How do you tell your friend/colleague that the military was (and probably still is) secretly performing horrifying experiments on your patients against their will, and that her father was one of the victims?

I didn’t know the answer, but I was about to find out.

I recentered my consciousness, anchoring myself in my physical body.

Ani turned this way and that, pressing her hands at the sides of her head as if to claw out her hair, even though it was bound beneath her sanitary hairnet. She was despondent, and I wanted to wrap my arms around her to let her know she wasn’t alone, but my fear of infecting her made me keep my distance. On a dark whim, I thickened my wyrmsight over her, just to be sure.

By the Angel…

I suppressed a gasp.

Ani was already infected: a Type One case, in the early stages. The fungal aura within her was a little bundle in her chest that was making her breaths come out wheezy.

I should have expected this, but still…

I was crying before I even wrapped my arms around her, and then even more when I did. I held her tight, and didn’t let go until I felt her trying to step away.

It felt so good to have that human touch ,so much so that I worried it was a sin. What kind of friend would I be to her if I was relieved to learn she was infected because it meant I no longer had to worry about infecting her? Not a very good one, that’s for sure.

And I wasn’t alone.

Andalon stood off to the side, lips curling, watching in silence—crying softly.

But not just her.

“Ani? Ani!?” Alon yelled. The window in my Main Menu was still wide open, giving us a front-row seat to his daughter’s misery.

Without another word, he ran up to the portal, intent on forcing his way through. But the gateway refused him. It rippled like a pond as Alon battered his fist on its pellucid surface.

“That’s my daughter, Howle!” he yelled, glaring back at my mental double. “Let me talk to her!”

“I… can’t,” I told him.

Alon’s eyes bulged in his sockets. He stood up tall, chest puffing out. He bellowed. “Why the fuck not!?”

The copy of Andalon standing in my Main Menu skittered behind me with a frightened yelp.

One of Alon’s arms bulged, his hand swelling with mass.

“No!” I gasped.

Yuta drew his sword and whirled about, as he turned to face Alon and stepped between us. He spread his legs, adopting a defense stance, widening his gray hakama.

Beast’s teeth… I thought.

Yeah, I had godlike power inside my mind, but godlike power does not mean godlike confidence. I yelped as I shrunk away behind Yuta, intimidated by the sheer rage in Alon’s eyes.

What can I say, old habits were hard to shake.

Don’t just stand there!, I thought at myself.

My body-self’s message shot through my shock like a ray of sunshine. Asserting control over the situation, I did the first thing that came to me. Alon let out a scream of horror as I transformed him into a little pangolin with just a pointed glare. A very angry looking pangolin.

Yuta staggered back in shock.

I raised my hands in a calming gesture. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s only temporary.”

Honestly, I preferred Alon this way. It was easier on the eyes, and on my nerves. More importantly, in shunting him into a cute pangolin form, I seemed to have stopped the fungus’ effort to twist him into a demon.

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Andalon smiled and applauded.

Pangolin-Alon stumbled forward, making an impassioned attempt to claw at me. I dodged it by stepping back. I then asserted dominance, conjuring a heavy metal cage around him. He wrapped his claws across the bars.

Back in my body, I looked Ani in the eyes. “Tell me what happened,” I said.

Ani crossed her arms, nodding with a pensive bite of her lower lip. Her face was a snot-covered mess. She brought her hand up to wipe it off, only to stop and clench her fist in frustration, remembering her PPE. “Fuck,” she swore, “I can’t even cry in this damn thing.”

“Do you want me to get you a towel?” I offered.

“No,” she replied, with a bitter smile and a shake of her head. “I’d rather not be alone right now.” Closing her eyes, she exhaled sharply, desperate to center herself. “Just… let me get this out.” She sputtered with a gentle coughing fit. “Maybe if I get all my regrets out now,” she said, “I won’t come back as an angry ghost.”

She sighed. My heart broke for her.

“Mom and Dad were sick as dogs,” she admitted. “Dad was already losing his memories. He didn’t even recognize me.”

“Was this after you gave him the mycophage?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, before.” Then, in the middle of all this pain, Ani smiled—genuinely smiled.

It was the loveliest sight of my day.

“I went back to check on them, you know?” she said, with a sniffle. “And, wouldn’t you believe it, they were actually improving. It was a miracle.”

I wanted to be excited for her. “Ani,” I said, “that’s—”

But she lowered her gaze. “—But, just now, I went back to check up on them. Mom was sedated, and Dad…” Her breath shuddered. “He was gone.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

Ani frowned. “I freaked out and ran out, weeping my eyes out, because I’m a ditz who can’t do anything right.”

I hated her talking about herself like that. I’d thought her therapy sessions had pried her away from that awful habit.

Apparently, they hadn’t.

Why was it that the brightest people in our lives so often had the darkest depths?

It wasn’t right.

Back in my mind, Pangolin-Alon snapped at me, flicking his slender, sticky tongue. “Let me talk to my daughter, you pale-skinned fuckwad!”

Apparently, I hadn’t specified the non-talking variety of pangolin.

“I…” I hesitated, knowing that I was about to come across as much more than just a jerk. “I don’t want them to find out that I’m turning into a wyrm!” I said, almost whining. I let my arms hang low. “You couldn’t talk to her directly, I’d have to relay your words to her, and even if she believed me, it would still mean…” I sighed. “I mean… would she even want to hear what I had to say, once I came out and told her I’d been lying to her and the others all this time?”

Now, in addition to everything else, I was also suffering from a boatload of guilt, fresh from Codman’s Wharf.

Shaking my head, I looked down at the caged pangolin. “Alon… see for yourself,” I said, pointing at the portal to Thick World, “look how devastated she is, and she doesn’t even know you’ve died yet! I don’t want to add to that pain by outing myself as a liar. Right now, I can still comfort her. I don’t want to take that away from her.”

The pangolin relented, curling his tail behind him.

“Alon,” I said, “I swear to you, I’ll make this right. I will get General Marteneiss to stop what he’s doing, or, so help me!”

All the while, my physical self was staring deep into Ani’s despondent eyes. I desperately wanted to be the bridge that reconnected her to her father, but, at the same time, I was terrified that revealing my betrayals might very well destroy her.

Faith really was a double-edged sword. With it, you could press onward when all others had given up. But when it left you, it took everything from you. Lost faith made the world fall apart, and, with NFP-20 crawling through her skin, Ani wouldn’t have enough time to try and build something new from the ruins.

By now, with Alon a pangolin, Yuta had calmed, having sheathing his sword in its scabbard by his hip. “I cannot make your decisions for you, Dr. Howle,” he said, “but… if your transformation continues to progress, unless death soon claims her, Ani will learn the truth soon enough, on her own. I imagine that, too, would seem like a betrayal to her.” He looked me in the eyes. “It falls to you to decide which is worse.”

“Good grief,” I muttered, with a sigh. My shoulders fell. “Why does everything have to be so hard…?”

For a moment, resolve boiled up inside me. “Ani,” I said, “I…”

But then a stone dropped into my stomach, dashing my resolve to pieces.

I couldn’t tell her. How could I? This wasn’t about her; no, it was about me and my problems, and my stupid guilt. If I told Ani, I was telling everybody, and I knew myself well enough to know that there was nothing I or any copy or part thereof could do to stop that from happening. I even knew how I’d do it: I’d inform the CMT by text message. Maybe I could have gotten away with telling Brand and stopping at that, but… if I told Ani, I was telling everyone.

And why would I do this, you ask? Simple: I couldn’t in good conscience saddle her with the burden of keeping my secret. It was already enough of a struggle for me; I didn’t want her to suffer with what to do with my secret.

And that was why I couldn’t tell her that I had her father’s ghost. The two were linked. There was no way I could reveal one—her father’s ghost, or my transformation—without revealing the other.

Now, I wasn’t just thinking all of this to myself, no, I was sharing it with Yuta and Alon, too. And while the samurai seemed sympathetic to my woes, the pangolin very much wasn’t.

“You haven’t told them!?” Alon roared, rattling his cage with fury.

He was surprisingly loud for a pangolin.

“You’re not just a pussy,” he yelled, “you’re a lying pussy!”

And what could I do but lower my head in shame?

“You’re right,” I muttered, much to Andalon’s dismay.

Alon titled his slender pangolin head to the side. “You’d give up that easily?”

“Yes and no,” I replied. “As much as I wish it wasn’t so, I can’t win every battle. It pains me to say this, but…” I sighed, “this is not just about Ani.”

“The hell it isn’t!” Alon snapped, with an angry flick of his thick, scaly tail.

I nodded. “It is.” I looked at Andalon and Yuta. “My real concern here is my colleague, Dr. Heggy Marteneiss. She’s Vernon’s older sister, you know.”

Alon and Yuta stared at me.

“I don’t know if I can stop Vernon and avert the disaster he’s hurtling us toward, but… if there’s any chance of stopping it, I need Heggy on my side.”

“And she would not lend her aid if she knew about your deceit,” Yuta said, nodding in understanding.

I exhaled sharply. “Exactly.”

Marteneisses stuck together, even when they should have known better.

“So,” Alon asked, “what are you going to do?”

I thought about it.

Out in the Thick World, I cried fresh tears. As much as I wanted to tell Ani the whole truth, I’d have to settle for only a part of it.

I looked her in the eyes. “Ani… there’s something I have to tell you.”