The emaciated figure lay soaked into his bed, grey, slimy skin pulled back from the bones and gleaming in the flickering orange light of the fire. He looked dead, but this wasted figure, this rotting corpse, was merely asleep.

Babbage reached out and poked the man’s face, shifting his head from side to side, but there was nothing, just a wet ripping sound. His head rocked sideways easily and his mouth slowly pulled itself open. He didn’t look too closely, but could tell from the new sweetness in the air that the inside of the man’s mouth had completely rotted away.

“This is unpleasant.”

“What’s the matter with him? Is he drugged?”

“Drugged, left in a dream state, left to die. Maybe this was one of our little pickpocket friend’s first victims, maybe they’ve become that sick. Sickness tends to breed out here.”

A clattering scurry above them snapped Babbage’s eyes away from the figure. The kid could still be around, out there in the shadows somewhere, planning an ambush.

“Stay on your toes Adlai. I need to see what I can do for our unfortunate friend here.”

If he could wake the man up, plug him straight into a data port, maybe he could save something. Help the man recover in a friendlier atmosphere, slowly bring him back into reality as he recovered. If he could recover. Babbage had no doubt simply dragging him back to consciousness would be the final end of him. Just breathing deeply enough to remain conscious seemed beyond him, and there would be quite a deal of pain to be dealt with, if even sensing that wasn’t already beyond him.

Babbage reached into his coat and pulled out a small memory stick. Nothing too fancy, just a simple flash storage port, a one-hitter, designed to hold the user over when the nearest data ports were either out or untrustworthy. This one was a simple beach setting. Warm sun, relaxation. Completely alone and content. It was the best he could do for him here.

Then they just had to worry about getting out themselves.

The man’s head twitched suddenly to the side and his mouth snapped closed. His eyelids continued to shudder with movement, violent, extreme. Whatever nightmare he was stuck in didn’t seem too pleasant. The sooner he could give him some relief the better.

Babbage reached forward and turned the man’s head to the side. There was the port. Now to just slot this in.

As he leant forward and slotted the memory plug in, he reached out and took the man’s hand. That was a mistake.

Babbage was thrown to the floor as the man’s eyes snapped open and his body jerked into a sitting position. There was a loud tearing as the skin on his back ripped away from his body, remaining stuck to the bed where it had become fused to the frame over the weeks and months he’d been trapped there.

His eyes stared, wide open but not seeing anything. Glazed and horrified, shocked by the pain of consciousness and something else, something worse. Babbage fell to his knees as the man wrapped his hand in a vice grip, then forgot all about the crushing pain as the man opened his mouth and started to scream.

It was unlike anything Babbage had ever encountered, and he’d seen more than his fair share. Even in those darker areas in and off Grid, those hidden trapdoors where the really disturbed fantasies were played out, even they had nothing on this. It was a primal howl, wounded and enraged. It reached down into your spine and scraped its nails across your nerves like a blackboard.

And wrapped through it was something else, something musical, something familiar.

Babbage felt his instincts take over. In a rush of adrenaline he tore his hand away from the dying man’s grip and wrapped his arms around his head. He had to block out the sound. This was more than unpleasant, there was something dangerous in even hearing this. He felt Adlai fall down with him and wrapped them both into a ball, arms over ears, screaming to block the sound from slicing into them.

How much breath could a body like that contain? It was as though the sound itself was forcing its way out, a genie in a bottle surging out of its vessel, its prison.

Suddenly Babbage could hear his own screams and nothing else. He shut his mouth and waited. Sure enough, the sound had gone.

Died, as had that unfortunate man, no doubt.

He opened his eyes and looked up at the bed, but all that was left was a bad smell and the small memory card lying alone on the bloody pillow. The man’s body had completely disappeared.