Plip. Plip.

A faint dripping sound startled him awake.

When Bayler Shrike woke up, he couldn’t move. There was an immense, unyielding weight pressing down on his chest, and for a second fear took over. He was surrounded by absolute darkness and completely paralyzed. For a second, he was afraid he had never left the hospital, never been given a second chance and the strength to climb out of that miserable bed..

More than anything, he was afraid the strength and the power he’d felt were a dream, and he was waking up now, too weak to lift his own hand.

He threw himself at the barrier holding him back, straining, using all the little ability he had to move, and it shifted. Barely, but barely was enough to wipe away that moment of frozen fear. It was only an obstacle, a dumb weight holding him down. He could do this.

There was a grinding sound as stone shifted, and his gasping, huffing breath in between pushes as he slowly forced the slab of concrete off his chest and crawled free. Sweat had made him sticky and rock dust clung to every inch of his body, filling his lungs.

There was no light.

He felt his way through his surroundings blind, and came up with a grim conclusion-- he was trapped in a space maybe half a room wide and as shallow as a coffin, the ceiling fallen so low he couldn’t get off his hands and knees.

Plip. Plip.

That sound again. When he’d gotten a look at the city below, it had been flooding. If that water was slowly pouring in, was he doomed? Or was the oxygen flow here already sealed, and depleting with every breath, so that he’d ‘drown’ on dry land first?

He could sit here and worry or ask questions but neither would move him forward. From the moment that window appeared, the world’s logic changed, replaced by a new set of rules he didn’t understand.

For all he knew, he couldn’t drown anymore. Being trapped under the rubble for deathless ages wasn't much better, but if it came to that he'd claw himself free, even if it took years.

There were tricks to seeing in the dark, and Bayler Shrike knew them all from his time spent as an underwater welder. Floating in waters so cold you could barely feel your limbs, holding a torch that scattered rushes of steaming bubbles and shining drops of liquid flame -- working upside-down so the light-strewn surface of the sea became the ground, safe and secure, and the lightless, black abyss became the sky, going on forever.

If you didn't learn to tell a real silhouette in the dark from your imagination, you had maybe a week before you started to see leviathans in that abyss, reaching unimaginable coils up for you.

He ran his fingers along the scars on his arms, some as small as a pinprick and others penny-sized lumps of hardened tissue. The results of stray drops of flame stinging him as he worked. They were real, familiar, oddly comforting.

And then the lights came on.

The announcement cast a hazy light through the cavern as it blinked into existence, and Bayler barely bothered to let his eyes flit over the words. It was simple, pure bliss to be enveloped in light again, almost dulling the stomach-churning bite of the second, less-pleasant surprise.

It wasn't water.

A thick, oily black goo dripped from a crack in the mass of rubble that formed the ceiling. Where it landed it didn't spread into a puddle but stuck together, blobbing up, forming a shivering, wobbling mass of inky darkness.

As he watched, fascinated, it started to split off parts of itself. They sculpted themselves into little balls as they broke away from the main body, going rolling through the room. They were almost cute, full of a springy energy as they bounced and wobbled about.

One of them touched his hand.

Instantly, every piece of the creature froze, and the main mass let out an ominous, quivering glorp noise.

Without hesitating, Bayler grabbed a chunk of rock and swung it down. The blob splattered into chunks and droplets of gooey black phlegm, smearing across the floor as he hammered against the larger pieces, grinding them into the dirt beneath his improvised bludgeon.

It didn’t work.

The split-off pieces rolled towards the dark pool he’d smashed the main body into, feeding themselves back into their maker as he hammered away as many as he could. Bit by bit, the smeared-out stain began to shiver, drawing itself back in, rising up-

He hit it again. A dozen times, more, he hit the damned thing, and every time it wobbled back into shape, indestructible.

It couldn’t defend itself in any real way. It wasn’t particularly dangerous. It was just stubbornly refusing to be killed, no matter how furiously he smashed it down to a jellied pulp. The slime simply reformed, too stupid to die.

And since he was trapped down here with it, that was all it had to do. Outlast him, even if took weeks or months, distract him from digging his way out, wait until he fell asleep or a cave-in immobilized him and then crawl over Bayler’s face and suffocate the life out of him.

It was a creature that hunted simply by outlasting its prey.

Thud. Plip.

With every blow, Bayler was getting angrier. There was a waiting wave of fear, grief, panic at his trapped situation, everything that had happened since that first same dream - he had held them all back behind a wall of numb determination, doing what it had taken to stay alive.

Now, this stupid, weak slime was finally an obstacle he didn’t know how to beat, couldn’t break by force or outwit. Now, anger was cracking that wall, threatening to let out the flood of pent-up emotion if he couldn’t make this damn thing die.

“You’re not going to eat me. I refuse, damnit, I’m not giving up before you do! I don’t die here! You don’t eat me!” His words echoed madly in the tiny, barely lit space, his face white as a ghost with clinging cement dust, his eyes staring madly out of withered sockets. And with a sudden, devious grin, he threw the stone away.

He dug his fingers into the reforming blobs of jelly, grabbing fistfuls and shoving them into his mouth. “I eat you! You little bastard, I eat you!”