Later, after a series of other doors leading into passages that smelled more or less like rotted meat, Tezzeret raised his hand, halting the group. They were in a room small enough that Venser could actually see the far and the near wall at the same time. It had the advantage of being low, with a ceiling that extended only a few feet above his helmet. Some of the Phyrexians had to crouch. One with the long legs of a spider was dragged by its comrades.

  Tezzeret turned to the party. “This is the place for sleep.”

  Venser fell onto the metal floor and was asleep in moments. He dreamed of night watches. He dreamed that it was his watch. Suddenly Phyrexians made of flesh appeared all around him with blood dripping from their eyes. One seized him around the neck.

  He woke to Elspeth shaking him.

  “What is it?”

  “Our guide is gone,” she said.

  Venser sat up. “Where?” He looked around in the pale glow from Koth, who sat leaning against the far wall, watching him with an unreadable expression. Venser stood. “Did anyone see him leave?”

  Nobody said anything.

  “We’re really in it now,” Koth said. “You’ve got us down here and now even I don’t have a clue where we are.”

  Like he ever knew where we were, Venser thought. But he did not speak.

  The tone in the vulshok’s voice became more caustic. “None of this would have happened if I had been leading,” Koth said.

  “No,” Venser said. “We would be squatting in some hole on the surface watching people die as they fought the invasion.”

  “It’s an honest way to die,” Koth said.

  “I don’t know if there is such a thing.”

  Koth was silent a moment. “Well, I don’t trust this one leading us, do you, Elspeth?” Koth turned to Elspeth, who was standing a bit back, gazing into her sword’s shiny surface. At the mention of her name she sheathed her sword.

  “I do not …” she said, “trust friends of mine enemy.”

  Venser heard the creak of metal and raised his hand to stop their speaking. Moments later there was another creak and a grind and the blue Phyrexians appeared in a line in the darkness. Some of the Phyrexians glanced at one another and then back at Venser. Tezzeret was behind them.

  “We have done a bit of scouting,” Tezzeret said.

  “Or trap planning,” Koth muttered under his breath.

  If Tezzeret heard Koth, he did not acknowledge it. He simply turned and began walking. The blue Phyrexians split and actually bowed as the companions passed between them. Koth and Elspeth looked at each other in confusion.

  They walked through another hidden door, and through one that was already opened. As they moved, Venser became suddenly sure that they were moving downward, though never did they descend stair or tunnel. Then they came to a strange wall where Tezzeret stopped and waited for the group to catch up. Venser stood staring at the wall, if one could call it a wall. He realized it was more of a body.

  Fibers were stretched over protrusions and bound off to other bulges, creating a taut sweep that reminded Venser strongly of muscles without the covering of skin. This impression was heightened when he touched it and the wall trembled. Tezzeret turned and glanced at him.

  “Did you touch it?”

  “I did,” Venser said.

  “It feels interesting, yes?”

  “What is it?”

  “A Phyrexian.”

  Venser nodded. The others were approaching out of the darkness, but he had something to ask. “You mentioned before that the taint was having trouble with the furnace layer, whatever that is.”

  “That is true,” Tezzeret said, brushing an unseen something off his sleeve.

  “What did you mean?”

  Tezzeret looked at him strangely, with a small smile curling the corner of his mouth. “They are gaining sentience somehow, all of these creatures, you know. It is a limited sentience, but they are beginning to understand that they exist and can die. This seems to have changed some. We … I am unsure if this change is only found in the denizens of that red layer, or if there has somehow been another dissident mindset injected into the group. It is hard to say.”

  “How are you privy to this kind of information?”

  “I am involved with certain aspects of the centrality of this infestation.”

  “So why are you helping us?” Venser said. “Couldn’t you drop yourself into tremendous trouble?”

  “That is one possibility.”

  Venser glanced at the wall. An eye as large as his whole body was opened next to him. The cornea and slit iris were black, and it was staring directly at him. Venser took a step back. “Where is the mouth?” he said after a moment.

  “We will be moving through it shortly,” Tezzeret said.

  Elspeth and Koth followed the chrome Phyrexians. Tezzeret pulled his breastplate down, revealing his bare chest. A glass vial hung by a thick lanyard around his neck.

  “Would you take it?” Tezzeret asked Venser. “I cannot touch it.”

  “But it is touching your …” Elspeth started.

  “My flesh, I know,” Tezzeret said, as Venser looped the lanyard over Tezzeret’s head. “But my etherium arm.”

  Venser held the vial up to the glow of the Phyrexians. “What is it?”

  Tezzeret took the vial and opened it with his flesh arm. He dabbed his finger on it and touched his forehead with the dab. Then he handed it to Venser, who did the same. Elspeth followed. Koth smelled it and curled his nose.

  “This smells like rot,” he said.

  “It is the essence of Phyrexian,” Tezzeret said. “But do not worry. It is not infectious in itself.”

  Koth dabbed his forehead.

  “Well, now we can take the next step,” he tapped the muscles of the wall and suddenly a line creased and the muscle spread to reveal innards: long, twisting metal pipes and strange, small organs hanging like wet fruit. Out of the hanging muck on the wall, a mouth yawned wide. The many teeth crowded in the mouth were chipped and filed down, from the passing of many bodies, Venser assumed. He could see that they had been sharp enough once though.

  “Why is the mouth under the skin?” Koth said.

  Tezzeret stepped back and smiled his small smile. “Well then, who will be first?”

  No one moved.

  “Only making a joke,” Tezzeret said. He stepped forward to the mouth, which was pulled open so wide that what passed for lips were stretched and cracked.

  Tezzeret looked back over his shoulder. “Whatever you do, keep your arms in.”

  He stepped into the mouth, which closed around him and swallowed. Then it opened again. Venser looked at Elspeth, who shook her head. Venser stepped forward and after a pause, stepped into the mouth. It closed on him and he felt the muscles tighten around him. In the next second he was thrown forward and began to slide.

  Venser slid, keeping his hands as close to his sides as possible. He was sometimes upside down and sometimes feetfirst. But always he moved, and fast. The throat banked and shot farther and farther down. The word stomach occurred to Venser and he remembered dissecting the dead Phyrexians he had managed to lay his hands on in Dominaria. They were precious because most, if not all, were burned after the great invasion. But he had found one and bought it off the black market. It had been preserved in a foul liquid, but that did not matter. He had worked on the specimen for days. When he had reached the stomach, he had been so shocked that he had dropped the charm he’d had to use to move through the half-flesh body and its metallic viscera.

  The stomach itself had teeth. Somehow it too had teeth as if it might someday get out of its body prison and go hunting for itself.

  Venser considered such thoughts as he shot through the intestinal track.

  And then he popped out and went sliding along a floor. Tezzeret was standing, scooping slime off his cheeks. Venser tried to stand, but slid. He was covered with slime. He turned and looked at the puckered hole they came out of. As he watched, Elspeth and Koth popped out. He helped Elspeth to her feet. She stood, wet and dripping with oil and metallic viscera. Venser watched as Tezzeret walked to a part of the flesh wall. As before, he touched it and flesh yawned to reveal the wet innards, which in turn spread to reveal a mouth yawning wide. Tezzeret stepped into that other mouth, and the process repeated.

  They shot down that throat, and then another. Each time Venser felt sicker and sicker. Every time the mouth seemed to get larger and larger. Once, he forgot to keep his arms at his sides. His wrist caught on something metal, and he yanked to a stop in the tube. He pulled and pulled, with the throat muscles closing in on him and squeezing, and finally his wrist came free. After what seemed like a hundred more throats and rooms, Venser stood and then sat back down on the metal floor.

  “You are tired?” Tezzeret said.

  “Yes,” Venser said.

  “That is good, because we have come to what I wanted to show you.”

  Venser looked around at the room. It appeared to be like all the others.

  Tezzeret must have seen the doubt on Venser’s face. He walked to the far side of the small room and put both his hands on the wall. Two eyes as large as his head appeared and blinked. Tezzeret spoke a series of words. A seam appeared in the muscle and then in the conduit guts beneath. The seam slid open to reveal a room on the other side.

  Chapter 9

  Elspeth popped out behind as Venser tried to get a good look into the room. He could not see anything save brightness. The room was well lit. Not bright like the room where they had met Tezzeret, but well lit. Koth popped out of the previous opening. Venser turned to Tezzeret. The metal-armed human was drumming the fingers of his metal arm on a wall. Waiting for his Phyrexians before entering the room, Venser guessed. Elspeth appeared beside Venser, still dripping and stinking. Her eyes wrenched down into suspicious slits. Her weapon was unsheathed in her white-knuckled fist.

  “What is it?” Venser said.

  Elspeth did not speak at first. Venser had to repeat his question.

  “The smell,” she said. “Do you smell it?”

  Venser did not want to tell her how much she stunk, how much they all stunk. “I think we all have a particular stench about us now,” he said.

  Elspeth’s head jerked curtly, her eyes never leaving the doorway into the well-lit room. “Not that smell. The other.”

  Venser took a good breath. His nose was usually fairly good, but he could not smell anything except the slight stink of rotting meat. He looked at Elspeth and shook his head. Her hands were shaking. Her lips were drawn into a tight, white line.

  “I smell their tools,” she said. “Their blades.”

  When the last of his chrome Phyrexians were dripping in the corner, Tezzeret stepped to the bright room. “This way,” he said.

  Venser suddenly became very aware of the Phyrexians behind him. He stopped walking. They stopped walking. Would it be possible to turn and leave, or would they not let him go?

  Tezzeret was the first to enter the room. Venser followed, then Elspeth, and last Koth, cursing as he tried to ladle the slime off his arms.

  Inside the room, lights were focused on haphazardly arranged tables. There were cages of metal ribs lining the room. Phyrexians of various sizes were moving between the tables.

  They were chrome-type Phyrexians like Tezzeret’s. One had a chrome breast and head, and unnaturally high shoulders. Each of its huge claws was festooned with blades and needles, and both of these claws were inside the cracked-open chest of a human lying on a table. The human was jerking and writhing as the surgeon pulled parts out and looked at them. A huge Phyrexian with a tiny skeletal head and patched-together arms as long as its legs held the humans down. As they watched in stunned silence, the blade-handed surgeon took out the human’s liver and dropped it unceremoniously on the table with a splat. Another Phyrexian, with strips of discolored iron wrapped around its body, poked at the liver with its sharpened finger lances, while its other hand, shaped like scissors, snipped bits off.

  Elspeth screamed.

  It was a sound like none Venser had ever heard-a primal, rage-filled shriek. She ran forward and cut the first Phyrexian she met, leaving two hewn parts to slip to the floor. Her sword moved like a blur and two more Phyrexians fell. Elspeth’s face was a grim mask and her blows were harder and less focused than normal-more wild hacking than anything else. She bellowed in a language Venser couldn’t identify as she butchered every Phyrexian in the room.

  Some of the chrome Phyrexians behind Venser twitched, but Tezzeret looked at them once and they stopped moving.

  When Elspeth reached the nearest surgery, the large orderly Phyrexian raised his meaty arms from the patient and had them severed neatly at the forearm. The next flurried cut came fast on the heels of the first, and the Phyrexian’s body slid apart in seven places. The surgeon pulled a syringed claw from the muck in the human’s body but was cut down in place, still with one claw in the human’s thorax. The Phyrexian doctor that had sliced up the liver looked from Elspeth to its chrome brethren at the doorway. The frantic knight’s sword swept down with an overhead strike that split its head and shoulders from each other.

  Elspeth turned and hacked at the side of the next Phyrexians, tears running down her cheeks, and strings of drool coming from the corners of her mouth.

  There were perhaps twelve Phyrexians when they entered, but they were soon dispatched. Elspeth sunk to the bloody, reeking floor, still holding her sword, and began to cry in wrenching sobs. Venser walked toward her. Unexpectedly, the person who had been on the table sat up. With no orderly, the human tried to stand, its stomach open. It fell on the floor. As Venser passed the cages, the beings within began to moan. They reached from between the rib bars and clutched at his clothes with weak, white fingers.

  Venser reached Elspeth and bent down and put his hand on her shoulder. She jerked away. He glanced at her sword before speaking.

  “What is this place?” Venser said. He walked back toward Tezzeret. Koth was standing off to the side with eyes wider than Venser had ever seen. The Vulshok’s vents at his ribs were wide and red. Venser could almost see the steam coming out of his ears.

  “This is an experimentation chamber,” Tezzeret said calmly, looking at his fingernails. Clearly the sight of all the carnage did not bother him in the least.

  “And this does not affect you?” Venser said.

  “This arm,” Tezzeret said. “Is made of etherium, as you know. I had to collect it painstakingly over time, from bodies sometimes. I found them anywhere I could. I pulled them dead out of gutters after bar fights.”

  Venser stared at the beast standing before him.

  “From filth and weak flesh,” Tezzeret said, “to this purity.” He flexed his shining arm. “Phyrexians strive to have flesh, to be of flesh. They fail to see that flesh is what makes them dirty and weak.”

  Elspeth’s sobs continued. Suddenly Venser was very tired and he felt as though he might be sick. Sick from what Tezzeret was telling him. Sick from what he had just seen. No, there was a level he would not pass. You could offer him four etherium limbs and he would not take them if the metal had to be extracted from bodies. “Why did you bring us here?” Venser said wearily.

  Tezzeret raised his etherium arm and pointed. “For her.”

  Tezzeret’s finger pointed to a cage on the far wall. Koth was closer, and he moved toward it, stepping carefully over the lumped bodies of the Phyrexians. It took Venser longer to reach the cage. Koth was already peering in by the time he arrived. Venser looked at the cage’s lock, which resembled nothing so much as a human heart of pocked metal. The artificer whispered words of power, moving mana to his hands from his head, and put his fingers into the lock’s suddenly pliable metal. He moved his fingers around until the door swung open. Inside, a figure lay on the floor. Koth walked into the cage. Soon he came out with the female human. She was dressed in leather, an unusual material to use for clothes on Mirrodin, Venser knew. Must be from another plane, he thought. Aside from that she appeared a normal human, except she needed a good scrubbing.

  Venser turned to Tezzeret.

  “Do you notice anything about her?” Tezzeret said.

  Elspeth stopped crying. She looked at the human.

  “No,” Venser said. “A human from somewhere else.”

  “Is she from somewhere else?”

  “She’s not Mirran,” Koth said.

  “No?” Tezzeret said.

  “She’s got no metal,” Koth said, looking at the human with barely hidden disgust.

  “Ahhh,” Tezzeret said.

  “What is your name?” Venser said.

  The woman did not answer. She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

  “Do you have a name?” Koth said.

  “Leave her be,” Elspeth said thickly. “Can you not see she is shocked to be free? Unlock the other cages. Let the wretches out.”

  “I would not do that,” Tezzeret said.

  “Why?” Venser said.

  “They are mostly Phyrexian. They would strive to kill you. This place studies Phyrexian transformation.”

  “But she has no phyresis,” Koth said, staring at the woman. “Not any that I can see.”

  Tezzeret nodded. His little smile reappeared. “Exactly.”

  Venser looked back at the woman. All flesh and no infection, he thought. As he watched, she teetered and then sat down abruptly.

  Tezzeret gestured to the woman. “They have been looking at this fleshling for some time. She does not succumb to the oil that spreads their infection. That is why she is not mangled. They pour the oil on her. They inject it under her skin. Still she defies infection. Nobody knows why.”

  “She is the key to fighting their vile spread,” Elspeth said.

 

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