Necropolis 2 Read Online Free PDF

himself.
    As he progressed through the vents, sounds came to Greg: gunshots, explosions, the screams of the dying, and the inhuman howls of the already dead. Far off, little more than a rumble, an explosion erupted. Greg wondered about hull breaches and decompression. He kept crawling, pausing only to look out a vent grate, not sure what he was looking for, but felt positive he'd know it when he saw it. He crawled on.
    Every vent was a different scene.
    Here was a corridor, splashed with blood, red and black, punctuated by the occasional corpse slumped on the ground.
    Here was a small storage bay, empty of life, crates piled high.
    Here was a security center housing a bank of monitors that registered nothing but a gray wash of static, gun lockers open and empty.
    Greg almost slipped out for that one, but something told him not to, so he kept going, ever hunting. He finally found what he was looking for a few moments later in what looked to be a break or rec room. He stared down at the sleek black pistol lying on the table as if it had been tossed there without care. It looked tempting.
    After waiting for several minutes, listening intently, straining his ears against the silence, Greg opened the grate and lowered himself onto the floor, dropping the last few feet. Greg looked around, apprehension making his skin crawl in wretched anticipation, but he was alone in the room. He grabbed the pistol, checked the magazine, and found it full.
    Whoever wielded it hadn't managed to get even one shot off. Greg spent a few moments hunting through the rec room, through the collection of end tables, chairs, couches, a few soda machines, and arcade cabinets. He was struck by the insane urge to stick around and play a few video games, they looked fun. He settled for prying open the soda machine and grabbing a chilled can of Vex. Popping the top, he drank it all in one go.
    It was like drinking liquid gold after all the shit they'd been feeding him lately. He belched loudly, felt it rattle his throat, and considered grabbing another soda, but no, not a good idea, he was on something of a schedule. While he considered heading outside, maybe trying the corridors again now that he had a pistol, a steady stream of gunfire just beyond the door changed his mind. He shoved the sturdiest looking table beneath the vent, listening to shouted commands, more gunfire, and the roar of what sounded like a Berserker.
    With some effort, Greg pulled himself back up into the vent, keeping the pistol in hand. He kept going, trying to keep his mind clear, but it refused. Like storm clouds rolling in on an otherwise clear sky, his thoughts crowded around him. Graves, Thomas, the security databanks, his friends...they all came and went like cards shuffled through a deck. Oddly enough, beneath it all, Greg found himself missing the rain of Dis.
    Was that crazy? Greg thought so. He remembered obsessing over Kyra at the beginning of this whole thing and thinking he was crazy. Was that insanity? He knew there was a technical term for insanity and that wasn't it, but then there were a lot of ways to be crazy, weren't there? So maybe it was stupidity. Greg didn't like thinking he was stupid, but then, he supposed, no one liked to think that, whether or not they were.
    He continued thinking of the rain, its calming effect, the way it smelled before, during, and after its fall. In his mind's eye, he saw blackened storm clouds building on a twilit horizon, titanium-white lightning forking in sprays, splitting the sky open in phosphorescent freeze frames. The bass rumble of thunder, in the distance. He crawled around in ventilation shafts on a ship of the damned and thought of rain.
    After a while, Greg paused and pulled the radio out of his ear. He studied the small, round piece of compact technology. It didn't seem damaged in any way, and the little light to indicate power was still a comfortable, steady green. He slipped it back into his ear and hit the activation button