All the faces called to him, offering him a release of purity. All he had to do was get free of the suit and then he could join them, be linked with them, another cog of the great synergistic machine that throbbed in his ears with unbelievable motive power. He could feel its psychic force drilling into him, shattering his skull into pieces, macerating his brain.

(Hubbs Hubbs Hubbs)

(be with us as us)

(be part of the machine)

(another cell in its body)

He recoiled from the voices. He would not listen. They wanted him to kill himself, to offer himself as sacrifice, prostrate before the great beating heart of the machine. It lusted for his suicide. It needed him. He was the fuel it needed to burn, but he wouldn’t allow it. He was going to escape; he was going to get out of this awful place.

Although he was terrified and confused, he felt strength inside him and he knew it would deliver him if only he focused on it. He had to concentrate. Remember his training. Mine his experience. The city was alive around him. It was trying to contaminate him, infest him with its creeping foulness. He had to fight it with everything he had or he would become part of it, just another screaming voice, another tormented soul being leeched slowly dry, a parasitized carcass fused to it that kept its diseased, alien heart beating.

The clarity in his head came in brief flashes and spurts of purity, hosing away the accumulated detritus the city was trying to drown him in. And as it did, he could no longer feel things crawling in his suit, colonizing him like he was a sunken ship.

He could be free if he indeed wanted to be free.

(NO NO NO NO DO NOT PULL AWAY DO NOT REJECT WHAT IS OFFERED)

The Exosuit began to react now that he fought against the city and its attendant systems. Slowly, slowly, it began to pull back toward freedom, toward deliverance. He could feel the rage of the countless minds that made up the whole. They were angry, screeching, offended at his defiance. The city would not have it. He could feel the minds telling him that. There would be punishment.

Then it took form.

It was coming down the tunnel to the chorus of screaming voices—a bloated, misshapen vermiform creature easily eight or ten feet in length. It was white and spongy like the flesh of a mushroom with a snaking, eel-like body that was shivering and gelatinous with a great spiny, central fin running down its back. It had no recognizable head as such, but the fore end terminated with a flabby, suctioning mouth from which stout, coiling tentacles emerged, each terminating in a puckering, toothed orifice. Tiny white threads and fibers floated around it like the albumin of eggs, creating a slimy, jiggling envelope that reminded him of an embryonic sac.