33. THE SPIDER. THE QUAGMIRE AND THE SAFETY FUSE…
— «He-lp… me… Ple-e-ase…»
The sound seemed to come from the black, oily muck on the floor. Someone was asking for help. The voice was cracked… with a terrifying, bubbling accent. As if the speaker’s throat was clogged with silt or thick syrup.
Did I imagine it?
— «Hey! Anyone alive out there?» — I shouted into the inky depth. The sound of my own voice grated on my ears, bouncing off the walls of the stairwell with a booming echo.
«Idiot. Now they’ll come running…»
The thought broke off.
From below, from the first floor, came a rustle. A dry, rapid swishing.
Then — footsteps. The sound of bare feet slapping against concrete.
The rhythm accelerated, breaking, turning into a drumroll.
The unknown creature was moving not on two legs. On four.
I thrust the knife forward, backing toward the wall.
It was approaching with inconceivable speed. A bald crown flashed in the stairwell. Followed by a long, unnaturally stretched neck, like a pale hose.
The creature was scrambling up the stairs. I managed to examine THIS in all its details. Human anatomy does not permit such angles. The creature’s legs, twisted in an unnatural split, stuck up with sharp, white knees higher than its head. It moved like a giant harvestman spider, scrambling its deformed limbs over three steps at once.
Terror dropped into my stomach like a lump of ice. I took a step back.
Behind my back — the gaping maw of the dark, strange apartment.
The only path of retreat.
The human-arachnid reached the landing. It braked sharply, its claws screeching on the tiles.
The creature slowly turned its head toward me. The face… It had no face left. A loose white mask with sunken eye sockets. A mouth did not exist. Instead of it, an ugly, jagged pit yawned. And inside, in the red depth, dark, slimy appendages wriggled. As if the creature had tried to swallow a live octopus, and now the mollusk, stuck in its skull, was frantically tearing its way out.
The creature hissed. It swayed and pounced. Two meters separated us.
— «To hell with it!» — instinct shut off my brain. I flew backward into the black apartment. A yank — and the door slammed shut right in front of the creature’s nose. The click of the lock sounded like a saving gunshot.
An impact from outside! The door shuddered but held. The screech of claws on the metal of the lock. Trying to rip out the handle?
Didn’t work…
I exhaled. Safe. For a second. I tried to turn around to assess the situation… and froze.
My legs wouldn’t move. At all. It was as if my boots were welded to the floor. The cold, dead substance on the floor beneath me came alive. It crawled up the bootlegs, greedily embracing, devouring the rubber and leather. I jerked like a beast in a trap. And lost my balance.
With a squelching, slurping sound, I toppled onto my back, bogging down in the sticky quagmire. The black jelly felt as viscous as bitumen and as heavy, as poisonous, as mercury.
And then it hit me. This wasn’t just fear. It was primal, animalistic Terror. I suddenly realized I wasn’t falling onto the floor. I was falling into a Stomach, greedily devouring my soul, savoring my anxieties like a fine dessert.
The darkness around me wasn’t just the absence of light. It was dense, alive, and very animalistically hungry.
The darkness was dissolving me. An unbearable pain pierced my back. As if thousands of invisible wasps had bitten into my flesh. No-o, these aren’t wasps. This is acid. I felt my skin cells breaking down. Felt the blackness pouring into my blood, replacing life itself.
I was losing my mind. My brain began to collapse. Red circles swam before my eyes. My heart was pounding so hard it was ready to smash my ribs.
THUMP! THUMP! Another second — and a heart attack, the saving death from a pain shock…
CLICK.
Inside my skull, it was as if a switch had tripped. A heavy, clanking sound of metal against metal. Emergency protocol.
(CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL FAILURE DETECTED. PANIC LEVEL MAXIMUM: 100%)
(ACTIVATING LOCKDOWN…)
The terror vanished. Instantly. My heart leveled its rhythm. The pain remained, but it seemed to stop being «mine.» Now it was just information. «Damage to the integumentary tissues of the back. Threat level: high.»
I stopped thrashing. I simply lay there, relaxed… meekly dissolving in the acid, staring into the darkness with calm eyes.
— «Birth is always pain,» — a familiar voice said. My own modified, synthetic one. Through the red haze, I saw him. My through-the-looking-glass doppelgänger. He stood over me, glowing with a deathly, pale blue light.
— «No one canceled your mission, Executioner!»
The creature wearing my face raised its right hand. Its thin fingers pinched together. I looked at him without fear. My fear had been blocked, put on safety.
— «Do you know your message? What you must deliver?»
— «Ye-es,» — I answered. My voice sounded hollow, mechanical. — «I know.»
— «That is good. But you chickened out. You gave in to your biological, animalistic primal nature. For biological cowardice, one must pay. Remember this…»
I no longer heard the snap that followed those words. I only saw a bright flash.
> ⚠️ **ENTITY STATUS: CRITICAL BIOLOGICAL FAILURE. FIREWALL ACTIVATION.**
>
> 🧬 How imperfect the protein shell is. Encountering the predatory flora of the Underside, the carrier gave in to the most primitive, garbage reaction — animalistic terror. He forgot his orders, dropped his weapon, and let his pulse jump to a critical level. The System was forced to intervene and pull the switch to save its courier transport from a heart attack.
>
> ⚡ Do you think the Reflection appeared to save him? Charming naivety. It appeared to punish him. Shutting off fear is not mercy, it is simply blocking a malfunctioning driver. The pain didn’t go anywhere; it became dry statistics.
>
> 💀 The Executioner forgot that he is merely a piece of reprogrammed meat whose only task is to deliver the Message. A snap of the fingers — is a reminder. The bill for cowardice is always presented. Keep reading. Let’s see where this messenger wakes up after another reboot.
