“Yes?” Karl asked.

Everyone turned to face me.

“I’m going to try to use my powers to try to control the infected.” I pointed around the corner, toward where the soldiers were. “With any luck, I’ll be able to manipulate their bodies like they were puppets.” I clenched my fists. “If I can just keep them from moving, you can go in and free the captives, and strike a blow for civil rights,” I added, managing to put on a smile.

Bever shook his head. “This is madness, and I love it.”

“Finally,” Morgan quipped, “you admit it.” The pikeman rolled his eyes.

I bit my lip. “I realize that this might be somewhat… ethically… questionable—”

“—This is war, Doctor,” Duncan said, interrupting me, “and a war against Hell, no less. It’s a small price to pay.”

The others nodded in assent.

“Alright, Andalon,” I said, turning to face her. “Let’s do it.”

“Andalon?” Karl asked. “W-Who’s that?”

“Uh,” I stammered, “she’s… she’s my familiar.” I waved my arm dramatically.

They seemed to buy it.

I widened my stance. “Prepare yourselves,” I said, “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep this up. I’ll leave it to you to tell me when you think it’s safe to go. I’ll show you the way.”

“I’m ready, Mr. Genneth,” Andalon said.

Closing my eyes, I focused, summoning the memory of what I’d done in the lobby to retrace my steps. I could sense trails of light flow back and forth between Andalon and myself. The connection to &alon sparked. With my thoughts, I reached out to the soldiers at the lab’s back entrance. I could feel &alon’s energy moving through me, tapping into the fungus within them.

Light rippled down Andalon’s sky-blue hair, and her eyes glowed.

I gave the targeted bodies their orders.

Don’t move, I thought. Don’t speak. Don’t hurt anyone.

I felt the command leave my mind and travel elsewhere, but then—

“—Fudge…” I muttered.

Andalon’s eyes widened in alarm. “Mr. Genneth!”

The way she looked at me told me she could feel it, too.

“What’s wrong?” Duncan asked.

I shook my head.

I sighed. “I have control of three of them,” I said, focusing my attention on the three brightest-glowing patches of fungal aura.

“And the others?” Morgan asked.

I shook my head. “Their infections must not be advanced enough for me to control them yet.”

Even now, I could feel those three men’s wills struggling against my interference. They knew they were being manipulated

“Beast’s teeth,” I muttered. “As soon as I release my hold on those three, they’re going to freak out.”

As if on cue, the light in Andalon’s hair flickered and went out.

Hunger pangs stand my chest.

She fell onto her hands and knees, panting for breath.

“Sorry, Mr. Genneth,” she said. “I… I can’t…”

The screams started a moment later.

I immediately sped up my thoughts.

Fudge. Fudge. Fudge.

“What are you going to do?” Yuta asked.

I… I don’t know, I thought-said.

“The enemy will quickly find us,” he said.

I’m well aware of that, Lord Uramaru!

“But what do you intend to do about it?” Yuta replied, crossing his arms, tightening his dark blue haori across his chest. “This was your plan after all. You had the temerity to loop these men into your quest. You should see this through to the end.” He shook his head. “I cannot do it for you.”

And then a thought occurred to me.

Light bulb! I thought-said.

“What is a light bulb?” Yuta and Andalon said, in near-unison.

It means I have an idea.

“Which is?” Yuta asked.

You! I thought-said. I would have pointed at him if I could.

The samurai’s thick eyebrows peaked. “What?”

One of the first spirits I encountered managed to take control of my psychokinetic powers, and it used them to hurt people. If I can give my powers to you, you can knock the soldiers unconscious. And since you aren’t a physical presence, they won’t be able to hurt you.

Now, how was I going to do this?

Hmmm…

Yuta, I thought, hold out your sword.

Nodding, he complied. The phantom katana glinted in the light.

Focusing on Yuta’s blade, I summoned a sheet of pataphysical energies, which I then willed to wrap around the katana as tightly as I could make them. The sheets worked the way my psychic holdfasts did—the ones that anchored me in place—only, here, the sheet was wrapped into an extremely thin tube; a psychic scabbard, if you will.

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I spent a moment waffling on how thick to make the sheet and, and how densely to pack its filaments. The more intense the weave, the stronger its pataphysical effect.

Since time was of the essence, I decided to go the middle road: not too thick, nor too thin. The blue and gold filaments glistened as I let the power flow. They orbited the blade in tight loops.

And I did it all without moving a muscle.

In an ideal world, I would have had time to test it out first—maybe against one of the knights’ mêlée weapons—but I couldn’t.

There wasn’t enough time.

Remember, I thought-said, incapacitate them if you can.

Yuta went around the corner. He spoke up almost as soon as he was out of sight.

“Interesting.”

What is it? I thought-asked.

“I cannot see their bodies, but I can see the auras around them—the same auras that you see. I also see the surroundings as you currently remember them.”

Will that be enough? I asked.

“Let’s find out.”

Apparently, the samurai didn’t need to be in view for me to be able to sense his presence. I knew exactly where he was as he soundlessly strode down the hallway. I even knew the exact moment when he phased through the Main Lab’s back entrance, passing through the glass like it was a layer of fog.

Through the walls, I watched my plexus move with Yuta’s blade.

Letting time’s flow return to normal, I turned to face the knights.

“One of my spirit companions will help us,” I said. “He’ll knock out the soldiers for us.”

“That… would be very useful,” Bever said.

“Is…” Karl briefly closed his eyes and shook his head. “Has it started yet?” he asked.

His timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

The phantom sword rushed up to one of the multicolored squiggles and struck, hitting the squiggle with the flat of its blade, rather than its edge.

The fungal aura toppled to the floor.

All the knights’ eyes widened as the first screams broke out.

“Holy shit!” a soldier yelled.

The soldiers’ auras grouped together. They were taking a defensive position. The phantom blade swerved around the clustered auras, swathed in circles of blue and gold. Yuta cocked his katana back, and then struck.

A lump of brightly glowing aura separated from the rest and fell to the floor. A full body’s worth of aura toppled beside it as the lump rolled to a stop.

I knew what that meant. Yuta had just decapitated someone—I could only hope by accident.

I screamed in horror. “No!”

“Ronnie! Ronnie!!”

Holy Angel…

I stepped back, and clenched my teeth.

“Did you hear that? It came from outside!”

The cluster of auras moved toward us.

Toward the door.

Fudge.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon yelled.

I turned to the knights. “They’re coming!”

Glancing at each other, Geoffrey and his men leapt into action. They charged into the hallway, and I ran after them.

This was a terrible mistake.

I barely had time to scream.

On the other side of the frosted glass, the soldiers’ blurry figures lifted up long, dark objects.

“Oh, fudge!” I screamed. “Duck! Duck!”

Unfurling a layer of filaments beneath me, I flopped forward, falling onto my belly as bullets crashed through the glass wall. Bite-sized fragments of glass hailed onto the vinyl floor, bouncing off the ground. Geoffrey, Bever, Morgan, and Duncan managed to dodge the bullets by leaping toward the sides of the corridor walls—but Karl wasn’t so lucky. The boy screamed as a bullet tore through his gown and the outer side of his trousers, splattering streaks of his blood on the corridor’s wall.

I flipped the polarity of my psychic belly cushion, launching myself up onto my knees with a psychokinetic shove. I looked up just in time to see Yuta—now fully in view—slash at the soldiers from behind. The plexus filaments crackled in deathly silence, punctuated by the sounds of samurai’s ghostly breaths.

The soldiers’ split up. The men in the back turned around to face their invisible attacker while their comrades in front rushed up the shattered double doors.

They raised their guns.

Angel’s breath!

My dead legs wobbled beneath me as I whipped up a pataphysical forcefield with a swipe of my arm. If Letty Kathaldri had blocked bullets with a forcefield—and she had—then so could I. I just needed to direct the force forward, to counteract the bullets’ momentum.

Time slowed as my thoughts quickened.

Despite my misgivings about my necromantic abilities, it really sucked that I couldn’t use them, what with Andalon still down on her hands and knees, panting heavily. Since I’d controlled far more zombies back in the lobby and that hadn’t tired Andalon anywhere near as much as this had, I could only assume that trying to hack into the fungus took a lot out of her if the fungus wasn’t well-established in its host.

A shame; a little necromancy to restrain the soldiers’ movements would have really come in handy.

I guess it’s up to me, I thought.

In the slowed time, I concentrated on building up my forcefield. I wove it into being like an ancient at a loom, one strand at a time. Blue, gold, blue, gold. I painted their radiance up and down the air in sequence, one next to the other. As new threads appeared, the older ones brightened and thickened, strengthening as the barrier grew and grew.

Up ahead, slow-motion flashes erupted from the soldiers’ gun-barrels.

They were firing!

C’mon!, I thought, speeding up my forcefield’s formation.

Behind the flashes of the approaching bullets, Yuta’s katana swept out a broad arc of light, like a photo in long exposure. As my forcefield grew, the intensity of the katana’s pataphysics dimmed.

I must have been diverting power from him to my forcefield.

I let time quicken again, slowing my thoughts. My forcefield unfurled in every direction, lines of energy settling in place until the cataract of woven light nearly spanned the corridor.

The bullets ricocheted off my forcefield. Their metal glinted as they clattered to the floor.

For a split second, everyone stared at me, speechless. Then Bever nodded and lifted his axe.

“My thanks, sorcerer,” he said.

He let out a blood-curdling war cry as he charged ahead. The sound made my coiled-up tail twinge in my hazmat suit’s back compartment.

One soldier shrieked, the others fired. The bullets bounced off my forcefield. I felt my power push against the weight of Bever’s body as he passed through the forcefield. My magic boosted his momentum, catapulting him forward. He tackled the soldiers with the full force of his body, shoulder first. They fell like bowling pins. There was a sharp, deep, ping as a bullet bounced off Bever’s heavy armor, leaving a ragged hole in his gown.

I could tell the forcefield was draining me. It was like a muscle, aching more and more with each passing second. I still had plenty of reserves left, but I had to be careful.

But then Duncan yelled behind me, and I was knocked out of my thoughts.

“Howle,” he barked, “watch yourself!”

Looking over my shoulder, I saw Karl and Duncan raising their modern firearms. I barely had time to dart out of the way as they started shooting. The bullets left little sonic-booms rippling through the air where they passed through my forcefield and accelerated to supersonic speeds. Any remaining glass in the wall flew into the Main Lab’s corridor, blasted away by the gusts that followed in the sonic boom’s wake. The bullets tore through the rear-file of the soldiers.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon yelled, raising her head. She gasped for breath. “You can’t do this forever!”

She was right.

I cut off my force-field, slowing time for a moment to give my strength back to the plexus around Yuta’s katana.

Yuta, I thought-yelled, you’re up!

He raised his katana high. Once more, the blade was swathed in orbits of blue and gold.

Geoffrey and Morgan pushed off the corridor’s wall to put a spring in their step as they charged forward. They flanked Bever as they stepped over the hollow glass-frames. The axeman had the soldiers pinned to the ground, not that they weren’t trying to wrangle free of his grip and weight, but he was just too strong—and too, gosh-darn big.

The two polearmsmen lunged forward with their weapons. Geoffrey impaled one of the rear-file soldier’s necks with the head-spike of his halberd, as brutal as anything I’d ever seen. As the man fell, he fired his rifle, his blood trickling down his arm. Semi-automatic fire sprayed through the hallway, and without my barrier to protect him, Morgan got struck square in the chest.

Behind me, I heard a thud.

Karl and I screamed: Duncan had toppled backward, killed by a bullet through the brain. But then I whipped my head forward as Yuta let out a battle-cry. I turned just in time to see him whirl his katana like a fire-dancer’s flames.

Kagura—a dance for the gods.

His blade rose and fell as it doled out successive strokes. The soldiers’ bodies came apart, like meat julienned.

Morgan yelled as he thrusted his pike downward, into one of the bodies Bever had pinned down. The axeman pushed off the ground, chopping the other soldier’s arm off with his axe before bringing it down on the man’s skull.

The last remaining soldier tried to escape, crawling back along the hallway. Yuta’s gray hakama trousers billowed like storm-clouds as he lurched forward and struck, slicing the man in half, down the back and shoulder. The dead man’s halves fell to either side, gushing blood. The sectioned corpse landed wetly on the vinyl, splashing onto the pooling fluid.