Surprisingly, in line with his promise, Kitty succeeded in finishing the hazmat suits before she died. Though, by that time, she wished she’d been dead.

“You’re excited, right? I sure am!” Kitty said as he gently brought another spoonful of some unknown food to her slacked-open lips. By routine instinct, not even looking, he used the spoon to remove some of the stuff that had dribbled down her chin, putting it in her mouth, where it slid down into her gullet. She didn’t consciously swallow it. By this point, she was pretty sure her body wasn’t hers anymore. It just did things. She was nothing more than an unwitting passenger; one that would very much like to get off at the next stop, if possible.

Smiling, Kitty put another spoonful in her mouth, sighing wistfully. “We’ve spent like a month on these suits. A month! It’s warranted, obviously, but still. From what I’ve heard, Jazz and Benevil are planning on using the suits afterwards to be able to work unhindered. I don’t really see the point, but whatever. Oh, and if you’re wondering, the solution to fixing the air filtration was to use wind magic. Stupid, right? It was that simple!”

Once upon a time, Myriam had, in her solitude, been so anxious to have a visitor that she would have accepted anyone, even if it was Kitty. Any noise was good noise. Now, things were different. She wanted him to shut up.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t move her arms, or her neck, or her tongue, or anything else. The last part of her body that she could moderately control were her eyes. She could look here, and there, and close them. That was it. Even then, she knew she was losing control of this, too. By this point, they were half-lidded at all times. Every time she closed them, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to open them again.

Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for her hearing.

“Yeah, it’s dumb. Anyways, they’re scheduled to be here for dinner, though they won’t be able to share it with you. They’re very nervous, so you’d better be on your best behavior!”

He chuckled to himself. She wished she had the ability to spit so she could do it in his mouth.

Grabbing the bread, he carefully tore off one of the soft bits, none of the crust, dipped it in something soft and warm, and fed it to her. Then, he gave her a little water to take it down. “Oh, by the way,” he said, wiping water off her chin, “have I told you you’re going to die tonight?”

She stared at him. No part of her body could give a response. She hoped her eyes would speak for her, but even if he saw what she was trying to say, he didn’t seem to care.

“I’ve been keeping track of the infectees, and one in three die the way you’ll die tonight—by choking on mucus. The rest die once they go into the coma.” A sly, fox-like smile came to his lips. “Except, I’m not going to let you die like that. I have a plan.”

As he kept feeding her, he laid out his clever little plan. “You see, and I’m sorry I didn’t say this before, but Moleman is sick. He’s got the dragon plague. And, if you’re wondering—no, nobody else does. Jazz, Plus and Rat are all fine. If you’re worried about Moleman… Don’t be! This plan will save him. And it’ll give you something to give back to the party with! Because you are grateful to him, right? I would be, if I were you. So, anyhow…” He grinned broadly. “How would you feel about being a donor again?”

She stared at him in mute horror. At what he was suggesting. At what it would do. The price it would cost—both for her and for Mole. Even more so, horror at the kind of person that could suggest something so terrible, all the while smiling.

He chuckled again, scratching at his cheek. “I know, I know. Sure, it’s not exactly nice to ask this of you, considering that you’ve already been removed from the donor list, but… It’s a favor for Moleman. You get it, right?”

His face, so full of excitement, gave her nothing but a hollow sense of loss yet to be.

“Right. So, in short, even though Moleman will definitely ask when you’ll die, I’ll lie and say you’ll die in a week, and then I’ll come back tonight to make everything work. I’ve already talked to Benevil, and he’s agreed to transform your body into one of those gem-things once you’re dead. That way, Moleman will be able to save a bit on the funeral, heh!” He looked at her for a moment, blank-faced. “Yeah, not my best joke, you’re right. Sorry. Anyways, I thought I’d tell you ahead of time so you wouldn’t be surprised by anything. This way, you can also say goodbye properly. Nice, huh?”

Even if she could have, Myriam didn’t think she would have given an answer to that one.

Despite everything, Kitty was anything but dishonest, and much as he had said, her friends came to visit that evening.

“Surprise!”

“Hi Sully!”

“Wow, so this is how you have it? Fancy!”

“We brought cookies!”

“Ah, sorry, she can’t have anything that’s dry,” Kitty said, deflecting the gift.

Someone she thought was Rat took a step back. “Oh, uh, sorry, I didn’t…”

And it was at this time that her friends fully saw her. The last time she sat by the window must have been almost a week ago. After her hands became useless, she’d communicated with them through Kitty, sometimes by telling him small messages, sometimes by dictating longer ones for him to send as messages. But that was many days ago. It dawned on her, as she laid there, watching her strangely dressed friends, that she couldn’t remember the last words she said to them, properly face-to-face.

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At the moment, she would very much have loved to be able to speak, so she could laugh at the way they were dressed. Each of them was clad in a full-body, fairly loose suit of leather in various colors, with the head portions marked by a pair of goggle-like glasses and a strange breathing apparatus. They looked like a bunch of odd monsters who had invaded her room. Through the semi-foggy lenses, she could only barely catch sight of their eyes. She’d already seen their faces for the last time, and she couldn’t remember when.

The previously barren room was suddenly made cramped by their visit. They all stood huddled over by where they came in. None of them seemed too eager to come in fully.

Kitty, spotting their shyness, waved for them to come closer.

Hesitantly, after sharing glances, they stepped closer to her. Soon, they all stood huddled around her bed, looking down at her through foggy goggles.

“Hey, Sully,” one of them—Plus, she thought—said as he took hold of her hand.

On the other side, another one—Jazz, by the stature, said “Hey,” and took her other hand. She couldn’t feel anything more than a dull sense of pressure. No heat. Not even the feeling of leather. It was only by sight that she could tell that Jazz was trembling. And now that she looked at it, so was Plus. Just barely.

Rat placed his hand on her leg, and Mole, very close, held onto her shoulder.

“How are you doing, Sully?” Mole asked, his voice as gentle as it always was when talking to children and the sick. “You’re holding up, right? Obviously, our fighter’s going to get through this—just another battle to be won. This can’t be any harder than defeating that minotaur, can it?”

She wanted to chuckle. She wanted to smile. She wanted to call him an idiot, and point out the fact that she would die tonight.

Mole looked down at her for a long while. She wondered if he was smiling beyond that leather mask. Or maybe he was making a silly face to cheer her up. That’d be nice.

She rolled her eyes to look at Jazz. She blinked, slowly. Her eyelids felt so heavy. All she wanted to do was sleep. But not now. Not yet. When she opened her eyes again—a fight far more difficult than defeating that minotaur—she found that Jazz had turned away, and was quietly sobbing into her suit. Mole had put his hand on her shoulder. Myriam wanted to do that, too. Or maybe stand up and give her a hug, and say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not dead yet.’

“Fuck, fuck,” she heard Rat hiss. He hunched over her, trembling as well. “Why didn’t we—we should have visited earlier. Holy shit. Look at her. This is—why the hell did we accept this quest? I mean, seriously. How are we qualified for—for saving a city from the plague? Are we really stupid enough that we just… We just assumed we’d be fine!?”

“Rat, calm down!” Mole ordered. Defiant by design, Rat puffed up, ready to continue his spiel in a far more personal direction. Mole took the wind right out of his sails simply by pointing at Myriam and saying, “She can hear us. Do you really think she’d want her last memories of us to be us fighting like a pack of dogs?”

Rat deflated. “No. No, that’s not… I don’t want these to be her last memories, period!”

“Neither do I, but…” His eyes trailed over to Kitty, who, in all his cruel apathy, merely shook his head. Myriam could hear Mole grinding his teeth. “This is how it is. There’s nothing we can do now, apart from making her final days as good as we can.”

Trembling silently, Rat stood down. “...Fine. But I’m not doing this because I think she’ll die. Sully’s strong. A little cold won’t put her down.”

In a morbid sense, she supposed, he wasn’t wrong.

Since they all had work to do, they could only spend an hour with her. She tried to appreciate it. And still, the horror of the whole situation was too much to fully enjoy it. In the end, they left, waving happily and promising to return in the morning. But when the door closed behind them, and she could no longer see them, she could hear their true thoughts. She wasn’t sure if it was Jazz who broke down first, but the sob sounded awfully like her. A few minutes later, they were all gone, including Kitty.

After that, she fell asleep. She really hadn’t planned to, but with the day being so exhausting, it had just happened.

When she woke up, there was a breeze in the air that she could only feel on her eyes, gently caressing her in the darkness of the room. She let her half-lidded gaze move about the room. Even though she knew he was there, it still took a moment for her to see him properly where he sat squat in the window, clawed hands keeping him in place, glowing yellow eyes peering back at her. “Oh, you’re awake. That’s okay.” He stepped down from the window and into the room. In the darkness, she couldn’t quite understand what it was he was wearing. He followed her gaze down. “This old thing? Heh, don’t worry about it. Think of it as… as my scrubs. I was about to say that it’s kind of like a butcher-apron, but you wouldn’t like that, right?”

He stood right next to her, now. She still couldn’t really see his face. It was all dark, dipped in the ink of the night—save for those eyes. With every breath she took, there was a little squeak, like a dog-toy had been lodged in her throat. He took a deep breath through his nose. “Yeah, you’re far gone. But you’re ready for what’s about to happen, aren’t you?”

His face loomed overhead. Eyes like midnight suns. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you any anesthetic. When I save Moleman, I’ll be using one of my abilities to make him briefly paralyzed—that way he won’t know what’s happened. However, if I do that to you, you might die. But it’ll be fine. You barely feel anything, anyways. Here, let me show you…”

First, he took off her blanket, and then he slit open her hospital gown, and then, while she strained her eyes to look, he put the claw of his index finger against her bare chest and pushed down. It slid effortlessly between a gap in her ribs. She didn’t feel it. It was nothing but a dull sensation of pressure. Thick, dark blood seeped out.

“Ah, don’t worry, this won’t kill you. I’ve done this enough to know where the heart and the lungs are. This is nothing but a harmless showcase.” Although she couldn’t see him smile, she could hear it in his voice. Strangely enough, she didn’t feel afraid. In the same way that she no longer had any control over her body, her body no longer controlled her. It wasn’t hers. This was but a dream within a dream.

Maybe, if she was lucky, this might finally wake her up.

“Good. Looks like you’re okay with this. In that case, I’ll begin right away. First, I’ll slice once vertically, right down and across following the sternum, and then another one up here, right across your chest. Ah, don’t worry, I won’t do anything nasty. I’m not really into anything like that, so no need to worry. Anyways, now that we have the skin cut, I’ll lift the flaps, separating the skin from the flesh as I do. These, I’ll then secure it with,” reaching up to his face, he plucked something out—all she could hear was a dull crack, “one of my teeth, which I affix like so. And then I repeat the process with the three other flaps.

“Now, the sternum is exposed, so I’ll just… See, this is why I’m happy to have such sharp claws and teeth. By simply biting my nail into a saw-like shape, I can easily saw through and remove the sternum. See? Here’s your sternum! Yeah, it’s not much to look at, but… Well, whatever. Now, all I have to do is cut through a bit more tissue, taking care not to cut the heart, and… Here it is. Can you feel this? I’m poking your heart. With my knuckle, that is. If I poked it with my fingertip, I’d claw right through it! That’d be a waste. So, now, with the heart exposed, I simply have to isolate it a little, and… Can you feel this? I’m holding your heart. It’s not beating very quickly. I’m not sure if you can see it, but can you feel it?

“I’ll just assume you can. So, with the heart in hand—specifically, my left hand, otherwise it won’t work—I pull it up just a little to expose the veins. Or arteries. I honestly don’t know the difference. With the whatcha-ma-call-its exposed, all I have left to do is snip-snip-snip, and we’re done! See? Easy peasy!”

He held up her heart. It beat slowly, coughing up little droplets of blood.

She didn’t feel it. Not when it was there. But now that it was gone, she felt its absence.

A coldness in her chest. A coldness that spread like mercury through her veins. A lump of ice melting inside her chest. And him there, triumphant, smiling.

“Thanks for the heart, Ursula! I’d say see you around, but that won’t really work, will it? Then again, I guess you’ll always be in Moleman, in a sense. Isn’t that nice? Hm? Oh, your eyelids are falling. Are you going away now? Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Go sleep, Ursula. You’ve been really tired. And you’ve worked really hard, too. You deserve to sleep in for a while. Hope you have a good rest. Goodnight!”

As Myriam’s eyes closed for the last time, she hoped that whatever dream lay ahead of her wouldn’t be as bad as this one.

And, even more so, that there wouldn’t be any cats in this one.