I tasted blood before I tasted anything else—mine, mostly, mixed with the chemical tang of whatever poison the Chemist had been cooking in this tomb. The phosphate plant had a way of claiming everything it touched, and now it was claiming me. I was pinned flat against a rusted mixing vat, the kind of machine that hadn't seen use since before the bones started walking upright. The cold steel bit into my back like a knife with a grudge.