Meghan got in her car, the thoughts of the previous interrogation sifting through her mind.

I had just gotten over it too. Now… Sarah…

She remembered the conversations she once had with her best friend, and also the ones she would have rather forgot.

“Meghan, you went behind my back to the board? Why? I thought we were partners in this?”

She shook her head.

Sarah, you wanted to test your brother with a potential bioweapon. Of course, I told the board.

“Meghan, it’s the only way! I’ll just use it to help cure him and be back with it. The board won’t have to know!”

And what happens if it bonds with him, will you bring your brother here to become an experiment? Because the board won’t just forgive you.

“Or me…”

Meghan sighed as she turned her car on and began her drive home.

New Terra flashed its night lights in front of her, giving her a kaleidoscope of colors to distract her wayward thoughts. The city was a wealthy place filled with Big Corpos, a wonderful array of plant life that coiled around the concrete city, and a healthy community of smiling people.

Yet, all of that brushed past her as she thought on her friend.

Why did the last thing I said have to be that?

She wanted to go back, to apologize to her friend for going behind her back and telling the board of directors what she planned. Most of all, she wanted to have her friend back, to be working on the R series together.

It feels like I’m missing that fundamental thing to get my brain going. I’m going to get fired for this anyway, so maybe its for the best.

Meghan sighed again, melancholy and depression mixing in her mind like a suicidal cocktail.

She remembered seeing the body, when the police brought her to see Sarah. Two bullet holes, one in the chest, and the other in the head.

They killed her, rather than expose their research. That’s the people you sacrificed your friend to, and for what? Safety? Hope that they would overlook your involvement?

Meghan began to cry, the colors of the city turning into a watercolor painting of bright blues yellows and reds.

You were a coward, and rather than help your friend, you led the hunters to kill her. She’s dead because of you!

She tried denying it aloud, telling her that she only wanted to protect Sarah from the board. If they found out what she did, her brother would have been taken away.

She finally arrived at her home, her car being self-parked in her garage as she got out and walked inside.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

She raced inside her home to her wine cabinet, and started chugging the first bottle she got her hand on.

Please forgive me, I never wanted this, Sarah!

She broke from her binge to sob as she fell over her couch.

Meghan turned her head to drink once more, only to find a ghost.

A red, faintly glowing, ghost of her former friend and colleague.

“NO! Please… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Sarah! Don’t haunt me!”

Ghost Sarah got closer to her, those red glowing eyes judging her for all of her sins.

“Meghan, I don’t blame you.”

That snapped her out of the loop of the brain cocktail she was on.

“W-What?”

“I said I don’t blame you, Meghan. I knew what I was doing was reckless. I never once blamed you for what happened to me. I just wished you trusted me.”

That one sentence broke Meghan.

She’s right, why didn’t I trust Sarah?

She burst into tears, reaching out to grab her friend’s ghost, only to find it was solid.

“I’m Shooow Shorrryy! Sharah!”

She felt her friend tap her back, in the same manner she did whenever they spent too much time drinking and Meghan ending up hurling it all back out.

The sobbing ended soon, and Meghan finally composed her enough to see what was happening in front of her.

Sarah was here.

Sarah wasn’t dead.

Sarah wasn’t even a ghost.

“Sarah? Wait, how are you here? What happened to you?”

Sarah did a twirl in her red new form.

“Guess the experiment is a class Z after all.”

Meghan felt her mind turn off as the revelation that her friend was a zombie hit her, and knocked her out.

…

Well, that went better than I thought.

Sarah stood over her friend’s sleeping body with a mix of happiness and relief.

She’s not one of them assholes that killed me after all, she was just scared for me… and Aden.

She was wondering at first, because she knew her friend must have told Monica Ferrous about her intention… which she only now remembered.

After making it look like she escaped through the vents she decided to do a very… invasive method to transport herself out.

She had hitched a ride in her friend’s meat suit, hiding just below the surface so that the decontamination gasses would not reach her.

And had gotten a whole heap of new information because of it.

It turned out that when you jump inside a person’s body, your feelings meld with theirs, giving you all of the baggage, repressed emotions, and in her friend’s case, guilt over what she thought was a betrayal.

She now had access to all of her friend’s knowledge, including her regrets.

It was when she had the interrogation that Sarah realized that her friend was trying to help her.

Even if it was what killed me… she never wanted me dead.

Blame the shooter, not the informant.

Later though, for now.

She easily picked up her friend and brought her to her bed. Being as she often hung out with Meg during drunken runs or simply to brainstorm together, she knew the place like the back of her hand.

Meg began snoring softly just as Sarah placed her down on the mattress.

“Sharah… shorry…”

She smiled as her friend talked in her sleep.

Sarah turned her feet into balls and began rolling back into the living room, sitting on the couch.

Her body instantly picked up the skin cells of several different people.

Mark Johnson? Kelly Birk? Marsa Lindon? I thought Meg hated Marsa?

New information cropped into her mind, though it was only DNA. No extra memories or different chemical make-ups like she had when she was riding inside her friend.

Totally going to tell her that.

She laughed a quiet maniacal laugh as she prepared to embarrass her friend with all of her closely guarded secrets.

Seems fair, since she indirectly caused my death. I’ll just embarrass her to the point of wanting death.

Mwhaha

She was distracting herself though, and she knew it.

All the missing pieces are back, and I finally remember everything now.

The question became, now that she was dead, what should she do?

There’s still Aden… but it already bonded with me, will it still work?

Sarah felt It was rather silly to think about that, since she knew she was able to change things in Meg’s body. She did not do anything else besides make herself a ‘home’ inside her friend, but she could have done more.

And if I can make changes on that level, then Aden should be able to be cured.

She nodded to herself.

Tomorrow, we go visit Aden.