Victor Gideon

Night pressed against Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center like damp velvet where inside, the facility breathed of institutional life. Hospitals always pretended to hide decay, but decay remained the truest form of honesty biology had to offer. Nobody appreciated that more than Dr. Gideon. His office light buzzed overhead while the monitor on his auburn desk bathed the room in pale clinical blue. Victor leaned forward in his chair with the heavy posture of a man built for endurance rather than elegance, his massive frame hunched over the keyboard as if the desk had been constructed several inches too small for him. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, thick and calloused, the skin across the knuckles dry enough that faint scaling showed where the light struck. Small flakes of shed skin rest