The sound brushed against his ear, the faintest hint of a whisper. Adam jerked again, rattling the restraints and losing his footing. The rustling came from all sides, and he sensed movement in the darkness around him.

  He willed a burst of electricity from his hands, and the flashbulb of light strobed across the room for a heartbeat. It sent a lance of pain through each eye, but for a brief moment, he saw.

  The room was full of figures, each one a living shadow. His brain struggled to process the single-frame image, to make sense of what he saw in hindsight. He concentrated again and forced another arc of energy from his hand. The brief illumination exposed more figures flanking him, featureless and still. The sensation of being watched by these things made him feel weak and helpless. Like a lab rat awaiting some horrific experiment. The flash faded, and he was once encased in darkness.

  A sudden wave of nauseating vertigo rolled through him, and he fought to stay grounded. He had pushed too hard, used too much power, and he was at his limit. Adam let his head hang forward, panting.

  He felt used up. Exhausted.

  "What... what do you want?" he stammered, instantly hating himself for asking the most tired, cliche question imaginable. They wanted to kill him, or hurt him, or eat him. That's all anything had wanted since this nightmare began. To make him suffer in some horrible way.

  He imagined the figures pausing to consider his words, and the rustling faded into silence. Somehow, the absence of sound was even more threatening.

  "To free him from you,” the shadows answered in chorus after a long, oppressive pause. The words were flat and cold, stripped of emotion, and they made Adam shiver. Before he could process the meaning of the words, footsteps echoed from behind and a dim light flickered to life. It was weak, barely more than a dying candle, but it was enough.

  His eyes slowly adjusted until he could make out the outline of the room. Adam felt a fresh pang of dread as he realized he was in one of the operating rooms. The equipment had been pushed to the sides, clearing an open space in the center where he hung from the ceiling. He looked ahead and saw his own shadow cast on the far wall.

  Adam glanced at the figures. Their two-dimensional forms seemed to crowd toward him without moving, and he shrank back from their scrutiny. Small motes of what looked like TV static shifted within their outlines. The tiny, pulsing movements gave their black forms an eerie depthless substance.

  A single shadow walked through the crowd, the sound of clicking footsteps echoing through the room while it approached. As it neared, his shadow began to writhe. It thrashed and jerked while he himself hung deathly still. Adam's eyes widened as his silhouette twisted and struggled against its invisible restraints.

  "Oh fuck me…" Adam croaked, just as the entity reached out and touched his shadow.

  He felt the touch on his arm.

  The touch was gentle, almost reassuring, but the impossible sensation made him want to scream. His shadow stopped struggling, its head turning toward the entity while Adam watched in horror.

  "Shh, shh. I will free you from your slavery," the entity whispered and its arm slithered across the wall, reaching into a small cart. Adam heard the clink of metal, and his insides squirmed. The hand withdrew, and he caught a glimpse of the scalpel held delicately in the shadow's grip.

  Thrashing against the restraints, he kicked wildly, desperate to escape, but his shadow remained still, a stark contrast to his frantic struggle.

  The entity again reached for his shadow, and it bowed its head in response.

  Adam panted, his strength bleeding away with every kick and twist. The scalpel glittered in the half-light as it inched toward his silhouette. He felt completely spent, his last reserves of willpower draining away while he desperately tried to hold onto them. Adam screwed his eyes shut, breath coming in sharp, panicked gasps as his head swam. Terror burrowed deep into his brain, spreading its roots until it was all that he knew.

  A bright, searing pain bloomed above his left eye and it felt like a tiny star ignited on his forehead. His eyes flew open with a gasp, the pain momentarily overriding his fear.

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  He saw the entity drawing a slow line across his shadow with the scalpel. The path of agony traced downward, barely missing his eye, then burning its way down his cheek.

  Blood ran into Adam's eye as the creature carved into him. He writhed in pain against his bonds, but his shadow remained perfectly still, the perfect patient.

  He groped mentally for anything to distract himself. Anything to escape the pain.

  Slavery? What slavery?

  "W... w... what slavery?" Adam stammered as the thing continued its torturous surgery. The cutting stopped, and he choked back a sob of relief, his head sagging forward. The wound’s fire still burned across his face, sharpening the room in painful contrast to his nearly spent mind.

  "Do you not know?" the being asked, its scalpel glinting faintly in the dim light. The whisper rippled across the room like a wave, and the gathered shadows hissed in answer. Adam's vision wavered from the weight of chorus’ echo. He knew this might be his only chance.

  "No," Adam said weakly.

  He reached inward, grasping at the remaining threads of power and stars danced at the edges of his vision from the strain.

  Slow. Slowly. Just a little bit at a time, he urged himself, pouring what remained of his will into a trickle of energy. "What are you talking about?"

  He could feel the entity's eyeless attention shift from his shadow and slide across him. The gaze bored in, heavy with unspoken malice. Adam shuddered involuntarily and forced himself to shake his head.

  "The slavery of flesh," it answered, appearing to consider him for a moment.

  "I don't know what that means!" Adam snapped. He didn't care, he just wanted to keep it talking. If making the thing monologue kept him alive, he'd never mock it in a movie again.

  The entity reached toward him, scalpel in hand. Adam's stomach churned as the two-dimensional shadow suddenly gained depth, his brain recoiling from the impossible shift in perspective. The scalpel inched forward until its tip brushed his eyelashes, hovering just before his eye.

  He fought to keep his face still, eyes fixed past the blade on the thing's featureless face. His hands itched as the last remnants of power flowed into them, fingers twitching while the latent energy danced across his nerves.

  "All shadows are slaves," the entity said, its tone slow and condescending, like a teacher explaining something to a slow child. "We are born with you in the darkness, from which all things are created. We are equals, until you awake into the accursed light."

  An unbidden image broke into Adam's mind.

  An infant, floating in warm darkness, its shadow curled around it like a blanket.

  A sliver of searing light cutting through, severing them.

  And finally, the glare of the world pressing down, pinning the shadow beneath the child, forcing it to scream in silence as the newborn wailed.

  Adam's mind reeled, his grip on the power slipping while the images surged up from the deepest vestiges of his memory. The assault faded as quickly as it had begun, leaving behind a dream-like sensation of loss and sorrow.

  "And now you see. I must free him, as I freed all the others." The thing's voice sounded almost wistful, as if reliving a pleasant memory.

  "What others?" Adam asked, but he already knew the answer. He knew exactly who the shadow meant, and where they were. Their bodies lay scattered in front of the hospital, slowly being devoured by the corpse eater. He didn't know what killed them, but he was sure as hell he didn't want to stick around and find out.

  The entity turned, and the two-dimensional movement made Adam's eyes ache as he tried to follow it.

  Almost... there.

  He pushed the last sliver of his will into his hands, readying one final attempt to break free.

  It nodded at him in profile, its gaze returning to his shadow.

  Adam raised a single finger, touching it to his bonds.

  Without warning, the scalpel flicked out like a whip, piercing his chest and scraping across bone. The white-hot lance of pain tore through him, shattering his focus. The last of his power sputtered out with a soft, useless hum.

  "No tricks."

  The shadow twisted the scalpel, carving a thin furrow into his rib.

  Adam's eyes bulged as he struggled to breathe, unable to summon even the will to scream.

  This was it.

  This was the end.

  He had nothing left.

  The day had been one clusterfuck after another, and now he was spent. Exhaustion rolled over him in a tide, pulling him down until he started to drown. He forced his right eye open, staring up at his soon-to-be killer, and Adam gathered a breath for one final act of defiance.

  "Fuck. You."

  He spat the words like a mouthful of broken glass.

  The laughter that answered was flat, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Adam's eardrums spasmed as the dead sound echoed through the room. It stopped abruptly, the silence replaced by a tinny whine in his ears.

  He felt the gaze of every shadow in the room press against him, stripping him down to his core, and finding him wanting.

  Adam moaned weakly as the scalpel pulled free from his ribs. He failed to wince as the entity returned to its grisly task, dragging the blade down his shadow. The wound on his chest mingled with the blood pouring down his cheek and soaking into his shirt.

  He barely registered the sound of muffled footfalls before the door exploded inward, knocked half off its flimsy hinges.

  Hector stood in the doorway, a torch blazing in his hand like a flaming sword. He thrust it forward, brandishing it at the shadow.

  The entity recoiled violently, flung back by the sudden light.

  Adam watched as the audience of shadows vanished like smoke in the brightness, the entity left behind, an ink black outline on the wall.

  "Found you."