The intraveneous needles pumped their black liquids, and I could feel my eyeballs bulging completely, pathetically to their limits as I extrapolated from the tantalum-covered machine the lifeforce I knew I needed.

"You can not breathe here," they always told me before I took my journal past the archway, and I was as good as dead if...

It was always if. If the machine broke down, if the communications were broken, if the moon didn't turn half-way just right at the given time.

There was a solid thought, though, a recurring idea.

"If you make it to Otherside, they're going to call you by name and recognize you. If you make it to Otherside, your cover will be blown," I kept hearing a voice call to me.