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With beepy-findy and cameras ready, the duo head into the burnt out house. While the building is considered structually sound at the moment, the floor feels soft in some areas, like it's almost ready to break. The upper levels are quite underwhelming and it looks like just an ordinary house belonging to a slightly eccentric older man?
Yuliya keeps to the edges of the floor, not daring venture into the middle of the rooms. "I do not see the tea pot," she comments to Fitz. "I do not think they were expecting company. Or fire."
Fitz, for all his gadgetry, possess a anti-grav belt or hover shoes tehreby relegating him to rely on caution where the structural integgrity of the floors were concerned. "Yeah I'm expecting not. No biscuits either. Right inhospitable they are." His eyes were matching up the BF Reader to the space they were looking at for discrepencies and possible live currents. "Let's hope that anything that caused this melted or we might be in for a nasty little urprise, yeah?
Fitz beepy-findy would be beeping and finding a live current under the floor boards, most likely in the basement, which strangely enough seems to run through a floor wall in the basement and it keeps on going. It certainly doesn't match the dead wiring in the rest of the house, that have already been cut by the power company. There's also a faint chemical smell coming from below as well
Yuliya doesn't get fun toys. If she did, she'd most likely misuse them or try to repurpose them for something else, which could be why she's relying on caution, training and experience. "Which is most likely a good thing. Any time I try some new food, something bad happens," she admits to Fitz. "One time I tried Italian made garlic bread, and blyat, a gunfight broke out."
Fitz might argue that is the very definition of fun: making doodads do things. 'Misuse' is so subjective really. A studious look was worn when he looked up from teh gadget, at the house, back to the gadget and then to Yuliya. Tapping the screen and then poinitng to some general corners he offered, "We're getting somethin of a current still running to the house. To what I couldn't say. Looks like… it's under us. Maybe under the foundation or along the outside of it. Usually they don't run lines to ground here." Pointing up to all of the overhead lines. Building developers not being in teh habit of doing this with their infrastructure stood out as odd; brilliant but odd. "Could go check it out but we may want to be careful. The floors and likely stairs could be structurally compromise-" He stopped and looked flushed with embarassment. "I'm… so sorry. I really didn't mean to- You're in insurance and I'm sure you know about these things. I didn't, um, I didn't mean to condesend. I think out loud and then over explain like-…well like now." He paused and signed, "Moving on then?"
Yuliya glances towards Fitz at the comment of a live current in the house, and then down towards the floor. "It is under us?" she muses as she glances back towards Fitz again. "This is getting stranger by the minute. We'll, I'm insurance and you walk for the local government. It would not help either of us if we did not get to the bottom of this." She then shakes her head and offers Fitz a smile. "Oh no, Mr. Fitz. I do not think you are being condesending at all. I am actually glad that you came along. Usually it is me sifting through these disasters." A nod is then offered to Fitz at the suggestion of moving on.
The stair case is rickety to start with, with the fire not helping much either. However it does look kind of safe. The faint chemical smell is now stronger as well, though it is competing with the smell of burnt books. Against one wall is also a small home lab, in front of a bricked up door which now has mortar flaking from the heat. The electrical signal on Fitz's device actually leads behind the sealed up door and slopes downwards into some void.
Fitz went first. He wasn't a stalwart anything, but he was a man of manners and comtemporary parlance suggested don't follow a woman down a rikkity set of stairs. The social blowback for that would be unforgivable/. He tested the steps and found a path down them that worked. Curious!
The Scotsman looked up to his fellow urban spelunker and ran the beepy-Findy Reader(tm) over the area "Wooould you look at that? Some nature of bomb shelter maybe? Panic room perhaps?" Now the secondary thought behind the technological curioity, "You thing someone could be hurt in there?"
Yuliya's brow furrows as Fitz goes down first, though she carefully follows after him, stepping exactly where he's stepped and not an inch off. She might as well be going through a minefield with her cautious movements. "Thank you, Mister Fitz," she offers sincerely to the man when she's safetly down the bottom. She wrinkles her nose at the ashen smell, before slipping a hand inside of her jacket to remove a bandana, which uses to mask the bottom of her face.
She follows Fitz over towards the sealed up door, and she tilts her head to the side as she considers it. "It could be a bomb shelter, but why is it bricked up? There could be someone or something on the otherside of it. But how to get through?" she asks curiously. She considers the burnt out basement closely, before she slowly starts to pace the edge of the room. Every now and then she stops and uses her foot to mark the sooty floor under certain load baring beams, before moving on and repeating the process. She then stops, shaking her head for some reason. "It feels weak there, at the old door. I… I think a good blow would dislodge the bricks. Some areas of the floor above I do not judge"
A sledgehammer with a charred handle sits nearby as well.
Fitz scanned around for tools, and logistics of hoow the structure is supported and offered, "Well," He hooked the BF Reader to his belt and hefted up the sledge hammer. "Either we knock politely," In a very brazen and impolite manner, "Or we cna try to take a top down approach. He shrugged. Figuring the sledge would not be at all subtle he shouted, tapping on teh wall. "Hey, we're sending help. If anyone is in there, get back from this wall." With that he picked a spot least likely, and not guaranteed, to avoid total collapse. He looked to Yuliya to make sure she wasn't in range of being hit and shrugged. Shouldering the maul he gave the brickwork a rather impressive swing. FOr a pencil pusher.
The bricked up entrace collapses under Fitz' mighty pencil pusher swing, revealing a tunnel with soot encrusted walls and flickering lights at the base of the slope. The chemical smell now smells like burning oil, and the air feels greasy. The air from the openning is also rather warm, but isn't hot enough to kill, wound or set anything on fire.
Yuliya wrinkles her nose at the smell, and shakes her head. "Very nice hit, Mr. Fitz," she comments supportively. "YOu picked the spot I would have gone for you. She looks a little troubled by the smell. "Do you smell that? It… It smells like napalm after it's burnt out."
Fitz furrowed his brow and looked… concerned. "For one, why would someone have a tunnel here. For two? What's the electrical going to? But more to teh point? That is concerning. If we cna get a signal we cna follow it topside? Maybe see where it goes?" He paused offering as if helpful to her vocation, and really welcoming a second set of eyes, "At least if we cna find the source other end teh insurance company might know who or what could be responsible for negligence?"
Yuliya peeks down the tunnel herself, her nose still wrinkled. "Yes, maybe it would be safer topside," she admits. "But aren't you curious as to what is down there?" she asks. "Maybe the signal you found leads down to some basement or something?" she then suggests. "Like someone has done it to avoid the power company knowing that they were taking power?" She tilts her head to the side and looks thoughtful. "What if there's another entrance down there?"
Fitz held the back of his hand to his nose and hrmmmed, "Well two things. If it's goin somewhere? This wasn't how they accessed it. They've got to have topside level access somewhere." He pausd and sighed, "uuuunless they're mole people." Don't ask. he pulled out a coin and flipped it. He sighed, "Alright, alright. Tails it is. Let me get a torch from the car." He shook his head murmuring to himself heading out to get the flashlight so they could see, "Most fellas get to say hey, miss, care to split a cab. No, Fitzy, you have to say Oh hey why dont we go crawl around in a bricked up hole that might blow up and collapse on us at any moment. Brilliant." He returned though and had a kerchief tied around his face taking a cue from her. "Well one way to find out."
"Mole people…" Yuliya muses with an arched brow. "Always a possibility in this city, yes?" With Fitz going to get the flashlight, Yuliya stays where she is, peeping through the hole and into the darkness that's lit up by the light at the end. She patiently waited there, still looking into the darkness beyond the hole. When Fitzy returns, she offers a bright smile that's hidden behind the bandana. She certainly didn't her his monologue either.
"I am ready when you are, Mister Fitz," she chimes, still rather cheerful despite the location.
Fitz eyed that hole. Well his luck ran out. He only got to study the perfect composition for a chocolate chip cookie for so long right? She was dauntless though and aside from having unpleasant chemical odors it wasn't really that bad. He assured, "Came right up street level when I was here a couple years ago." He crawled into the hole pulling his best Andy Dufresne immitation and crawled forward withthe torch on minding where the reading was coming from teh wire so he didn't make accidental contact with it. He didn't know how much juice it was pulling and didn't care to find out the sloppy way.
Down and down into the hole, which seems to carry on for some distance. Though in reality, it might only be 16'. But the cramped, dark conditions with the flickering light at the end of the tunnel could easily make it feel longer. The air gets hotter, and might cause someone to break a sweat. The smell gets stronger, this time mixed with something that smells wrong. When Fitz comes to the end of the tunnel, it opens up into a large room which has a heavy metal door at one end. Professional looking lab benches have been set up as well, though the beakers and flasks are now either badly warped or have been turned to a now solid puddle. Near each bench, there are the skeletal remains of stools, too.
For a working lab, there's only one unfortunate person who was caught in the fire, who's charred body rests near the door. Or it might seem. The flickering light from a very, very resilent bulb, well just flickers."
Fitz accepted he was crawling along for a length of time. It weirdly wasn't the first. It was always interesting though! Unable to fit two through he laid flat to teh tunnel so she could see over him. "Ooooh the city's goin' to want to hear about that. Labs usually have protective measures on them." Meaning something went vastly awry or worse, someone. His head turned, "Someone's laboratory has been slagged. We were right. Conflagration. Backfire. Likely mised with something gathering in teh basement of the residence. Piift. I can't promise that this isn't caustic. We should really come back with suits." Because lungs were important. His brow furrowed trying to more a batche or something but most identification proved a bit illegible from here.
"It is certainly not on any print I've seen of this place," Yuliya admits to Fitz, as she peeks over the top of him. Yup, she followed the man down, and now she's carefully starting to crawl backwards, keeping low and trying to avoid touching the wires above. "I think coming back is a good idea. I do not fancy ending up with something that burns or eats away skin on me." A sigh is then given. "I'll most likely have to throw this suit away now. Thankfully it wasn't my white one. Blin, I think I have a hole in my stockings." Because yeah, that white suit would have just been a mess by now.
The flickering light and the distance to the closest bench might make it a little hard to see, but there are burnt tins. However on scorched blackboard is something written in Croation, as well as symbols. It seems that the fire may have brought out some hidden writing.