it’s difficult to tell if they would land directly in an open furnace at the end of a quarter mile drop or into the massive pool of boiling water roiling next to it. ]