As an Octarian, Mimi had intimate knowledge of the secret paths beneath the surface. The underturf, it was called, the vast network of pipes around the Valley and beneath Inkopolis. Though she knew there was a subway that would take her there, she didn’t want to risk exposing herself and her intentions to whoever ran this operation. She’d have to make her own path, squeezing her boneless octopoid form through passes so old and untended she feared they might collapse on her if she wasn’t careful.
Whenever she had room to resume her bipedal form, she’d check the energy reader she’d taken along. Normally these were used to locate abnormalities in the Valley’s ill-maintained electrical network, but here it served to guide her to the strange chambers Bon had told her about. If her own supervisors weren’t going to return her calls, it seemed she was just going to have to take matters into her own hands, for the sake of her people.
She was close. Awfully close, and it felt like she’d been down here for days. she finally comes to a grating, pale green light shining through, lifeless fluorescents. She slips through it, falling to the metal floor. That ammonia smells is here too, diffused, mixed with ozone and the stale recycled air she was used to breathing in the Domes. Her colors shift to match the plastic of the trees as she climbs up its slippery trunk, looking for a better vantage point. Was anybody even in here?
