By sheer luck, there was a printing room just a hop and skip away from Brand’s lab. Unfortunately, as Heggy might have put it, at the moment, the tanks of polymerized glop that fueled the printer were emptier than a patient sitting down for a colonoscopy. Brand carried off what remained of my hazmat suit without hesitation, alongside several plastic chairs and fed them into the printer to give it the raw materials to print me a new hazmat suit, one specially customized to accommodate my latest changes.

I protested at first.

“I thought you said I needed to change for the better?” I asked him. “How is doing exactly what I was doing before advancing me toward that goal?” I’d narrowed my eyes at him. “You know, doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result is the definition of—”

—And of course, he’d cut me off, politely—but aggressively—pressing his palms together.

“Dr. Genneth Howle is an asset to West Elpeck Medical,” he’d said. “We can’t afford to keep him on the sidelines. Even the fricken’ military thinks so.”

“Yeah, but—”

“—No, Genneth,” he said. you’ve lost ‘but’ privileges.”

That came out funnier than he’d probably thought it would.

Much like Engoliss’ disease, my feelings of guilt had progressed from their acute stage to the subdued chronic form. They sloshed around the bottom of my soul, ponderous and bitter. A week ago—maybe even only a couple of days ago—I would have wasted beastly amounts of time ruminating on those feelings until my thoughts were red and raw. But not this time. I had changed.

“This is no time for a pity party,” I told myself, clenching my claws with resolve.

I needed to do something.

I’d have all the time in the world to weep if Hell’s darkness succeeded in snuffing out the last rays of Light. Right now, with Brand away on printer duty, I had my matters of my own to attend to. This latest bout of transformation had reduced my legs to uselessness, dangling like demented training wheels from either side of what had once been my waist.

I wasn’t going anywhere until I figured out how to move again.

From a distance, I imagined I looked like a really long lizard, only with human bits at the front end. My blackened, shriveled leg-struts were a bit ahead of my midpoint. Both halves of my body were nearly as long as my original human body was tall, though with a slight bias toward my aft half. I must have been near ten feet long, not that I had any interest in taking exact measurements. This situation was mortifying enough as-is.

My body’s new layout made standing a challenge—to put it mildly. There was a point in the upper middle of my belly I could bend without much difficulty, rearing up everything above it. Unfortunately, the result had my head low enough to the ground that it would have made Nurse Kaylin feel tall; I barely brought my head over the edge of the table against the wall where Brand kept his microscope and other laboratorical doodads.

I tried to lift myself up by grabbing the edge of the table with my claws and pushing myself up. Doing so caused the table’s plastic material to crack down the middle like it was peanut brittle.

Apparently, I no longer knew my own strength.

I managed to keep everything from spilling onto the ground with my powers, but it wasn’t easy. Though my skills had definitely improved, using my psychokinesis to manipulate a dozen different objects simultaneously was even more taxing than I thought it would be, especially considering the ease with which I’d managed to control all the zombies.

I guessed the mechanics of my necromantic and psychokinetic abilities were sufficiently different that what one could easily accomplish, the other might have more difficulty.

I set the beakers and the microscope back on what was left of the table and put the broken section of the table in my hand on the floor out of reach, resisting the temptation to nibble on it.

After all this I was still hungry.

“Fudge me,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Fudge me…”

Trying to lift myself up further only caused more problems. I tried dragging myself up one of the room’s square support columns, but that brought back some unpleasant hyperphantasized memories of me failing to climb up a pole back in my middle school physical education class.

My claws raked through the columns’ paint, tearing through the layers of drywall and insulation, down to the steel beam underneath.

I stopped trying before I took the building down with me.

Funnily enough, my problem here was the same as it had been back in middle school: I wasn’t using my lower body properly. When you climbed a pole, you had to use your legs as much as your arms, and—then, as now—I was having trouble, only this time, I really didn’t have much in terms of legs that I could usefully move.

All that time I’d kept my tail stuffed inside the pocket for the oxygen tank at the back of my hazmat suit meant I hadn’t gotten to practice moving the darn thing. I spent a good fifteen minutes experimenting with it, flicking it up and down; sliding it left and right—and accidentally knocking over a couple of rolling chairs.

There was so much more of myself to keep track of!

Bizarrely enough, my mind-world forays into non-human bodies was proving to be somewhat helpful. I’d like to have said that my having gone to medical school also helped, but I was far beyond human biology at this point.

Veterinary school would have been better preparation for wyrmdom.

“Focus on the positives…” I muttered.

Well… since pretty much everything below my chest was mostly wyrmflesh, the lab’s chilly vinyl floor didn’t feel cold to me at all.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Also, I was acclimating to my body’s new sensations pretty quickly. That was something to be proud of, I guess. I no longer flinched at the feeling of my tail and underbelly brushing against the floor. Though, getting used to the fact that part of me was over here while another part was over there was definitely going to take some time.

I absentmindedly scratched at the back of my neck, only to wince as my claws opened up wounds in my skin, though those wounds stitched themselves shut in mere seconds.

I sighed.

Just another part of being wyrmy.

Eventually, my experiments bore fruit. The most workable postures seemed to be in between me looking like a capital U and me looking like a capital J, with the bottoms of the letters being the fulcrum where my body met the floor. Either way, I was far too tall; my neck and belly were too long. I swayed like a reed in the wind.

I’d also figured out how to move, though only on a semi-reliable basis. This involved me slither-waddling forward or backward, in order to change the point on my body from where I was balancing myself. My slumping, sifting weight, had crushed my legs into a permanent half-crouch. The disintegrating bones crinkled like bags of rice whenever I moved.

It felt like I was stuck in a permanent squat.

My tail slogged behind me, and whenever I tried to lift it up off the floor, I could feel its weight tugging at my back and neck. It was like someone was pulling me by the hair.

I let my tail flop back down. I flinched as it smacked onto the floor. It didn’t hurt, it just… there was too much feeling.

Focusing, I gritted my teeth, only to hear one of them crack open.

I groaned.

I hadn’t seen any sign of the tell-tale blue flames that appeared whenever I ate—data streams from &alon, strengthening my connection to her greater self. Their absence was particularly unnerving, considering how much I’d eaten. I would have expected a deluge. But things were coming up empty.

This worried me. Was the reaction simply delayed, or was there a more sinister reason for it? Perhaps the fungus was interfering.

Clenching my claws, I groaned. “If I keep worrying about this, I won’t get anything done,” I muttered.

I needed to focus.

“Alright,” I mumbled. “It’s time to get serious.”

I’d ask Andalon about the flames when I next saw her.

I’d hoped I could move around just using my body’s muscles, but either they weren’t fully formed enough or—more likely—I was being stupid, so, I had no choice but to give myself a leg up with my powers.

Closing my eyes, I grew a patch of fibrous aura along my back and sides. Humming with power, it acted like supporting cushions, providing a slight pressure from the sides and behind to keep me steady in the J posture. I made sure to curl the luminous fibers into a closed loop, just like Tira had shown me back in the self-help group. To my delight, the weaves stayed in place even when I stopped actively thinking about them. After a couple seconds, I found I could make them react to my will like they were just another part of my body, and without any lag. With just a thought, I could have my psychic supports adjust me or push me one way or the other.

“Now, I just need to figure out how to walk again,” I told myself.

Several other pieces of furniture and lab equipment fell (or nearly did) as I toyed with different intensities for my psychic cushions. Eventually, I figured out how to use them without fear of flinging myself (either in whole, or in part) at a desk or a support column. It seemed I was going to be waddling instead of walking, twisting side-to-side at my fulcrum point to throw me and my legs forward. I used my powers to keep my balance, and—if necessary—to give myself a push.

I had a strong feeling I wasn’t supposed to be moving this way, but I refused to start slithering. Not yet.

I wasn’t ready to make that leap.

I stopped once I felt I’d gotten the hang of it. To my surprise, I heard applause. Turning around—twisting—I came face to face with my adoring audience.

“Hooray for Mr. Genneth! Hooray!”

Andalon clapped profusely, only to stop as inexplicably as she’d started.

Sighing, I relaxed, letting my somewhere-in-between-a-J-and-a-U-shaped-posture slump onto my psychokinetic cushions.

They were surprisingly comfy.

As usual, Andalon’s timing was uncanny.

“Andalon,” I asked, “why haven’t the blue flames appeared yet? I’ve never eaten as much as this, and yet…”

Her expression darkened. “I dunno. Maybe Amplersandalon is havin’ trouble.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I dunno.”

I sighed. I should have expected that.

“Are you okay, Mr. Genneth?” she asked. Andalon craned her neck as she stepped toward me. “Is it just the no bluey?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I felt you when you was talking to Mr. Brandy.” Tears pooled in her stormy blue eyes. They glinted in the shafts of light that passed through her sky-blue bangs. She lowered her gaze. “You didn’t have a mama, just like me.”

This was a pleasant surprise. Andalon was exhibiting emotional maturity beyond what I’d come to expect of her. It caught me off guard, making the leaden feeling in my heart go all runny, shaken up by Andalon’s kindness.

Then, walking up to me, Andalon embraced me in a hug, wrapping her arms around the lower half of my midsection.

And I felt it, and it wasn’t cold—it was lukewarm.

It will never cease to amaze me how, in the right context, the simplest of actions can reduce a man to tears.

Brand arrived not long after that, lumbering into his lab with a voluminous hazmat suit in the cart he wheeled in front of him. It looked like he’d slain a violet cyclops and had taken its skin as a prize.

Seeing me with fresh tears, Brand set the suit on a nearby unbroken table and rushed over to me.

“Genneth! What’s wrong?” he said. “Did something else happen?”

His concern was almost parental.

Without hesitation, I told him what happened—and, I have to say, it felt good to do that.

“Andalon?” he said. “She’s here?” Even from behind his own hazmat suit’s visor, Brand’s eyes bulged with excitement.

Andalon started jumping up and down, tugging at my arm.

“Can Andalon talk to Mr. Brandy?” she said. “Andalon wants to talk to Mr. Brandy! Please oh please oh please, Andalon wants to talk to other peeps! Peeeps!”

Brand staggered back as his eyes leapt at my arm. “Holy shit!” he said. He spread his arms to his sides in a defensive posture, elbows flexed.

Andalon’s jumping had made my arm wag up and down in sync with her movements.

“Okay!” I said, turning to face her. “Okay!” I tried not to laugh.

I nodded at Brand. “Yes,” I said, “she’s here—and she wants to talk to you.”

“She does?” Brand sputtered, leaning forward with excitement.

I could picture the dreams of scientific glory passing before Dr. Nowston’s eyes. Literally. Hyperphantasies paraded in front of me, floating dioramas of award ceremonies, awed journalists, and applauding conference attendees. And Brand was the center of each and every one.

I nodded. “Alright,” I said, turning back to Andalon. “Talk to Brand as if you’re talking to me. I’ll say your words for you. It’ll be like what you did for Tira.”

Beaming, Andalon let out a firm, loud “Hello!”

I conveyed it for her. She waved her hand at him.

“Hello, Andalon,” he replied.

“Yep, this is awkward,” I said, under my breath.

“Andalon is best friends with Mr. Genneth,” she said, “but is still very lonely.”

“What about everyone in the self-help group?” I asked her.

She impassionedly stomped her foot.

“They’re wymehs, that’s diff’rent!”

I rolled my eyes.

She turned back to Brand.

“Will Mr. Brandy be Andalon’s friend? Pleeease?”

“Be careful, Brand,” I muttered—grimacing, half in jest, “Andalon’s friendship comes with some pretty thick strings attached.”

“I’m well aware of that,” he replied.

I’d told him all about the other transformees’ encounters with Andalon, after all.

Dr. Nowston patted his fist on his chest. “But I think I’m pretty well prepared.” Smirking, he nodded, bowing deeply—gracefully—his arm stretching up like the neck of a swan. “Sure, little miss Andalon,” he said. “You can count Dr. Brand Nowston as your friend. We’re all on the same side here. We’re all trying to stop the fungus.”

Andalon clasped her hands together, holding them close to her chest. Her sky-blue eyes were wide and joy-glistened.

“This is the best day ever,” she said.

And then she vanished.

I relayed this to Brand.

“That’s…” He blinked bemusedly. “That’s it?”

“Apparently,” I said. I shrugged.

“She’s not the most predictable sort, I take it?” he asked.

“You have no idea…”