The void didn't feel like space; it felt like being digested.Saddam’s consciousness slammed back into reality with the grace of a brick dropped from a skyscraper. He wasn't falling anymore. He was face-down on a floor made of cold, slick obsidian, breathing in air that tasted like ozone and rusted copper.He didn't move immediately. He lay there, his heart drumming against the floor, checking his own limbs. The last thing he remembered was the sensation of Felisa’s whisper against his ear and that soul-searing explosion."Felisa?" he wheezed. His voice sounded like gravel grinding in a jar.He forced his eyes open. He was in a long, vaulted corridor that seemed to bleed darkness. The obsidian walls pulsed with an unnatural, sickly purple light—veins of residual mana running through the stone like cancer. This wasn't the headquarters. This was deeper. This was something beneath the base, something Kepler had been keeping in the cellar.He scrambled to his feet, every joint in his body