"Wow, Mantis was right, subtlety really isn't our strong suit."
"Now could you please go and check around inside and make sure we don't have any hobos or anything else living here? I have to call Mantis."
Of bloody course you do, Calvin thought. He stood up out of the car and was almost blinded by the sudden rush of pain to his head. "Jesus, that hurts," he groaned. He leaned on the car to steady himself for a moment, and then headed up the steps to the front door, which was unlocked. Entering, he found himself in a large hall with doors lining the walls on either side and a wide, sweeping staircase leading to the upper levels.
The gang had not been kind to their lair. Graffiti covered the walls, and the tarnished suit of armour standing on a dais by one of the doors was missing both arms and its helmet. There were bottles, soiled clothes and discarded food items everywhere. If vagrants were indeed living here, they hadn't bothered doing any cleaning, because the whole place smelled like shit. The carpets were stained and torn, and sections of the bannister on the stairs had been broken off. Looking up, Calvin saw a hole in the ceiling. A crow perched on its edge cawed down at him.
He shrugged and went to try opening one of the doors, idly thinking that he should probably wash his hands when they got back to base. The door, warped by damp, was stuck in its frame and wouldn't open. Calvin booted it open, and stumbled back cursing as a scruffy-looking cat jumped at his face, hissing and spitting all the while. There was nothing in here. A search of all the other rooms on the ground level and the upstairs yielded no results except for a few more angry cats and one very confused-looking dog.
After concluding his search of the kitchen, he saw a door that he presumed led down to the cellar. He pulled the door open, and was hit with a blast of chemical fumes. After a brief coughing fit, he pulled his t-shirt up over his nose and mouth and went back inside. This did little to help, and the throbbing in his head was getting worse. Feeling dizzy, he kept going, and began to hear voices. He strained his ears, but the were speaking too low for him to hear.
Just as he was beginning to wonder if the mumbling was some kind of hallucination on his part, he came to the part of the cellar where the wine was kept. Wending his way through shelves covered in dusty and for the most part, empty bottles, the voices grew louder, and the fumes stronger.
He realised then that the speakers were talking in some foreign language. Calvin didn't know which one, but it was very harsh sounding. The noise was coming from his left. He turned to peer through the shelf, and saw several tables set up with what looked like chemistry equipment set up on them. Calvin knew enough about drugs to know what he was seeing, and he found out the reason that the words had been so garbled was that the speakers were wearing gas masks. He wondered why they hadn't reacted, but they were all talking and looking intently at their equipment, seemingly oblivious to all around them.
As the room was starting to sway at this point, Calvin turned and stumbled out of the cellar and back outside, coughing all the way. When he got back to the car, Byron was on the phone with Mantis. Calvin walked up to him.
"Hey Byron. I've checked it all out. First off, the place is a wreck and repairing it will cost a fortune. No hobos, but there's a cat infestation and a small-scale meth lab in the basement."
