Zachary Quinto speaks of tongues in audio clip from John Scalzi’s The Dispatcher

John Scalzi won a Hugo Award for his tale of the doomed Intrepid away teams in Redshirts, but the action in his latest work would probably be relegated to that ship’s sick bay. Scalzi’s original Audible novella, The Dispatcher, follows Tony Valdez, who holds the titular occupation. A Dispatcher’s duties include euthanasia, as they “release” patients who are about to die on the operating table. This job exists in a world where murder is extraordinarily hard to commit, which might be why those victims aren’t staying dead. In this new audio clip, Zachary Quinto narrates one of the dispatch procedures, which Tony performs with precision and the aid of Nurse Soto.

Quinto sounds clinical but just a tad menacing in his voiceover, like an amalgam of his American Horror Story personalities. But Valdez is soon on a mission to find his co-worker’s killer, so he’s probably not the bad guy (unless he’s in some kind of fugue state?). If you’re looking for a suspenseful sci-fi story this Halloween, you can download The Dispatcher for free from October 4 until November 2.