Cold.
Wet.
Something was wrong with my face.
I tried to open my eyes.
The blue blur in front of me widened, narrowed, then widened again when I concentrated.
That was not how eyelids worked.
I tried to raise my right hand.
Nothing.
Maybe I was still under anesthesia. Maybe the signals were firing and my body was too numb to answer. I tried the left hand, both arms, then my legs. After that, I tried my fingers again because the first failure had apparently not been convincing enough.
Nothing moved.
My jaw did.
Or something near where my jaw should have been.
"Hello?"
No voice came out.
I waited for the sound anyway.
There were only faint vibrations passing through the surface beneath me. A distant patter. Something soft tearing. I could not tell how far away any of it was.
My body felt cold, soft, and spread against wet stone.
Not numb.
I could feel too much.
I tried to sit up.
The underside of my body tightened in a slow wave, and I slid forward a few millimetres.
I stopped.
Tried again.
The same contraction moved from one end of me to the other. No elbows. No knees. Nothing bent. My entire lower body worked as one broad muscle.
'No.'
Two thin shapes rose into the blue light.
I flinched.
They vanished.
I froze, then tried looking left.
The shapes came back, and the world shifted with them.
My eyes were at the ends.
I pulled them in again by accident.
For several seconds, I kept extending and retracting them because I could not quite believe I was doing it. Two shorter feelers moved beneath them, touching the stone.
Something hard pressed over my back. When I turned, it shifted with my weight and nearly tipped me sideways.
Attached.
I opened my mouth.
A rough surface scraped the moss beneath me.
Tiny teeth.
A radula.
I ran out of other answers.
Four tentacles. A muscular foot. Mucus under my body. A shell.
A snail.
'I'm a snail.'
No.
I tried to move my right hand again.
There was no right hand.
"My name is Christopher Aspen."
My mouth moved. Nothing human followed.
"Help me."
Nothing.
I knew there were no human lips, no vocal cords, nothing that could shape the sounds I wanted. That did not stop me. I kept forcing the attempt until my body trembled.
Then it pulled itself into the shell.
I had not decided to hide.
The world became close, dark, and damp. My body folded in with an ease that made my panic worse. Some part of me knew exactly how to do this. It had probably known before I woke up.
I pushed forward.
For a moment, the body refused.
'Get out.'
Nothing.
'Get out.'
My head and tentacles slowly emerged.
I stayed there, half exposed, and tried to think.
If another person found me, they would not hear me. They would not know there was anyone to hear. They would see a snail and decide whether to ignore it, move it, or crush it.
That was all I was from the outside.
I tried saying my name once more.
Still nothing.
A large droplet sat in a shallow crack nearby. I crawled toward it because I wanted proof, although I already had too much of that.
The trip was perhaps the length of my body.
It took long enough for me to try moving a missing hand twice more.
My reflection bent across the water.
A pale body. Four nervous tentacles. A shell that looked almost clear around the edge, with a faint blue tint beneath the distant light.
I pulled away.
Rain on glass came back to me.
A mug of cold coffee. Three open files. An unfinished calculation written over an older unfinished calculation. A machine humming somewhere behind me.
There had been a note on the back of my hand.
Call back.
I could see the words.
I could not remember who I was supposed to call.
Maybe I had died.
Maybe this was a hallucination, a coma, or a copy of my mind shoved somewhere it did not belong.
I had no way to know.
But Earth was gone from my reach.
That part was real enough.
Crunch
The stone moved under me.
My eyes snapped inward.
Something tore through the moss.
I forced them back out.
The area around me was larger than I had understood. Moss filled deep cracks in broken stone. Roots rose like walls. Blue and green fungi leaned over them, giving off weak light.
Farther away, a strip of moss had been pressed flat into a broad trail.
Whatever made it was much larger than the shape coming toward me now.
That shape pushed through the moss on a long segmented body.
Many legs.
Too many for an insect. Myriapod, maybe. Centipede-like. The blur made certainty impossible.
Its mandibles were clear enough.
They closed on the moss.
Crunch
It was feeding.
I moved away.
My foot contracted as fast as it could. The result was several millimetres and a fresh line of mucus behind me.
The creature lowered its head for another bite and covered more distance than I had.
Its front appendages tapped the surface before each movement.
Vibration sensing was possible. If motion guided it, staying still might remove me from whatever passed for its map.
I stopped.
The creature kept coming.
Tap.
Bite.
Tap.
Bite.
Closer.
Wrong.
Either it was not tracking vibration, or vibration was only part of it.
One feeler touched the mucus behind me.
Its head turned and followed the trail.
I started moving again.
The shell shifted as I tried to turn too quickly. My body rolled halfway onto one side before I flattened my foot and dragged myself back down.
Ahead, a dark crust covered part of the stone. The creature had changed direction around another patch of it.
I touched the edge with one lower tentacle.
Pain shot through it.
I pulled back.
Acidic. Toxic. Defensive fungus. It could have been any of them, and I did not have time to separate the possibilities.
The mandibles closed behind me.
A torn clump of moss hit the side of my shell.
I crossed the crust.
My foot tightened so hard I stopped moving.
'Move.'
The creature reached the edge behind me. Its feelers touched the dark surface and jerked away.
I forced a contraction.
The burning spread under my body. My shell tipped. I corrected, moved again, and reached bare stone just as the creature tapped the crust a second time.
It refused to cross.
I kept going until the pain made my foot lock again.
Behind me, the creature followed the edge, lost my trail, and returned to feeding.
Crunch
Still close.
My underside burned. The surface of my body felt drier, and each movement produced less mucus.
I had found the correct route.
It had made me worse at travelling.
Great.
Blue text appeared in front of my eyes.
[Host Identified: Crypto Asper]
Crypto Asper.
Christopher Aspen.
It looked like someone had copied my name badly.
A translation error? An assigned identity? A specimen name?
I focused on it.
Nothing happened.
[Species: Common Garden Snail]
[Level: -5]
Negative five.
I read it again in case the minus sign disappeared.
It did not.
[Health Points: 1/1]
[Mana Points: 30/30]
[Strength: -3]
[Vitality: 1]
[Agility: -3]
[Intelligence: 5]
[Sense: -3]
[Active Abilities: None]
[Passive Abilities: None]
[Title: Test Subject]
[Title Effect: Sign-In System]
One Health Point held my attention.
The crust had burned me, but the number remained one. Either the injury was too small to register, Health did not measure pain directly, or the System rounded values.
One example was not enough to tell me which.
Another crunch came from the moss.
I focused on Mana.
Thirty points meant there was something there. I just had no idea what it was or how to reach it.
I imagined movement first, then warmth beneath my injured foot.
Nothing.
A droplet above me swelled on the edge of a fungus.
The cap bent lower as the weight increased.
I moved aside before it fell.
Splash
Water struck where I had been and spread across the stone.
The bending cap gave warning.
Useful.
'Status.'
The panel vanished.
I thought it again.
It returned.
So thoughts controlled it.
Probably.
I focused on Test Subject.
No explanation.
'Can you hear me?'
Nothing.
'Help.'
Nothing.
The creature bit into the moss again.
The System remained silent.
A new message appeared.
[Sign-In Location Detected.]
[Location: Moss-Covered Ruins]
[Distance: 3 meters]
A faint marker appeared beyond the roots.
Broken stone rose beneath layers of moss. Between me and it were cracks, exposed ground, hanging water, dark growths, and the broad flattened trail of whatever had passed through earlier.
Three metres.
I did not know my speed, how long my body could remain wet, whether the System measured a straight line, or what waited at the ruins.
Behind me, the creature bit down again.
Staying still was not an option.
I turned toward the marker.
My foot hurt before I moved.
Then it hurt more.
I went around the nearest crack. The next droplet began swelling above the path, bending its fungus lower. I waited for it to fall, crossed while the cap lifted, and stopped when my mucus thinned again.
I checked the distance.
[Location: Moss-Covered Ruins]
[Distance: 2.99 meters]
I stared at the number.
Then I moved again.