I snapped back awake to the sound of fighting getting closer. Whatever it was, it was approaching the door quickly, and with it more muffled voices. A strangled gurgle, I think, and then – “eliminate…”

What?

As if in response, the walls surrounding me began to crackle subtlety at first, then grow in intensity. A low hum vibrated around the room, and the cement glowed an eerie pale blue.

One pulse came. It coursed through the walls, then, the floor, then myself, jarring my bones and rattling my teeth. I felt my heart skip a beat.

Second pulse. Harder, stronger. The walls were alive now, bursting with deadly energy as they sent waves of death after me. My eyes burned as electricity coursed through me. The pulses were shorting out my brain – and then my heart.

Third pulse. Agonizing, excruciating pain, ten times worse than the fat man’s sessions. They scrambled my thoughts, cracking whips across the gray matter in my shrieking skull.

But then it was calm, and darkness took me.