“It feels interesting, yes?”
“What is it?”
“A Phyrexian.”
Venser nodded. The others were approaching out of the darkness, but he had something to ask. “You mentioned before that the taint was having trouble with the furnace layer, whatever that is.”
“That is true,” Tezzeret said, brushing an unseen something off his sleeve.
“What did you mean?”
Tezzeret looked at him strangely, with a small smile curling the corner of his mouth. “They are gaining sentience somehow, all of these creatures, you know. It is a limited sentience, but they are beginning to understand that they exist and can die. This seems to have changed some. We… I am unsure if this change is only found in the denizens of that red layer, or if there has somehow been another dissident mindset injected into the group. It is hard to say.”
“How are you privy to this kind of information?”
“I am involved with certain aspects of the centrality of this infestation.”
“So why are you helping us?” Venser said. “Couldn’t you drop yourself into tremendous trouble?”
“That is one possibility.”
Venser glanced at the wall. An eye as large as his whole body was opened next to him. The cornea and slit iris were black, and it was staring directly at him. Venser took a step back. “Where is the mouth?” he said after a moment.
“We will be moving through it shortly,” Tezzeret said.
Elspeth and Koth followed the chrome Phyrexians. Tezzeret pulled his breastplate down, revealing his bare chest. A glass vial hung by a thick lanyard around his neck.
“Would you take it?” Tezzeret asked Venser. “I cannot touch it.”
“But it is touching your…” Elspeth started.
“My flesh, I know,” Tezzeret said, as Venser looped the lanyard over Tezzeret’s head. “But my etherium arm.”
Venser held the vial up to the glow of the Phyrexians. “What is it?”
Tezzeret took the vial and opened it with his flesh arm. He dabbed his finger on it and touched his forehead with the dab. Then he handed it to Venser, who did the same. Elspeth followed. Koth smelled it and curled his nose.
“This smells like rot,” he said.
“It is the essence of Phyrexian,” Tezzeret said. “But do not worry. It is not infectious in itself.”
Koth dabbed his forehead.
“Well, now we can take the next step,” he tapped the muscles of the wall and suddenly a line creased and the muscle spread to reveal innards: long, twisting metal pipes and strange, small organs hanging like wet fruit. Out of the hanging muck on the wall, a mouth yawned wide. The many teeth crowded in the mouth were chipped and filed down, from the passing of many bodies, Venser assumed. He could see that they had been sharp enough once though.
“Why is the mouth under the skin?” Koth said.
Tezzeret stepped back and smiled his small smile. “Well then, who will be first?”
No one moved.
“Only making a joke,” Tezzeret said. He stepped forward to the mouth, which was pulled open so wide that what passed for lips were stretched and cracked.
Tezzeret looked back over his shoulder. “Whatever you do, keep your arms in.”
He stepped into the mouth, which closed around him and swallowed. Then it opened again. Venser looked at Elspeth, who shook her head. Venser stepped forward and after a pause, stepped into the mouth. It closed on him and he felt the muscles tighten around him. In the next second he was thrown forward and began to slide.
Venser slid, keeping his hands as close to his sides as possible. He was sometimes upside down and sometimes feetfirst. But always he moved, and fast. The throat banked and shot farther and farther down. The word stomach occurred to Venser and he remembered dissecting the dead Phyrexians he had managed to lay his hands on in Dominaria. They were precious because most, if not all, were burned after the great invasion. But he had found one and bought it off the black market. It had been preserved in a foul liquid, but that did not matter. He had worked on the specimen for days. When he had reached the stomach, he had been so shocked that he had dropped the charm he’d had to use to move through the half-flesh body and its metallic viscera.
The stomach itself had teeth. Somehow it too had teeth as if it might someday get out of its body prison and go hunting for itself.
Venser considered such thoughts as he shot through the intestinal track.
And then he popped out and went sliding along a floor. Tezzeret was standing, scooping slime off his cheeks. Venser tried to stand, but slid. He was covered with slime. He turned and looked at the puckered hole they came out of. As he watched, Elspeth and Koth popped out. He helped Elspeth to her feet. She stood, wet and dripping with oil and metallic viscera. Venser watched as Tezzeret walked to a part of the flesh wall. As before, he touched it and flesh yawned to reveal the wet innards, which in turn spread to reveal a mouth yawning wide. Tezzeret stepped into that other mouth, and the process repeated.
They shot down that throat, and then another. Each time Venser felt sicker and sicker. Every time the mouth seemed to get larger and larger. Once, he forgot to keep his arms at his sides. His wrist caught on something metal, and he yanked to a stop in the tube. He pulled and pulled, with the throat muscles closing in on him and squeezing, and finally his wrist came free. After what seemed like a hundred more throats and rooms, Venser stood and then sat back down on the metal floor.
“You are tired?” Tezzeret said.
“Yes,” Venser said.
“That is good, because we have come to what I wanted to show you.”
Venser looked around at the room. It appeared to be like all the others.
Tezzeret must have seen the doubt on Venser’s face. He walked to the far side of the small room and put both his hands on the wall. Two eyes as large as his head appeared and blinked. Tezzeret spoke a series of words. A seam appeared in the muscle and then in the conduit guts beneath. The seam slid open to reveal a room on the other side.
Elspeth popped out behind as Venser tried to get a good look into the room. He could not see anything save brightness. The room was well lit. Not bright like the room where they had met Tezzeret, but well lit. Koth popped out of the previous opening. Venser turned to Tezzeret. The metal-armed human was drumming the fingers of his metal arm on a wall. Waiting for his Phyrexians before entering the room, Venser guessed. Elspeth appeared beside Venser, still dripping and stinking. Her eyes wrenched down into suspicious slits. Her weapon was unsheathed in her white-knuckled fist.
“What is it?” Venser said.
Elspeth did not speak at first. Venser had to repeat his question.
“The smell,” she said. “Do you smell it?”
Venser did not want to tell her how much she stunk, how much they all stunk. “I think we all have a particular stench about us now,” he said.
Elspeth’s head jerked curtly, her eyes never leaving the doorway into the well-lit room. “Not that smell. The other.”
Venser took a good breath. His nose was usually fairly good, but he could not smell anything except the slight stink of rotting meat. He looked at Elspeth and shook his head. Her hands were shaking. Her lips were drawn into a tight, white line.
“I smell their tools,” she said. “Their blades.”
When the last of his chrome Phyrexians were dripping in the corner, Tezzeret stepped to the bright room. “This way,” he said.
Venser suddenly became very aware of the Phyrexians behind him. He stopped walking. They stopped walking. Would it be possible to turn and leave, or would they not let him go?
Tezzeret was the first to enter the room. Venser followed, then Elspeth, and last Koth, cursing as he tried to ladle the slime off his arms.
