It got worse before it got better. Ever-resilient, Ani defied her fear and insisted we press on, investigating the situation to the best of our abilities. She’d told me that Jonan had managed to hack into the hospital’s security camera network. Given what we found in our twenty-odd minutes of data gathering, I felt it was time to call a meeting of Ward E’s CMT.

So I did.

Once more, we flocked to the glass-walled conference room to the side of the Ward’s main reception desk; by this point, it was our de facto headquarters.

We gathered as many as we could. In attendance were myself, Ani, Jonan, Heggy, and Suisei, with Brand telecommuting from his lab.

As for Dr. Skorbinka, he was in the ICU with a fulminant Type One NFP-20 infection. And, as for Dr. Arbond, our curmudgeonly surgical wiz was stuck completing his transformation into a wyrm in Operating Theater 12.

So, they were no-shows.

Within our conference room, we were scattered around the center table in a chaotic assemblage. We didn’t so much sit in our chairs (or, in my case, on my stool) as much as we lurked in them, in anticipation of whatever the next revelations were going to be. All eyes were on me.

I was the one who’d called the emergency meeting, after all.

“So, Dr. Howle,” Heggy said, “what do you have to share with us now?”

Dr. Marteneiss’ wavy golden locks were bound up beneath her hairnet, and, with her steely composure, she seemed like force incarnate locked in human form.

I would have preferred to stand as I spoke, but I instead kept to my stool. I was worried my legs couldn’t handle it.

“I told Heggy this a couple days ago,” looking around the room, “but things have developed a lot since then, and now there’s no reason not to tell all of you.”

“Go on,” Jonan nodded.

“Ani,” I said, “this will be new to you, too.”

Her expression tightened.

I resisted the urge to take a deep breath. Instead, I gave my lucky bow-tie a good squeeze.

That certainly caught Heggy’s attention.

“The transformees can see and interact with—even talk with—the spirits of the dead,” I said. “Their souls, for lack of a better word, are getting uploaded into transformees’ minds.”

Jonan blanched, silently mouthing a curse. He leaned back in his chair, shaking his thigh like a fuel-filled engine.

Suisei, meanwhile, did a very good—and very subtle—job of seeming surprised.

“This can happen in two ways,” I said. “Either transformee consumes the person’s body—before or after death—or they need to get in sufficiently close proximity to the corpse. Either way, that causes one of these uploads to occur. It’s…,” I pursed my lips. “They tell me it’s like downloading an app, except the app is a human being. Well… a human consciousness.”

Jonan leaned back in his chair. His thigh was shaking like a rickety old engine.

“As you may have heard,” I continued, “patients have been going missing,” I glanced at Ani, “among them, Dr. Lokanok’s father.”

I turned to Ani. My next words were incredibly difficult for me to say. My head felt like a great stone, weighing down on my neck. It was a struggle for me to look Dr. Lokanok in the eyes.

“Ani… your father is dead.” Her reaction was agonizing for me to watch. She froze stiff, like a mouse about to be eaten. For both our sakes, I powered through my words as quickly as I could. “But, he didn’t die of the Green Death. No: he was murdered.”

Ani shook her head. Tears pooled in her eyes. “G-Genneth… what? Why…?” She was stunned. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me?” Ani asked.

I sighed. “I didn’t want to make it more painful than it already was.”

Ani broke down at that, weeping inconsolably. She leaned over the table and bawled.

Promptly, without any hesitation, Jonan got up out of his seat, walked up beside Ani and held her in a deeply felt embrace, which she immediately reciprocated. They held each other for a while, saying nothing, doing nothing, forming a long quiet that seemed like a shard of eternity. I didn’t disturb them, nor did I begrudge them. I still didn’t care for Dr. Derric’s attitude, but I couldn’t deny his struggles, nor the kindness he showed to the woman he loved. I had to admit, he really did love her. The proof was in the kindness he showed her. It was as simple as that.

Eventually, Ani bid him away with a light push of her hands.

She looked at his face. “I would kiss you, you know,” she said.

Jonan tapped his PPE visor. “Safety first.”

Chuckling, Ani nodded. With a sniffle and a cough—her cheeks reddened and puffy—she turned forward.

She was fighting against herself—against the impulse to give up and give in. I could see it in her eyes.

Ani gave me a steely-eyed glare. “Tell me everything,” she said, in a quiet voice.

I nodded. “One of my patients’ ghosts told me,” I explained. “That patient was in communication with Alon’s spirit. He has a message for us. A message for you, Ani.”

“Which patient?” Ani asked. The steel in her eyes had sparked a flame. “Which ghosts?”

Gosh darn it…

I should have expected that. But I hadn’t, so now, to compensate, I had to throw together a sturdy lie lickety-split. Obviously, I couldn’t tell her, “Because I’m the transformee with his ghost, and I didn’t want you to learn that I was a transformee, because you and the others would then hate me forever.” That… that would just make things worse. I sped up my thoughts to give myself plenty of room to ponder what to say. Eventually, the words came to me. They were about as pleasant as a stomachache on the side. I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was about to stab my former protégée in the gut.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Andalon’s expression turned somber and miserable.

“Lopé Broliguez,” I said, naming one of my patients. “Unfortunately…” I shook my head and wept—for myself, and what remained of my decency. My saliva was thick in my mouth—and fizzy, and sweet. I averted my gaze. “Lopé's changes have robbed him of his ability to speak,” I said. “He communicated with me via text message with his last remaining human finger. By now, I imagine it’s probably turned into a claw. The darn things break console screens.”

“Which one was Lopé?” Jonan asked. “The short one?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Yep,” Jonan said, “all claws on that one.”

Ani leaned back in her seat. “He was close, and I was there, but…” She shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

I wiggled my tail as I looked Dr. Lokanok in the eyes once more. “Ani… I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” And I meant every word. “There’s a chance other transformees might have picked up your father’s spirit. I promise, I’ll ask around.”

“Did…” Ani shook her head. Behind her PPE visor, her big, round glasses glinted in the fluorescent light. “What did my father want to tell you? What did he say?”

Fudge… I really would make an awful god. What kind of god wouldn’t tell the truth?

I deserved to be yelled at, and the fact that Jules and Pel weren’t there to do it broke my heart. If there was any consolation, it was the knowledge that, both in professionalism and in quality of work, Ani was a better, more honest doctor than I had ever been. The student had surpassed the master. Both of us were known for our optimistic exteriors, but Ani’s was far more authentic. And now, I’d one-upped myself by taking my lies to the next level.

At least now I could get to the parts that were actually true.

“Alon told me what I told you,” I said, looking Ani in the eyes.

Nodding, Dr. Lokanok inhaled sharply.

I nodded, too. “Right now, us being here?” I said. “It’s what Alon wants.” I looked over my shoulder, back at the wall where the projection had been. “He wants us to stop this.”

Ani wept, biting her lip as she nodded, deeply, and vehemently.

“What do you mean?” Heggy asked.

I turned back to Dr. Lokanok. “First, Ani,” I said, “show the others what we found.”

Nodding, Dr. Lokanok pulled out her console, tapped it to bring up the data, and then passed it around. Ani had done most of the work in collecting the data, and by “most”, I mean “all”. When it came to data management, I was utterly helpless.

I had, after all, promised to help Ani figure out her father’s whereabouts. To that end, we’d been looking around for whatever evidence we could find, especially if pointed at wrongdoing or foul play. Despite my promise, Ani hardly needed my assistance at all. She quickly sussed out some valuable findings all on her own. It started with her discovering some unusual inserts in her father’s medical record. According to those inserts, Alon had been discharged from the hospital’s late last night. Tellingly, there was no explanation for the discharge, and instead of a physician’s seal of approval, there was only the bureaucratic impersonality of a generic security code.

Yet another piece of evidence that the military had a Lawful Evil moral alignment.

“But that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Ani said. “As you can see, this same security code has been reused again and again to discharge NFP-20 patients from WeElMed’s care.”

Heggy clenched her gloved hands into fists. “Why…?” Uncharacteristically, Dr. Marteneiss paused. “Why wasn’t I told about this earlier?” she asked.

My jaw dropped, though I hid it as quickly as I could.

Heggy could omit the truth like nobody’s business. But she was the worst liar I’d ever known. She wasn’t built to lie, so all her lies came out hesitant and uncertain, as if she was trying to convince herself they were true—because she was.

From her body language alone, I could tell that Dr. Marteneiss already knew at least part of the information that I was about to share with the group.

The questions were: how much did she know, how did she know it, and for how long had she known?

Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to know the answers to these (and so many other) questions, answers alone weren’t going to cut it. We needed to do something about it before General Marteneiss’ ticking time bomb of bad decisions blew up in our faces.

One of the advantages of my evolving mind was that my multitasking skills had gone through the roof. On our walk over to the meeting room, I aliquoted part of my consciousness to a doppelgenneth tasked with coming up with plans for how we could rescue Nina and the others. And while none of my ideas were good, at least they were something.

But I was getting ahead of myself.

“Remember the panic this morning, by General Labs?” I said, looking around the room. “Alon told me what was happening there.” I leaned forward on my stool. “He told me what happened… and what they did to him.” I lowered my gaze.

Andalon mirrored the movement.

I continued: “Under General Vernon Marteneiss’ orders, dozens of our patients have been stolen from our care, and made into test subjects against their will. And what they’re doing to them… it’s sick.” I shook my head in disgust.

The room was so quiet, you could have heard a pin drop.

“To study how people get turned into zombies, and figure out whatever’s going on at WeElMed that’s stopping it from happening, they’re trying to turn our patients into zombies.” I clenched my fists. “They’re making monsters down there.”

“Do you think this has any connection to what happened in the lobby, with the knights, and then all the zombies suddenly stopping?” Jonan asked.

“Maybe,” I said.

“At the risk of stoking controversy,” Brand said, finally speaking up, “how do you know that these ghosts’ testimonies are even reliable? As far as we know, they might be hallucinations, or even creations of the fungus, meant to mislead us.”

Heggy narrowed her eyes. “You think the fungus is trying to mislead us, Dr. Nowston?”

“It’s a distinct possibility,” he said. “It might not even be aware it’s doing it. We’re in uncharted territory, after all. We’ve never encountered a sapient disease before.” Brand glanced at me. “For all we know,” he added, “its levels of consciousness and awareness might be unlike anything we’re familiar with.”

“I very much second that,” I said, with a nod.

Without any warning, Jonan’s hand went up like a rocket. He sat out straight, flush with determination. “I request to be put in control of this situation,” he said, adding a dubious, “Please,” after sending Ani an askance glance.

“Why?” Suisei asked, tilting his head.

Jonan pulled out his console. “I have evidence that corroborates Dr. Howle’s claims—the monsters part, not the ghost part.”

“What?” Heggy said. “How?”

Jonan smirked. “I hacked into the security cameras.”

Heggy’s brow flattened as she glared at Dr. Derric, but Jonan continued on, undaunted.

“I wasn’t able to get any footage from the cameras inside GL; they must have deactivated, maybe even destroyed. But…” Jonan’s expression perked up. “…I did get this.” He pointedly tapped a finger against his console’s screen.

A moment later, the projector unit whirred as it emerged from the ceiling and projected Jonan’s footage on the wall.

The footage showed soldiers carting patients into General Labs’ back entrance, underground, in the hallways of the first basement level of the GL Building.

Jonan pointed at the footage. “Note the conspicuous absence of healthcare workers in this recording.”

He fast-forwarded through the video, advancing the time stamp by about two hours. Patient after patient got carted into GL.

“None of them came back out,” he added.

The video ended.

“My conclusion?” Jonan said. “The military is abducting people.”

“Jonan…” Ani whispered. There was terror in her voice.

More than anyone else, it was Heggy who the footage struck the deepest. She stared at it, slack jawed, the corner of her mouth twitching at the edge of outrage and gobsmacked astonishment. It was like Heggy was a pot, about to boil over.

And then she did.

Slamming a clenched fist down on the tabletop, Dr. Marteneiss rocketed up out of her seat, yelling, “I told him! I told that fucking sonofabitch not to do this!” Turning around—arm trembling—Heggy lowered her head, her face wet with shame.

“Wait, what?” I said. “You knew?”