For the record, this was the first time I’d ever been grenaded. I’m not gonna lie, it was a very unpleasant experience, and it only further lowered my regard for first-person shooters. 0 out of 10, would not get bombed again.

Even Andalon agreed with me. She’d been clutching her hands to her eyes, yelling, “Too much sees!” over and over again.

She was absolutely right about that.

I blinked.

Even now, maybe ten minutes later, my vision was still flashing and blurry. My ears were still ringing, and it felt like someone had left a strobe light on inside my skull.

Where was I, again?

Well, I was sitting on a bench; I knew that much. I’d been carried to it, likely by nurses, though I didn’t know any of the specifics beyond that. My senses weren’t exactly operational at the moment.

A shadowy blob loomed over me. Andalon hovered beside it, rubbing her eyes. Unlike everything else, Andalon’s form was perfectly clear to me. Also, there was the matter of my wyrmsight. At this point, my wyrmsight was more reliable than my normal vision. For whatever reason, the flash of the stun grenade hadn’t knocked my wyrmsight out of commission, though it had knocked Andalon out of unconsciousness—and much to her dismay, too; for the first couple of minutes, she was very much an unhappy camper. Then again, both of us were. I was tired and hungry, and Andalon was tired and hungry, too. Yes, I’d conjured up some imaginary cookies for her to eat, and though that had helped her somewhat, it left me even more drained.

Words oozed through my ears, as blurry as my vision.

“Can yuuu eeee-uh me?”

The blob turned to the side, toward another blob, who then spoke. “Ake off the sue. E’s at isk of eat s’roke.”

Then, there was a sharp, metallic whine, one that made even Andalon cringe. Sounds returned to normal a moment later.

If only the same could be said for my vision.

I felt hands pressing down on my shoulders.

“We’re going to take off your suit now, Dr. Howle.”

Actually, scratch that. Sounds still felt a little on the raw side—though that hardly mattered now, what with the panic surging through my veins at the thought of getting my suit taken off.

For all I knew, my second and third pairs of eyes might now be visible, growing in on the sides of my head.

“No,” I said. “No no no no no no!”

I stuck out my arms and crossed them in front of me.

The shorter of the two blobs stuck out a blobby hand, only to waver as it coughed. Badly.

It panted for breath.

“Dammit,” the other blob said, “you need to get off duty, now. You’re as sick as a dog, Kaylin.”

Kaylin? I thought. Nurse Kaylin?

“I’d rather die on my feet,” the first blob replied.

I recognized the voice as Nurse Kaylin’s.

She stuck out her hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Unfortunately for me, her hand was basically a distorted mitten to my messed-up eyes.

I had to resist my own urge to rip my helmet off. I really, really wanted to rub my eyes.

Wait a minute, I thought.

Closing my eyes, I doodled a hand-sized plexus inside my helmet, right on top of my face. After a moment’s thought, I figured the best way to get the effect I wanted would be to make sure that the directions of the weave’s force vectors were all jumbled up. As I executed my plan, the resulting manhandling sensations were a lot like putting my fingers on my face and twisting them slightly, which—though better than nothing—wasn’t anywhere near what I needed. Fortunately, by turning the little face-mask of a spell on and off repeatedly, it made those invisible fingers rub back and forth.

Softly, I moaned in pleasure, my eyes watering. After a couple seconds, I disassembled the weave and blinked.

I could see again!

“Three fingers!” I said, answering Nurse Kaylin’s question. “I see three fingers.”

Yes, my eyes felt like they’d been scrubbed down by sandpaper, but, at least I could see.

Stepping back, she let out a horrible cough.

I had to suppress my shock. Jess really did look awful. Fungal hyphae were clearly visible as they climbed up her neck beneath her PPE. Lumps of gauze stuck out from beneath her PPE, likely held in place by medical tape. No doubt, those were covering up ulcers where the fungus was eating away at her flesh. She seemed perpetually short of breath, and, through my wyrmsight, I saw the fungus’ multicolored infection-aura twitch brightly within her.

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If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said she was on her last legs.

“Everything’s fucking falling apart,” Jess said, “including me.” She nodded weakly. “Glad to see you’re still in one piece.”

I was about to ask her why she was still on duty when she was so clearly sick, when I thought better of it. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite if I could avoid it.

Lowering my arms, I pushed myself up off the bench, but the nurses had me pinned in place, what with their hands pressing down on my shoulders.

“Hold your horses!” Jess’ companion said. “Just wait a couple more minutes.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Things are still crazy right now.”

“Could you at least step out of the way?” I asked. “You’re in my view.”

Though, yes, I genuinely wanted to assess my surroundings, I was also worried that the more time they spent up close and personal with me, the more likely it became that they’d discover I was a transformee.

Thankfully, the two nurses stepped off to the sides.

“Angel’s Breath…” I muttered, though I stopped short of sighing in relief.

I didn’t want to fill my hazmat suit up with any more spores than it already had floating about inside it.

“There aren’t cusses big enough for shit like this,” Jess said, with a raspy chuckle.

She was very much right.

Ward E’s main waiting room was a disaster zone, pure and simple. Spilled bullets littered the vinyl, coated in the blood and black ooze that had been smeared across the floor. I spotted upward of a dozen bodies on the floor covered up by beige tarp. Stained, bullet-ridden chairs and sofas lay overturned here and there, with chunks of their upholstery spritzed across the floor. Healthcare workers were everywhere. They tended to the injured, handing out blankets and applying wound resin—both likely freshly printed from recycled materials. Soldiers stood vigilantly at the edges of the room.

And there wasn’t a zombie in sight—though there was a very dead horse lying in a pool of its own blood, next to some overturned chairs.

Another thing I didn’t see? The knights—or, for that matter, their weapons. I sat up straight. “Where are—”

“—The Third Crusaders?” Jess asked, with a cough. She looked off to the side. “The military’s taken them. The one that got shot had been attacked by the fucking zombies, and… well… he was not in good shape. His condition started deteriorating immediately. The soldiers had him taken away.”

“And the others?” I asked.

“They were sedated and given a room,” the other nurse said. “The General’s men should be examining them any minute now.”

Beside him, Nurse Kaylin had pulled up a chair to sit in, unable to keep standing on her own.

I looked at Andalon. She’d stopped rubbing her eyes. Her face looked a little raw, but her expression was still fearful.

Obviously, we needed to talk.

“Mr. Genneth…” she muttered.

“Somethin’ the matter, Dr. Howle?” Nurse Kaylin asked.

“I don’t suppose you know why General Marteneiss is interested in them?” I asked.

I did not need to be reminded that I was still no closer to knowing what sort of messed-up stuff Vernon and his men were doing in General Labs.

“I can sure as Hell guess,” Nurse Kaylin answered. “Either it’s because those knights had something to do with why people stopped turning into zombies, or it’s because the knights are fucking time travelers.”

Jess put her hand on top of her hairnet, as if to keep her head from rolling off her neck. She swallowed hard and then smiled sadly.

The woman of steel had tears in her eyes.

The other nurse shook his head. “You really think that—?”

Behind her translucent F-99 mask, Jess bit her lip. She coughed. “For the past few days, I thought I was losing my mind. But…” She shook her head. “Nope, it’s the world that’s gone crazy.”

I nodded slowly. “You mean…?”

She returned the gesture.

A couple days ago, at the beginning of the end of the world, Jess had given us all a scare, saying she’d thought she’d gone to another world or something to that effect.

“I’ve, uh, been spending my meal time doing research,” she said. “I remember the words they said. ‘Goost’. ‘Complying’. I don’t remember my fucking childhood anymore, but at least I remember those words.”

“What did you find?” I asked.

“Assuming I somehow time-traveled,” she said, “I was probably in the old Templar Hospital, in its mess hall, nearly a thousand years ago.”

“Templar Hospital?” the other nurse asked.

“The land WeElMed sits on has been in use for millennia,” I said. “Back during the First Empire, a thousand years ago, it was the site of the headquarters of the Templar order.”

Nurse Kaylin nodded. “It was real. It really happened. And now… it’s happening again.”

“How in the world can this be happening?” the other nurse asked. “Why? How? What does it mean?”

“For one,” Jess quipped, coughing, “it means ‘we’re boned’. And that’s hardly the only problem.”

“There’s more?” I asked.

“Have you seen the footage?” she asked.

In my experience, nothing good ever came after the words “have you seen the footage”.

“Which footage?” I asked. “Things have been kind of hectic lately, if you haven’t noticed.”

Jess frowned, and then pulled out her console and brought up a recording.

“The soldiers have been passing it around,” she said.

There was no sound, and, coupled with the aerial view it gave and the fact that it came from the military, it could only be footage from one of the Trenton military’s aerostats. The footage had a bird’s-eye view of the city’s civic center. Even as a deteriorating, zombie-infested heck-hole, Elpeck’s historic core was truly beautiful to behold: Cascaton Park, the Melted Place, the Imperial Palace, and the grand Promenade, clustered together like an oasis among the surrounding skyscrapers.

Andalon leaned against my shoulder as she looked down at the console screen.

“What the heck…?” I muttered.

Even without the benefit of my wyrmly memory, the spectacle of the Lost Lassedite Mordwell Verune revealing himself to the world would have been burned into my mind. It was like a second Angelfall; it was the kind of event that drew a clear line between what came before it and what would come after, knowing that the world was forever changed.

The aerial view of the Melted Palace showed the basilica, the old city square, and the Promenade flooded with people. There had to be thousands of them. Tents and blankets speckled the ground with little flakes of color, filled and covered with people.

Jess coughed terribly. “People really are nuts.”

“I guess you could call them true believers,” I said.

All things considered, I should have expected this. People can go their whole lives waiting for a sign from God. For many Elpeckians, at any rate, I guess Verune counted as that sign.

“This isn’t going to end well,” I added.

My words made Andalon frown in distress.

“Fuckin’ time-travel bullshit,” Jess swore. “First Verune, now the Crusaders. What’s next?”

“They’re not our only time-travelers,” I said.

“Yeah,” Jess said, “that’s right.” She stared off into the distance. “The Munine in period dress.”

“I saw one of them die in the mêlée,” I said. “What about the other one?”

“Taken into surgery,” the other nurse said. “He was severely wounded.”

“Do you think he’ll make it?” I asked.

“To the operating room?” Jess said, coughing as she laughed. “Sure! But if he even makes it out of there alive, I swear, I’ll eat a fucking hat.” She turned to the other nurse. “Enough chatter, Huey. Let’s get moving.” She glanced back at me as the two of them walked off. “Stay safe, Dr. Howle.”

I nodded.