He braced his feet against the side of the chamber and pulled on the latch. Something popped in his shoulder. The pain was distant and unimportant. He closed his eyes and strained. The latch gave. He tumbled through the door. Sputtering, half swimming and half scrambling, he rode the torrent of water that rushed out behind him until he could paddle to his feet. The room was empty and cavernous. The water from the chamber continued to flow from the door in a magnificent arcing spray. It filled the room and pooled above his ankles. Ambrose gulped the air and looked around.

A network of pipes on the ceiling seemed designed to divert water from the chamber. He splashed along beneath the pipes, following them as they ran parallel down a narrow hallway. In order to keep a user permanently inserted, the fleshbound stasis apparatus had to be kept cooled and hydrated. The Gen-Farm was already equipped for massive irrigation. It was the perfect place. Martin had probably bought the entire building.

Ambrose followed the pipes into a room of open scan-tubes arranged in two rows like the bunks of a quarantined hospital ward. Ambrose walked between the rows, checking each tube. They were all empty. The very last one was closed.

Ambrose felt his brain’s instinctive resistance to his hallucinations, feeble and short-lived, before he was overcome by creeping dread and the feeling that there was no turning back. He saw his own face reflected dully in the flat silver surface of the tube. Then he slid the top half open to reveal Martin’s face, frozen in rictus. The flesh around his mouth had shriveled to a translucent, paper-thin membrane exposing his pink gums and yellow teeth. His eyes were sunken black spots. A rat’s nest of wires sprouted from his temples and between the wisps of thinning hair on top of his head.

Ambrose tried in vain to blink this whole place out of existence.

Martin’s lower jaw dropped open. The flesh of his cheeks split, extending his smile to his ears.

This isn’t real.

“I wanted us to be happy,” gurgled Martin’s throat. His useless mouth hung without moving.

Ambrose couldn’t keep from answering, despite being vaguely aware that he was having a conversation with himself. The sight of Martin’s emaciated, atrophied body made him sorry for what he was about to do.

“I was happy,” Ambrose said honestly. “But the life you gave me was a lie.”

Ambrose reached inside the tube. He disturbed a stench, sickly sweet and cloying. He retrieved Martin’s brittle arm. The skin was like a thick jelly; if he pushed too hard, it would turn viscous and slippery in his hand. There was a red wire attached to the center of Martin’s skeletal palm.

“There’s still time.” Martin’s voice came from somewhere else. Ambrose didn’t look for it. “We can start over.”