The table wasn’t shaped at all like the kind of thing you would tie a giant spider to. Rather, it was man-sized and man-shaped. There was far more going on than some simple arachnid. Leather straps hung from the edges of the table. Franks picked up one strap, and it was so dried with age that it cracked in his hand. A very long time ago, someone or something had been strapped down to this table and stuck full of needles leading back to a machine that did who knew what, then buried and forgotten.

My teeth were chattering. “What’s the deal, Franks?”

“You getting anything?”

“Angry.” I gestured at the machine. “What does the MCB know about this?”

He shrugged. Nothing.

“Yeah, well, Stricken sure knows more than he’s telling. Maybe I should go ask him.”

“Your funeral.” Franks went back to examining the table.

“Who is this Stricken guy supposed to be that even you’re afraid of him?”

“I’m scared of no man…”

“What’s Nemesis then?”

Franks paused. That word seemed to make him angrier. “Getting anything yet?”

“I’m not a supernatural Geiger counter, Franks. It doesn’t work like that.”

He mumbled something to himself about useless Hunters and continued looking for clues. I went back to the machine, but its function was beyond me. Whatever it did, judging from the condition of the batteries, it had run out of juice decades ago, but the thing on the table hadn’t moved until recently. Why?

I looked to the ceiling for the first time. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. It was wrong. The top of the space was the same seamless metal as the floor, but there was an odd pattern of discoloration around the hatch. “Franks…” I reached up and found the switch for my headlamp. “Kill the lights.” It went dark. The glass lamps in our helmets faded slowly orange. Then the tank was pitch black. I stood there, respirator laboring, skin burning with cold, and waited.

The light was faint at first, so weak that I thought I’d imagined it, but then it began to grow, glowing with the muted color of aged bone. The light took on a sick green tint, and then I could see it clearly.

It was the symbol.

The mark had been placed above. It had seeped through the metal of the tank until its malevolence could be felt inside. It had been placed there to wake up whatever had been strapped to that table. Somehow I knew what it had been like here, asleep, waiting, between worlds. When suddenly the sick light had intruded, forcing itself into the safety of the tank. And it had awoken.

Suddenly weak, my knees buckled. In the darkness I floundered, panicking, until I struck the ladder and held on. The sweat running down my body turned to ice.

“Is that it?”