Chapter 19: Sachi Crosses the Threshold

The annex smelled different at eleven in the morning than it had at night.

Sachi noticed this first, because she noticed sounds and smells before she noticed almost anything else, and the difference was specific: at night the laboratory's fluorescent hum had layered over everything like a second ceiling, flattening the space. Now, in the thin light coming through the propped fire door, the room breathed differently. She could hear the tanks' circulation systems individually. She could hear the tick of expanding metal somewhere in the wall. She could hear, from the direction of the floor drain, a faint mineral exhalation that she had not registered before, possibly because she had been too frightened the first time to hear it.

She was not frightened now. She was not sure what she was.