...softened under his boots, dissolving into a warm, gelatinous mire that sucked at his heels. He tried to pull away, but the simulated gravity had grown heavy and wet, dragging him down

...bruising into a deep, necrotic purple that throbbed with a sickening, rhythmic pulse. The floorboards of the server room—once a grid of flawless, sterile light—softened under

...the pristine, neon-lit corridors of the mainframe began to curdle. The clean, ninety-degree angles of the virtual architecture sagged like melting wax, their crisp blue lines bruising into

...instead, it tore from his throat as a wet, bubbling rattle that tasted of battery acid and warm copper. The audio channel didn't glitch; it bled.

Around him

...peeling back in raw, pink ribbons of flesh, exposing white bone that scraped against the digital barrier.

He screamed, but the sound didn't register as a clean audio file