Brian Evenson - Dead Space - Martyr

And then, without another word, the pair stood and left the room.

The chamber they dumped him into was circular, about six meters in diameter. They pushed him through a pressure door and had left him there, gripping his absurd weapon, for too long. He had tried to make it a little less absurd, scraping it against the walls and sharpening its edges, giving it a point, making it a makeshift knife.

The observation chamber was directly overhead, the same size and shape as the chamber below. The glass ceiling of the lower chamber served as the glass floor of the upper one. He could see Stevens and Markoff above, looming over him. They were drinking glasses of champagne, smiling.

It’s one thing to be killed, thought Altman, but dying knowing what infamy will be done in your name after your death is another thing entirely. Better to be like the old drunk in the town and have no name.

The second door of the chamber slid open to reveal a dark corridor. He stayed where he was, near the door he had been pushed through, waiting for something to come through. Nothing did.

The world is a hell, thought Altman. You can do everything right and cheat death, and then be ruined by one false step. Those, apparently, were the conditions of life. Of his life, at least.

The smell suddenly reached him. It was a rank, rotting odor, putrid to an extreme. He gagged.

And then he heard a heavy scraping sound, and the creature pulled itself in through the door.

It scraped against the sides of the passage as it came. He could see, here and there, reminders that it had once been human, a foot that had been stretched and split and now projected from the joint of the creature’s chitinous gigantic arm. Fingerlike tentacles throbbed over its face. And there, in the middle of its pulsating abdomen, was a large callus that looked like Krax’s screaming face.

It pushed the rest of the way into the room and howled.

Oh, God, he thought. Let this be a hallucination. Let this be a dream. Let me wake up.

He closed his eyes and then he opened them again. The creature was still there. It roared, and then it charged.

This book would not have been possible if Frank and Nick Murray hadn’t provided me the perfect place to write at just the right time. Thanks are due to them and to Le Trèfle Rouge, and to the fine folks at Visceral Games/EA for trusting me with the best bit of first-person SF/horror dismemberment out there. And applause is due especially to my editor, Eric Raab, for his excellent, tireless, and thankless work.