Brand had fallen to the floor, twitching like a dead rat hooked on electrodes.

“Brand!” I yelled. Brand!”

Sweeping myself up with my powers, I lowered myself onto the floor, belly first, my fake legs stretching out behind me.

Brand was seizing.

Defaulting to my training, I turned Brand’s body to the side, putting him into the recovery position, keeping his head tilted downward to ensure any fluid in his mouth would drain out of it, rather than into his lungs. When someone was having a seizure, posture could make the difference between living to see another day and choking to death on your own saliva.

On instinct, I reached for my console, pulling it out from where I’d stowed it in my suit’s stomach pouch, only to pause. Seeing Brand in danger had made me panic, but now, that panic was melting into bitter dread—the proverbial sinking feeling.

Brand had no history of seizure disorders, nor did his family—and I should know, I was the man’s (neuro)psychiatrist. That’s how we’d met. Years ago, he’d come in for a psychiatric consult for chronic depression. It still struck him, every now and then, but that was just depression for you. It doesn’t go away, but the right prescription can make the pain less burdensome to endure.

Especially when that prescription was a friendship.

Fearing the worst, I checked my wyrmsight.

“Break the Tablets…” I whispered.

Violet. Ultramarine. Those were the colors I saw. The runic lacework was spreading across Brand’s body right before my eyes, weaving through him like a second nervous system, tattooing his skin with its fractal language.

There was no purpose in waiting for him to wake up, nor in calling E Ward’s nurses to help. I wasn’t going to let them lock him up in the garage.

Picking up my console from where I’d set it on the floor, I texted Dr. Horosha.

Suisei, it’s an emergency. It’s Brand Nowston. We’re in 1Ba318. Please, hurry. Bring a stretcher, and some help.

Gently, I placed my hand atop Brand’s.

“I’m here,” I said, “I’m not leaving you.” I shuddered. “Because that’s what friends do.”

I hoped he could hear me.

I did as I said, waiting through the tumultuous minutes it took for Dr. Horosha to arrive on the scene.

For all that he had done for me and other transformees so far, I had to admit, I’d still been harboring some doubts toward Suisei. Not ill will, just… doubts. He was a literal international man of mystery. His skill and professionalism were not in question, I just didn’t feel comfortable with our current relationship: he knew nearly all my secrets, yet I knew barely any of his. And my psychiatric instincts told me that Suisei’s secrets were vast and deep.

But any qualms I still had with the man were banished by the lightning speed with which he arrived at 1Ba318. He came with a nurse, sharing the duty of pushing a rolling bed down the hall. I didn’t know where they’d gotten the bed from, nor did I want to.

The mattress was stained with black, oily splotches that were dusted over in green like powdered sugar on evil chocolate. I felt awkward and powerless as the nurse lifted Brand onto the bed using her psychokinesis more quickly than I could respond.

She didn’t look that transformed at all, so seeing her use her powers out of the blue like that definitely startled me.

Even after all that had happened, I was still getting used to the fact that magic powers were real.

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Fortunately, I kept myself busy, explaining to Horosha and the nurse everything that had happened, up to and including Lt. Colonel Kaplan’s grisly fate.

I omitted the multiple Angels thing, though. Unlike with Brand—for whom there was no such thing as “too much information”—I was worried about starting an argument with them over it.

Suisei stared at me when I described the set-up Brand and I had rigged up for my hazmat suit.

I didn’t know whether he was disturbed or impressed.

Probably both.

“You put on quite a show for General Marteneiss back there,” Suisei said.

I scoffed. “I’m glad you approve.”

My gaze flicked over to Brand’s bed as the nurse secured him in place, putting the restraints around his arms.

“Make sure to keep him in the recovery position,” I said—and forcefully so. “He’s having a seizure.”

The nurse nodded at me. “Yes, Doctor, I know.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I muttered, “I’m just… scared.”

The nurse tensed up. “We all are.”

I looked at them both. “You can’t let him get put into the garage. The violent transformees there will tear him to pieces if they get a chance.”

The nurse looked surprised. “You’re certain he’s a—”

“—Yes,” I said, interrupting her, “I—”

—But Dr. Horosha cut me off. “I trust Dr. Howle’s judgment,” he said. “And… even if I did not…” He stared at Brand’s unconscious body. “I can sense it within him—the weft of the change.”

Brand was going to be a wyrm. That…

Andalon appeared suddenly, hovering at the foot of Brand’s bed. She clasped a hand around the footboard, and then looked over her shoulder at me.

“He’s gonna be wyrmeh!” she said, with a smile.

I was about to yell at her, but I stopped myself.

Yelling at Andalon only made things worse.

Hissing out breath, filling my brand new hazmat helmet with spore stench, I clenched my fist. “Please, Andalon,” I said, quietly.

Her expression fell. “Oh… I…” She lowered her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Genneth.”

“Dr. Howle?” the nurse asked, staring at me.

“It’s alright,” I said, with a shake of my head.

I smiled bitterly, looking at her and Andalon at the same time. “It’s kinda funny, actually,” I said. “I think Brand might actually be happier this way.”

Angel, I thought, what a weird feeling.

I was bittersweet—and I hated bittersweet, like any sweet tooth would. I was aching for my friend, knowing the perilous journey he was about to embark on, and knowing that he was about to lose his humanity. And yet…

I swallowed hard…

I’d meant what I said. Circumstances always seemed to conspire to hold Brand back, be it through his race, his sexuality, or the sheer inexactitude of his fleshy vessel. With a wyrm’s mental capacity, Brand would thrive in a way that would put the rest of us to shame.

Even Greg.

And yet…

I still worried for him. I could think of no worse outcome than the fungus getting its tendrils into Brand’s mind. For all Dr. Nowston’s brilliance, he was flighty and absentminded. If any of us had to be worried about going silver-eyed, it was Brand. He was easily influenced; easily distracted.

And spirit-management? By the Godhead, that was going to be a nightmare—for him, as much as for his ghosts.

I could picture it now: the spirit of a dead mother, grieving the son she might never see again, and then Brand goes and shows her detailed recreations of lithified fetuses, complete with cross sections—slice, by slice, by slice.

It was a disaster waiting to happen. Even Andalon looked distraught—though that was probably just her responding to all the bad vibes these thoughts were making me put out.

In the middle of my time-slowing worries, Suisei reached out to me and of my distress.

“Everything will be alright, Genneth,” he said. “We will take care of him.”

“You should be out in Ward E,” Suisei said. “You have already been away for too long.”

He went to the opposite side of Brand’s bed and joined the nurse in wheeling Brand away.

“Wait…” I said.

The two of them stopped and turned back to face me. “What is it?” the nurse asked.

“What are you going to do with him?” I asked.

“Once he awakes,” the nurse said, “we’re going to do our usual protocol. We feed him enough to get some wyrmflesh to appear, then we establish a physical link in order to explain to him what he needs to know, and get him up and running with Greg’s Wyrmware.”

Her words gave me an idea.

I stared at all three of them—the nurse, Suisei, and Andalon—and then started undoing one of the suit’s gauntlets. I made sure to hold the gloves with their bottom upright, so as to not spill the filler in the fingers.

“What are you doing?” Suisei asked.

I extended my clawed hand to the nurse. “Take off your glove,” I said. “I want to link with you. There’s something I need to share with you, so that you can share it with Brand.”

“O-Okay,” the nurse said. She took off one of her gloves.

We clasped hands. It took a few seconds for me to initiate the link. Mere physical contact wasn’t enough to get the wyrm link started. At least one wyrm had to actively will the link to form.

Fortunately, I’d gotten plenty of practice the other day.

I nodded at the nurse as I felt our flesh begin to squirm and intermingle.

“What are you sharing?” Suisei asked.

“A mystery called Lantor,” I said.

If anyone could figure out what the heck was going on with the incursion, it was Brand Nowston.

I recentered my consciousness into a mental realm as the connection took hold.

File sharing: there really is nothing quite like it.