The air in the extraction chamber was thick with the scent of ozone and the acrid, metallic tang of spent explosives. It was a suffocating pressure that seemed to push the oxygen right out of Darien's lungs. Without his Beast, every breath felt shallow, every heartbeat a heavy, sluggish thud against his ribs. The silver poison of "The Veil" was a cold fire in his veins, keeping the beast at bay while leaving the man to face a fortress built to kill him.
Across the shattered laboratory, past the rows of blinking monitors and the jagged remains of the reinforced door, Vane stood behind the magnetic glass partition. His thumb was white-knuckled as it hovered over the black button of the detonator. He looked like a man who had finally stepped off the edge of reason, his hair disheveled, a thin line of spittle at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes wide with a manic, flickering light.
