Page 73 of Immersed
Theapplausegrewlouderas they moved through the passageways, leading them toward what looked like a wider chamber ahead. The rhythmic clapping echoed off the concrete walls with metronomic precision, never speeding up or slowing down.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
“That’s not normal applause,”Levi whispered, slowing his pace.
They reached the entrance to a larger room—some kind of observation chamber with a raised platform in the center. Emergency lighting flickered overhead, casting sickly yellow pools across the space.
And there, in the middle of the platform, was the source of the applause.
Jesus fucking Christ.
A humanoid form sat strapped to a metal chair with barbed wire, the twisted metal cutting deep grooves into what remained of its flesh. Most of the skin rotted away, leaving exposed muscle and bone beneath.
Wooden blocks had been screwed into the bones of its hands—crude prosthetics that allowed it to continue the motion even as its fingershad long since decomposed. The sound of wood striking wood echoed through the chamber with horrible regularity.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Wire armature connected to the ceiling kept its arms positioned correctly, pulleys and automated systems ensuring the applause never stopped. Even when strips of rotting flesh fell away from its forearms, the wooden blocks continued their eternal percussion.
Its face was a ruin of surgical experimentation—jawbone exposed where the cheeks had been cut away, empty eye sockets staring blindly ahead. But somehow, impossibly, it was still alive. Levi could see its chest rising and falling with clockwork precision, forced breathing courtesy of the apparatus jammed down its throat.
“It’s a lure,”Asher said, studying the room’s layout.“Look at the floor.”
Levi followed his gaze and spotted the subtle difference in the concrete in front of the platform. A pressure plate, designed to look like normal flooring but clearly rigged to some kind of mechanism.
“I bet the door would seal if we stepped on it,”Levi said, noting the heavy metal barrier that hung ready to drop.
“And then whatever’s behind that door would be released.”Asher pointed to a second barrier on the far side of the chamber, this one showing signs of something large and violent trying to get through. Deep gouges in the metal, and a sound like breathing that wasn’t quite human.
The applauding horror’s head turned toward them with a grinding of vertebrae. Its empty sockets seemed to focus on Levi, and the clapping intensified.
Clap-clap-clap. Clap-clap-clap.
“It knows we’re here,”Levi breathed.
“Is there a motion sensor?”Asher studied the wire armature.“It probably responds to body heat and movement. The closer we get, the faster it claps.”
This is what happened to the patients.This monstrosity had once been a person, someone trapped in this place and subjected to Faine’s horrors until nothing human remained.
Levi took an involuntary step forward, driven by some combination of horror and morbid fascination. The pressure plate was only a few feet away, and the thing’s clapping was becoming frantic.
“Levi, don’t—”
Asher’s arms wrapped around his waist, yanking him backward just as his foot was about to land on the pressure plate, and pulled Levi against his chest, holding him safely away from the trap.
“Careful,”Asher murmured, his breath warm against Levi’s ear.“You almost triggered it.”
For a moment, Levi felt only gratitude.He saved me. Again.But then Asher’s arms tightened around him, hands splaying possessively across his chest, and the gratitude curdled into something else.
“Let go,”Levi said, trying to pull away.
“In a moment.”Asher’s voice was soft, intimate. His hands moved, fingertips tracing along Levi’s ribs through his shirt.“You’re trembling.”
Of course I’m trembling.They were standing in front of a rotting corpse that had been tortured into eternal applause, with something large and hungry waiting behind a metal door.
“I said let go.”
“You’re safe now,”Asher continued, as if he hadn’t heard. One hand moved up to rest over Levi’s heart, feeling its rapid rhythm.“I won’t let anything hurt you.”
