3
The chamber they dumped him into was circular, about six
meters in diameter. They pushed him through a pressure
door and had left him there, gripping his absurd weapon,
for too long. He had tried to make it a little less absurd,
scraping it against the walls and sharpening its edges,
giving it a point, making it a makeshift knife.
The observation chamber was directly overhead, the
same size and shape as the chamber below. The glass
ceiling of the lower chamber served as the glass floor of the
upper one. He could see Stevens and Markoff above,
looming over him. They were drinking glasses of
champagne, smiling.
It’s one thing to be killed, thought Altman, but dying
knowing what infamy will be done in your name after your
death is another thing entirely. Better to be like the old
drunk in the town and have no name.
The second door of the chamber slid open to reveal a
dark corridor. He stayed where he was, near the door he
had been pushed through, waiting for something to come
through. Nothing did.
The world is a hell, thought Altman. You can do
everything right and cheat death, and then be ruined by
one false step. Those, apparently, were the conditions of
life. Of his life, at least.
The smell suddenly reached him. It was a rank, rotting
odor, putrid to an extreme. He gagged.
And then he heard a heavy scraping sound, and the
creature pulled itself in through the door.
It scraped against the sides of the passage as it came.
He could see, here and there, reminders that it had once
been human, a foot that had been stretched and split and
now projected from the joint of the creature’s chitinous
gigantic arm. Fingerlike tentacles throbbed over its face.
And there, in the middle of its pulsating abdomen, was a
large callus that looked like Krax’s screaming face.
It pushed the rest of the way into the room and howled.
Oh, God, he thought. Let this be a hallucination. Let this
be a dream. Let me wake up.
He closed his eyes and then he opened them again. The
creature was still there. It roared, and then it charged.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible if Frank and Nick
Murray hadn’t provided me the perfect place to write at just
the right time. Thanks are due to them and to Le Trèfle
Rouge, and to the fine folks at Visceral Games/EA for
trusting me with the best bit of first-person SF/horror
dismemberment out there. And applause is due especially
to my editor, Eric Raab, for his excellent, tireless, and
thankless work.
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