Shapes spilled into the corridor—not beasts,but corpses he had seen earlier floating in shattered vats of murky preservative fluid.
Bodies that should have stayed dead.
Now they crawled, lurched, fell, and slammed their way into the passageway.
A corpse squeezed out of a ventilation shaft,its spine folding and then snapping straight again with a sickening crunch.
Another slid from a broken cylinder,half its organs still dripping with cloudy chemical fluid.
A legless corpse dragged itself entirely on elbows,gray skin flaking like wet paper.
A ribcage split into eight bony stalks scraped its way forward like a spider made from human remains.
Something worm-thick and swollen flopped across the floor,its entire surface stretched with cracking human skin.
Stitched torsos slithered like centipedes,their spines dragging behind them like segmented tails.
Dog-sized corpses skittered on four joint-broken limbs,heads twitching violently at unnatural angles.
And the smell—rot mixed with disinfectant—hit him like a slap.
Every corpse turned toward Adrian.Every corpse lunged.
The first reached him.He punched—
"kaka!"The skull dented inward, the corpse snapping sideways like a broken sack.
It clawed upright again.
Another crashed into him.He kicked—
"peng!"The corpse smashed into a rack—then staggered forward again, jaws snapping.
Hands grabbed his ankles.Teeth scraped his arm.Nails dug below his ribs.
More and more piled on—falling over him like a landslide of dead flesh.
He struggled, struck, tore, kicked—but there were too many.
They pinned his back.Crushed his ribs.Hands clamped around his throat.Gums bit into his shoulder.
He couldn't breathe.
In desperation he twisted—
—and slipped.
He fell backward—
straight into the pile of five-colored crystal cores.