Ramsay and I stared in silence when it was over, each too engrossed to speak. Clocks ticked in my head. Or rather, one clock in particular

(tick…tick…tick)

the laconic advance of an atomic, I realized, instead of the metronomic pendulum I usually sensed at times like these. Ramsay’s eyes flitted towards something off on my periphery. I followed his gaze, and was hardly surprised when I saw it wasn’t only in my head. An image of the thing on the wall of Britt’s office hovered just above my shoulder.

“Congrats, boss,” Ramsay whispered. “You got yourself this season’s hot new accessory.” His voice was flat, mechanical, sharing none of the levity his comment demanded.

I nodded, resigned.

I wanted to beat him for pointing it out. To punish him for trying, and failing, to mention such a crushing thing in such a flippant, casual way. I wanted to charge him the same way Rauch had Miller, with both hands slung to one side, swinging them back and forth like a weapon, and clout him in the solar plexus, then grab that rifle strapped to his back, and pump a slug into every inch of his sterine-covered torso. But that would have been pointless, of course. It was just Ramsay being Ramsay.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Instead I asked him the only question he might have been able to answer. “When?”

“I first noticed it a while ago, before we watched that last scene. It wasn’t as strong as it is now. But it was on its way.”

I nodded again. Still holding my emotions in check. Still resisting the urge to wail on him for every annoyance. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Ramsay shrugged. “You were pretty into it,” he said. “I didn’t want to, you know, distract you.”

Because, he seemed to want to ask, what good would it have done?

I didn’t press. I wouldn’t have been able to answer if he had.

Miller’s corpse stared up at us, its one good eye still wired open in a snarl of pain. Its flesh had putrefied further as we’d listened to the playback, dissolving into gelatinous ooze that seeped, slowly, into the space between the tiles, flowing through their geometric channels as if they were an aqueduct. The infected half of his skull grinned at us with avarice. His teeth, now exposed to the roots, looked impossibly frail as they clung to his jaw. You, I imagined it was saying, mocking me in an offhand way. This is you, before much longer! An hour, a day, two at the most, and you’ll be just like me. Both of you will be! ALL of you! And then, as the last few sentences the girl had spoken before she’d died repeated in my head, as I thought about the failed efforts to control its spread, and the hinge we’d chirped on our way in:

All of everyone…

(tick…tick…tick…)

“We gotta move.”

I locked back into the interface. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ramsay, craning his neck to check over his own shoulders.

I tried not to take any comfort in the ghostly boil of pale and blue I noticed burgeoning there.