Widening his eyes, Jonan shook his hands in the air like a drunken cleric, trying to invoke the Moonlight Queen at Convocation.

“My father has HC,” he said.

“HC?” I said. “Hereditary Chorea?”

Jonan nodded. “The one and only. I’ve probably got it too, even if it hasn’t had the decency to show itself yet.” He shrugged. “Or… maybe I don’t.” He waggled his eyebrows. “The suspense is to die for.”

“Angel, Queen, and Hallow Beast,” I muttered.

Suddenly, Jonan Derric made a whole lot more sense than I could have ever imagined. “Are you sure it’s HC?” I said. “There’s a wide range of conditions, chronic or acute—that can cause jerking movements. Cerebrovascular disease, copper poisoning or deficiencies in the body’s chemical filtration and excretory mechanisms; it can also happen as a side effect of a chiral dopamine prescription, or hyperthyroidism, or a bacterial infection—”

“—Spare me the differential diagnoses, Doc.” Jonan shook his head. “My grandfather had it, as did his father before him, and his mother, and on and on, all the way back through the whole fucking family tree. We’re blue-bloods, don’tcha know?”

I could picture him smirking from beneath his rebreather unit.

Hereditary Chorea, also known as HC or—crudely—the Shakes—was an untreatable genetic neurodegenerative disease. The autosomal dominant gene responsible for the condition caused a certain protein to get produced in a malformed version. Inexorably, this protein would accumulate in your neurons, causing them to malfunction and die. The condition was terminal. Its name came from the uncontrollable spastic movements it caused in its later stages.

In my country, the disease had a fourth name: the Gentleman’s Twitch. Many of the old Trenton bloodlines bore the mutant gene that caused HC. It was just another one of the seemingly innumerable ways our forerunners’ self-serving attitudes—in this case, inbreeding among the old Imperial aristocracy—had shaped the present for the worse. People who preferred the Second Empire to the Republic that followed it like to say that HC was a sign of the Moonlight Queen’s judgment against the parts of the aristocracy that sided with Lassedite Agan against Lassedite Verune, and, of course, people who favored the Republic said the exact opposite.

Fun fact: the Lassedile Encyclopedia had an entry on Hereditary Chorea, dedicated to explaining how the disease’s existence did not contradict the all-knowing, all-powerful, omnibenevolent nature of God.

Civil wars were stupid like that.

Things had gotten better after the Prelatory had ended. Religious motivations pushed the Prelates to implement bans on important things like genetic testing or layperson celibacy. Thankfully, with DAISHU’s help and the vigorous “Clean Gene” public health campaign by the Second Republic’s government, HC rates in Trenton had dropped significantly. Every child adopted by an HC carrier meant one less blighted gene line to plague future generations. Still, there were some holdouts, especially among those aristocratic families who were so conceited that they believed they were entitled to want to perpetuate their particular bloodline.

I guess Jonan’s family was one of them.

Back in my mind, Andalon and I were rapt in a moment of silence. She scooched over to me and leaned against my side, and unlike when she touched me out in Thick Word, she wasn’t the least bit cold. She didn’t say anything, she just held me.

“Why, Mr. Genneth?” she asked. “Why would he want to go away?”

Ugh.

How to explain suicide to a child?

I would have referred to my own memories for guidance, but it had just never come up with Jules, Rale, or Rayph.

“Andalon,” I said, “you’ve been hurt and scared and lonely, and for a long time, right?”

She nodded.

“Do you like that?” I asked.

“No!” she said, with a great deal of force.

“Did you ask for it?”

“No!” she said, brimming with despair.

“Would you give up anything to make it go away?”

Andalon thought about that for a moment, and then nodded.

“Well… that’s the logic behind suicide. Nothing bad can happen to you if you aren’t alive anymore—unless you believe in an afterlife, but—…” I shook my hands, “actually never mind.” I sighed. “The point is: sometimes, people feel overwhelmed. They think that their problems will never end. But there is one thing they can do to make their pain stop, and that’s to make themselves go away, for ever. That’s what suicide is. It’s a bad answer to the problem, but… it is an answer, and for some people, they’d rather have a bad answer than to keep waiting for a better one.”

Andalon looked at Mr. Humby.

“Can I ask you a question, Andalon?” I said.

She turned to face me and nodded.

“You’ve seen my patients die, more than I can count. What’s different about Mr. Twist?”

For a moment, Andalon lowered her gaze. “I couldn’t save him,” she answered, quietly.

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“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t bring him to you, like I did for the ghosts.” She shook her head. “That’s why he can’t go away. Andalon doesn’t want anybody to get lost.”

I swallowed hard.

By now, I’d accepted my fated wyrmhood, but…

I wonder… I thought.

“Andalon… what happens if a wyrm doesn’t want to be a wyrm?” I asked.

“Whatch’ya mean?” she asked.

“What if, no matter what happens—no matter what you tell them—what if they just don’t want to be a wyrm?”

“They can’t go away,” she said, barely above a whisper. “They’re too ‘mporptant.” She looked me in the eyes. “I need them. Amplersandalon needs them, too. You can’t go away, Mr. Genneth. You can’t give up. It’s not right.”

“Have you gotten yourself tested?” Heggy asked.

I cleared my throat. “I’ve worked with enough HC patients to know that it’s generally considered impolite to ask that question of them. It’s a very personal matter for most.”

“No,” Ani said, “he hasn’t, and he won’t.” She sighed. “Believe me, I’ve tried.” She glared at him. “But the medication stealing, that… that’s new to me.” Her expression softened. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

Jonan titled his head from side to side. “I did… in my own way,” he said.

Ani furrowed her brow. “All you said is that you ‘don’t want to know’.”

“Exactly,” Jonan replied.

Suddenly, I had an epiphany.

“Ah,” I said, “so that’s what you were using the barbicane for, huh?” I said.

“Oh?” Jonan asked. “Do tell.”

“You’re trying to suppress the symptoms before they even appear, assuming they ever do,” I said.

He nodded. “Bingo.”

Though barbicane was principally a painkiller, it had other applications, one less known one of which was that it helped suppress the kinds of uncontrollable jerky movements caused by HC. It was often prescribed to help lessen particularly severe cases of tardive dyskinesia.

Involuntary movements, particularly of the face and jaw.

The one downside? To get the anti-dyskinetic effects, you needed to take barbicane at a significantly higher dose than what was needed for its analgesic effects. One of the reasons barbicane had become popular as a painkiller was because the decline in HC cases had left Prescott sitting on surpluses that it couldn’t profit from.

“Why?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you why,” he said. “I said I would.” He cleared his throat. “When people think of people with HC, you know what they feel? Pity. They imagine the awful fear of death, the halo of doom circling an inch overhead. Diaries filled with wishes that would go unfilled. ‘Every second counts’, they say. But me? I’m not afraid of the disease; I’m afraid of being kept from living.”

Oh… I thought.

Everything was coming together.

Jonan continued: “If I do have HC, do you have any idea how much it’s gonna cost to get all the supportive and palliative care I’d need to stay functional once I start to decline? It’s through the roof. The cold, hard, truth of it is that the more successful I am, the longer I’ll be able to keep doing the things that matter to me with the people that matter to me.” He glanced at Ani. “Excuse me for not putting any stock in politesse or second chances. I don’t have time for them, and, even if they did, what difference would they make? I’m here to make money and save lives. A smoldering flame either burns brighter or gets snuffed out. There’s no middle way, no matter how much you want it to be. So, I gotta burn.”

By this point, Heggy’s gloved hands were pressed firmly against her PPE’s plastic visor, as if she was about to scoop her eyeballs out of her face.

“Just get fucking tested already,” she muttered. “If you’re positive, you can get a priority prescription. And if you’re negative, well… you can throw yourself a party when this is all over.”

Jonan shook his head. “No thanks. I’d rather not know.”

“Why?” Heggy and I asked, in unison.

“It’s the best of both worlds,” he said. “A positive test result would take away my last bit of hope, while a negative test would take away my motivation—and motivation is really all I’ve ever had.”

We all just stared at him.

He turned to Heggy. “So, there, now you know. I’ve been creatively appropriating drugs from the pharmaceutical dispensary. Now, what I want to know is: what are you going to do about it, Dr. Marteneiss? You gonna dock my pay? Both of us will probably be dead before my next payday. You wanna try and fire me? I can just sign up for the military. I’m sure your brother would love to get my help.” Jonan leaned back in his chair. “It’s like I said: the system has failed us. Everything’s falling apart, and if you don’t believe me, just look out the window.”

He pointed.

There was silence, and Heggy said nothing. She just glared at him.

“I forgive you for being offended by me,” Jonan added. “In another life, I would be, too.”

“If the system is broken,” Heggy said, gritting her teeth, “then why are we still fighting? And no,” she shook her finger at him and coughed, “don’t you give me another one of your snarky replies. I don’t care if you have a point. A system—an institution… it’s only gonna be as good as its people. The Church, the government, the military… even this damn hospital. That’s just the way the world is.” She nodded. “You’re right. Everything is falling apart. There are freakin’ zombies out there!” Heggy glowered at him. “That’s why I need to know that I can trust you, Dr. Derric.” She glowered at all of us. “The same goes for all of you. We can deal with the bullshit once the danger has passed. Trust is what matters most right now.”

“I’ll say this,” Jonan replied, “you can trust that I’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done, even if that means going behind your back or giving your precious law and order the finger.”

“What are we going to do about the transformees?” Ani asked, breaking her silence. “We do what we can,” Heggy said, “and try to not to make things worse.”

“After what just happened out there with the sequestered transformees,” Ani said, “even though it’s terrifying… I feel more strongly than ever that our crackdown on communication is just plain wrong. It’s one thing to keep them sequestered, away from the people they love. It’s quite another to slap muzzles along with that. I understand the arguments—not wanting to cause panic, not wanting to endanger our lives or the patients’, but… it’s doing more harm than good, and it’s only going to get worse.” She looked Heggy in the eyes. “Tell that to your brother.”

“You should tell that to the people who are strangling the economy right now with all the lockdowns,” Jonan said.

Ani closed her eyes and groaned. “Not funny, Jonan.”

“We can either laugh or sob,” he replied. “I prefer the latter.”

“People shouldn’t be reducible to cents on the groat,” Ani said. “This stupid rule about keeping stuff about the transformees hush-hush—forgive me for saying that, but that’s what it is—it’s stupid…” she sighed, but her eyes stayed wide open, “It’s hurting people, and it’s hurting them where it matters. There’s a future knocking at our doorsteps, and I don’t want it to be one where I have to keep telling people that we’re doing everything we can to get them back to the people they love, and who love them back when we’re not and we all know it.”

Pursing her lips, she closed her eyes and rubbed them. Her fingertips wove around the frame of her glasses.

“Jonan…” she said, steadying herself with a shaky breath, “…has hacked my phone more times than I care to admit and angels know what else he’s done that I don’t know about—and I think he’s an ass for doing it… but…”

Jonan raised an eyebrow. “Where are you going with this?”

Ani put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands together. “I think we should try hacking into the hospital’s console server, just to let patients videophone each other, despite the crackdown. And, you never know, maybe we’ll be able to sneak a peek at what Vernon is doing in General Labs.”

Heggy glared at her.

“Don’t give me that look,” Ani replied. “I know everyone here has been itching to learn what he’s been up to.”

She turned to Dr. Derric. “And if you’re not willing to do it, Jonan, I—”

“—Not willing?” he asked. “Ani, what you just suggested is the best idea I’ve heard all day!”