Dorothy took a step backward without making the conscious decision to do so, her stomach curdling with fear. In the entire time she’d known Willis, she’d never known him to be frightening before. At least she’d never known him to try to frighten her. He’d always had the air of a gentle giant, someone who was large but who never used his size to intimidate.

But, now . . .

He took up the entire doorway, his head practically scraping the ceiling, and he looked at Dorothy with no kindness in his eyes. His mouth was a straight, hard slash in a face like granite and his arms . . . had his arms always been that large? They were the size of dogs. It was as though Willis had two pit bulls strapped to his torso.

For a moment, Dorothy couldn’t catch her breath.

“I’m helping you because I think you’re here to figure out a way to save Ash’s life,” Willis said. “If I find out that’s not the case, if at any point it seems like you’re the reason Ash is dead after all . . . well, then we’ll be having a very different conversation.”

“U-understood,” Dorothy managed to choke out.

Willis stared at her for a beat longer, and then he threw open the door and was gone.

LOG ENTRY—SEPTEMBER 14, 2074

12:21 HOURS

THE WORKSHOP

You’ll notice that it’s been a few days since I last updated. That’s my fault, recovery’s taken a bit longer than I expected. But I can sit upright now, and I seem to have regained the full use of my hands, so I can’t complain.

Needless to say, my last experiment was not quite the wild success I’d been hoping it would be. I was able to implant the exotic matter inside of my person and align myself with the anil, and I did feel a sort of . . . pull, for lack of a better word, as though something was dragging me forward . . .

Unfortunately, that’s where everything went terribly wrong. Moments after I felt that telltale pull below my navel my skin began to prickle. The sensation was odd, at first, but not entirely painful. Unpleasant, certainly. It felt as though all my nerves were firing at once. I admit, I’d wondered whether this was some sort of unpleasant side effect to the exotic matter, and so I did not react to the sensation right away but attempted to hold my ground, so to speak. That was a big mistake.

It couldn’t have been more than two or three minutes before the unpleasant prickling became a full-out burning. I began to lose the feeling in my extremities, my fingers and toes went numb, and I no longer had control over my hands. It was terrifying.