The group of four sat in somber, uncomfortable silence. Parker, Aldon, and Lemmy all looked at Yiddek who was sitting on the concrete facing away from his brothers body. He rubbed his eyes and clasped his claws together.

“I don't… I don't know what I'm going to tell our parents. He was just here a few minutes ago. I didn’t realize it had… I didn’t realize.” Yiddek murmured, continuing to rub his eyes furiously.

He’d lost patients before. But no matter how attached he had been it was never like this. Never so surreal. Never so empty. He didn’t know what to do now.

“We still have to go after your sister. At least, I still think we should. It’s what he would have wanted .” Parker said, pulling herself together. She hadn’t known Harvel long, but the peek into his mind had been very telling. He'd kept going, even when he knew it would get him killed. He’d just been lucky up until this point.

“I don’t even know where to look for her. He knew where she was! All I know is that she’s in the sewers. Hell even if we knew where she was he was the only one who knew how to get there.” Yiddek explained, shrugging his shoulders in resignation. Harvel had truly been the only one of them who’d known what was going on. Lemmy coughed.

“About that last bit. I may have a way to get there quickly, but I have to warn you it might not work correctly. We’ll need coordinates, but if we can get them then I might be able to help you get your sister back.” Lemmy explained, quickly grabbing a few tools from his work bench and hurrying out into the garage.

Aldon and Parker followed him, leaving Yiddek behind with Harvels body. Lemmy shuffled away from them, hands overflowing with tools, over to a large covered bulk in the corner. He practically dropped the tools onto a cart and grabbed a corner of the tarp.

“Do you mind? It gets caught on the other side if I do it all at once by myself. Takes forever to get it right again.” He said, gesturing in the pairs general direction. Parker grabbed the opposite corner and began pulling the tarp towards the front. When the tarp was free Lemmy excitedly presented his creation.

“It’s a, uh, boat.” Aldon pointed out, feigning interest. Parker nodded in unimpressed agreement.

It was, in fact, a boat. Not a particularly large one either. More of a dinghy with a hat. Aldon had to admit though, he'd never seen one with a hull that gave off mist and looked like it was nearly see-through.

“Well, yes it is, but it’s much more than that. It’s a very special boat. I call it a trip boat.” Lemmy explained, exasperation showing on his face. Aldon and Parker both crossed their arms in unified skepticism.

“And why would that be? The big lazer looking thing on the front?” Parker asked, leaning on one of the struts holding the vessel aloft. She could tell it had never been in the water, though it didn't look as if it was meant to be.

“Yes! Yes! The big lazer thing! So, that is actually one of many different things that are very special about this boat. The first is the hull! It's made of a two micron thin hyperconductive alloy that is constantly cooled to negative ninety degrees Celsius!” Lemmy yelled, pulling himself onto the boat and pointing at various parts of the craft.

“And that will?” Aldon asked, giving the hull a swift tap with his boot. Lemmy deflated a bit.

“That, Aldon will allow us to use the big lazer thing to project a magnetic field that will lock the hyperconductive alloy in space. Then we use the other big laser thing to create a small singularity and pull apart the strands of reality. Then we slide on through between and come out where we please, like a cat through an iron fence.” He explained, leaning over the side of the trip boat. There was a moment of contemplation regarding the implications of such a device.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Well, fuck me then. You’re gonna put me out of a job.” Aldon said, pulling up a shop stool and staring at the future of locomotion as he knew it. Lemmy shook his head.

“I doubt it. You have no idea how expensive the materials are. With the money I spent on enough hyperconductive alloy to transport the whole boat I could have bought a large freighter.“ Lemmy said, embarrassed at the thought of how much he'd spent getting this little independent project going. Aldon relaxed a bit at the prospect of a still intact career.

"Have you ever actually done all of that shit before? You know, all at once. Successfully." Parker asked, holding her hand a few centimeters away from the hull. After a few seconds the cold had already reached the bones in her fingers. Lemmy lost a bit of his zeal at the words.

"Uh, no. I haven't. But I'm pretty sure I figured out the rest of it about three minutes ago." He said, a grin spreading across his face.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Yiddek stared at his tablet, the data folder for his brother open. It was laid out the same as all of his other patient files. There was a box labeled “Current status:” with his cursor blinking inside. He placed his finger on the D and watched it fill up with multiples of the letter. He couldn't bring himself to spell out the rest of the word.

There was a polished steel sheet backing the wall in front of him. He looked at the reflection of Harvels body, almost hoping he would see it move. He looked back at his tablet. As he deleted all but one of the Ds, and his finger hovered over the e, he heard an odd cracking sound.

Yiddek looked around, expecting to see Lemmy doing something mechanically inclined. He was alone. He looked at the reflection again. Harvel hadn't moved. He glanced back down at his tablet and before he could start again Yiddek heard the sound resume.

It was a deeper, soggy type of cracking this time. Like mud covered sticks being broken up for a desperate fire. Yiddek looked up at the reflection again. Fingers, slender and knobbly, were wriggling out of his brother's silhouette.

Yiddek turned, eyes wide in unfathomable horror as the cracking and snapping grew louder and louder. The hand, dripping in blood and green ooze, forced its way out of Harvels chest. His ribs splayed outwards towards the ceiling, the hand purposefully grabbing them and prying them out of the way.

The sickening cracking noise continued, as Harvels skull seemed to cave in and retract partially into his neck. Yiddek instinctively grabbed a thick steel break-over bar and waited with it at the ready. His stomach churning with disgust and grief, he set his sights on the creature now making its way out of Harvels corpse.

A head, only identifiable as such due to the sunken, pore-like eyes and nose, popped out from between the ribs. It looked like a mushroom, an uneven, knobbly cap cresting high above its eyes. It placed its hands on the sides of the table and laboriously pulled its legs out of Harvels. Yiddek tried to steady himself in spite of the squelching sounds it made.

The creature inspected itself for a moment, moving its limbs about in front of it. It seemed amused at first, flicking the blood off of its spindly fingers. It looked at its hands in confusion, rubbing the digits together. Noticing it was distracted, his moment had come. Yiddek wasn’t going to let whatever the fuck it was get away with killing his brother, or anyone else.

The bar sailed into the creature's head, burying itself into the cap with a barely audible “poomf!” sound. The problem was that it stayed there. Try as he might, Yiddek could barely wiggle the bar, let alone pull it free. The fungus didn’t seem phased. Its cap had immediately reformed over the bar once it was embedded.

Yiddek prepared himself for the inevitable assimilation headed his way, but nothing happened. The mushroom still seemed to be preoccupied with flicking the blood off of its hands. After a moment it seemed to notice something was off.

Yiddek held his breath as the creature raised its hands and began feeling around its head. It found the bar, and immediately began to show signs of panic. It turned to look behind it, effortlessly yanking the bar and Yiddek along with it. Now face to face with a rather annoyed looking mushroom, Yiddek nearly froze.

“Sorry.” Yiddek squeaked, gulping. The eyes bored into his, wrath emanating from their near infinite depths. It hastily plunged its free hand into the soup of blood and ooze it was sitting in and leaned forwards. It found a clean spot of bench, and began to write furiously.

“What the hell did you-” the creature paused to slosh its fingers around in Harvels guts again, “do that for?!” It wrote, punctuating the action by pointing at the words aggressively. The handwriting looked oddly familiar.

“Um, I uh… What?”