Aftershocksgesture studyDarkness.
Mac had slipped into the warehouse through a side entrance, the locked door barely slowing him down. The blackness inside was more of an obstacle. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them wide, peering forward to make the best use of what little light seeped in through the cobweb-choked windows. The orange glare of the streetlights seemed to be swallowed by the interior darkness like a scattering of pale dust dropped into a deep pool of thick, stubborn sludge.
A different pale gleam escaped from a crack under a door ahead of him, at the end of the corridor: the entrance to the main loading dock.
With the hunt up in the mountains still fresh in his mind, MacGyver felt an odd sense of unease, although it wasn’t the air that felt stifling. It was the city itself, with its closely-packed buildings and its morass of intense human activity. Sometimes it hit him like this, especially when he’d been away from so-called civilisation for an extended time, roughing it in the backwoods. The unnatural concrete landscape felt hard and lifeless, and the pressure of all those densely packed human lives gave him a weird sense of claustrophobia. It always took a while before the vibrancy of the life it held recaptured his sometimes reluctant affection. Los Angeles, with its dry, dirty air and its frantic pace, was the antithesis of the wild world he loved – but it fascinated him all the more because of it.
At the same time, his senses felt razor-sharp, as if the fresh mountain air had scrubbed his nerves clean. The interior of the warehouse smelled of dirt and engine grease, overlaid with dust and the acrid smell of the city itself. The sounds were clear and distinct, easily identified, from the incessant flow of traffic outside in the distance to the creak of the building itself as it settled. And, ahead, beyond the door, the murmur of voices.
So soon out of the forest, he was still the hunter, stepping forward lightly, hardly disturbing the fetid air as he passed. He eased open the door at the end of the corridor, slipping through into the loading dock softly enough to melt into a new set of shadows.
