Outside, the world fell silent as the last echoes of the collapse faded into a strange, heavy stillness.
Ethan stood motionless in the Inhibitor Chamber, his eyes following the lines running across the blood red walls, which pulsed with a faint and sickly light. At the center of the room lay the shattered remains of the device he had come for, the Inhibitor. He had never actually seen one before, only heard descriptions, and he had expected something sleek and metallic, something sharp with gears and soft glows, a piece of forgotten high technology. But what he found looked more like a ruptured heart.
The lower portion, the base, still held traces of actual machinery, smooth alloy wrapped around dense circuitry, but from that base had grown a grotesque, organic mass that was now torn open. Its surface was covered in thin, vein-like tubing that had climbed up the walls, glistening with an oily film that gave the entire chamber a slick, unsettling sheen.
