Through the tinted glass he could see Snow pinned to the side of the magnet by the ax blade, his limbs writhing and wriggling like a beetle in a child’s insect collection. Then the entire room began to rumble like a freight train as the pressure vessel inside the magnet’s plastic casing strained against the abrupt bulge of gas expanding within it. Titanium bolts popped off, whistling as they streaked across the room like a hail of bullets, smacking off the walls. From above there was a sharp pang as the vent pipe burst.

Snow jolted up, staring out at Mike in surprise.

The vessel exploded.

The room went white as a frozen cloud of helium fog spilled through it, instantly crystallizing the window in a thick layer of frost. Mike couldn’t see anything. Reflexively, not even aware that he was doing so, he drew closer to the glass, squinting to make out what was happening inside.

A gray claw smacked the glass in front of his face and he jerked back.

Through the streak of clarity that the claw had slashed across the frosty glass, he could see Snow in his truest undeveloped form, the rawness that had been incubating inside. He saw it for a fraction of a second, but that fraction was enough to last an entire lifetime.

Snow was still in the prison jumpsuit, but the fabric had split open on the sides to allow for a lashing outburst of flailing roachlike limbs. They looked lethal, but they also looked queerly vulnerable, comprised of soft tissue that had never been intended for exposure to outside elements. Staring at them Mike felt himself going a little mad, his brain stretched beyond its capacity for reason, like waking up in the glare of a screaming blue sun.

If hell was real, this thing had almost surely come from there.

One of the limbs was struggling blindly to pluck the ax from its back, which now resembled more of a carapace than any sort of human skin. Sticky translucent fluid dripped from its pale inner membrane. Another limb fumbled at the door latch. Through the fog Mike saw how Snow’s spine had elongated and doubled over on itself, arching like an inchworm’s, his long alligator head twisting and snapping from the warped infrastructure of his shoulders. He grinned at Mike, yellow-eyed, cackling, the sickening fullness of his exposed body telescoping inward.

Mike saw it coming, and in retrospect he thought Walker must have, too. One of the snapping claws shot forward. It fastened onto Walker’s throat, compressing the wrinkled wattles beneath the doctor’s chin, just above the collar of his shirt. At the same time Mike saw Snow’s movement stiffening, losing all fluidity. Frost hardened over the grin, over the gleaming gray slug-flesh, filming the eyeballs, turning them to globes of isinglass.

The claw snapped shut.