Evening’s darkling sky was well on its way by the time my shift finally came to an end. I would have called today the worst, tensest, most frenetic, most disorienting, most unremittingly patient-surging day of my life… but I didn’t want to tempt fate into proving me wrong.

I had a lot on my plate, and that was understatement.

Merritt, Kurt, Letty, the CMT, Jonan…

Andalon.

Myself.

And that was just the past twenty-four hours.

The day had been so overwhelming, I’d almost forgotten that I was dead, and that my every movement lagged a millisecond or two behind the will that moved them. I didn’t know whether to be thankful or terrified.

I’d been feeling hungry lately. Ordinarily, I would have dismissed it. I’d worked through most of the day. I’d been so busy, I barely had any time to eat. But now, with Andalon’s words and Kurt’s polyphagia on my mind, it wasn’t so simple.

What would happen if I ate? And what would happen if I didn’t?

Those were the trillion-dollar questions. Would I become like Kurt, stuck in a positive feedback loop, eating and eating until whatever was supposed to happen finally happened? Or would avoiding food lead me to that fate?

I didn’t know.

Andalon kept on making evanescent appearances through the day as I went about my rounds. Strangely, they grew shorter and shorter as the day played on. This was ominously accompanied by a mounting headache throbbing in my skull. I knew hunger could sometimes lead to headaches, and it certainly had here.

Eventually, I wasn’t able to hold out any longer, and gave in. I got myself a pre-made meal from the cafeteria. After the day I’d had, I needed a moment to myself, if only to figure out what the heck was going on, and what the heck I was going to do about it. Assuming I could do anything about it.

So, I’d gone to Staff Lounge 3, and—luckily me—it was unoccupied.

The food definitely helped. My hunger and my headache simply evaporated. Unfortunately, I my cup of problems was still very much overfloweth-ing.

Letty had stopped bullets. Bullets.

My mind reeled, and then reeled some more. Other Type Two cases might develop that level of power. Would I fall under that category? Once again, I didn’t know whether to be thankful or terrified.

I’d tried asking Andalon about it later in the day, but that quickly proved to be a fool’s errand. First she asked me what a bullet was. Then, once I’d answered, she asked me what a gun was. She’d disappeared halfway through asking her next follow-up question.

For the fifth time since my shift had ended, I stared intently at the plastic water bottle I’d set on the table of Staff Lounge 3, phasing out the sound of the commercial playing on the wide-screen console mounted on the wall to my right, currently serving as my television. I’d drawn the curtains over the bay windows, to keep out the Night’s cold touch.

My back twinged; my shoulders were stiff. My thigh bone (femur) ached, which was connected to my leg bone (tibia)—which also ached—which was connected to my ankle (metatarsals), which ached the most of all. I could barely feel my toes.

As one commercial ended, another began. A suave, sultry male voice began an incantatory voice-over.

“Journey to a land seven millennia in the making…”

The voice-over began listing the supposed benefits of flying with Arakan Airways, pretentious accent and all. The narrator spoke against backdrop montage of wondrous, exotic sights: lagoon-side temples etched in lonely stone, nestled among figs and mangroves; the famed spice-markets of old town Tinesh, with their celebratory parades of bronze-skinned dancers, clad in dawn’s airy colors, their white smiles glittering and perfect.

The ad ended with a swell of exotic music. “Arakan Airways,” it said. “The Occident awaits.”

I rolled my eyes. Leaning back, I let myself attempt to relax. I abandoned my nervous, forward-hunched posture for the soft, gushy embrace of the sofa’s thick, slab-shaped cushions and their leather upholstery.

My stomach grumbled. Fortunately, I still had a bit of chips leftover from my meal. Half an hour ago, the open, see-through plastic container on the table had been filled with slightly spicy sweet tofu, rices noodle, and a vegetable stir-fry. Now, it held only some used plastic utensils which rested on a bed of stained napkins, vegetable scraps, and puddles of cold sauce. For my side, I’d opted for some bu’etl chips. The half-emptied bag sat on my lap filled with air-puffed Maikokan tuber chips covered in bright orange cheese dust with a color like acid waste from an industrial mine. The brand’s mascot, stared at me with his squinting eyes and his permanent thumbs up. His head was a brown circular splotch above a beige burlap poncho, half-hidden beneath the tasseled shadow of his oversized, square-brimmed fainara. Beneath his tumid handlebar mustache, a speech bubble erupted, exclaiming the words “Ahppy belly, nustar,” as if satisfaction were that easy attained.

I pulled another handful of chips out of the bag, my fingers brushing against their wavy dip-ridges. My gaze hovered over the screensaver playing on the console embedded in the table.

Rayph’s words played through my thoughts.

“Goodnight, Daddy. Stay safe!”

My crazy day had completely ruined my workday rhythm. Usually, I’d call in the afternoon to talk to Pel around lunchtime, and then call again in the evening in the event I was working late. I’d called home twice over, the first time while they were eating dinner; the second time, after they’d finished.

I had the urge to call them once more, if only so that I could hear their voices one more time before wishing them goodnight all over again.

As the saying went, third time’s the charm, right?

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I stuffed the handful of chips into my mouth, savoring the sweet, sweet artificial tang of industrially manufactured cheese powder and its barbecue sauce highlights. All the while—for the sixth time—I stared at the water bottle on the table. As I stared, in my mind’s eye, I saw the little cup of water levitating in front of Merritt’s petrified face. I saw Letty, standing below me, as she psychokinetically pinned me up on the wall and squeezed the air out of my chest. I saw the contempt in her eyes as she stopped a barrage of bullets like something out of a fantasy novel.

The wrathful hag’s words replayed in my head.

It’s sad you haven’t been training like I have, Doc Warlock. What a waste of talent.

Should I try it out?

“No,” I muttered. “No no no no no.”

In addition to the trillion-dollar questions about what would happen if I did or didn’t eat, there was also the figurative giant white elephant in the room.

I was 99% sure that I was infected with a Type Two case of NFP-20. The remaining 1% was the small possibility that I wasn’t just a Type Two case, but something else altogether. Merritt, Kurt, and Letty hadn’t said a word about Andalon. That made my own situation only more uncertain.

But that wasn’t the white elephant. The white elephant was that I was sick, but had yet to inform my colleagues.

Actually, no, it was worse than that. Letty had accused me of being like her.

A warlock.

And I’d denied it. Loudly.

Right to Heggy’s face.

I rubbed my eyes and muttered. “Fudge…”

I had to tell her the truth. I had to tell all of my colleagues the truth.

That was the right thing to do.

A short, three-note trumpet fanfare blared from the TV console startled me to attention. CBN special Pandemic Coverage was back from the commercial break. And, as TV was wont to do, it immediately gave me something else to fixate on.

Because of the pandemic’s global scale, one screen with one reporter simply wouldn’t do. Instead, CBN’s broadcast had the console screen divvied up into nine distinct feeds, each showing footage from somewhere around the world, accompanied by dialogue captions. The new collage showed healthcare workers and public health professionals at work combating the NFP-20 pandemic all over the world. Unfortunately, what I saw didn’t inspire much confidence.

From a public health standpoint, the one truly unqualified success was in Maiko down under. The wisdom and prudence that President Cindèla Dardaràn had shown in the first twenty-four hours of the pandemic belied her mere forty years of age. Apparently, she’d given a heartfelt private address to the Maikokan public directly from home, and from her personal console, no less. It had gone viral, to say the least. Clips of it were playing in the news collage’s upper right-hand corner. Explanatory captions detailed Maiko’s four-tier alert system. It consisted of border closures, social and economic lockdowns, and multiple levels of protective redundancies, all of which were implemented with humane concern, and an appeal to the best of the public. That was real leadership: using your charisma to inspire people to take collective action. That was how you took the wind out of a pandemic.

Unfortunately—pardon my language— everything else was an absolute fudge fest.

In the mountains north of Maiko and directly below the clip of Dardaràn’s announcement lay a small rump state called Ritriri. I’d been a child when the old Maikokan state—the military junta—fell into civil war. Ritriri was all that remained of the junta’s government and its core, radicalized demographic support base. President Kazabul was a dictator in all but name, and like most tyrants, he was hopelessly lost in minutiae, and in the worst possible way. CBN showed a live broadcast from the Ritririan Presidential Palace. In lieu of President Kazabul himself, his Minister of Agriculture had taken to the podium to vigorously denounce the Green Death as an “evil fiction” manufactured by the “Trento-Munine hegemony” which was bent on corrupting the pure, pious, helpless Ritririan masses with ideas and customs that were contrary to their fundamentalist brand of Neangelical Lassedicy. The Ritririan Minister of Agriculture reiterated that dancing was still absolutely forbidden—on pain of death—reminded the public that all non-spicy foods were dosed with poison and could not be safely eaten, and emphasized that it was every citizen’s obligation to murder any foreign journalist who dared to set foot in their holy country.

Although the situation in Mu wasn’t anywhere near as bad in Ritriri, it was still disheartening to learn that the most technologically advanced nation in the world was getting itself shot in the foot by its own citizenry. The people of Mu were famed for their capacity for selfless collective action in the face of adversity. When darkpox came and threatened to wipe the Soran Empire off the face of the earth, the people of Mu culled their own to stop the spread, going so far as to let the capital city of Noyoko burn to the ground—Tokuwatsu Palace and all. And they were just as determined to rebound from their collapse; banding together, the nation opened their doors to foreign support—settlers, merchants, artists, inventors—ushering in a golden age of cultural, technological, and intellectual ferment, sped on by the wealth brought in from the Costranaks and the rest of the Daxonian continent. When Trentonian émigrés fled the Prelatory, Mu opened their doors once more, and in doing so, launched their country into the global economic stratosphere. With a history like that, it was painful to watch faithful Lassediles of many different denominations undermine the Munine people’s efforts by secretly attending in-person Mass or Convocation at their local church, in defiance of public health regulations. Apparently, going digital wasn’t good enough, even though the Sun shone its light equally on all the world.

This was near to the heart of my struggles with my faith and the Church that upheld it. It pained me to see people who called themselves men of God and the Angel’s faithful bring about a super-spreader event in the Munine capital of Noyoko. It had gotten so bad that President Mame had been forced to deploy the military in Noyoko and other major cities with significant Lassedile enclaves. Though, I think the award for “most impassioned overreaction” went to the mayor of a small town in the Polovian hinterlands who, as the viral clip on the news showed, had gone so far as to threaten to get a flamethrower, hitch a ride on his private aerostat, and personally burn to a crisp any non-essential workers out on the streets, as well as anyone else who dared to go out past curfew.

The noise from the news collage rose to a climax, and then cut out as the screen transitioned to the familiar sight of Ilzee Rambone at her desk. Ilzee’s short hair was in a bit of tousle, but the spectacles on her face glistened as bright as ever in the studio’s lights. She no doubt had a dragon’s hoard’s worth of meticulously researched facts to flash across the screen.

Out of habit, I looked over my shoulder and called out to my daughter.

“Jules, Ilzee’s talking about—“

—Only to cut myself off when I remembered where Jules was, and where I wasn’t.

I shuddered.

Try as I might, nowadays, if my conversations with my daughter managed to get anywhere, they tended to slip into grievance and acrimony. It wasn’t easy to admit it—and it was even more difficult to acknowledge it—but it was the truth. Still, except when we ended up pitched in a screaming match against one another, our fights weren’t strong enough to break our age-old habit of sitting together to watch The Ilzee Rambone Show, and the bond that habit had forged. When Jules was in elementary school, not even the school librarian had been as well-informed about current events as my daughter. I remembered the days when she gush excitedly about all the “serious grown up stuff” she’d managed to bring up in the middle of class, much to her teachers’ delight.

I remembered those days fondly, and missed them terribly.

Even now, thinking about them made me sigh with regret. I guess it was just a saving grace that her childhood habit had held up even in her adolescence—even after her brother’s death. It helped make our currently rocky relationship just a little bit less jagged. On those days where I came home late because of work, sometimes—say, if she was up late doing homework—we’d sit next to one another on the couch and watch the second airing of Ilzee’s show before scuttling off to bed, and all without saying a word. Sometimes.

I turned my attention back to the news, and sank a little bit deeper into the sofa.