The heavy blast doors of Sector Zero parted with a high-pressure groan that echoed down the long, shadowed halls of the mountain’s core.
Arthur Vance stepped across the threshold. Then, the warm, fungal stench of the Hive Sanctum vanished, replaced by the sterile, biting chill of a heavy-duty bioprocessing plant. The air smelled sharply of chilled saline, heavy-duty formalin, and the faint, sweet trace of aetheric stabilizers.
Before him stretched a cave half a mile long, carved from dark, unpolished slate and supported by massive cast-iron roof beams.
Lined up in eight sharp-angled rows were two hundred and fourteen towering heat-proof glass incubation vats. Each metal tube measured fifteen feet tall and six feet in width. It was bound with heavy brass rings and anchored into concrete foundation blocks. Inside the cylinders, lit up by the pale turquoise glow of underwater chemical lamps, thick amniotic fluid swirled in gentle, nonstop vortexes.
And within that fluid floated hundreds of living, breathing tragedies of comparative sickness.
Arthur approached the nearest row, his Monocle Taxonomy Loupe humming softly as it registered sample after sample.
These were not man-made monsters like the Homunculus God. They were native mountain fauna. Juveniles, yearlings, and sub-adults captured during the Order’s raids on the surrounding valleys. Floating in suspended animation were Dire-Wolves, Ironclad Cave Bears, Razor-Beak Raptors, Scaled River Drakes, and Armored Pangolins. But every single creature had been subjected to horrific razor-sharp butchery.
