Subject 24238, as he was known in the records, though names mattered little here, had no time to wonder what lay beyond the door. One moment, he was stepping through with a dozen others. The next, he was plummeting downward, the door gone, the ground gone, everything gone.
The fall was endless.
At first, he could only hear the roar of air rushing past his ears and his own scream, ragged, desperate, torn from the lungs by pure terror. Somewhere above, or was it below?, he heard another scream, higher-pitched, belonging to the girl who had stood beside him. Then that sound, too, vanished, devoured by the darkness.
Silence.
Not the comfortable sort that came with sleep or solitude. No, this was absolute silence. The kind that pressed against the skin, crawled inside the ears, and made the heart feel far too loud. Even the sound of his breath was gone. Even the beat of his own pulse had disappeared. It was as though the void itself had swallowed sound whole, refusing to give any of it back.
And then, without warning, it did.
The silence was shattered by a shriek. Not human. Not even close. It sounded like metal being twisted by unseen hands, a cry born of agony and malice and something far older. Then came another, and another, each worse than the last, layering over each other until it felt as though the air itself was screaming.
And then he landed.
It was not the broken, splintering end he'd expected. No shattered bones or snapping spine. Instead, he sank into something soft. Wet. Giving. It swallowed him up like a pillow soaked in warm stew.
He lay there, stunned, gasping for breath, the air in this place thick and heavy, like breathing through a soaked rag. For a while, he did nothing, just breathed, just existed, because that was all he could manage.
Then, his mind began to move again. Slowly, carefully, like a hand reaching into a dark cupboard, not knowing what might be inside.
What did I land on?
He shifted, feeling the spongy mass beneath him compress and squelch. That thought sent a jolt through his body. He rolled off it, his limbs clumsy, breath coming in ragged bursts. His feet found more solid ground, a mixture of damp stone and something else, something dry and brittle that cracked under his weight.
He squinted, peering into the gloom.
The dark was not complete here. Faint light, dull and purple like bruised fruit, filtered in from somewhere. As his eyes adjusted, shapes began to form. He turned to look behind him.
And saw it.
The mound he had landed on wasn't ground. It was a carcass. Huge. Twisted. Fur matted with filth, skin split open in places to reveal pale, glistening meat. One glazed eye stared upward, lifeless. Its mouth hung open in a frozen roar, long tusks protruding from each side like spears.
Subject 24238 recoiled, falling backward onto something else, a scatter of bones. They cracked and shifted beneath him, and he yelped, scrambling away on all fours like a frightened animal.
He didn't stop until he hit the stone wall behind him. Then he sat there, chest heaving, staring into the dark.
"You fool", he thought bitterly. "Jumping around like a scared child won't save you here."
Panic wouldn't help. Screaming wouldn't help. Nothing would help, unless he kept his head. He forced himself to breathe, slow and steady, even if the air stank of rot and death. His fingers curled into fists.
He pushed himself to his feet and took stock of his surroundings.
He was in a cavern, half a cave, really. The ceiling above him was slanted stone, pockmarked and wet. The walls were rough and jagged, the floor littered with bones, feathers, and things he didn't want to identify.
And there, ahead, was the entrance.
It yawned like a mouth, jagged edges forming what looked like teeth. Beyond it, the faint purple light grew stronger. It wasn't daylight, not quite, but it was something.
He stepped forward, slowly, weaving through the corpses. Some were small, others enormous. A few were torn to shreds; others looked almost peaceful, as if they'd simply laid down and died.
He crouched beside one, a humanoid figure no larger than a child, and picked up a long, thick bone. A femur, maybe. Strong and dense. He turned it over in his hands.
That's when it clicked.
The carcasses. The bones. The sheer size of the entrance, as though made for something far larger than any man.
"This is a nest!", he realized with cold horror. A feeding ground. A lair.
This was a monster's cave.
His stomach twisted, and the bone dropped from his hand with a dull thud. His feet moved without him telling them to, backing away from the center of the cave, edging toward the wide opening.
He had to get out. Now.
And then he heard it.
A low grunt, guttural, deep and coming from the entrance. It rumbled through the stone like a growl in the bones of the earth.