It adjusted its grip, releasing the hold it had on his shirt so that its thumb pressed against his breastbone and the rest of its fingers dug into his back. It squeezed.
All the air rushed from him, the vice on his chest unrelenting. The thing croaked again, an eager sound, one of anticipation and barely restrained excitement. It drew him upward toward the hole it reached through, its skinny arm hoisting him easily. Flickers of light gathered at the corners of Quinn’s vision and he thrashed in its grip, the last of his air leaking out of him in a squeal. The world was losing focus, like a film heating up before a projector bulb. His arms flailed and he struck the thing’s wrist, but it continued to pull him up, its mouth open and waiting. Something scraped his shoulder, and as it passed, he latched onto it, trying to stop his progress, but it came free in his hand. It was sharp and heavy and the pain that it brought as it sliced through his palm delivered a single frame of clarity that honed every detail to an edge.
Quinn raised the shard of glass and brought it down as hard as he could on the thing’s arm.
The glass cut through the pale flesh, unzipping it as if there had been a hidden seam there all along. The tip glanced off hard bone and ripped free, spewing dark blood onto the rain-soaked glass. A foul blast of air swept over him, reeking of old meat, and the baritone cry exploded inches from his face, sending an icepick into each eardrum.
Then the hand around his chest was gone and he was falling back to the solarium’s floor. He hit hard, the entire world jarring in his vision and there was a sharp pain in his ankle that eclipsed the burning cut on his hand. He gasped and drank the air in as rain and blood pattered around him. The thing roared again, its cry rising from the croak to a keening as it reached for him with its good arm.
Quinn scrambled back, sliding out of its reach as he searched the dark for the XDM. The sky fluttered with light, and he glimpsed the huge hand outstretched toward him, fingertips stabbing the floor as he pulled his feet away. Quinn spun and crawled to the far corner, his fingers knocking something away before latching onto it again. Glass shattered behind him and the thing bellowed, its sound filling the room, the world. Quinn turned and fired into the darkness.
It was there in the muzzle flash, hunched and striding toward him, reaching. The bullet took its index finger off its left hand above the first knuckle. The digit dropped free and fell to the floor like a worm hacked in two. Its massive face constricted in a rictus of pain and clutched its wounded hand, blood jetting free in thin spurts. Its eyes found him in another flicker of lightning, and there was something there in them, something familiar.
It leapt forward, long legs uncoiling, gapped teeth bared. Quinn fired again, the shot tearing out a chunk of flesh from its shoulder, but it kept coming. It hit him with the force of a car, sending the ceiling and floor into a spin as he flew across a table and slammed through a glass panel.