Shepard's flare illuminates the hall, a dazzling light that's momentarily blinding behind Dean's night-vision goggles. He rears back, squinting, blinking through the flash, and when his vision clears, he... almost wishes it hadn't. Clustered at the end of the hall, a dozen genderless, smooth-skinned wax figures huddle like someone just interrupted their prayer circle.
He's been doing this job for thirty-odd years, but he's still not above acknowledging when something is objectively creepy as hell. He doesn't know what a husk is, but all the same, he mutters a dry, "Me, too."
Fun fact: this is not the first time Dean's done a job in a haunted wax museum. The one back home was a solid decade ago, and it was populated by figures like Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln and Paris Hilton. Recognizable faces took the job from being mostly uncomfortable to kinda comedic. There's no such relief here, not for him, not when he doesn't know the vast majority of the historical figures they're trying to recreate.
The flare dies; the light goes too dim for either Shepard or Garrus to see — but Dean can.
A weighty silence follows the request as they wait, and he watches, and seconds tick by. All of them are still, unmoving, as he stares.
Except for the one in the front, which cocks its head to the side so, so slowly it takes him a beat to even realize it's moving. And then, equally slowly, with a deliberateness in the movement, its raised hand begins to sway back and forth in two-inch increments.
"It's waving at me," he declares, his tone nearly matching Shepard's. Annoyed, unamused, businesslike. "They're screwing with us. This is a distraction."
The longer they spend worrying about the wax figures, the less they're focused on the spirit boards powering them.
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He's been doing this job for thirty-odd years, but he's still not above acknowledging when something is objectively creepy as hell. He doesn't know what a husk is, but all the same, he mutters a dry, "Me, too."
Fun fact: this is not the first time Dean's done a job in a haunted wax museum. The one back home was a solid decade ago, and it was populated by figures like Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln and Paris Hilton. Recognizable faces took the job from being mostly uncomfortable to kinda comedic. There's no such relief here, not for him, not when he doesn't know the vast majority of the historical figures they're trying to recreate.
The flare dies; the light goes too dim for either Shepard or Garrus to see — but Dean can.
A weighty silence follows the request as they wait, and he watches, and seconds tick by. All of them are still, unmoving, as he stares.
Except for the one in the front, which cocks its head to the side so, so slowly it takes him a beat to even realize it's moving. And then, equally slowly, with a deliberateness in the movement, its raised hand begins to sway back and forth in two-inch increments.
"It's waving at me," he declares, his tone nearly matching Shepard's. Annoyed, unamused, businesslike. "They're screwing with us. This is a distraction."
The longer they spend worrying about the wax figures, the less they're focused on the spirit boards powering them.