No answer.
The man wore a shapeless and filthy smock that reached down to his bare feet, and stood perfectly still, as if his bones had locked into place and he could no longer stand straight.
‘Hello?’ Luc asked again. ‘Can you tell me where I am?’
No answer. Somehow he hadn’t really expected one.
He watched as the bent figure took a sudden step forward, banging his head into the wall with some force.
Despite a burgeoning sense of dread, Luc stepped closer, putting one hand on the man’s shoulder and pulling him around. Instead of eyes, grey metal ovals studded with pin-like extensions protruded from between the man’s eyelids, while much of his lower jaw had been removed entirely and replaced with some kind of machinery with a steel grille built into the front. His flesh was mottled and twisted where it had been fused to plastic and metal.
A moan emerged from the creature’s mouth-grille, full of terrible pain and unfathomable anguish.
Luc stumbled backwards, his heart hammering with shock. The misshapen figure turned away from him once more and resumed ramming its head against the wall.
Luc fled, running through the sunlit exit, desperate to get away from the misshapen creature. But rather than finding himself outside as he had expected, he instead found himself standing at one end of a greenhouse filled with a stunning variety of flora. The air tasted moist and peaty.
He shaded his eyes against the sunlight streaming in through the panes overhead and saw Zelia de Almeida standing further down a narrow path. A mechant hovered by her side, a straw basket incongruously clutched in one of its many manipulators. He watched as de Almeida took a small cutting from the branch of a tree, placing it in the basket.
The tree shivered in response, its lower branches weaving in slow patterns that somehow suggested distress. De Almeida reached out again, grasping hold of a slim branch. It tried to pull away from her, but she had too firm a hold on it. He watched as she snipped the branch off with a small pair of secateurs.
The tree shivered more violently than before, and Zelia murmured something inaudible to the mechant. In that same moment, another faceless monstrosity, identical to the one Luc had just encountered, appeared at the far end of the path, another straw basket clutched in its hand.
Luc watched dry-mouthed as the figure shambled along a connecting path, and out of sight.
‘Ah, there you are.’
He looked back at Zelia. She was peeling off a pair of gloves, dropping them into the mechant’s basket.
‘Where am I?’ he asked.
Zelia gestured to the mechant, and it moved down the path away from him. ‘I brought you to my home,’ she replied, stepping towards him. ‘Call me paranoid, but I didn’t want to take a chance somebody might have interfered with you.’
She placed one hand on his shoulder and guided him back through to the circular room he had just come from.
‘Back up, please,’ she said, leading him back over to the raised slab. Her manner was brisk and business- like.
Another thump echoed from across the room, but Zelia showed no sign of even being aware of it.
‘What the hell is that thing?’ Luc demanded, unable to hide his revulsion.
‘What thing?’ asked Zelia.
‘The man with no eyes.’
She glanced behind her with mild puzzlement, then back at him. ‘Ah,’ she said, nodding. ‘Nothing to worry about. Just an experiment.’
‘An experiment,’ Luc repeated. ‘What
‘One that needn’t concern you,’ she replied briskly. ‘You’ll be pleased to know I’ve already treated us both for radiation damage.’
He gestured back in the direction of the eyeless thing. ‘But . . .’
She flashed him an angry look. ‘We’re not here to discuss my private research,’ she snapped. ‘I want to find out what happened to you back there at Vasili’s. How much do you remember, from when you collapsed?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘One minute everything was fine, the next . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve never experienced anything like it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well . . . something like it happened to me back on Temur, just after they brought me back from Aeschere.’
She nodded, as if this had been the answer she had been expecting. ‘I checked your records as soon as I had the chance, but the medicians attending to you couldn’t identify a cause for that first seizure. Is that correct?’
He nodded.
<But before we discuss anything else,> she scripted at him, her gaze unblinking, <tell me if you can understand what I’m saying.>
Luc stared at her, unsure how to respond.
