Though there were no walls within my Main Menu, the sky-clad chamber rumbled and shook. Andalon leapt onto Mr. Humby, her tears hardly dried. She squeezed the plushie in a death-lock hug. I moved forward to comfort her, but then she gasped and looked up, confused and afraid.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She looked up at me, shivering in terror. “Something’s happening, Mr. Genneth.” She spoke in a breathless, almost whispering voice. “Something’s coming. Something’s fighting. I’m… I’m trying—I’m—”

“—What do you—”

Back in reality, the red-headed swordsman charged at the zombie, bearing his blade in an upward strike. The soldiers opened fire at the same time. The bullets tore through the swordsman and Morgan’s hostage and the woman who’d been approaching them. The burly axeman tried to pull his comrade out of the way, but the bullets battered his gauntlets and breastplate, some bouncing off, others breaking through. The time-travelers’ riflemen shot fresh rounds of musket fire, spewing smoke through the air.

One of the soldiers grabbed me by the back of my hazmat suit and pulled me down and back.

Too many people had gotten caught in the crossfire, healthcare workers and civilians alike.

Back in my Main Menu, suddenly, Andalon shook. Then she clutched her arms around herself and screamed.

“No, no!!”

She scratched her fingernails down her face.

“Make it stop, Mr. Genneth!” she shrieked. “Please!”

“Andalon!” I yelled.

“I can’t make it stop!” she screamed. “Andalon can’t make it stop!”

Right before my eyes, the feral state spread through the crowd. I could see the process rippled out from the woman who’d first turned, spreading from one person to the next. It swept through the people in a wave.

Screams coalesced into messages of horror.

“I can’t stop! Help! Help!”

“Johnny! Johnny!”

The soldiers cursed and screamed.

Darkness had struck.

The fungus was attacking.

Men, women and children moved like misbegotten machines, stumbling, tumbling, herky-jerky, spastic and wild, clawing, biting, shrieking. People formed living chains, grabbing each other by the arm, trying to hold one another back, but to no avail. The chains came apart as the crowd became a mob and the mob became a horde.

I ducked down.

The soldiers’ gunfire met the oncoming zombies. Glancing up, I saw the knights mounting attacks of their own from the other sides of the horde. The halberdier swung, swept, and cleaved, slicing through multiple bodies at once. The victims’ fungus-weakened tissue fell apart at the seams. The armored axeman hacked through several zombies, lopping off heads and limbs.

More screams erupted around me as several of the soldiers around me spasmed and palsied. They lost their grips on their rifles, cutting the gunfire short. Their weapons clattered to the floor as they lost control of their bodies.

In a moment, barely any bullets were being fired anymore.

I ran up against a wall, pushing zombies out of my way with restrained psychokinetic pulses.

I had to do something!

I yelled into my thoughts. Andalon, I need you—now!

A moment later, I reabsorbed my second self, my double-headed awareness collapsing down to one. Andalon materialized in front of me, the same as she had been inside my mind, only without Mr. Humby to comfort her. Her hands were clasped onto either side of her head as she shook her head in dismay, tossing her sky-blue hair left and right.

Andalon! I thought-yelled. Look at me! Listen to me!

Twisting and turning her limbs, she floated up off the floor, her nightgown billowing around her.

She stared at me, filled with sorrow and anger. “I told you!” she said. “I told you, I told you, I told you, Mr. Genneth, but you didn’t listen!” She wept openly.

Unwilling zombies roared. The demon fungus was conscripting body after body to serve its unholy cause.

“It’s not gonna stop,” she said. “We can’t do it—”

“—Stop it, Andalon!” I yelled. Don’t be like I was. I already made enough mistakes. I have faith in you. You can do it! You’re stronger than some moldy old fungus!

“Hwah!” someone yelled. “Demons, the lot of you!”

I turned to look.

The halberdier lunged into an oncoming zombie. “Fight to the last!” he yelled.

Black ooze splattered as the halberd cut through the zombie’s body.

“Eylon!” the axeman yelled, trying to make his way toward the red-headed swordsman. “Eylon!”

The swordsman was on the ground, bleeding from numerous bullet wounds. The zombies descended upon him before the axeman could reach.

The violence was rapidly ballooning. People ran down the hallways, trying to flee, only to slip and tumble as the fungus claimed them.

If we didn’t stop this now, there’d be nothing left—no one left to save.

Reaching out, I grabbed Andalon’s spectral hand with one of my own while thrusting a row of topple chairs forward with my powers, knocking back a bunch of zombies, striking them square in the stomach.

I didn’t have time to worry if someone had seen that.

I sped up my thoughts, slowing the mêlée around me to a crawl. In between splatters of blood and ooze frozen mid-air, I saw the knights locked in combat with the demons.

The axeman had stuck his armored forearm into a zombie’s mouth, holding it at bay as he lifted his weapon, ready to strike. Three zombies were pressed up against one another where the halberdier had thrusted his weapon forward. Morgan scrambled for his pike.

More zombies were closing in on them, though. In seconds, they’d be overrun.

In the stretched time, I turned my attention back to Andalon. My vision slowly shifted toward her as my eyeballs turned in their sockets.

I had an idea.

Andalon, I thought-said, meeting her eye-to-eye, you gave me my powers, right? Well… maybe I can give them back to you, if only for a little bit.

“W-What?” she stammered, tears pooling beneath her sea-blue eyes.

If you hadn’t chosen me to become a wyrm, I would have ended up as just another corpse among billions. You gave me a second chance, Andalon, and you got me to pick it up and try to do good with it.

For a moment, I let my thoughts wander back to my ever-unfinished Clarinet Sonata, by way of my conversation with Mr. Himichi. I’d wanted my music to be the mark I’d left on the world, so that others would know I had lived, and so that I could tell myself that my suffering hadn’t been for nothing.

I guess you could say the fungus had thrown a wrench into that plan, huh?

I let my mind fill with the sound of my music.

“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon whispered, her eyes wide, “if you give me back my power… you die. Wyrmehs can’t live without Andalon.”

Then I’ll give as much as I can without it having to come to that, I thought-said. If WeElMed goes up in smoke… I… I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m not ready to leave it, yet. I know you want me to run, Andalon, but I can’t. I won’t.

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“But it won’t do anything!” she yelled.

And if it doesn’t, then I’ll try something else.

Her voice broke, “You can’t fight the darkness…” She shivered. “It’s too strong.”

I’ve gotten pretty strong, too, I thought-said.

“But… then your friends will get angry-sad with you,” she said.

Andalon, I thought-said, I don’t care if the fungus is Hell itself, I’m still going to try. You got me to stop giving up, Andalon. If you can do that, trust me, there’s nothing you can’t do!

To be clear, I didn’t know if I could even do what I was proposing, but I’d rather have an idea that didn’t work than nothing at all. At least with the idea, I could say I’d made an honest effort. And, if it failed, I had plenty of corpses around me to eat and gain power from. I’d be a one-wyrm army, if it came to that.

Steadying myself, I focused. I brushed away the sounds of the music I’d written as I reached for the music within me—the weave of &alon’s power.

Suddenly, through the hazmat’s suits gloves, where my hands touched Andalon, I felt… warmth. Normally, Andalon’s ethereal presence had a deathly chill to it, but that chill was in full retreat.

She coursed with warmth, and she began to glow.

Light poured from her eyes and mouth as her hair rose up behind her, fluttering like a torch flame, flaring light.

I felt that light.

Suddenly, spectral blue flames flickered into existence all around us—all over the room, radiating with a heat that was not heat. In a mighty whirlwind, they swirled, converging on Andalon and I.

And I felt it.

&alon was stirring.

Andalon’s hair flailed about, as if being blown in a ferocious wind. She looked around in disbelief.

“I… I don’t understand! How!?” She looked at me. “What’s happenin’ Mr. Genneth?”

Something forced my thoughts to slow down. Time sped up around us. All the chaos sprang back to life.

“I think I got Ampersandalon’s attention!” I said, grabbing Andalon’s other hand in mine.

We’d tapped into her greater power, or, perhaps, &alon had tapped into ours.

Whatever the explanation, I felt heat course through my body as the flames flowed into the two of us.

Andalon floated up to my chest and yelled. “Mr. Genneth!” She looked over her shoulder in shock. “Something’s happening!” she cried. “Something’s coming!”

And then it came, and I felt it: a ripple through the air. Patches of the room quivered like mirages. The distortions coalesced into a sphere in the middle of the room, one that I could see with my naked eyes. Things moved more slowly the closer they were to the sphere. The space around it stretched, as if it was wrapped around it—and I wasn’t the only person who saw it.

Several of the knights screamed.

The warmth of Andalon’s light flowed up her arms, into me.

On instinct, I thickened my wyrmsight. The brightness of what I saw sent afterimages flashing across my field of view.

Beneath my wyrmsight, the sphere was swathed in surging color. Light crackled like lightning at its surface. Intricate, fractal patterns cracked into the air around it, like spiderwebs or frosted glass. The air-cracks unfolded and straightened, aligning themselves perpendicular to its surface. Some of the blue flames still hovering around us were pulled away, drawn toward the sphere. Waves of aura rippled out from the sphere, pulsing across the air in a wide sweep that sent power hurtling across my wyrmsight. And though that power wasn’t visible to the naked eye, its effects certainly were. Zombies standing where the waves of aura passed through fell prone, twitching uncontrollably, as if all the neurons in their bodies were discharging at the same time.

The sheer amount of power streaming off the spatial distortion was beyond anything I could imagine.

It still is.

If that wasn’t a direct link to &alon, I didn’t know what was. With my wyrmsight up, I couldn’t stare at it for more than a second or two, it simply overwhelmed my senses.

Turning away from it, however, my wyrmsight passed over the auras of the zombies.

Their auras… I thought.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of checking their auras until now. The Green Death’s malignant will flared all over the zombies’ bodies, its colors as riotous as ever. I could even see what I was pretty darn sure was the will of the human soul trapped within the zombie body. It was an inner power, as much wind as light, blowing back at the writhing network of the fungus’s commands, helpless to fight against it.

I sped up my thoughts, slowing time once more, though not to the point that I couldn’t move.

“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon said, floating away from my chest and looking me in the eyes, “I… I think you did it.” She put her hand on my chest. “Amplersandalon listened. She gave you power. Please, help me—”

Say no more, I thought.

She asked for my help, and I gave it. It was instinctive. I learned how to do it as I did it for the first time. It was… like untying a knot. If anything, it reminded me of what I had to do when I wanted to shape my psychokinetic filaments to make something happen that was more than just me exerting a pushing or pulling force, only far more complex, almost impossibly so.

It was like what I’d tried to do with poor Mr. Draunborn. I’d tried to banish the fungus’ aura from his body, only for his head to explode right in front of me. But this time… things went differently.

His soul had come to me the night before last. He’d been even worse than Frank Isafobe, little more than a swirling cloud of broken glass, crackling with the lightning of a vengeful spirit. Andalon and I had had to seal away the demon his soul had become.

I didn’t try to destroy the fungus’ aura. Instead, I peeled the wild, spiny surface of energy off the zombies’ bodies, one after another, after another, as if it was fat to be skimmed off milk. I pared it down, weakening it, damping it, until it had been reduced to a web of magenta scribbles that pulsed inside their bodies—the core of the infection’s presence.

It took barely a second to do. It was as simple and natural as scratching an itch or wiping away a tear, but the result was like magic.

The zombies closest to me staggered for a moment, yelping in shock.

Their bodies were theirs to control once more.

“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon cried, “you have to do more! They’re not safe yet!”

More?, I thought.

Andalon was right. Through the slowed time, I could see the knights caught mid-attack, their blades closing the gaps between themselves as their targets. Things were happening too quickly for the knights to process it. They hadn’t realized their targets were no longer a threat.

They couldn’t. Their nervous systems simply didn’t function quickly enough.

What little hair I had left on the back of my neck stood up on end.

Somehow, I just knew what Andalon meant. With the light blazing from her air, our thoughts were on the same wavelength.

I knew what to do, as did she. Both of us had roles to play here.

While I focused my thoughts, Andalon stuck out an arm toward where I was focusing. She moved in tandem with my thoughts.

More.

I let my awareness grow. My mind was a flower—a lotus on a pond, opening and opening. All around us, the zombies’ auras quivered as they fell into my thoughts’ grasp. Even the people I’d freed from the fungus’ control fell under my spell. In a moment, I had my metaphorical fingers inside the aura of every infected person from here to the ends of the hallways.

Andalon, I thought-said, are you thinking what I’m thinking?

She nodded. “Andalon is thinking what Mr. Genneth is thinking, yes.”

I think we just hacked into the fungus, I thought-said.

All this time, I’d been afraid of the fungus taking me over, to use my powers and the souls within me as part of its army of darkness.

But now, for once, the tables had turned.

With a single thought, I could have returned all of the zombies to their senses, except for those who were already dead. But I didn’t. There was no way I could tell all of them I was about to give them back control of their bodies, and there was no telling what was going to happen in between the moment I freed them and the moment when they took control of themselves once more.

For all I knew, the fungus might even try to take control of them all over again.

“If you’re controlling them, Mr. Genneth,” Andalon said, “the fungus can’t. There’d be too many thinks in them.”

The news was music to my ears.

Returning my perception of time to normal, I reachEd out with my mind. Instead of peeling off the outer layers of the fungus’ body-snatching aura, I pinched it, like surgical clamps cutting off blood flow.

One by one—zombie or not—the infected froze stiff. Their motionlessness spread out in a wave, centered at me.

I knew what I was going to do next.

Can you do that? I thought-asked.

Andalon nodded. “I can do it,” she said.

I guess I was going to have another stint at playing conductor.

Then, all at once, the zombies stepped back, away from swinging blades and threatening guns. They moved because I willed them to move, and because Andalon had channeled &alon’s power to make them obey. Incredibly, I could feel the fungus’ will writhing beneath my grip, flailing about like an animal grabbed at the neck.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon said.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered, “I’m not going to let it through.”

I dared to smile.

In that one moment, we had the fungus on the ropes. For once, the fungus was the one flailing in desperation.

For once, I wasn’t the powerless one.

Gasps shot out across the lobby as I commanded the infected to lower themselves to the floor. I, of course, did the same, all on my own. Things would end very, very badly if someone decided that now was the time to shoot me for being a demon.

“What… what’s happening?” the young rifleman asked, slack-jawed and dumbfounded.

“Hold, Bever!” the halberdier shouted. “Hold!”

I waited for a second, until I was absolutely certain that I had everyone’s attention, and then I gave the infected control of their heads and chests.

“What’s happening?” One of the zombies asked, zombie no longer. “I’m not attacking anybody any more!”

It was a cry of joy.

“Why can’t I move?” someone said.

That was my cue.

At the same time as I let go of my hold on the fungus’ aura, I peeled it off all of the zombies, just as I had the first few. The zombies’ glowing silhouettes dimmed as their bodies became their own once more. I could feel the fungus’ anger writhing beneath the fading energies, but only for a moment, for it soon drowned, disappearing from my awareness.

I wish I could say it was gone for good, but it wasn’t. But, still, the fungus was in retreat. For once, the fungus was in retreat.

I looked up at Andalon. “We did it…” I whispered.

Slowly, the former zombies started rising to their feet. I shed tears of joy.

At first, there was only stunned silence. Seconds later, people broke out in whoops and cheers.

Slowly, with the help of my powers, I rose to my feet. Andalon floated beside me, the radiance in her hair slowly flickering out. I could feel her connection to her greater self beginning to thin. And though her face was still wet with tears, she smiled.

I swooned as I stood, struck by dizziness. The feeling of warmth that had been coursing through me faded, and I found myself suddenly aware of how very, very heavy my body Felt and how weak my legs were and how hunger was writhing around inside my stomach like the world’s worst cramp.

Then the last bit of light in Andalon went out. Her eyes fluttered for a moment, and then dropped out of the air with a moan. She slowed as she fell, landing gently on the floor, and, despite my expectations, she didn’t disappear on me.

Had she outgrown that part, or was it because of the massive dose of pure, unadulterated &alon that both of us had just gotten?

Eh, probably both.

Then the rest of the exhaustion hit me, and I fell to my knees, scraping against the wall behind me as I landed in a sprawl atop a nearby overturned chair.

I heard a big commotion break out in one of the hallways, but I was too tired to care, let alone do anything about it. People gasped as footsteps clomped down the hallways, and then someone yelled something—a single word—and I heard—and, looking up, saw—a small, metal object clatter onto the floor. It bounced off the vinyl, and then rolled and bounced some more, and then ricocheted off Yuta Uramaru’s severed head, sending the head rolling like a billiard ball, before finally settling to a stop in the pool of blood up against the dead horse’s body, whereupon the object exploded in a stunning dazzle of incapacitating light.

Ah, I thought. The word was, “Grenade.”

Well, better late than never.