It was dark, but not pitch-black. There was a faint red radiance coming from somewhere, like emergency lighting. It gave him no clues about where he was, but his ears suggested it wasn’t a big space. He could feel a constant shuddering through his skin, coming from everywhere: engines, ventilation, some kind of heavy machinery. The air tasted like oil and metal.

His nose was blocked with what he suspected was blood. After a few goes he managed to sniff it clear and was rewarded by a sharp reek that was definitely organic. He detected stale sweat, excrement, urine, and all of it bound into a grander stench that had something of the animal, something of desperation. He’d gone into a bunker, once, back in his army days. Thirty-nine people had hidden there with minimal food and water. Twenty-eight had come out, in the end, half dead themselves. They had crouched there during the shelling, as the entrance was buried, feeling the air grow staler. This place smelled like that. Like despair.

To call out or not to call out? But the question became moot as the hellish light waxed brighter. Abruptly there were shadows moving on either side of his cot, and he felt a stab of panic that he fought down. It took all his willpower to lie still, to pretend, maybe, that he was too groggy to break necks should they release his bonds.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw someone come close. Something: the movement didn’t register as human. He rolled his eyes and strained through the gloom. The size of a child, but not the shape. The body was long, canted forwards, and there was too much head, too much neck. It undulated, unpleasantly serpentine. The red light glinted on huge eyes like plates; he had a moment’s stab of relief as he realized they were lenses, then felt a renewed horror because the head they were set into was snouty, sleek-skulled. Just a mask, a hood, biohazard gear. But some primal part of him knew it wasn’t. Then a small hand appeared, holding an instrument that looked like a torturer’s Swiss Army Knife. The hand had clawed nails and two thumbs, one where he’d prefer to see a little finger. It was pallid and wrinkled as though it had never felt the sun. Craning his neck, he saw the suggestion of big ears, cast back from the low skull and rolled into sharp points.

The instrument clicked through several vicious permutations, ending with a pointed tube like a hypodermic for elephants. When his shadowy persecutor rammed it into his upper arm, Lucas screamed and tried to jerk away.

The figure—the creature—paused, and then it said something, or at least Lucas thought it did. He heard a chittering and screeching at the very edge of his hearing, as though a bat was lambasting him.