Around itself, time did coil; static kissed the memory-fragment’s edge.

Perhaps she’d been imagining it, but, Ani was pretty sure that Jonan had been strangely unnerved by something. Maybe it was him having a hard time dealing with Kurt saying goodbye to his dying wife? If so, that would count as a point for Jonan’s emotional growth. Yes, it had happened a bit late in the game, but progress was progress, even when the world was ending.

When Ani had asked Jonan if his security camera hack had brought anything useful to light about General Labs, his response had been very clearly mum, which made it obvious to her that he was being evasive, which, in turn, made her really freaking curious about what he’d found. She tried badgering him, hoping to get him to spill the beans—it worked with choosing movies for movie night, so, why not here?—but he was adamant about gathering the team for a meeting, first. He’d also been insisting that the two of them leave Room 268, ASAP.

“Why?” she’d asked, only to get a particularly ominous reply: “I don’t want to scare them.” As usual, Ani pressed him further, but then he’d looked at her said, “I think you should go check up on your patients—your parents, the time-travel girl, and anyone who's received the mycophage,” with a worried look in his eyes that made Ani’s heart sink into her stomach.

“Why?” she’d asked.

“Just do it,” he’d said, with even deeper worry.

Ani almost felt like snapping at him. You’re breaking the never-brood-alone rule, she’d thought, but then, under his breath, Jonan had muttered “and keep away from the soldiers,” and Ani’s nerves sparked. They were still sparking, even now, as she rushed down to the ground floor.

Ani passed a couple of sick nurses arguing with one another over something, but she didn’t pay attention to them. All her thoughts were on her patients—and her parents.

Hoshi’s room was on the way to her parents’ room.

Ani didn’t waste a moment. She darted into the quarantine tunnel, and turned the door handle with her clammy, gloved hand. “Hoshi,” she said, speaking the girl’s name aloud as she stepped inside. Ani had left the room in disarray last time she’d visited; she was expecting that.

She hadn’t expected Hoshi to be fighting for her life.

For a couple seconds, Ani stood in the doorway, stunned, her arms limp at her side. Her spine stiffened in her back.

“No,” Ani whispered. “No no no, please…”

Ani rushed to the girl’s bedside. The hard metal frame pressed coldly against Ani’s stomach.

Hoshi lay on her bed, half covered by her flimsy blanket. Her breathing was ragged. The girl’s pale, innocent skin was already beginning to be darkened by faint trails of fungal filaments. According to the read-outs on the machines and the bed’s console, Hoshi was running a high fever.

No shit! Ani thought.

Couldn’t machines do anything better than just tell you what you already knew!?

Hoshi lay on her bed, half-covered by a blanket, eyes closed and limbs sprawled out.

“Hoshi,” Ani repeated, louder than before.

The girl didn’t move.

“Shit,” Ani said. She pressed her hands on the mattress. The bead creaked.

Hoshi wasn’t sleeping; she was unconscious.

Ani raced out into the hallway. She pointed at the doorway as she looked around, frantically searching for anyone who could help. “When was the last time this patient got the mycophage treatment?” Ani said.

For a moment, she clean forgot about the whole “cautious rollout” of the mycophage.

A nurse at a reception desk blearily lifted her head. “The what?”

A male nurse stepped out of a nearby patient room. “I… I gave her a dose about an… hour and a half ago,” he said. He was exhausted, panting for breath. He had to lean against a wall just to keep himself on his feet.

“What was the dosage?” Ani asked.

“I gave her exactly… exactly what you told me to give… her,” he replied.

Ani pressed her hands down on her head. She wasn’t even bothering with a hairnet anymore. Most people weren’t.

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Slowly but surely, the will to fight was dying.

But Ani wouldn’t give up so easily. Not giving up so easily was a habit of hers, one she was proud to have, even if it did occasionally get her into trouble.

Or even more than occasionally.

People liked to tell her that the reason she didn’t give up was because she was made of sunshine. But that wasn’t true, at least not all of the time—and, certainly, not now.

The real reason was much more earthbound: her demons couldn’t catch her if she kept moving forward.

Ani closed her eyes and muttered under her breath. “Think, Ani, think.” She pressed her sanitizer-slicked fingers into her scalp.

Opening her eyes, Ani glanced at the male nurse. “Where’s the main supply?” she asked. “Have any more doses of mycophage been brought up from the basement?”

“It’s over there,” he said, pointing at a half-open storage closet.

Unfortunately, other people had taken notice. It was a mix of patients and healthcare workers.

“What’s this about a treatment?”

Suddenly, someone grabbed Ani by the arm and pulled.

“A treatment?!”

Ani looked to the side to see an ailing man in a brown suit and matching pork-pie hat tugging at her. He coughed in her face, spreading spit and spores and ooze across her PPE’s visor.

“Do you have a treatment?” he said. “Do you have a treatment?!”

Ani remembered what Dr. Marteneiss had said about the possibility of panic if rumors of a cure were allowed to spread through the hospital.

Ani bit her lip. She knew she had to set things straight.

Pulling away from the man in the pork-pie hat as politely as she could, Ani stepped back from the crowd that was gathering around her and stuck out her hands in a placating gesture.

“Please, everyone,” she pleaded, “calm down—and back up. C’mon now,” she added, “let’s spread out a little. Social distancing, remember,“ she said, with a cough. “We don’t want to get each other sick now, do we?”

“Tell us what’s going on!” pork-pie hat demanded.

A lot of the faces were tense with worry, particularly the nurses’. Ani almost wanted to scold them. What business did they have being worried? Hadn’t the Green Death taught them it was useless to worry? It was wasted precious energy they could have spent doing something. And, shit, it wasn’t healthy to give yourself stress like that!

But she held her tongue.

Still, Ani wondered: maybe there was something going on?

Or… does this have something to do with what Jonan found? she thought.

Given how Jonan had reacted, that wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Ani’s first instinct was to go get Dr. Marteneiss, but, after a moment’s introspection, Ani realized that idea sounded a lot better than it actually was. People were already starting to give Heggy the stink eye over her connection to the military’s presence, by way of her brother. Calling for Dr. Marteneiss’ help might be seen by some of the more conspiratorially-minded patients as an appeal to get General Marteneiss to intervene, and Ani didn’t want to do anything that would catalyze people into blaming Vernon’s actions on Dr. Marteneiss. Heggy didn’t deserve that, and—worse—if, for some reason, she ended up getting it, it was just a hop, skip, and a leap from accusing Dr. Marteneiss of being in cahoots with the military to accusing all WeElMed personnel of the same, and there were already enough people whispering that sort of thing.

Ani groaned inwardly.

Fuck, this isn’t good, she thought

If people thought Heggy’s authority wasn’t trustworthy, things would fall apart faster than a house of cards. Along with Nurse Kaylin, Dr. Marteneiss was the glue that held Ward E together.

“I’m sorry,” Ani said. She tried to strike a balance between concern and formality. “In hindsight, we probably should have made an announcement about it, but… there were concerns about the possibility of panic.” Ani sighed. “Listen, we don’t have a treatment. Not yet. We’re still doing a trial run.”

The crowd erupted in clamor and coughs.

“Please,” Ani implored, “just listen. We don’t know if it works yet. We don’t know what the right dosage is. Maybe it’ll stop people from getting sick, or maybe it keeps them from dying, but won’t help with the memory loss. Maybe it’ll—”

—Ani was about to say, “Maybe it will kill patients due to unrelated side-effects,” but had decided mid-sentence that that would be a really bad idea.

She pointed at Hoshi’s room. “Right now, there’s a little girl in there who we gave the mycophage as a prophylactic.” Ani fought back tears. “But it didn’t work. She’s infected.”

Shock and dismay rippled through the room. Meanwhile, some of the dying patients sitting in the benches or on the floor looked up in confusion, having already forgotten what all the commotion was about.

“Right now, I’m going to give her another dose,” Ani explained, “larger than the first. I’m praying it will stabilize her.”

But then Ani stopped. She wanted to tell everyone what would happen if the mycophage bore out as a viable treatment, but then realized that doing so would lead them down the path of no return. If it worked, they’d have to ration it and decide who got to use it and who had to wait, and—despite her ebullient idealism—she couldn’t help but think of what Jonan might say about a situation like this.

They’d tear themselves to shreds fighting over it, she thought. That’s the sort of thing Jonan would say.

Before she could figure out what to say next, however, fate intervened. An old woman shoved her way past pork-pie man. Fungal hyphae striped her face. Every few seconds, her arm twitched, as if to reach out and strike. “Where’s my son?” she demanded.

That lady wasn’t the only one with spasms or tremors.

“What do you mean?” Ani asked.

One of the nurses looked Ani in the eyes. “Patients have been going missing.”

Another doctor lowered his head in shame. “We’re losing track of who’s who. The staff’s having memory problems, because…” but he didn’t finish his sentence, nor did he need to. The terror in his eyes spoke volumes.

“I haven’t forgotten them,” the nurse said blistering with defiance. “I’m telling you, they disappeared!”

Suddenly, Ani had a thought. A mad, ridiculous thought. It was so silly, she almost laughed. And yet…

Her heart began to race.

“Out of the way,” she said, treading forward with the kind of determination that only true terror could bring. “Get out of my way!”

Ani quickly emerged from the crowd, which was smaller than it looked. She ran down the hallway, turning, and turning again. She passed Hoshi’s room, making a beeline toward her parent’s room. Entering, Ani found her mother lying unconscious, next to the empty bed where her father should have lain. But he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there.

Ani screamed.