No one questioned Heggy as she crossed Garden Court Drive and took the stairs down to the Undergreen Galleria. She preëmpted the soldiers standing guard at the top of the stairs, whipping out her ID and politely reminding them of who she was before they’d even opened their mouths. If they’d had any words on their tongues, those words died there and shut back up, and not just because Heggy was on a Ward CMT.

Her name carried weight, as it well should.

Dr. Marteneiss stepped onto the galleria to find its boot-scuffed tiled floors abuzz with activity. Having no patience for playing hide and seek, she asked a passing soldier where General Marteneiss was stationed.

“He’s in the Ritz-n-Glitz,” came the reply.

Heggy nodded and went her way, pushing her way through the glass doors and into one of the galleria’s half-hexagonal corridors. Impressively enough, the fucking AC was on, as were the lights; the portable electric generators Vernon’s men had brought littered the floor, plying power for everything from the HVAC system to the radio terminals set in the galleria’s repurposed boutiques. The radio operator sat hunched over in their chairs, manning their stations, relaying information across the globe in between percussive coughing fits. From what Heggy could hear, it sounded like most of them were doing broad-spectrum searches for any signs of life—safe zones, or other clusters of survivors.

The Ritz-n-Glitz was near the middle of the hall. The store was just one of main outlets of the chic chain of jewelry stores.

A jewelry store, in a shoppin’ mall next to the garage of a major urban hospital… Heggy thought.

It was the kind of thing that made a person worry about the direction society was heading—or it would have, had the Green Death not struck first. Now, though, it was little more than a relict curiosity.

Seeing the place from the outside, Heggy immediately understood why her brother had set up shop here: the store’s glass front—doors included—was blocked from the inside by thick metal shutters to protect the valuables.

Two guards stood on duty outside the shop’s double doors.

“Halt!”

Heggy raised her hands, bearing her palms at either side of her head. “Tell Vernon his big sister is here,” she said, “and that she’s got a bone to pick with him.”

One of the guards stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Heggy heard some indistinct conversation; a moment later, the guard opened the door and waved her in.

For whatever reason, the jewelry store hadn’t gotten the memo that the world had ended. It was in pristine condition, as were the many offerings on proud display in the glass cases scattered throughout the store: necklaces, rings, earrings, broaches, bracelets, lockets, pins, sacred figurines—even some jewel-studded combs. Many of the pieces were works of art in their own right: hummingbird brooches with emeralds, amethysts, and rubies; stained-glass icons depicting the Angel in all His glory.

Vernon stood at the back, near the rows of shelves of fine watches and rings. He wasn’t alone. Two soldiers stood at his side, bespectacled and studious-looking, while all three men had consoles in their hands. They were in the middle of a very tense conversation.

“Everything’s falling apart, sir. Every hour brings news of more desertions. And they’re taking our equipment with them.”

Groaning, Vernon lowered his PortaCon to his side. “Please don’t tell me they’re falling for Verune’s bullshit?”

“That, or they just can’t take it anymore,” one said. “I mean…” the man sighed, “you can’t exactly blame them. Things… things aren’t looking good right now.”

The third made gave the general an inquisitive stare.

“Sir, the man is a bonafide time-traveler, and if that weren’t enough, he’s also turning into a serpent creature. How is that ‘bullshit’? I mean, I’m not that religious, myself, but… I think we’ve reached the point where it’s fair to say that they were right and we were wrong.”

“The cooks were right? Really?” Vernon asked, sizing up his subordinate with an intimidating glare. “A bunch of beasteaten time travelers just showed up on our doorstep, turning into demons ripped right out of scripture, and then they say, ‘no, you’ve got it all wrong.’ But scripture is supposed to be infallible, and the only reason people give that madman any credence is because of ideas that they got from scripture in the first place. Reformed shit is still shit,” Vernon said. “Absolute truth only exists inside calculators; I should know, if it was out there, our intelligence operatives would have found it long ago, and Angel-knows how many lives we could have saved if we had it. That, lieutenant, is why it’s bullshit. The zombies just got un-fucking-zombified right before our eyes. That’s real. That happened! That exists! This is the time for action and investigation, not fear and puppy-eyed trembling. If we don’t seize this opportunity now, we won’t be around long enough to seize the next one!”

“High command feels the ‘unzombifying’ incident isn’t sufficiently substantiated,” the first soldiers said. “And likewise for the claims of time travel.”

Vernon bashed his first onto one of the glass cases. The reinforced glass didn’t so much as tremble. “Motherfuckers!” Vernon shook his hand in pain. “I’ll bet they’d believe it if it was written in the fucking Testaments,” he hissed. “With people like this, it almost makes you think we deserve this beasteaten plague.”

“Uh, Vernon…?” Heggy said, waving her hand to get her brother’s attention.

The general’s eyes bugged out inside his hazmat suit’s headpiece. “Oh, shit. Heggy!” He turned to face her. “They said you were here.”

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“And for more than a couple of minutes, too,” she replied, with a wink.

“Sorry,” Vernon said, shaking his head, “they’re running me so ragged, I doubt I’d recognize my own face in the mirror.”

Heggy nodded. “You and me both.”

“What is it, sis?” Vernon asked. “Sword strike me, it damn better be worth it.”

She nodded again. “It is.” Heggy looked askance at her brother’s two assistants. “Boys, if you could give us some privacy, the General and I have somethin’ of a family matter to discuss.”

Bowing respectfully, the two soldiers quickly exited the jewelry shop, leaving Heggy and Vernon alone, standing on opposite sides of an aisle of glass display cases.

“Remember what Pop-Pop used to say?” Heggy asked.

“Pop-Pop said a lot of things,” Vernon said.

“He said, ‘Don’t let them see your mistakes.’ Unfortunately, Vern… you done screwed up, big time.” Heggy shook her head.

Vernon furrowed his brow and stepped toward his sister. “What are you talkin’ about?”

Heggy clicked her tongue. “Dammit, Vernon, I done told you not to do it. But, fuckin’ hell, you went ahead and did it anyway. And you know what I’ve heard? I’ve heard you’ve been turnin’ people into zombies! You’ve been feedin’ them to monsters! I should’ve gotten on your case after this mornin’s snafu. Everythin’s boilin’ out of your control.”

Heggy heard Vernon’s exhalations through the speakers on his black-armored hazmat suit. The sound was a hiss of white noise streaming down from his face.

“I told you it wasn’t going to be pretty…”

Heggy’s eyebrows rose in ire. “Not pretty!?” she yelled. “A pug wearin’ lipstick isn’t pretty. What you’re doing… it’s downright unholy!”

Vernon met her eye to eye. “Who the fuck told you about that?” he said. Vernon didn’t need to yell to be intimidating.

“From a ghost,” Heggy explained, “after a fashion.”

Vernon grimaced. “What?”

“The transformees, Vernon… they can talk with the souls of the dead. One of the victims of your experiments shared their experiences with one of our patients, and my colleague Dr. Howle managed to hear it from them.”

“The fuck?” Vernon said, taken aback.

“Dr. Howle is, uh, somethin’ of a specialist when it comes to dealin’ with the transformees.”

Vernon cut his hand through the air. “Heggy, this is nonsense!”.

Heggy closed her eyes for a moment, swaying in place. “Oh, honey, you have no idea. Yeah,” she said, opening her eyes, “it’s absolutely nonsense, but so is everythin’ else right now, so it all washes out in the end.”

“It’s not that simple!” Vernon countered.

“‘Course it isn’t, but we don’t have time left for complicated. Besides, you know what won’t wash out, Vern? All this bullshit of yours. The things you’ve done…”

Heggy puckered her lips in disgust, grimacing at her younger brother. “Imagine what Pop-Pop would have said if he could see you now…”

Scoffing, Vernon shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, sis. The things Pop-Pop did, the things we all did…”

Heggy crossed her arms. “No, Vernon, I don’t want your morbid platitudes; I wanna know what the hell you were thinking! How could you debase yourself like this? And not just yourself, but the whole fuckin’ military, too! When you serve your country, you do it with honor. You remember the cartels I fought against, in the Costranaks?”

“Oh, I do.”

“The cartels… they raped any captives they could get their hands on. They were monsters. No decency. No feelin’ for anyone else’s humanity. You know what the only difference between a soldier and a murderer is? The soldier kills with honor. When innocents fall, the soldier makes amends.”

Vernon let out a pained cough and then slowly shook his head. Resignation and hoarse sorrow weighed down the corners of his mouth. “Heggy… Heggy, Heggy, Heggy.” He chuckled and then looked his sister in the eyes. His eyes glinted under the fluorescent ceiling lights. “I wish I could be as good as you, sis,” he said, lips trembling. “You were the strongest of us all, Heggy. You were the only one who made it out of our beasteaten family. I wish I could hang up my rifle for good, but I can’t. I’m in it too deep, and I’m no good at anything else.”

“What the Hell is going on, Vernon?” Heggy said, with quiet urgency. “Please, you can tell me.”

Vernon tapped the console embedded on his suit’s forearm. Heggy felt a buzz from her PortaCon in her PPE apron’s belly pocket.

“I just sent you something,” Vernon said, after another cough. “I don’t know how much time you have left, sis, but… you should set some aside to read it. It’s… enlightening.”

“Vernon…” Heggy’s voice trembled with worry. “…I don’t think you understand.” She pointed toward the General Labs building. “You’ve got a tickin’ time bomb in there. You need to move the patients out of the lab, now, before they turn into zombies and kill us all, or trigger a riot that does it for them.”

Vernon shook his head. “I’m sorry sis, but I can’t.”

“And why the hell not?” Heggy yelled.

“Sunk costs, and all that,” Vernon replied. “If I stop, everyone dies, and all the people that got wronged along the way will have suffered for nothing. We’re up against extinction, Heggy.”

“Angel’s breath, Vern,” Heggy said, slicing her arm through the air, “the ends don’t justify the means! That’s what the bad guys say, and you’re not one of them—and don’t I fucking know it!” She prodded her thumb against her chest. “We’re supposed to be the good guys!”

Vernon shook his head. “The ends don’t justify the means, except when they do. It’s just human nature, and there’s no changing that. It falls to people like us to figure out how to be better.”

“And how would we be better?” Heggy asked.

Vernon tilted his head. “I wish I knew, Heggy. I wish I knew.”

“Then how about this?” Heggy asked. “You know that soldier of yours who brought a package from a downed flight from Stovolsk?”

Vernon flattened his brow at her. “I recall hearing something to that effect.”

“Well, he brought us a briefcase full of miracles.”

Heggy prayed that hearing about an alternative would be enough to make Vernon reconsider and change his course.

“One of our colleagues—a mycologist from Odensk—proposed usin’ somethin’ called a mycophage as a non-traditional therapeutic for the Green Death.”

Heggy could tell her brother was clenching his jaw. Vernon did that a lot when he was nervous.

“Sis… why do I get the feeling that I’m about to be very, very angry with you?”

Heggy stuck out her palm and shook her head. “Hold your horses, it’s not that simple.”

Vernon crossed his arms.

Heggy sighed. “We’re gettin’ the matter printers down in WeElMed’s basement to make a shit-ton of it. I wish I could say it was a cure, but it’s not—or, at least, at the moment, it doesn’t seem to be one. It makes folks a little better, maybe even slows their decline—

“—But…?” Vernon asked, eyebrow peaking.

“They’re not gettin’ any better, and some are even startin’ to get worse,” she said, “but we’re not throwin’ in the towel just yet, and you shouldn’t either. You don’t have to go this course! There are other options.”

Vernon sighed. “And I gather the reason you didn’t tell me about this earlier was because you wanted to avoid causing a panic, or something like that?”

Heggy nodded. “Somethin’ like that.”

Vernon sighed again. “Now we’re going to have to commandeer your set-up, sis.” He groaned. “Ugh, this is going to be such a mess.”

Turning his head, Vernon spoke into the console on his arms. “Guards, please escort my sister back to the hospital.”

“Wait!” Heggy’s eyes widened. “Vernon, don’t do this!”

Soldiers stepped in as the doors opened behind her.

Vernon turned away from his sister. “I’m sorry, Heggy.”

And then the soldiers dragged her out the door.