Scratch Monkey, page 29 by Charles Stross
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t underground space; I can hear the dank sound of water dripping somewhere distant, the echo of footsteps on slime-encrusted stone or concrete. A cold draft blows down from above, hinting at distant caverns.
My escorts steer me past walls of metal and wood (other vehicles, perhaps) towards a doorway.
Suddenly the sounds from behind are cut off, as if we've entered a tunnel. It's cold in here, and it smells of the bitter rock beneath a mountain; the clack of their boots on the smooth stone floor is the only noise. We come to a guard post where they pause, restraining me, while someone rubs a pole-like device that emits a brief humming noise all over my body. Then we're going down a tunnel, past numerous openings from which blow turbulent currents of air. We make so many turns that even with my inertial tracker I'll never get out of here unaided. We come to a door in the wall, and they push me through it and shut it behind me.
I freeze, listening carefully. It smells close. There's a lingering odour of stale urine and despair, a miasma of decay that seems to hang in the frigid underground air so that I expect at any moment to put my foot into a nest of mummified bones. I shuffle forwards and carefully stretch my hands out in front of me; I reach the wall unexpectedly soon. It's chilly and rough, hewn from stone blocks. I trace the grooves between them with a fingertip. Strange marks are cut into the surface.
Perhaps they're grafitti from long-dead prisoners; it doesn't matter to me. I can't see to read them.
Even if I had eyes I probably couldn't read them. The script is as alien as my situation.
I map out the boundaries of my prison with a growing sense of bleak despair. The floor and ceiling are as rough as the walls, the only difference being that the flagstones are larger; there is no window, and when I work my way back round to the door I run my hands over it. It takes me a few minutes to realise that the bars curve together in the strange geometry of a human rib cage;