A mad rush of terror spread through him and he had to choke back a scream. It’s the city, he told himself again and again. The city is manufacturing this, trying to break you with fear. But that did little to calm him. As it swam in his direction, it paused now and again, a smooth and slender mosquito-like proboscis jutting from its mouth and suctioning to one agonized face after another, seeming to drink from them, perhaps tapping into the raw psionic juice of their minds.

Hubbs kept trying to pull back, but everything was weird and dreamlike and he barely moved inches as it closed the gap. Then with the speed of a striking moray eel, it was on him, winding its body around his suit, exerting enormous pressure. His Exosuit began to groan as its integrity was tested. Warning lights flashed inside. He began to grow very warm, sweat running down his face.

The city could not convince him to leave the suit willingly, so the creature would crush him inside it, squeeze him out of it like toothpaste from a tube.

Its mouth sucked at the face bubble, the tentacles exploring every seam and joint, looking for a way in. By that point, Hubbs was hysterical with fright. He couldn’t seem to get his racing imagination under control.

And then, quite suddenly, he didn’t want to.

He wanted to be free from the cage of his suit. He wanted to be embraced by this horror. He wanted to be sucked into its gelid membrane and have his mind vacuumed from his skull so that he could be part of something much larger.

My God, that was not only necessary.

It was imperative.

As insane as it seemed, his body was burning hot with desire. He wanted the creature to touch him, to embrace him, to slide its proboscis inside him and drain him dry. Trapped in the suit, he was like a man overcome with lust that couldn’t peel himself free of his clothes as a beautiful, exotic woman spread her long limbs for him.

He had to make contact with it.

He had to become part of it.

He hungered for the union.

Then, as his desire neared completion, a voice in his head—one well-disciplined by rigorous, demanding training—simply said, no. It stopped him. It shocked him out of it. As the creature enveloped him in slime, winding itself around him in loathsome coils, the voice of his well ingrained survival instinct slapped him out of it. All you have is your life. Fight for it. Fight now. The controls obeyed. He lifted one of the arms and it broke free of the creature, the claw-like manipulator on the hand pod seizing one of the tentacles and snipping it in half like scissors.