The desktop area of the laptop was dotted with an array of folders. Every folder Zeke clicked on demanded a password in return, and ‘Rosh Hashanah’ didn’t work for any of them.

“Damn it, Yaalon,” Ashlin hissed, with no regard for speaking ill of the dead.

“Wait, the background image,” Aida alerted.

Zeke was on his feet, holding the laptop in his hand. He squinted and could detect parts of a large sigil behind the group of files. He selected all the folders and dragged them to the recycle bin. Now, the desktop wallpaper was unobstructed.

Ugo snapped his fingers and pointed at the sigil on the screen. “That could be the sigil for his lab.” He held his hand out for chalk, and Akachi tossed one to him. Ugo walked over to the door and got to work.

“He already has it memorized?” Ashlin said, watching Ugo draw the sigil perfectly and speedfully. She crossed her arms and approached him. “You’re more impressive than I thought.”

Ugo looked back at her and smirked. “I can assure you I am nothing but impressive,” he said slyly, opening the door without taking his eyes off her.

Ashlin gave him a leer and then entered the new room.

On cue to ruin Ugo’s parade, Aida moved up to him and said, “Please, don’t tell me you’ve fallen for her.” She glanced back at Zeke. “You brothers just have the worst taste in women.” Aida went inside.

Zeke was the last to enter the room; it was the same lab on Yaalon’s video.

It was an organized space, and the surface of everything in the room had a polished glow. Large bookcases were backed into the walls, shelves holding unlit candles, strange twisty plants, and various jars filled with different liquid colors. A collection of ceramics were spread across the floor, and the ceiling was marked with symbols—protection wards Zeke remembered from his grandmother’s teachings.

The Healers explored the tidy lab with a brick furnace at the end, providing light but making the room muggy.

Zeke began to sweat as soon as he called off his Healer’s Garb and some of the other Healers were already removing their extra layer of clothing.

A booming sneeze came from Akachi. “Great, the temperature change already got me a cold.”

Wade offered some pills.

Akachi held up his hand, shaking his head. “Nah, I’m good.”

Zeke circled the table in the middle of the room. Flasks of different sizes and medical equipment he was unfamiliar with sat on it.

“I found some stairs!” Aida shouted from afar.

The group followed Aida up the single stone staircase and found themselves in a more sophisticated lab filled with large fantastical machines. Again, Zeke had no clue what any of the contraptions were used for. The search continued until Violet called everyone over.

They approached her near the end of the room, and she stood before a table with a sizable microscope incubation chamber on top.

Violet tapped on the piece of parchment adhered to the glass. “I think I found what we need.”

The note on the parchment said: Kian’s Specimen.

Aida volunteered to take a look at the specimen. Placing Tsukikaze down gently, she bent over and planted her eyes against the lenses. The Geneticist messed with the knobs and dials of the optical instrument as she let out squeals of excitement.

Zeke found a journal near the incubator with an obsessive amount of bookmark tags sticking out its sides. He leafed through its clean parchment paper and was taken aback by the Yaalon’s polished handwriting. It wasn’t cursive, but the print penmanship was exceptional, down to the margins as if a computer wrote it. “Mora,” Zeke called abruptly, still looking through the pages. “I am going to need you to memorize this journal.”

“Noooo…” Ugo whined, knocking his head back.

Zeke glanced at Ashlin and neared Ugo, whispering, “Don’t you want to keep impressing Ashlin?”

Ugo’s eyes narrowed, and he raised a finger. “I see what you’re doing, but I’m going to fall for it anyway because it’s still a good point.” He took the book and walked away to get started on his process.

“This is marvelous!” Aida said, making a tiny hop.

“Koshiko, try to remember you’re looking at the Black Death part 2,” Akachi said, gesturing to the box.

“Sorry, it’s just….” She said, pulling away from the microscope. “It’s beautiful.”

With curiosity getting the best of him and overpowering his fear, Zeke moved over to the microscope and looked.

The specimen was a red, shapeless blob sprinkled with black dots. The various ends of the thing expanded and lengthened and then contracted. Zeke wondered where the beauty Aida mentioned was. Although slightly unappealing, it looked no different from a regular microbe in the human world.

Then, Zeke picked up on a sensation that had him shiver all over. It was both malicious and strangely familiar. He pulled away from the lenses.

“It’s a protozoan,” Aida announced. “Its place of origin is hard to say.”

“That’s because the goth bastard grew it in a lab,” Akachi replied.

Zeke looked over to Ugo. “How’s it going?”

Ugo closed the book in his hand. “Done.”

“You memorized the entire journal already?” Ashlin asked.

“Well… half of it.”

“Mora,” Zeke said with a hint of disappointment.

“I’ve read enough, okay?” Ugo defended.

“Okay, that’s straight-up supernatural,” Ashlin said, eyeing him as if he were a cat walking on two legs. Her fascination was replaced with concerned curiosity. “How far have you looked into your condition? We should have Violet do a brain scan on you.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Ugo flashed his lewd smile. “You can scan me yourself if you want. You can scan me for as long as you want—”

“Mora!” Zeke shouted. “What’s in the journal?”

Ugo put on a serious expression and explained, “It’s notes about… Kian’s Specimen. Yaalon extracted it from a young girl who was admitted to a hospital in some old town. The only discernible symptom is a persistent dry cough, but doctors have no idea how to get rid of it.” Ugo legged up to the incubation box. “He had been observing the specimen for about a week and all of his magical efforts to kill the thing failed.”

The air in the room grew heavy after Ugo’s statement. Zeke could sense a quiet terror rising inside his fellow Healers.

“Apparently, he tried using mystical disinfectants he made himself and had successfully killed microorganisms with them in the past, but when that didn’t work, he tried using his weakening spells on it… and the specimen used a defensive spell to block it—a defensive spell exclusive to his Healer’s Garb. After that, it tried attacking him with a mind-disruption spell.”

All eyes fell onto the incubator chamber.

“This little bastard can use magic?” Akachi said, pointing at the box.

“It makes sense,” Aida added. “Not only can I sense a soul within it but Mana as well. It has a Mana Gauge.”

“Yaalon said it was hard to get the specimen in this warded box,” Ugo continued. “It put up a good fight.”

“Wait, Mora; you said, ‘mind-disruption spell.’” Zeke glanced over at Violet. “Like Violet’s spells?”

“‘I created it using cells from your Healer’s Garbs,’” Ashlin quoted. “That’s what that weirdo said. It looks like he wasn’t joking.”

“How the hell did he get a hold of our Garbs’ cells?” Akachi hissed.

“If it has access to all of our spells, then… we could be looking at the ender of worlds here,” Violet said with a smile playing on her lips.

“Why are you smiling?” Aida asked and then locked her eyes on her sword. Her hand began to twitch as he growled.

Violet, undaunted, made a shrug. “It’s a smart idea. If I were to create the ultimate disease, I’d do the same.”

Ugo lifted the book. “Yaalon said that it’s not contagious, nor does it have the ability of asexual binary fission… whatever that is. But he believes the specimen is evolving, and its true adverse effects on human health will be revealed if it remains loose on the world.”

“We have to stop this thing before scarier symptoms than coughing show up,” Zeke said.

“Yeah, no, shit, Sherlock,” Akachi rasped and backtracked to lean against a wall.

Violet gave Akachi a scowl for Zeke.

Zeke passed a hand over his curly hair. “We need to find all the current carriers, quarantine them, find Kian, and work on making a cure.”

“Who died and made you the leader?” Akachi said.

“Yaalon did, and I say yeah, he’s the leader,” Violet responded, looking at Akachi with a menacing smile.

“Alright,” Aida said, holding back the rising vomit in her throat. “I have a spell that can help with the carriers. Ugo, the chalk.”

Ugo tossed the chalk over to Aida, and she caught it between her teeth. She crouched in the middle of the room and drew a sigil. She made her hand signs and then slapped her hand against the sigil.

A puff of smoke burst upwards, and once it settled, an excitable canine was jumping around Aida. Its coat was as dark as charcoal with split ends just as jagged as its white teeth.

Aida petted and played with the demoniacal animal, making it emit joyful whimpers and wag its bushy tail.

Zeke noticed Violet and Ashlin wearing identical, unamused expressions, looking like a set of twins.

“Wow, I can barely tell the difference between the two,” Violet said.

Ashlin groaned loudly. “Dogs… disgusting creatures.”

“Where is your dumb cat, anyway?” Akachi asked.

“Found her and sent her away after Kian’s attack. She can’t breathe in that infested air.”

The black dog with large glowing red eyes hit the floor and rolled over. Aida rubbed its belly as she talked to it in a baby’s voice. “Who’s the cutest doggie? You are! You are!” Then, she sprang up. “Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?”

The demon dog rolled back on its paws and barked happily.

“Come on! Come on!” She exclaimed as she led the dog over to the incubator. “Here, boy! Here, boy!”

The panting dog propped its paws onto the edge of the table. The way the sides of its mouth curved while its black tongue was out made it seem like the creature was smiling.

It then did something not so cute as its head dematerialized into a cloud of pitch-black smoke and phased through the incubator. Inside the box, the smoke circled the specimen’s slide several times and then retreated.

The dog’s head morphed back into normal, and it climbed onto Aida, tackling her to the floor and assaulting her with affectionate licking.

“We can use him to find the carriers!” Aida said, giggling while trying to push the dog away. “He can follow the scent of whoever carries the same genetic material as the protozoan.”

“Hey, Wade!” Akachi called out as he turned around.

“Yeah?” Wade answered while holding up a colorful, twisty flower in his hand and fumbling with a lighter under it.

“What are you doing?”

“Given Yaalon’s Middle Eastern heritage, at least one of those plants has to give you one hell of a trip.”

Deciding it’s not worth any more inquiries, Akachi changed the topic. “Look, man, I need you to stay here and see if you can learn more about the specimen, alright?”

“Alright.”

“Is that really a good idea?” Zeke asked.

“He’s fine and completely lucid. Watch.” Once again, Zeke was witness to another one of Wade’s sobriety tests.

“Wade, bud?” Akachi started affectionately. “Who is talking to you right now?”

Wade stopped to squint at Akachi. “Somebody,” was his answer.

“Well done,” Akachi nodded and walked off. “I am going to swing by my lab and grab a few things. We need to replenish our Mana.”

“I need to change clothes,” Ashlin said, heading towards the staircase.

Unprompted, Violet conjured her canvas messenger bag. “Ezequias, hold out your hand.”

Zeke did it immediately without question as she strode towards him. She grabbed a blue apple from the bag and placed it in his hand.

Zeke was reminded of the first time he had seen oddly colored produce. It was during her battle with Nananiel back then when something as strange as a messenger bag appearing out of thin air would’ve sent him into an existential crisis.

“Eat,” she said. “You’re low on Mana.”

Zeke inspected the apple for a bit and then moved it towards his mouth; as he opened it, Violet grabbed onto his wrist.

“Wait,” she said and then took a slow, large bite of the apple while fixating on him with her bedroom eyes.

Zeke gaped at her as she chewed and swallowed.

“Alright, all yours,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder, and then walked away.

While stuck in a trance, Zeke barely noticed Ugo taking his arm and dragging him away to a corner.

“Ey, Mano, snap out of it,” Ugo said urgently. “Back when we were establishing everybody’s alibis. What did Violet mean when she said you two ‘spent the night together?’”

“Exactly that,” Zeke mumbled, still in dreamland mode.

“What does that mean? You two are together now?”

“I don’t know! I really have no idea, but….” Zeke’s lips curved into a dumb smile. “It’s exciting.”

“Zeke…”

He frowned after noticing the look on Ugo’s face. “What?”

“She was willing to let your mother die.”

“I… know… she’s corrupt, but we can fix her—”

“How about if you can’t?” Ugo said, stealing a glance at Violet while she was observing the incubator. Maybe there are just some people you can’t save, some people you can’t change.”

“I’m not giving up on Violet,” Zeke said sternly, “we agreed on that.”

“I know. I want to help her, too,” Ugo said, “but you can’t let her wrap you around her finger. Like you said, she’s corrupt, so she could be scheming something, and we need to be careful.”

Zeke studied him and was irritated that it was Ugo, of all people, giving him such a lecture. A memory he tried to repress resurfaced. Back at the Cathedral in the Providence Realm. One of the biggest fights they ever had.

With a tight clench, Zeke forced the memory away. Why is it that he had to think responsibly all the time?

I’m allowed to be happy and have fun.

Zeke put his hand on Ugo’s shoulder. “Maybe, try to use this time to get closer to Ashlin. This could be your chance.”

He walked off, took a bite of the apple, and stood by Violet.