Has this happened to you, I wonder? You’re playing a game, and you’ve just finished a tough boss battle—possibly only by the skin of your teeth—and then the game just throws you into another one. No mercy.

It’s not a pleasant experience, let me tell you.

But it pales in comparison to the real thing.

The chaser.

I’d just filleted a four-legged fungal abomination—a log-work creature, only the logs were made of corpses.

Three seconds later, I turn around to face a tsunami of green.

Spores.

There wasn’t even time to panic, so I quickened my thoughts and made some. The onrushing tide of spore breath blasting out of General Labs slowed, turning feathery and plumed. Wisps wicked in upward twirls in the slowed time, spilling forward like an alien air.

A missile rocked out of the wavefront, flying parallel to the ground, swathed in a corkscrew of blue and gold. The tsunami churned around it, stirred into a vortex, fatal and elegant.

I turned away, facing forward. My thoughts raced, but I moved with agonizing slowness.

Nina was dead.

How? How could that have happened?

Karl came into view up ahead, wide-eyed and terrified.

A shadow loomed over him. It loomed over all of us, casting a wide berth across the garage’s mosaic floor.

Slowly, my eyes rolled up.

The wave was cresting over our heads. Spores gathered in droplets, trickling and spooled.

Gravity tugged them downwards.

Hit the deck!

I fell forward. I would have whipped up a plexus to cushion my fall, but all my willpower had gone into a protective forcefield I’d woven behind me.

I’d pulled it over my head like a cloak.

I willed the cloak forward. Through the slowed time, the sheets of pulsing color extended—a wave beneath the wave—spreading to cover Karl.

But, too late, he was already running away.

My lips twitched as my nervous system ordered them to open up and yell.

I slowed my thoughts to return time to normal right as my “No!” boiled up from my throat.

Sounds sped up like an overclocked record.

I fell forward. Inside my hazmat suit, I was a car crash in miniature. My glasses bashed against my face. The visor caught the brunt of my fall, sending my head rebounding off the mosaic seascape. There was a loud crack as the helmet’s plastic buckled

Then the green spore-cloud inundated everything. The torrent battered my force-cloak. I looked up just in time to see the plexus-swathed wyrm corkscrew past me. It zoomed over vehicles, leaving a wispy trail in its wake.

Bracing my arms, I pushed myself up.

The wyrm plowed through the glass wall between the garage and the Galleria. Swerving upward it broke through the ceiling, erupting through one of the skylights. Glassy daylight rained down, along with cordons, and black metal fences, and tents, and dozens of bodies.

I cut the power from my force-cloak and gathered it underneath me, to lift me to my feet.

Nina was supposed to be one of the Blessèd, right? One of the Angel’s chosen warriors.

No. That…

If there could be more than one Angel, then everything was suspect.

The wyrm’s breath weapon had blown across a third of the garage in a strip spanning end to end. Half of the spore cloud pooled around the parked cars. The metal chassises hissed and bubbled, as if slicked with sea-foam. Naked metal stuck out from the sedans whose roofs had corroded away.

The other half of the cloud was pulled into the Undergreen in the wyrm’s wake. Everything in its path was sandblasted and bare. The clouds hung in the shallow ditches it had guttered into the tile.

A couple more feet to the right, and the wyrm would have blown through one of the garage’s support pillars.

The abomination that I’d killed was a steaming midden in the middle of the garage, crumbling and bubbling. Spores gathered around it, pooling like fog at an island’s edge.

And the bodies.

By the Angel, the bodies…

Shoes and legs stood like smoldered stumps. Cloth and armor crumbled into char. Foaming green burned on naked, blackened bone.

They were the lucky ones.

Others still lived, reduced to trembling figures of sizzling flesh and smoking, charcoal-stick limbs. Entire swaths of backs and flanks were burned away.

“Andalon, what do we do now?” I asked, within myself. Second-me sat in the chair in my mind-office, with Andalon in the chair on the opposite side.

“Nina, she…”

I’d wanted to believe that Nina’s powers would have protected her from the fungus. I mean, they protected Suisei, so, why…

Andalon looked me in the eyes. “Mr. Sushi has to know. He hasta!”

But then why did I feel so much dread?

Karl lay on the ground, sputtering. His transformation’s rune-work plexus glowed like a strobe light in my wyrmsight. It must have been giving its all, just to keep him alive.

He must have dived forward to try to dodge the spore breath.

The back half of his body had been burned away—his shoulder blades, his neck, a good deal of his scalp—exposing the cords of layered wyrmflesh that had replaced his central nervous system.

“I’m scared,” I said.

Andalon looked on in concern.

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Check the soul crystals! I told myself.

First-Me was right.

The mind office melted away, everything whisking off to the side, stretching out as the world spun, only to coalesce at my Main Menu. The great sphere of soul crystals floated in the pure, open sky.

“Sorcerer!” Bever yelled. “Help!”

Turning, I saw Bever and Morgan leaning against one another, barely able to stand. Morgan was semi-conscious. The lower parts of his legs had been melted off. His tibias extruded from the ends of his legs, blackened like used matches.

The axeman’s armor was eaten through in places, particularly on his back. The edges of the dissolved portions of the metal still bubbled.

And then, Bever saw Karl.

“Break the Tablets!” he cried. “Karl, boy what’s—”

Karl moaned.

The gashes and scrapes marring Karl’s face were slicked in drool. His saliva pooled on the mosaic floor. With another wordless moan, he crawled toward the dead abomination’s steaming mass. He reached for it with an unsteady hand, twitching like a crushed insect.

Filaments budded out from the wyrmflesh in his back, attempting to heal his wounds. But the growth was sluggish and stilted.

“Angel p-preserve us…” Morgan muttered. He whispered in terror.

“Help him, Mr. Genneth!” Andalon cried. “He’s starving! He’s dying!!”

Swallowing hard—a gob of my own sweet, tangy saliva sliding down my throat, I pushed the minced abomination toward Karl with a psychic shove. Chunks of twisted corpse flesh spilled onto Karl’s body. They stuck to him like glue where they touched.

He yelped and moaned.

In seconds, filaments wriggled out from the column of wyrmflesh in Karl’s melted back. Some of the filaments plunged into his wounds. Others sewed their way through the chunks of flesh, striking them together like beads on a necklace. The chunks deformed as their biomass flowed onto the connecting filaments.

“What’s…?” Karl strained to reach his chest. “What’s happening to… me…?” His voice distorted as he changed.

“Howle?” Bever yelled. “What? What have you done?” The horror in his face was struck through with disbelief and betrayal.

Morgan pushed Bever away and fell to the floor.

“Leave me!” he cried. “Help the… the boy!”

Nodding sternly, Bever grabbed his axe and moved toward Karl.

Morgan began to twitch and froth. The spores on his blackened tibia stubs took root. Fungal filaments grew up his flesh and armor with horrifying speed.

“Get back!” Karl yelled, sticking out a hand, only for it to twitch and change as he held it.

The sphere spun and churned as I whisked through the crystals. Andalon watched on in trepidation.

There.

I pulled one of the crystals out. Fluidic light sloshed around within it, steadily filling up.

“We’ve got her,” I said, turning to Andalon. “I’ve got Nina’s soul.”

Now, I just needed to wait for it to finish uploading. I set up an alarm that would go off once it had.

And once it did? Well… I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.

Bever turned to me. “You!” he roared. “You did this!”

He charged at me.

I tried to yell at him to make him stop, but there wasn’t enough time.

There wasn’t even time for me to move out of the way.

I needed to unify myself. I needed to focus. I had to act—now!

I was afraid. And the more of me there was, the more fear there was. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

I’m sorry, I thought.

You don’t need to apologize, I told First-Me. Once Nina’s spirit is ready, we’ll get our answers.

I spread my arms. Feeling trickled away as I dissolved back into myself.

I felt myself fully. One world, myself, alone.

I slowed time just as Bever started to swing his axe. I whipped up a forcefield and placed it in front of me, like the prow of a ship. Bever’s axe clashed against it, sending off sparks that briefly elucidated the barrier’s front edge. The forcefield caught Bever off guard, throwing him back. His axe got ripped from his hand as he was flung to the floor—right into Karl’s transforming body.

“By the Godhead…” I muttered.

It was like with Geoffrey, only worse. The exposed, spore-eaten parts of Bever’s flesh fused with Karl, melding into the boy’s back. The knight twitched and folded as his body was subsumed. He managed to mutter, “It’s not your fault before his skull cracked and his head was stretched long, wrapping around Karl’s back like the swirls on a barber pole.

Karl tried to reach around to peel his friend off his body, but it was no use.

The knight’s spore-coated armor buckled and snapped as it was absorbed.

“Bever!” Karl screamed. “Bever!” His voice distorted like the axeman’s face.

Spikes burst from Karl’s spine, pushing off what remained of his clothes. The spikes marched down his spine, punch punch punch, while the bone below lengthened and creaked, thickening into a mighty tail that swept across the floor.

All traces of Bever’s body had vanished.

In moments, the last pieces of the slain abomination had slithered into him, joining Bever’s biomass. They flowed up his arms and neck, extending his torso along with his tail, until, even when sprawled flat on his belly, he was nearly as tall as me.

Ten feet long.

Fifteen.

Twenty.

The boy’s arms bulged obscenely as his hands exploded into wyrm claws. His head was like a grape compared to his forest-green hands.

He reached forward with a trembling hand and pointed at the Galleria.

“By the Godhead…” I muttered.

Feral infected were spilling down the stairs. It was a mad dash of mindless fury. They stumbled over one another. Rotting bones cracked open on the floor. Others fell through the hole in the ceiling, coming to pieces as they smacked on the ground.

Screaming soldiers—their armor dissolving in the spore-tide—were pummeled by the human deluge. Bullets fired. Screams and shrieks burst. Shards of broken glass painted the floor in streaks of blood.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon yelled. “You have to stop them!” She pointed up, toward the hole. “Zombies zombies zombies!”

I turned to Karl. “But, what about—”

“—You killed them!” Karl yelled, still mid-change. “Geoffrey… Geoffrey would have protected the people! You hid. You… betrayed.” His eyes bulged gold as he screamed. “Liar! Liar!” He spat out spores, which scattered across the tile in sizzling splotches.

“I—”

I wanted to tell him it was an accident. I wanted to tell him I hadn’t—

“—Mr. Genneth,” Andalon yelled. “You gotta protect everybody! You gotta help and save!”

“B-But!” I stammered.

Karl screamed as he wept.

Up ahead, the zombies were crawling across the broken glass, spilling out into the garage. Their ulcers and broken limbs hardly stopped them; they just made their powerless hosts scream in agony.

Fudge, I thought. I could feel guilty later.

“Andalon!”

I looked her in the eyes.

She nodded.

Stepping forward, I closed my eyes and took a deep, deep breath. I instantly sensed the power flowing from Andalon. In my mind’s eye, she was a living flame, white fire on black

I opened my eyes to see light pour from her body. I thickened my wyrmsight to the fullest. Suddenly, I was an island in a sea of writhing magenta.

The aura of the horde.

“Andalon!” I yelled.

Her hair streamed upward, as candescent as the fires in my mind.

A ripple spread across the morass of zombie-aura, spreading out from where I stood. The aura twitched as the ripple passed through it. Each twitch was the formation of a connection, and I could feel every one of them.

The burden was more than I could have ever imagined. It knocked me onto all fours, nearly overwhelmed. My gloved hand smacked on the mosaic tile.

But I held firm to the connection. I stayed in control. With gritted teeth, I raised my head and looked straight ahead.

And then… I blew—a little puff of air. I don’t know why I did it, it just felt natural.

The magenta tinge in the zombies’ aura scattered like dust in the wind. All those vile lights went out, and the surging horde’s momentum got the rug pulled out from underneath it. People stumbled and fell. They landed flat on their faces or smacked into a structural pillar or the side of a parked car.

I was in control.

I tightened my grip on their wills, just enough to stop them from moving. Wanting to give them back control of their bodies, I relaxed my mental hold on them. Beside me, Andalon’s light dwindled. Ahead, the freed zombies broke down, sobbing and screaming.

But I couldn’t let go all the way. Beneath the layers of Andalon’s power, I could feel the fungus. It was struggling against me, clawing against the psychic sinew like a man buried in a grave.

I stayed vigilant, holding on to a sliver of Andalon’s power—enough of her light to keep the fungus at bay.

Andalon turned her head to face me. “Mr. Genneth…”

There was fear in her eyes.

Angel’s breath, I could feel it too!

Something else was wrong.

I had to slow my perception of time to notice it.

Break the Tablets…, I thought.

Not all of the infected I’d freed the infected from the fungus’ control were able to enjoy their freedom. For every person who staggered to their feet, I saw two that lay motionless where they’d fallen. Others stood like scarecrows, blankly staring and empty-headed.

Why aren’t they going back to normal? I thought-asked.

Andalon lowered her head in shame. “It must be too late,” she said. “The darkness must have got them.”

I sped time up again.

Fudge…

Gunfire broke out in counterpoint to a wyrm’s otherworldly cries.

The sound sent shivers down my spine.

Andalon floated into the Galleria. “Mr. Genneth!” she said, brimming with urgency.

“I’m coming!” I yelled.

But as I ran forward, a polyphonic voice boomed behind me.

“Dr. Howle!” Karl said.

The sound made me flinch.

Around me, the freed zombies looked up and then screamed. They stumbled as they fled in terror.

I turned, and then staggered back.

Karl loomed over me, head and shoulders rising up above the surrounding cars. He’d wrapped his arms around a support column. He clung to it like he was caught in a river; like if, at any moment, he might get swept away.

In appearance, he strongly resembled what Greg had become, only he was bigger than Mr. Pfefferman had become, and more of his humanity was still intact. He was serpentine below the waist, with his arms, neck, shoulders, and torso having mostly changed to what I now recognized as wyrmly proportions. Only the Godhead knew how much more the boy would grow before he was fully changed. Yet his face was still his, even if most of his hair had fallen out.

He glanced down at his serpentine lower body, disgusted by himself. He twitched his tail-body, not knowing how to move it. Metal creaked and groaned as he bumped against the surrounding car.

“H-Help me…” he said.

It was barely above a whisper, but it set the air aquiver, and sent out faint, curling trails of spores.

Behind me, up through the broken skylight, the silver-eyed wyrm keened.

“Fudge me up the axe,” I muttered.