Gordon came to with a violent jolt, pain biting into his wrists and ankles.
He realized he was hanging from the ceiling of a classroom, his body suspended by restraints he couldn't see in the dim light.
A few weak bulbs flickered overhead, casting a sickly glow that illuminated just enough to see, but never enough to feel safe.
Something was wrong with the room.
The classroom was far too large. The walls stretched wider than any schoolroom should, the ceiling rising like a cavern roof. But the size wasn't what made his stomach turn.
It was the bodies.
They were piled high in one corner, stacked carelessly like refuse. None of them were whole. Organs lay exposed. Limbs were torn away. Flesh had been reduced to a grotesque mash of blood and bone, the air thick with the stench of iron and rot.
And beside that pile was a creature.
It was massive, nearly filling the already oversized classroom. Bipedal by structure, yet crouched on all fours like an animal at a feeding trough.
