The emergency stairwell was a vertical coffin.
With the Stadium's power grid completely dead, the narrow, spiraling shaft was swallowed by an absolute, suffocating blackness. The air was freezing, biting at exposed skin, and it tasted like rust and centuries of dead dust. But worse than the cold was the smell. Major Sterling's dried arterial blood was caked thick on Ren's ruined clothes, mixing heavily with the putrid, lingering stench of the Abyssal Glutton's stomach acid. In the tight, unventilated concrete cylinder, the odor was thick enough to chew.
Every step Chloe took felt like dragging her legs through wet cement.
My thighs are burning. The muscle is literally tearing, Chloe thought, her teeth gritted so hard her jaw ached. Three hundred feet. Fourteen pounds of armor. Just keep stepping. If I stop, the dark is going to crush me.
