Marcus pushed the thoughts away, shocked at himself. What the fuck? Why would you even think that? Instead, he pulled up Olena’s face. The one he knew, not the flip side that he now feared was behind it. He wondered how he could’ve forgotten her for even a second. Her face, and with it he remembered what they were doing and why and what could be after they escaped this place. That’s what they were going to do. Not join in the horror, but escape it. He tried desperately to hold on to that.

Cool the fuck down, Marcus. Five minutes. Five minutes and we’ll get out of here.

The only problem was that he doubted they had five minutes. His skin itched. Adrenaline coursed through him, screaming at him, ripping at every fiber of his being, telling him to flee. To fucking flee right now. There was the guard, but he could kill that fucker in an instant. Smack him with his tongue and pick up his Uzi or whatever the fuck it was and squirm. Anyone got in his way he’d shoot them to pieces. He could see it in his mind, bodies jerking, limbs twirling away, heads exploding. He’d kill every crazy fucking thing in here.

Marcus looked at him, mouth awash with the glorious tang of poison. He didn’t strike.

The man’s small eyes were pinned to something in the distance, so intense in their fear that Marcus forgot his sudden murderous anger. He turned. Something large was moving on a street adjacent to the green space in front of the casino. He couldn’t see it yet, just the shadow of it cast huge against the buildings. Slow moving, many limbed. Massive.

“No,” Marcus said. Whatever was about to step into view … No. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want it to exist. No, it shouldn’t and hadn’t and couldn’t exist. Just no.

The creature had many legs. Tall, spindly things, jointed like a spider’s. But it didn’t move like a spider. It progressed forward slowly, both deliberate and meandering at the same time, like some prehistoric giant grazing. Its bulbous body looked, from a distance, to be spotted with blotchy stains. Above it a massive, tentacle-like head. Marcus knew it was a head by the way it moved, turning this way and that as if it were looking around. It had no eyes that he could make out, but still he was sure it could see. No mouth or ears, but he knew it was a head.

“Are you seeing this?” Marcus asked.

The thug didn’t say anything. Of course he wouldn’t, but yeah he was seeing it.

Marcus knew without any lingering doubt that this was no crazy night of bizarre jokers let loose on Talas. He’d suspected that for some time, but seeing this thing … Seeing this he knew in every molecule of his body that it wasn’t of this earth. It was other, and not even other like jokers were other. Something else. Much worse.