text: [Themes: medical, laboratory]
  
  > look around
  Room 321, Mt Airy Hospital
  This small room would have made a cozy office for a single person; set up for two, it feels more like a furnished closet. The room's furnishings express remarkably different personalities: on the west, a massive black filing cabinet is flanked by a mahogany desk and expensive-looking rolling chair. On the east, the cheap metal desk has a kneeling chair in front of it, next to a gray filing cabinet much smaller than its counterpart on the west side.
  
  There's a high shelf supporting a preserved heart and a pickled two-headed sparrow above the mahogany desk.
  
  > examine the sparrow
  One of the heads is smaller than the other, jutting strangely upward, while the other is bowed by the weight of the first. Both beaks are open plaintively, but all four eyes are closed.
  
  > go to the east
  Glass crunches faintly underfoot as you move through the hallway.
  
  You swipe your keycard through the keycard reader. After a moment, the door emits a loud click and the airlock door slides open.
  
  Biohazard Airlock, Mt Airy Hospital
  You stand in a small room lit by a low red light. It is immaculately clean and nearly featureless. Two hooks are mounted on the wall; what appears to be a shredded environment suit hangs from one of them. Overhead, a set of red lamps shines down on you, mounted next to four spray nozzles. A sliding door with a small wire-reinforced window leads back to the hallway to your west. Another door stands to the east, a small opaque window set in it.
  
  Three large buttons, one marked "ENTRY", one marked "EXIT", and one marked "DECONTAMINATE", glow faintly from a wall recess.
  
  > examine the suit
  (the clean hazard suit)
  It's a thin white hazard suit. While not very durable, a combination of a charcoal air filter and an airtight fiber weave should serve to protect the wearer from most environmental hazards.
  
  > wear the suit
  (the clean hazard suit)
  (first taking the clean hazard suit)
  You pick up the clean hazard suit.
  
  You clamber awkwardly into the suit. It takes you several minutes to figure out how to get your hands into the gloves at the end of the sleeves without having to zip it up first, but after some struggling you are completely suited up. You check all of the airtight zippers and make sure that the filter is letting you breathe properly. You feel clumsy and big, but you should be protected from all but the most minute contaminants. Unless the suit tears, of course.
  
  > go to the east
  You push the button marked "ENTRY". The internal airlock door emits a loud click and then slides open with a soft hiss.
  
  As the door slides open, you are immediately sprayed by a reddish liquid, which splatters against the surface of your suit. Upon wiping off your faceplate with a suited arm, you see that an amorphous red substance is now oozing into the airlock through the partly open door.
  
  You flinch back from the vista beyond, where a strange, churning red substance has devoured almost an entire room. Before, when you looked into the faceplate of the prone figure's environmental suit, you saw a seething red hell that consumed one man. That was the microcosm; this door contains the same red hell in macrocosm.
  
  Biohazard Lab, Mt Airy Hospital
  This room seems to have been the subject of some kind of massive biological explosion. Some kind of glistening, mealy red substance similar to ground meat is splattered all over the floor, walls and ceiling in large patches. The substance seems to have a life of its own, pulsing and undulating in great colonies. Large piles of it merge and separate.
  
  The room itself seems to have been some kind of biological experimentation laboratory. You can see a large sink along one wall, with nozzles for a bunsen burner mounted next to it. While most of the counters are covered with the disgusting red substance, one table is mostly untouched thanks to an overhanging edge.
  
  On the table is a measuring pipette, fixed in place above a wooden test tube rack. There's also a small lab refrigerator branded with a biohazard symbol.
  
  The bottom of a glass test tube projects from a mound of the mealy red stuff.
  
  > get the tube
  (the sludge-encrusted test tube)
  You pull the test tube out of the churning mound of mealy red stuff.
  
  > Go west
  Biohazard Airlock, Mt Airy Hospital
  You stand in a small room lit by a low red light. It is immaculately clean and nearly featureless. Two hooks are mounted on the wall; what appears to be a shredded environment suit hangs from one of them. Overhead, a set of red lamps shines down on you, mounted next to four spray nozzles. A sliding door with a small wire-reinforced window leads back to the hallway to your west. Another door stands to the east, a small opaque window set in it.
  
  A few slowly shifting tendrils of red, mealy meat have made their way into the airlock.
  
  Three large buttons, one marked "ENTRY", one marked "EXIT", and one marked "DECONTAMINATE", glow faintly from a wall recess.
  
  > Wait
  Time passes.
  
  The internal airlock door slides closed with a hiss and and locks with a click.
  
  > go east
  You push the button marked "ENTRY". The internal airlock door emits a loud click and then slides open with a soft hiss.
  
  Biohazard Lab, Mt Airy Hospital
  This room seems to have been the subject of some kind of massive biological explosion. Some kind of glistening, mealy red substance similar to ground meat is splattered all over the floor, walls and ceiling in large patches. The substance seems to have a life of its own, pulsing and undulating in great colonies. Large piles of it merge and separate.
  
  The room itself seems to have been some kind of biological experimentation laboratory. You can see a large sink along one wall, with nozzles for a bunsen burner mounted next to it. While most of the counters are covered with the disgusting red substance, one table is mostly untouched thanks to an overhanging edge.
  
  On the table is a measuring pipette, fixed in place above a wooden test tube rack. There's also a small lab refrigerator branded with a biohazard symbol.
  
  > open the fridge
  (the clean glass test tube in the wooden test tube rack)
  You lower the clean glass test tube through a hole in the wooden test tube rack and nestle its base into the appropriate divot.
  
  > open the small lab refrigerator, revealing a vial of blood and a legal-size page.
  
  > get the page
  You find nothing of interest.
  
  The internal airlock door slides closed with a hiss and and locks with a click.
  
  >(the legal-size page)
  You pick up the legal-size page.
  
  You add the legal-size page to your existing collection of pages.
  
  > read the notes
  The legal-size page reads:
  
  From the desk of Dr. Edward Atwater, M.D., Ph.D.
  April 25th, 1978
  I'll be damned, they're really buying it. McMoneagle's due to be
  dosed within the next few days.
  I am not a completely heartless man. It is a popular conceit in
  this office, and I suppose I cannot blame anyone for thinking so. But I have been here for years, now, and overseen the snuffing out of over a dozen lives. With each death I hope to the godless heavens that Corona will see the depth of its mistake, realize that experimenting with a lethal parasite and calling it a symbiont will not make wishes come true. If we want to join the Project it will only be through methodical chicanery, not methodical murder.
  What do they want of me? To become McMoneagle's friend, like
  "kindly old Doc Yehuda?" To have faith in the absence of reason, like "Crazy 'Lainey?" I dread to think of how crushed they will be when the young man's brain floods itself with chemicals. I will be the only staff member in his right mind.
  I am not a monster. I am a doctor. To hell with anyone who doesn't understand that.
  
  > get the blood
  (the vial of blood)
  
  > put the blood in the tube
  You pick up the vial of blood.
  
  >(the vial of blood in the clean glass test tube)
  There are no measurement graduations on the test tube. You should put components into the pipette so that you can be sure you added the right amount.
  
  > put the blood in the pipette
  (the vial of blood in the measuring pipette)
  Using Dr. Yehuda's notes for reference, you carefully measure some of the vial of blood into the pipette and then decant it into the test tube.
  
  > put the hartmann's in tube
  (the partially full glass test tube)
  There are no measurement graduations on the test tube. You should put components into the pipette so that you can be sure you added the right amount.
  
  (the partially full glass test tube)
  There are no measurement graduations on the test tube. You should put components into the pipette so that you can be sure you added the right amount.
  
  > put Hartmann's in the pipette
  Using Dr. Yehuda's notes for reference, you carefully measure some of the jar of formaldehyde into the pipette and then decant it into the test tube.
  
  Using Dr. Yehuda's notes for reference, you carefully measure some of the bottle of Hartmann's solution into the pipette and then decant it into the test tube.
  
  > put Vanemine in the pipette
  Using Dr. Yehuda's notes for reference, you carefully measure some of the vial of Vanemine into the pipette and then decant it into the test tube.
  
  > put the syringe in tube
  (the partially full glass test tube)
  There are no measurement graduations on the test tube. You should put components into the pipette so that you can be sure you added the right amount.
  
  > get the tube
  (the partially full glass test tube)
  You pick up the partially full glass test tube.
  
  > fill the syringe from the tube
  (the partially full glass test tube in the sealed hypodermic syringe) You open the plastic wrapper surrounding the hypodermic syringe and prepare the needle for use.
  
  You draw some of the liquid from the test tube into the hypodermic syringe.
  
  >["fill syringe from tube" is not a recognized command.]
  
  > put the tube in the rack
  (the partially full glass test tube in the wooden test tube rack)
  You lower the partially full glass test tube through a hole in the wooden test tube rack and nestle its base into the appropriate divot.
  
  > Go west
  Wincing, you grope about for a moment in the sludge near the door until you encounter something that feels like a button.
  
  You push the hidden button. The internal airlock door emits a loud click and then slides open with a soft hiss.
  
  Biohazard Airlock, Mt Airy Hospital
  You stand in a small room lit by a low red light. It is immaculately clean and nearly featureless. Two hooks are mounted on the wall; what appears to be a shredded environment suit hangs from one of them. Overhead, a set of red lamps shines down on you, mounted next to four spray nozzles. A sliding door with a small wire-reinforced window leads back to the hallway to your west. Another door stands to the east, a small opaque window set in it.
  
  Three large buttons, one marked "ENTRY", one marked "EXIT", and one marked "DECONTAMINATE", glow faintly from a wall recess.
  
  > wait a while
  Time passes.
  
  You note that some of the mealy red substance from inside the biohazard lab has found its way into the airlock.
  
  > Wait
  The internal airlock door slides closed with a hiss and and locks with a click.
  
  > Go west
  (the clean hazard suit)
  You take off the clean hazard suit.
  
  You push the button marked "EXIT". The external airlock door emits a loud click and then slides open with a soft hiss.
  
  Side Hall End, Mt Airy Hospital
  Plain, windowless doors labelled neatly with small brass signs lead off to the north and south. At the east end of the hallway, a large, lurid orange biohazard symbol marks a door of a different design.
  This door is a sliding door instead of a regular door, and it has a small, wire-reinforced window.
  
  Several curving, sharp pieces of glass and small pieces of metal litter the floor.
  
  There's a keycard reader beside the sliding door.
  
  > get the sign
  You carefully peel the sign off the wall. Realizing that the old clear tape is likely to tear the paper, you fold it over the paper's side and add it to your notes.
  
  You add the typewritten sign to your existing collection of pages.
  
  > Y.
  Are you sure you want to do this? (y/n) >Still dazed by the sudden racing of your heart, you depress the button.
  
  To the southwest, muffled by the walls, you hear a strident buzzer, and the noise of high heels suddenly echoes down the hallway from that direction. The footsteps pause, and you hear the sound of a door opening.
  
  In the security monitor, you see the young man jerk his head upward suddenly. This is your first good look at his face, and his features are gaunt, his eyes sunken and haunted. He slowly gets to his feet and walks out of the range of the security camera.
  
  The strident buzzer continues to sound.
  
  > go south
  The lights flicker. The security monitor gives a sharp, abrupt crackle before going dead.
  
  Side Hall, Mt Airy Hospital
  The off-white walls and dull, stain-resistant tiles of this hallway match those of the main hall to the west. Windowless doors marked with small brass signs branch off to the north and south.
  
  The strident buzzer continues to sound.
  
  > Go west
  Hall Intersection, Mt Airy Hospital
  Cold fluorescent lights pace the ceiling from north to south and lead off east along the T intersection. To the west, a pair of metal elevator doors sits silently closed. There's a call button beside the elevator and a floor indicator above the call button.
  
  A building map is posted on the wall.
  
  The strident buzzer continues to sound.
  
  > Go south
  Hall End, Mt Airy Hospital
  Long banks of fluorescent lights cast sharp shadows along the half-familiar, half-unfamiliar hallway, which continues off to the north. The tiled floor is only a shade darker than the dull off-white walls. A strange, unpleasant odor hangs in the air and stings your nostrils. The door to Room 320 is across the hall to the west.
  
  A windowless door leads east into the testing room's antechamber.
  
  The strident buzzer continues to sound.
  
  > go to the east
  Antechamber, Mt Airy Hospital
  Your last visit to this room was your last breath of normalcy; now, the madness has spread even here. A pile of shattered bones, gore and viscera lies in a wide cone, sprayed toward the door through which you entered. Blood drips from the walls and ceiling in the shape of that same cone, pelting you with a gentle crimson rain. The most complete part of the remains is a single high-heeled shoe, which lies just in front of the pile. The ficus tree that previously stood in the corner now lies on its side, its leaves glistening with blood. Its pot, now cracked, lies on its side in a pile of blood-drenched topsoil.
  
  A metal fire axe lies on the far side of the floor.
  
  The strident buzzer continues to sound.
  
  > get the axe
  You heft the metal fire axe. It is heavier than you expected it to be, but the weight is nonetheless somewhat reassuring.
  
  The strident buzzer continues to sound.
  
  With an audible click, the buzzer shuts off. The door swings closed behind you, and the lock slams home before you can intercept it.
  
  > examine the shoe
  It's a single, black, heeled women's pump. Whatever happened to its owner threw it forward just enough that it escaped the carnage, and it is mostly free of blood. Someone has written "EGB" in faded black marker on the pale gold lining of the inner sole.
  
  > examine the ficus
  The ficus tree's leaves glisten red with blood, so evenly coated as to uniformly appear that this is their natural state. The tree sprawls from the mouth of a cracked pot that lies on its side.
  
  > search ficus
  The ficus tree's pot is badly cracked, and the topsoil in which the tree was planted now spills out on the floor, soaking up the blood that coats one half of the room. You glimpse something buried in the topsoil, probably thrown there from the remains of the corpse: an intact pill bottle.
  
  > get the bottle
  (the bottle of Hartmann's solution)
  You already have that.
  
  > get pill bottle
  You pick up the bottle and brush off the blood-soaked dirt. It's labeled "Sandepam".
  
  > Go east
  As you open the windowless door, you interrupt the insulated barrier that was preventing sound from leaving the test chamber. The sound of screaming suddenly goes from a muted, ignorable presence to a hammering agony on your ears.
  
  The screaming from inside the test chamber hammers down, not only on your ears, but on your mind. The world warps strangely around you, and, quite abruptly, you are somewhere else.
  
  The door slams shut behind you with tremendous force.
  
  Test Chamber, Mt Airy Hospital
  While you are not entirely sure what you expected to find, you are halted in your tracks nonetheless. The floor of the test chamber is littered with glittering shards of reflective glass. The one-way mirror between the test chamber and the observation room is opaque, but it pushes outward in the center to form a pair of jagged, irregular halves like a pair of jaws. From the hips up, Ian McMoneagle is trapped in the grip of those jaws, his face twisted into a mask of pain. The mirror's halves grind against muscle and bone, tearing him apart as they draw him in. And yet he lives....
  
  Ian McMoneagle looks you in the face with wide, terrified eyes, his bloody bangs obscuring his gaze but not reducing its weight. He opens his mouth and screams in guilty agony.
  
  The mirror pulls Ian in more deeply. The hideous cracking sound that follows is almost surely his pelvis.
  
  > drop the bones
  You scoop the fingerbones up from your pocket, rattle them in one hand, then toss them onto the ground in front of Ian. At once, his screams stop, and he stares at the bones.
  
  Following his gaze, you see that the fingerbones are gone. What lies on the ground is a set of twelve six-sided game dice, each one showing a single pip facing upward. Six sets of snake eyes stare up at you and Ian. You stare back.
  
  The room vibrates for a few seconds, and then reality shatters. You both shatter with it.
  Press any key to continue.
  
  A darkened office. The orange light of dusk spilling through venetian blinds, laying bright stripes on the dark wood of an expensive luxury desk.
  
  With a satisfying clatter, six dice bounce across the surface of the desk, coming to rest with assorted results: 6 6 2 6 3 1. The man who threw them, a middle-aged man with a face craggier than his age should allow, wears Brylcreemed black hair, a power suit, and the receiver of an office telephone held firmly to the side of his head.
  
  "No, John, let me tell YOU something," he says. "The Schuyler family didn't get to be where it is because we refused to take risks. This stuff is the real deal, and whoever pulls it off first is going to be set for generations."
  
  He grabs three of the dice, leaving the three that show sixes. With an offhand gesture, he tosses them again. One of the three comes up a six. "Look, this Buchanan broad is too hippy dippy for the Institute, but she's the real deal and she'll do anything for a break. They want to look legit, fine, but they won't land the project. We will."
  
  He picks up one of the unlucky dice, then the other. He pauses for a moment, listening to the phone, then laughs. "Well, John, I imagine she'll go nuts after a little while, but if you're not willing to squeeze an orange hard enough, you'll never get a glass of juice. Well, all right John. Talk to you later."
  
  The man hangs up the phone, then throws the final two dice one last time. Both come up sixes. He leans back in his chair and smiles.
  
  "Heh-heh," he says. "Yahtzee."
  
  Then, he puts five dice back in the game box and one die in his pocket, and he saunters off to dinner.
  
  > kill Ian
  You raise the fire axe over your head and bring it down in a long, sweeping slice. Ian's head hits the floor and bounces from the force of its removal. Ian's body slumps for a moment.
  
  Something in the stump of his throat moves. Widening the throat, something emerges from his windpipe: a single veiny eyeball supported on a pink, pulsating stalk. It swivels to stare at you.
  
  The mirror continues to chew at Ian, drawing him into its surface with razor-sharp shard-teeth.
  
  > hit the eyeball
  You falter, unable to break away from the  eyeball's faceless gaze. And from deep inside the headless body, there comes a dreadful keening....
  
  The mirror begins to bubble, like a photograph exposed to flame.
  Great silver blisters form in its surface, and the blisters slowly turn white from front to back. Only a few heartbeats pass before the entire mirror is comprised of large white mounds. Then, all at once, a black spot with a dark green iris appears at the center of each mound, and they all swivel to stare directly at you. The surface of the mirror, now perfectly still, has become a wall of eyes. The combined gaze bores savagely into you as the body of Ian McMoneagle collapses at your feet.
  
  Paralyzed, you stare back, completely unable to move.
  
  > Break mirror
  You heave your shoulder behind the fire axe, driving it into the mirror's surface with all of your strength. The head of the axe buries itself in the mirror, throwing cracks all the way across its surface. The cracks run straight through the mirror, through the hideous jaws, and through the body of Ian McMoneagle
  
  Press any key to continue.
  
  Consciousness returns. You awaken in your bed surrounded by familiar and unfamiliar faces - Dr. Shaunessy, the neurologist; Rayjay Farley and Best Ife, the lab techs; the wheelchair-bound Dr. Ensfield, previously known by you only at a distance; a slim, chestnut-haired woman with a cool gray gaze, utterly unknown to you. Dr. Ephart is missing.
  
  Dr. Shaughnessy has soothing words for you, but most of them blur together, issuing from a face that sometimes seems to lace with scars from an unknown source. You fight to understand. You were unconscious for three days, he tells you, after collapsing during a memory test. The project will continue if you feel up for it after a few days of rest, but right now everyone's going to take it easy.
  
  You want to know where Dr. Ephart went. Dr. Shaughnessy says that she was transferred to another project because she adjusted your medication doses inappropriately, contributing to your attack. In the corner, the chestnut-haired woman with the bullet eyes stares at you. It all seems wrong, wrong. Everyone is alive and dead. Walking around one moment, shambling with fatal wounds the next.
  
  Nightmares plague you that night - Dr. Ephart, confused and protesting, gunned down by the chestnut-haired woman; Dr. Ensfield screaming and covering his ears in an elevator shaft; Rayjay Farley staring into static as the static takes him apart. And Ian. Over and over, that young man from the test chamber in Mt. Airy Hospital - Ian McMoneagle, wild with fear and guilt, being devoured by the walls.
  
  Press any key to continue.
  
  You can guard your words.
  
  But you can't stop your dreams.
  
  You can't stop your nightmares.
  
  You can't stop this from happening all over again.
  
  It's inside you.
  
  IT'S INSIDE YOU.
  
  And you had the chance to stop it.
  
  But you can't stop it now.
  
  Press any key to continue.
  
  Your protestations turn to abjurations. Your abjurations turn to ravings. You must make them listen, and your efforts become more violent; you plead, you cry, you lose control, you scream and rave.
  It is not long before the youngest and strongest of the staff, Rayjay and Best, strap you to your bed with sad, worried eyes.
  
  But straps will only hold you down while you're still harmless.
  
  they'll all die.
  
  Just like you saw.
  
  Three days later, your dreams come to life in Corona Labs.
  No one escapes alive.
  
  > Inject ian
  With no time for precision or care, you dodge Ian's attempts to fend you off and ram the syringe into his shoulder, driving the plunger home. The solution enters his body, and his screams, for just a moment, are stilled.
  
  You watch him anxiously for some sign of change as you withdraw the needle, but nothing obvious happens. The mirror bites down again, and his screams renew.
  
  The mirror continues to chew at Ian, drawing him into its surface with razor-sharp shard-teeth.
  
  > open the bottle
  Which do you mean, the pill bottle or the bottle of Hartmann's solution?
  
  > Y.
  Do you want to swallow the Sandepam pills? (y/n) >
  You twist off the lid of the Sandepam and hesitate over the pills for a moment before swallowing two.
  
  After a moment, you feel a numb, calm sensation come over you. Your senses are slightly dulled, but the terror of your situation seems a little bit less sharp. If only you'd found these a little earlier in the nightmare.
  
  Ian's anguished screams gargle into weak bubbles as the mirror bites into his chest, and, surely, his lungs.
  
  > look at Ian
  Ian's eyes are bulging and terrified, but filled with terrible knowledge and guilt as well. His mouth is opened wide, his teeth stained with what must be his own blood. The lower half of his body is hidden by the glass jaws that are chewing him up from the bottom to the top.
  
  With the sound of glass grinding against glass, the mirror-glass draws Ian all the way in and shuts its uneven jaws. There is a brief and terrible silence before the mirror shatters cataclysmically.
  
  Shards of glass fly past you, shredding your skin and muscle. You feel tiny pieces piercing your eyes, driving into your brain, flaying you alive. You stumble and fall onto a floor covered in razor-sharp pieces. There is no mercy; as you twitch in spasmodic anguish, lanced repeatedly through the cerebrum and cerebellum, everything goes dark....
  Press any key to continue.
  
  Consciousness returns. You muzzily realize that you are gazing at the ceiling of the Corona Labs test chamber just before the door slams open. Dr. Shaunessy, the neurologist, hurries into the room. Dr. Ephart follows close enough behind to step on his heels. "How many fingers do you see?" Dr. Shaunessy asks, kneeling down beside you, and Dr. Ephart rests light fingers on your wrist to take your pulse. In short order, they conclude that you suffered a vasovagal syncope and struck your head in the fall.
  
  You try to talk to the doctors, but your words are confused and disjointed. Your gaze drags across the fallen photograph, half-shadowed by the folder above it, and you see the gaunt young man screaming. You can't find the words to make them understand. Though you can nearly stand on your own, the doctors firmly escort you from the room and off to bed.
  
  Dr. Shaunessy leaves, but Dr. Ephart stays with you as the sedatives take hold. "Don't worry," she says, resting a gentle hand on your shoulder. "Everything will be all right."
  
  Six days later, the past repeats itself in Corona Labs.
  No one escapes alive.
  
  > look
  Antechamber, Mt Airy Hospital
  Your last visit to this room was your last breath of normalcy; now, the madness has spread even here. A pile of shattered bones, gore and viscera lies in a wide cone, sprayed toward the door through which you entered. Blood drips from the walls and ceiling in the shape of that same cone, pelting you with a gentle crimson rain. The most complete part of the remains is a single high-heeled shoe, which lies just in front of the pile. The ficus tree that previously stood in the corner now lies on its side, its leaves glistening with blood. Its pot, now cracked, lies on its side in a pile of blood-drenched topsoil.
  
  > Go east
  As you open the windowless door, you interrupt the insulated barrier that was preventing sound from leaving the test chamber. The sound of screaming suddenly goes from a muted, ignorable presence to a hammering agony on your ears.
  
  The screaming from inside the test chamber hammers down, not only on your ears, but on your mind. The world warps strangely around you, and, quite abruptly, you are somewhere else.
  
  The door slams shut behind you with tremendous force.
  
  Test Chamber, Mt Airy Hospital
  While you are not entirely sure what you expected to find, you are halted in your tracks nonetheless. The floor of the test chamber is littered with glittering shards of reflective glass. The one-way mirror between the test chamber and the observation room is opaque, but it pushes outward in the center to form a pair of jagged, irregular halves like a pair of jaws. From the hips up, Ian McMoneagle is trapped in the grip of those jaws, his face twisted into a mask of pain. The mirror's halves grind against muscle and bone, tearing him apart as they draw him in. And yet he lives....
  
  Ian McMoneagle looks you in the face with wide, terrified eyes, his bloody bangs obscuring his gaze but not reducing its weight. He opens his mouth and screams in guilty agony.
  
  The mirror pulls Ian in more deeply. The hideous cracking sound that follows is almost surely his pelvis.
  
  > inject yourself
  You poise the tip of the  hypodermic syringe over your elbow and briefly consider what a bad idea this is. Before you have time to talk yourself out of it, you push the needle into your vein and press down the plunger. The solution burns like fire ants racing into your body.
  
  Immediately, you feel light-headed, and you think your heart might be beating faster although only a few seconds have passed.
  
  The mirror continues to chew at Ian, drawing him into its surface with razor-sharp shard-teeth.
  
  > Y.
  Do you want to swallow the Sandepam pills? (y/n) >
  You twist off the lid of the Sandepam and hesitate over the pills for a moment before swallowing two.
  
  After a moment, you feel a numb, calm sensation come over you. Your senses are slightly dulled, but the terror of your situation seems a little bit less sharp. If only you'd found these a little earlier in the nightmare.
  
  Ian's anguished screams gargle into weak bubbles as the mirror bites into his chest, and, surely, his lungs.
  
  Your heartbeat becomes labored and fast, and you can feel its sharp, heavy thud shaking your chest. Your breathing increases in speed as your vision fades toward white. You fall to your knees, losing strength in your limbs and feeling in your extremities.
  
  > wait
  Time passes.
  
  With the sound of glass grinding against glass, the mirror-glass draws Ian all the way in and shuts its uneven jaws. There is a brief and terrible silence before the mirror shatters cataclysmically.
  
  Shards of glass fly past you, shredding your skin and muscle. You feel tiny pieces piercing your eyes, driving into your brain, flaying you alive. You stumble and fall onto a floor covered in razor-sharp pieces. There is no mercy; as you twitch in spasmodic anguish, lanced repeatedly through the cerebrum and cerebellum, everything goes dark....
  Press any key to continue.
  
  Consciousness returns. You muzzily realize that you are gazing at the ceiling of the Corona Labs test chamber just before the door slams open. Dr. Shaunessy, the neurologist, hurries into the room. Dr. Ephart follows close enough behind to step on his heels. "How many fingers do you see?" Dr. Shaunessy asks, kneeling down beside you, and Dr. Ephart rests light fingers on your wrist to take your pulse. In short order, they conclude that you suffered a vasovagal syncope and struck your head in the fall.
  
  You try to talk to the doctors, but your words are confused and disjointed. Your gaze drags across the fallen photograph, half-shadowed by the folder above it, and you see the gaunt young man screaming. You can't find the words to make them understand. Though you can nearly stand on your own, the doctors firmly escort you from the room and off to bed.
  
  Dr. Shaunessy leaves, but Dr. Ephart stays with you as the sedatives take hold. "Don't worry," she says, resting a gentle hand on your shoulder. "Everything will be all right."
  
  Six days later, the past repeats itself in Corona Labs.
  No one escapes alive.
  
  > Continue
  > inject yourself
  You poise the tip of the  hypodermic syringe over your elbow and briefly consider what a bad idea this is. Before you have time to talk yourself out of it, you push the needle into your vein and press down the plunger. The solution burns like fire ants racing into your body.
  
  Immediately, you feel light-headed, and you think your heart might be beating faster although only a few seconds have passed.
  
  > Y.
  Do you want to swallow the Sandepam pills? (y/n) >
  You twist off the lid of the Sandepam and hesitate over the pills for a moment before swallowing two.
  
  After a moment, you feel a numb, calm sensation come over you. Your senses are slightly dulled, but the terror of your situation seems a little bit less sharp. If only you'd found these a little earlier in the nightmare.
  
  Your heartbeat becomes labored and fast, and you can feel its sharp, heavy thud shaking your chest. Your breathing increases in speed as your vision fades toward white. You fall to your knees, losing strength in your limbs and feeling in your extremities.
  
  > wait
  Time passes.
  
  After what seems like an eternity of agonized arrhythmia, the Sandepam's effect begins to counter that of the cure. Your heartbeat becomes more subtle, regular, slow. Your breathing, too, begins to return to normal. While your eyes still feel wired open, the white fuzz around the edge of your vision begins to recede.
  
  You feel decidedly unwell - nauseated and manic at the same time. But you don't think you're going to die. Not for this reason, at least.
  
  > Break mirror
  You heave your shoulder behind the fire axe, driving it into the mirror's surface with all of your strength. The head of the axe buries itself in the mirror, throwing cracks all the way across its surface. The cracks run straight through the mirror, through the hideous jaws, and through the body of Ian McMoneagle
  
  > Go east
  As you open the windowless door, you interrupt the insulated barrier that was preventing sound from leaving the test chamber. The sound of screaming suddenly goes from a muted, ignorable presence to a hammering agony on your ears.
  
  The screaming from inside the test chamber hammers down, not only on your ears, but on your mind. The world warps strangely around you, and, quite abruptly, you are somewhere else.
  
  The door slams shut behind you with tremendous force.
  
  Test Chamber, Mt Airy Hospital
  While you are not entirely sure what you expected to find, you are halted in your tracks nonetheless. The floor of the test chamber is littered with glittering shards of reflective glass. The one-way mirror between the test chamber and the observation room is opaque, but it pushes outward in the center to form a pair of jagged, irregular halves like a pair of jaws. From the hips up, Ian McMoneagle is trapped in the grip of those jaws, his face twisted into a mask of pain. The mirror's halves grind against muscle and bone, tearing him apart as they draw him in. And yet he lives....
  
  Ian McMoneagle looks you in the face with wide, terrified eyes, his bloody bangs obscuring his gaze but not reducing its weight. He opens his mouth and screams in guilty agony.
  
  The mirror pulls Ian in more deeply. The hideous cracking sound that follows is almost surely his pelvis.
  
  Your heartbeat becomes labored and fast, and you can feel its sharp, heavy thud shaking your chest. Your breathing increases in speed as your vision fades toward white. You fall to your knees, losing strength in your limbs and feeling in your extremities.
  
  > wait awhile
  Time passes.
  
  The mirror continues to chew at Ian, drawing him into its surface with razor-sharp shard-teeth.
  
  Too late, you realize that your system is not strong enough to withstand the powerful injection. Your vision goes completely white and you collapse heavily to the floor, feeling your heart seize up as your senses fade.
  Press any key to continue.
  
  But your mind - does not fade. In the moment of death, you are drawn forward to where your body convulses in a white bed. You see Dr. Ephart's white and worried face as she drops your hand and steps away, hear Dr. Ensfield's cry for someone to use the paddles, Best coming forward with the paddles in her hands.
  
  The paddles flare across your chest. Electricity. Your heart tries to start - and fails. Your synapses spark and jitter.
  
  Your mind does not fade. But as electricity snaps through you, your awareness is torn backward across the planes of reality, a psychic rope ripped painfully down through twenty years of history.
  
  You see Best retreating with the paddles in her hands, hear Dr. Ensfield's indecipherable cry, see Dr. Ephart's white and worried face as she steps toward you and takes your wrist.
  Press any key to continue.
  
  > Y.
  Everything faster.
  Everything backward.
  
  > Y.
  Everything accelerating from your death to your death.
  
  Press any key to continue.
  
  You don't see, but somehow sense, the Corona team cluster around your corpse. And then you're alive again. They back away from your unconscious body, compelled by worry and concern.
  
  You lie unconscious for three days and then rise sharply into wakefulness. You press buttons on a wireless keypad; Dr. Ephart holds up the matching cards in response. You leave the test chamber backward; you watch red rose petals dance upward on the television screen.
  
  You watch yourself retreat from the blue-walled rooms of Corona. Now you've never been there. The teams mills about briefly in your absence, consulting and debating, before it dissolves to the wind.
  Dr. Ensfield leaves with Rayjay Farley. The others all leave alone.
  
  Press any key to continue.
  
  The building bustles with transcriptionists and secretaries, all walking confidently and casually backward. They untype letters from computers and regurgitate lunch in neat little bites and leave the building one by one, never to return.
  
  And then the workmen come, and what they touch - the carpenters, the plumbers, the electricians, the stonemasons - they destroy. They pull paint from the walls and wires from the ceilings and coat everything in soot and decay. There is only a carcass here.
  
  For years, the scorched and ruined carcass stands. Your mind whispers with melancholy voices, but they're all backward, shattered, bewildering. You understand none of it.
  
  Press any key to continue.
  
  And then men come again - dressed differently, this time, men in suits and sunglasses and briefcases. They bring corpse after corpse into the building, each more mutilated than the last, and they leave the corpses. Walking backward, they retreat into sunlight.
  
  On the third floor of the building, shattered silver reforms into a pane of one-way glass. Seconds later, the mirror regurgitates a young man's corpse, and the corpse comes to life. Nightmare swirls through the building - acid, jaws, darkness and madness, something too inconstant and awful for your mind to embrace - and where the nightmare goes, dead men and women leap up alive and flee backward through their mortal days.
  
  And there - with the building half-gutted, corpses springing to life around you - there is where you die again, hot cheek against the floor with the Vanemine raging through your bloodstream.
  
  Press any key to continue.
  
  Your mind stretches from death to death like a piece of rope. Your consciousness stretches backward and forward across twenty years.
  
  With light, sharp-edged pressure that knows nothing of time, the young man's mind rubs at yours. Your psyche cannot endure the same space as his. Slowly, you fray.
  
  And someday, somehow, you will snap.
  
  But not yet...
  
  Please be advised that One Eye Open is a horror game. It contains mature content (including blood, gore, human injury and death, mild language, tobacco reference, violence, and violent references.)
  
  We do not recommend this game for a younger audience.
  
  > Y.
  Would you like to proceed? (y/n) >
  
  After only ten days, you're becoming surprisingly comfortable with life as a Corona Corporation guinea pig. It helps that your routine is so reliable - meals, exercise, rest, and sleep are clearly arranged on a schedule hanging beside the white clock in your room. As for the tests - well, you've grown used to the sight of your blood in a sample vial, and the rest is mostly paperwork. Personality tests, aptitude tests, intelligence tests, psychological tests, Rorschach and the MMPI and even kinetic family drawing... you're starting to worry that they'll run out of tests by the end of the month.
  
  Although 7:30 PM is always the day's last test, you never leave your room alone, so you were still watching American Beauty when Dr. Marnie Ephart knocked at the door. "Oh, you're almost to the end!" she said brightly, seeing the screen. "I can wait until you're through."
  
  "No, that's fine." You hit PAUSE to freeze Angela in mid-motion as you got up from the couch. "I've seen it before." Last Monday, actually. The video collection isn't that good, and, considering what they're paying you, it's a pity Corona couldn't invest in a few more options. It's hard to complain, though; the staff is friendly, the tests aren't hard, and the salary is great.
  
  During the day, Raymond, Best, or one of the scientists might be around, but at night, it's usually just the two of you, and the hall you cross now is deserted. You accompany her through the antechamber and into the main testing chamber. By now, you're used to being watched from behind one-way glass, but the observational room is fully lit today, and you can easily see inside.
  
  "Back in a moment," Dr. Ephart says cheerfully. "See you on the other side!"
  
  Test Chamber, Corona Labs
  In the center of the room, a single black office chair sits in front of a broad, heavy desk. The desk and chair are familiar, but the wireless keypad sitting on the desk is new. There are five large white buttons on the keypad, each displaying a different symbol in broad black strokes. The symbols are a circle, a cross, a set of three wavy lines, a square, and a five-pointed star. As always, you are quite aware of the cameras watching you from above.
  
  To the west, a windowless door separates the testing room from the antechamber outside.
  
  The familiar black office chair sits invitingly nearby.
  
  Through the thick pane of glass, you can see the curved desk in the observational room.
  
  > Y.
  That was a rhetorical question.
  
  Through the thick pane of glass, you see Dr. Ephart come into the observational room carrying a stack of cards and a notebook. She waves to you in friendly fashion, sets her notebook on the desk, and sits down before pressing the intercom button.
  
  "This is a different kind of test," Dr. Ephart explains. "I have twenty-five cards here, each of which shows one of the symbols on your keypad." She holds up five cards and fans them so you can see the circle, cross, wavy lines, square, and five-pointed star. "I'm going to draw one of these cards and concentrate on the shape. I want you to concentrate, to really focus your mind, and try to pick the same symbol that I do. After you've decided on your symbol, press it on the keypad. We'll do five of these."
  
  Dr. Ephart shuffles her cards together and draws the first card. She holds the card up with its back to you.
  
  > Go north
  Do you want to swallow the Sandepam pills? (y/n) >It's safer to leave the pills in their container until you decide to take them.
  
  Ian's anguished screams gargle into weak bubbles as the mirror bites into his chest, and, surely, his lungs.