Dead silence. Heavier than a vacuum, more frozen than polar pack ice. This was not the absence of sound, but the stagnation of existence itself, like an ancient insect trapped in hardened resin.
The Old Welder drew in a sharp gasp of bone-chilling air. The inhaled dust sent him into a violent fit of coughing, every spasm ripping through his entire body with a tearing agony, as though he were tightly bound and violently pulled apart by invisible barbed wire. The turbid air filled his lungs like a burial shroud; a dense mixture of thick rust, aged grease, and an indescribable, eerie, sweet-and-putrid stench akin to biological organs slowly dissolving in forced disinfectant. Every breath triggered deeper nausea and dizziness.
His vision struggled painfully back into focus. Dimness. Intermittent, faint sparks danced across the twisted, fractured pipe openings overhead and along the walls, emitting dying, sizzling groans. Far from illuminating anything, this meager light cast dim, shadowy contours over the surrounding rusted, viscous metal profiles, resembling the skeletal silhouettes of distorted monsters. He was sprawled upon the freezing metal grid floor, oily grime and metal fragments stuck to half his face, congealed black blood heavy with the reek of rust lingering at his nostrils and the corners of his mouth.
Chapter 72