finding the bare skin of his ankles with a freezing, hyper-sensitive sting. It didn't burn, not exactly. It felt more like a thousand microscopic needles, each whispering a low-voltage

...clinging to his heavy canvas trousers with the weight of wet cement. It didn’t just coat him; it seeped through the seams of his gear, finding the bare skin

...now flexed like a colossal ribcage, contracting to squeeze the stale, metallic air from the chamber with every shuddering respiration.

The silver grease climbed past his knees, clinging

...once rigid, slackened into a bruised, throbbing membrane that groaned with the wet friction of shifting muscle. The ribbed conduits overhead, which he had mistaken for iron girders,

-water to a warm, clutching grease. It began to heat, not with the dry warmth of a radiator, but with a sickening, metabolic fever. The metallic walls around him, once rigid