Pain.
It was like thousands of red-hot needles were being driven into the gaps between his bones.
Or like a rusty saw, slowly grating against his spine.
When Ian "woke up," his first sensation was pain.
This was no illusion. It was real pain.
He twitched a finger. His knuckles felt rusted. Every flex was answered with a crisp CRACK and the sharp, tearing agony of muscle.
He gasped for breath. The air was thick with the smell of rust, dust, and the foul stench of something long since rotted.
His eyelids felt as if they were weighted with lead. It took all his effort to pry them open a crack.
His vision was a blur. The world was spinning.
The first thing to come into focus was the gloomy, gray sky.
It wasn't a normal gray, but a dead, suffocating gray, as if an ashtray had been dumped out over the world, pressing down until it was hard to breathe.
A few rays of dark red light seeped through cracks in the thick cloud cover, casting the surroundings in murky shadows.
