Even the soldiers looked back to get a look at me.

“What do you want with me?” I asked.

She nodded her horned head. “Nothing too big,” she answered. “Making you miserable like you deserve would be a nice start. I was right, you know,” she added. “I am important, too important to be just another tragedy.” She smiled. “It took a man out of time to get me to see the light. Though, to be fair,” she added, with a cackle, “I’ve always been a stubborn girl.”

“So,” Jonan snarked, “ugly, crazy, and stubborn?”

Letty chuckled at that. “Oh, I am going to have so much fun tormenting you,” she said. “Just you wait.”

Turning back to face me, Letty gestured at herself and her companions. “We’re checking out, Dr. Howle,” she said.

“This isn’t a hotel,” I said. “The word you’re looking for is ‘discharged’.”

“I don’t fucking care,” Letty said, with a shake of her head. “The Godhead has a greater purpose for me. For all of us.” She gestured at all the assembled transformees.

Me included.

“You mean that Divine Beast bullshit ‘Lassedite Verune’ was preaching?” Heggy said.

Letty scoffed. “Leave it to a Marteneiss to fail to see the truth even when it’s staring them right in the face.” She turned back to me. “It’s like Mr. Henrichy said: you think you’re better than us. You want to hold us back and keep us scattered and afraid. Well, I’ve got news for you, Dr. Howle: we’re not gonna take it anymore.”

Behind me, I heard Ani curse: “By the Angel!”

Glancing back, I saw her and Suisei coming up from the rear. She was out of her hazmat suit.

If only I could do the same.

“Ani,” Jonan said, “get back.” He motioned with his hand. “It’s not safe.”

“I could say the same to you,” Ani replied.

Letty scowled. “Shut up!” she yelled. “This is our time. The days of human bullshit are over!”

It seemed someone didn’t like not being the center of attention.

I locked eyes with Kurt. He tried to avert his gaze.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “What you’re doing could get us all killed.”

A long, thick, dark turquoise tail pulled away from Kurt as Valentine slithered out from behind him. Below the waist, the young man was almost entirely wyrm. His vestigial legs dangled from his flanks far behind him, darkened and rotting. Valentine’s black hair had fallen off, except for at the back of his head, where it thickened into a mane that trailed down his neck, back, and tail.

“We just want to leave, Dr. Howle,” he said. “That’s all.” He looked warily at the guns. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

I spied Lopé’s golden eye staring from behind Valentine. It looked like the boy-convert was crouching behind the girth of Valentine’s tail. He’d stuck his mouthless, red-scaled snout through Valentine’s mane where the turquoise transformee’s body snaked along the floor. Pale, almost phallic horns curled at the sides of the little ‘Demptist’s head.

I couldn’t believe they were siding with Letty—Kurt, least of all.

“I’m touched,” the lead soldier said, “really, I am, but it’s not about what you want.” He pointed at the wall. “Hell’s melting out there. Lassedite Bishop just committed suicide, and Lassedite Verune has returned from the dead. The Last Days are here, and we’re not gonna let a bunch of Demon Norms go out and have their way.”

“Then why not just kill us now and be done with it?” Bethany asked.

“Girl,” Heggy said, “I’m tryin’ to convince my brother that we can trust you transformees to use those powers of yours to keep us safe if push comes to shove—and, Angel-knows, it’s a shovin’. People are scared. And this? What you’re doin’ right here?” Heggy shook her head. “It’s not helpin’.”

The lead soldier looked back at her. “You’d work with demons, Heggy Marteneiss?”

Heggy snorted. “If it meant not gettin’ ripped to pieces by zombies? Abso-fuckin’-lutely.”

The soldier turned back to the transformees.

“You think you can beat us?” Letty asked. “I’d like to see you try.”

Clicks rang through the hall as laser rifles were cocked.

I forced myself forward. There had to be a way to stop this!

“What about you, Kurt?” I asked.

Kurt was even longer and more sinuous than Bethany. He was almost like Valentine, only his dark blue tail wasn’t as long. A ridge ran down his back, like mushrooms jutting from a tree trunk. His face was a snout, and his nostrils were two holes at its tip, above his lips, and other holes were just starting to open up nearby.

“I got a call,” he said, his voice alien and resounding. “It was Marjorie, my wife. She…” Tears trickled down his snout. “She and the kids are sick. They’re here, at the hospital. They’re…” His thrashing tail tousled the back of his hospital gown. “They’re not doing good, Dr. Howle.”

Kurt moved his hands to wipe away his tears, only for his fingers to brush up against his neck. He still wasn’t quite used to having to reach to touch his face.

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I stammered. His half-finished answer caught me off guard.

Kurt was living in my nightmare future.

They all were.

“You want to see them…” I said.

He nodded.

“I’ve been reading about how the world is ending,” he said. “If I want to talk to them, I gotta do it now, before, well, you know…” He chuckled bitterly. “The Green Death makes you forget. You forget everything. Even the people who mean more to you than your life itself.”

He breathed in deep. For a moment, the stench of acrid sweetness that pervaded the hospital got a little stronger.

“I’m going to see my family,” Kurt said. “They’re here, they’re sick, and I’ll be damned if I’m not there by their side.”

Sword, pierce me, I thought.

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Console says Ward S,” he answered.

Jonan sputtered. “That’s on the other side of the hospital!”

“You think I don’t know that?” Kurt said, with a growl.

I turned to my colleagues. “Can’t someone bring them here?”

A nurse answered: “They’re in critical condition, Dr. Howle.”

“Doc,” Jonan said, glaring at me, “even if we ignore the fact that this would be in violation of the deal you made with Hobwell and DAISHU about transformee sequestration, if you let these freaks wander all over the hospital, you do realize that we’re going to have a riot on our hands, don’t you? Third time’s the charm.”

“They’re not freaks, Jonan,” Ani said, softly.

“In general, yes,” he replied, “but, in this case, I beg to differ.”

I turned to the other transformees. “Bethany! Maryon! Nathan! Don’t tell me you’re in league with her?”

All of them averted their eyes, except for Lopé who, like Letty, continued to watch me with the utmost interest.

“Please, Dr. Howle,” Bethany said, “just get out of the way.” Her tall, slender body swayed in the hall. She looked at Valentine. “Valentine said what all of us feel. We don’t want anyone to be hurt.” She turned to Letty. “Right, Letty?”

Letty tilted her head to the side. “Actually,” she said, with a flick of a claw, “about that…”

The horned witch grinned.

“I lied.”

Through the patch of thickened wyrmsight in the middle of my field of vision, I watched a fresh set of plexuses swirl around Letty. They split into two currents. One stretched out to form a glistening sheet of blue and gold filaments that spanned the hallway side to side. The other surrounded her in what I instantly recognized as a levitation sphere.

But then, I noticed she wasn’t just leaving the barrier in place. She was changing it, twisting it. It looked like…

“Fudge,” I muttered.

It was just like what I’d tried in my courtyard levitation practice session a couple days ago: she was setting it up to redirect momentum.

Suisei must have seen it, too, because the next thing I knew, he yelled. “Move out of the way!”

Of course, the bystanders saw nothing until the moment the energy flowed and Letty hovered upwards.

Gasps and screams shot out from the crowd at the same time as Suisei’s warning.

I looked back and saw Jonan and Heggy dart up against the wall.

The lead soldier gave his orders: “Fire!”

The soldiers pulled their triggers. The hallway filled with flashes and blasts as narrow, piercing, blisteringly hot rays of red light shot from the barrels of the elite troopers’ guns. Bystanders ducked down and covered their ears.

You could feel the heat wafting off the laser beams.

I had just enough time to whip up a plexus on my back with which I shoved myself downward, out of the way of the gunfire. I slammed onto the vinyl face-first, my hazmat suit’s headpiece slightly bouncing off the floor from the recoil.

The lasers didn’t even get to hit their targets. The plexus Letty had set up across the hallway jerked forward and pressed onto the line of soldiers, bunching up around their weapons and ripping the laser rifles out of their hands. A few of the soldiers held on to their weapons, only to get pulled forward and flung to the ground as their weapons floated toward Letty and spun around midair, turning to face them.

It happened so quickly, parts of the walls and floor were scarred with laser burns sent off by the guns as they’d spun around midair.

All the weapons’ triggers squeezed on their own, blasting a laser fusillade at the elite troopers.

And there was nowhere to run.

The lasers tore through the front row of the gathered soldiers, knocking them backward, toppling corpses onto corpses, filling the room with the stench of burning meat. The back rows flailed about as they tried to pull themselves free from under their dead comrades’ bodies. Multiple healthcare workers fell around me, landing on their knees or on all fours.

Honestly, it smelled delicious. I had to bite my lip to keep my drool from spilling over my lips, which made it hard for me to smile when I heard Kurt roar and looked up to see him bend his neck down and bash into Letty’s shoulder, slamming her against a wall, and pinning her there.

And then everything went to hell.

Letty shrieked.

Several of the laser rifles had fallen to the ground, but a few floated near Letty, who fired them remotely. She struck Kurt with her claws at the same time as the laser beams burnt across his robe, spewing invective and force in equal measure. She flung Kurt off her with a concentrated blast of psychokinesis that sent him skidding backward along the vinyl.

“You bitch!” Bethany screamed.

Lopé scuttled out of the way as Bethany clawed the witch from the side. Plexus threads glistened around Bethany’s claw-fists, strengthening her blows, only to explode outward, scattering the few still-floating laser rifles in every direction. Bethany’s psychokinetically strengthened blows also kept Letty from just shrugging off the attacks with a forcefield of her own.

Not that she didn’t try.

“No, wyrmehs!” Andalon yelled. “Stop! No fighting!”

She wept, but they wouldn’t listen—not that they could hear her, anyway.

Nathan and Maryon lunged forward, Nathan toward Bethany and Maryon toward Kurt. The two transformees reared up on their puny, crooked legs as they smacked their targets with their monstrous arms. Claws sliced through hospital gowns like butter, cutting through to the human flesh underneath, yet no blood fell.

I skittered across the ground and pushed up against the wall, glancing at a soldier who was prying off a dead comrade’s body. Reaching out, he managed to grab a laser rifle that had landed on the ground nearby, and, rising into a crouch, fired it at the fighting transformees. He struck Letty on the flank, making her recoil and shriek as the laser burned away some of her sail-human flesh. But then Letty flicked a plexus at him, ripping his arm out of his socket in a twisting, pulling motion that tore his laser rifle to shreds. Dark, infected blood poured out from the wound as the soldier fell.

Surging forward, Valentine flicked his tail-body toward Letty and Nathan. Letty floated up, evading the turquoise transformee’s attack, but Nathan, with his frail legs, wasn’t mobile enough to dodge, and Valentine forced Nathan to the ground as he wrapped the end of his tail around one of the black-scaled transformee’s colossal arms.

Maryon and Kurt wrestled one another.

“You won’t stop me!” she shrieked. “I’m going to see Kreston!”

They crashed into a wall, shattering a hole into the drywall.

More laser blasts followed as another soldier recovered his weapon. Others pulled out handguns and started firing bullets. Several of them tore through Letty’s gown, grazing her sides. The bullets sent out sparks as they bounced off her tail.

With a snarl, Letty spread her arms, summoning her psychokinesis. Her plexus weaves spilled onto the soldiers like water from a bursting dam. Like serpents, they flowed, serpents of light that wrapped around the soldiers’ necks and gripped them there and hoisted them high. Lasers and bullets flew in every direction as the soldiers struggled and kicked, desperate to pry off the crushing force.

They didn’t stand a chance.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a nurse in magenta scrubs emerge from around a corner and join Heggy in charging at Letty, but the hag didn’t seem to notice. Letty’s attention was directed upward, at the soldiers writhing in the grip of her magic.

As the soldiers squirmed, Letty drifted down to the floor to get a better view, and then laughed as sent power sparking through her plexuses.

All the soldiers’ necks snapped. The sickening sound echoed down the hallway.