Freezing oxygen burned Caleb's throat.
The air tasted entirely sterile, stripped of the rotting copper stench from the upper levels of the mountain. The squad stood motionless inside the unmapped obsidian corridor.
The crushing heat of the fleshy dome lay trapped behind the shattered bone-wall they had just breached. Beneath Caleb's surplus boots, the floor stretched out in a single sheet of smooth black glass.
Bare stone arched overhead, dry and devoid of the pulsing, bioluminescent veins infecting the rest of the rupture zone.
Caleb pressed his left hand hard against his neck. Thick, hot blood flooded between his taped fingers.
The serrated bone-blade had sheared through the thick canvas collar of his jacket, sinking deep into the muscle along his collarbone. The anomaly anchored behind his sternum thrashed, demanding massive calories to knit the severed tissue and seal the artery.
There were none.
