The place was a low-ceilinged room, all rust and dim light, where shapes moved inside tanks of cloudy fluid.
He watched figures drift, pale, slick, each one a broken mirror of someone familiar but his mind was sluggish for some reason. Arms twisted into odd angles, tails turned into useless fins. Faces collapsed inward, sprouting teeth where eyes should have been.
The machines did not stop. A small voice called out, a perfect and terrible recording of his own laugh, as his ribs split open to show a second, smaller mouth. He tried to run, but the floor softened like flesh underfoot. Every door led to another row of tanks, another batch of almost-people unfolding like wet paper. Then one creature turned its head but it was not toward him, but through him, as if he were already forgotten.
