The world inside Arthur Wright’s skull inverted with the blinding, electric violence of a lightning strike hitting an ungrounded transformer.
NEURAL OVERDRIVE ACTIVE: 60.0 SECONDS. Lock-step DEPTH: 99.8%. Brain PRESSURE: 38 MMHG [SEVERE Height].
The three-space-folding physical room vanished from Arthur’s sense senses. In its place erupted the dizzying, four-space-folding stonework of Vesper’s central nervous system.
Through the timed together neural bridge, Arthur didn’t merely observe her anatomy. He became the host of her agony. Every cut nerve ending in her spine screamed in his own neck column. Every barbed fungal anchor tearing into her dura mater felt like a red-hot iron fishhook being dragged through his own spinal canal. A heavy, dark stream of deoxygenated blood gushed from Arthur’s left nostril, dripping across his upper lip and spattering his soot-stained trauma scrubs. His optic nerves flashed with kaleidoscopic bursts of photophobic static, his heart rate spiking to one hundred and ninety beats per minute.
Behind him, Grimm stepped forward. The six-hundred-two-pound Stygian direhound pressed his massive black glass skull firmly against Arthur’s lower back, channeling a steady, rhythmic 1.5G gravity anchor into Arthur’s lower-back spine. The nearby downward pressure artificially steadied Arthur’s plummeting blood pressure, preventing neurogenic shock from claiming his mind.
