last natural rhythm to a cold, relentless ticker.

The terror vanished with it, scrubbed from his mind like a line of bad code. In its place came an awful, crystalline

oxygen—or a synthetic equivalent—directly into his neural pathways. The searing cold in his chest bloomed outward, a web of icy filaments tracing every vein and capillary until his heart surrendered its

The sensation of suffocating peaked, then abruptly dissolved. The expected panic of a dying brain never arrived; instead, the metallic liquid filling his lungs began to pulse with a unnatural, mechanical rhythm, pumping

...but his fingers skidded uselessly across a surface that had already turned as smooth and unyielding as glass. The membrane had hardened into an airtight seal over his features,

...ozone as it coated his tongue. It forced its way down his esophagus, a cold, writhing column that bypassed his gag reflex entirely. He tried to thrash, to claw at his face