By the time I made it out of Room 268, I was a ruptured husk. I walked down the halls until I stumbled upon an old wooden bench, worn and unvarnished. I sat down, pulled the console out of my PPE pocket, and dialed home.

The call rang once.

The call rang twice.

My daughter’s face appeared on the screen.

I was a peeled fruit: sweet and sour, and weeping juice all over.

Jules raised her eyebrows in alarm. “Dad…?”

“Jules! Julette! My baby girl! I love you so much, you hear me?” I lowered one of my hands, clenching it into a trembling fist. I peeled off my visor, hairnet, and my face-mask and wiped the gunk off my face with the hairnet’s inner surface.

My face now smelled like my scalp, and probably had a couple of loose hairs matted on it, and I couldn’t care less about it.

“I’m sorry we yelled. I don’t like it when we fight. I miss the way things used to be. I miss your brother so, so much. I know you feel like we tried to replace him, and maybe you’re right—it… it just hurts so much.”

Jules paled. “Dad, please. Calm down, you—”

“—Jules, is that your father?” Pel said, offscreen.

The view through the console in my daughter’s hands spun about as she ran off somewhere. A door slammed shut, a lock clicked, and all the walls turned pink.

She’d locked herself in her room.

Normally, this only happened when I was at the house. I guess you could say it reminded me of home.

“Julette Howle,” Pelbrum said, loudly, but sternly, “unlock this door right now. Please don’t ruin—”

“—It’s not me,” Jules said, looking over her shoulder, “it’s Dad.” She brushed her bangs out of her face as she turned to face me.

It almost goes without saying that my breathing was quite heavy and ragged at this point. My face probably looked like a wet beetroot. A hairy, wet beetroot.

“What’s going on, Dad?”

I thought of telling her to let me talk to her mother, but I knew my daughter well enough to know that she wouldn’t do anything without a plan, and, at the moment, getting into an argument about whether or not I was doubting her plan was one of the last thing I’d ever want to do.

Putting my hairnet, visor, and mask to the side, I grabbed the console with both hands and hunched over, holding it between my legs.

I shuddered.

“It’s hard. It’s… it’s scary,” I said. “It’s terrifying. By the Angel, Jules, this thing… NFP-20…” I leaned back into the bench. A chill went down my spine.

I didn’t have permission to spread information about Type Two NFP-20 cases to my family, and I had no intention of putting them in the crosshairs of not-so-secret corporate assassins.

“I love you so much, Jules. I love you, your mother, and both your brothers.”

Sniffling, Jules wiped her face on her elbow. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry about the yelling, too.” She covered her mouth as she laughed. “And… you know, the twerp did a really good job, at the play.”

I chuckled, nearly choking on the lump that formed in my throat. “Please… don’t call him a twerp,” I said.

She smiled, weeping quietly. “He is a twerp, though,” she mumbled.

For a moment, we stared at each other, not saying anything.

“I love you, Dad,” Jules said. “Please, stay safe.” She took a deep breath.

Like father, like daughter.

“Do you want me to put mom on the line?” she asked.

Oh God…

My heart sank.

I wanted to say yes with every fiber of my being. I also knew that, in this emotional state, if I started talking to my wife, I was going to keep talking until every last word that had ever been said had crossed my lips, and then some. I’d also have then created a digital confession of my status as a Type Two NFP-20 case and the fact that I was hiding it from my colleagues and superiors.

“No… I…” I held my breath in my chest and shuddered. I nodded hurriedly and put on my most convincing smile. I tilted the console screen back so that Jules couldn’t see below my neck, because if she did, she’d notice I was fidgeting with my bow-tie, and would put two and two together.

To make a long story short, if a family game required any kind of willful deception or poker-face… I was not cut out for it.

“I need to get back to work,” I said. “Tell your mother and brother I love them. I love them more than the Light itself.”

Then I ended the call.

Oh, God…

— — —

I didn’t know what was real anymore. I liked being rational whenever I could be, and I was desperately trying to be so now, more than ever, but it felt like my mind was slipping out between my fingers. I didn’t know what to think anymore. Even more so than usual, every moment was a struggle to keep moving and stay sane. I wanted nothing more than to tear the mysteries to shreds and reveal their hidden truths, but at the same time I was terrified that the truth would break me.

When it came to people who truly believed—people like my wife, like Ani Lokanok—I envied their ability to read significance into even the slightest fibers of the world around them. Sometimes it was as simple as Pel seeing the breath of the Hallowed Beast—the breath of Life itself—in the wafting vapors of a hot cup of tea. Other times, it was the awe-inspiring conviction that Ani showed in seeing each and every patient that came her way as part of the Divine plan, filled with significance beyond ken. Even my mother-in-law, as vulgar and militant as she was, nevertheless possessed the same instinct. To Margaret, every action in every moment of every life was a battlefield between good and evil—between the Godhead’s will and the taint of sin. Everything. Even voting.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I wasn’t cut out for that. To me, that viewpoint was alien and terrifying, because it meant that every moment of every second of my life was a choice between good and evil, and how could I be sure I was making the right decision? I’d go mad from paralysis.

But now, I knew that monsters walked the earth. I knew that powers strange and uncanny were creeping into being, perhaps waking from a long slumber. What did it mean? What was I supposed to do? How did I know what was right?

Oh, God… what’s going to happen to us? To the world?

If the evil souls that ended up getting housed within Andalon’s wyrms turned into demons who then hijacked the powers of those wyrms—that is, Andalon’s powers… by the Angel, the havoc they’d wreak would make the Green Death the least of our worries!

While the Church’s theology and soteriology were set in stone (unless, of course, you were a Neangelical), its teachings on demons were far less… definite. There were basically two points of general consensus. First, demons had a hierarchy, with Norms at the top. Second—and more importantly—except for the Norms, all demons had once been reprobate souls. This is what got drilled into us in Sessions School. Mortal sinners, profligates, the barbaric, and the cruel; the more vile a soul had been in life, the more quickly that soul would transition into demonhood following their entrance into Hell, and the stronger the demon the soul would become.

But it wasn’t like the souls of the wicked got to rejoice in their depravity. Oh no. The demon’s body was a manifestation of the sins of the soul(s) from which it was birthed. The actual soul(s) themselves—the sliver of divine light at their core—were trapped within the hearts of the demons they became. Separated from the evil they had cultivated in life, those souls were damned to agonizing, never-ending torment, trapped within a vessel whose only purpose was to inflict suffering and pain. Once mature, demons were said to emerge from Hell in places like Cranter Pit, that they might stalk the earth and poison the hearts and minds of men, that the righteous might be led into temptation and end up joining the forces of Hell after their mortal existence came to an end.

I’d never seen a demon before, but I imagined Mr. Isafobe’s specter was a darn close fit. Yet it made no sense. If any of the spirits within me were destined for demonhood, it was probably Aicken Wognivitch’s. The Dressfeldt shooter was a murderer, not to mention a cruel, raving nutcase. Yet it wasn’t his soul that had become a demon, but Frank’s, and I had no explanation for it.

“Darn it!” I muttered, clenching my fist.

I sat down in the nearest available chair.

After spending a moment worrying over what to do, I decided I might as well turn to social media for answers.

In general, “When in doubt, check social media” was risky advice, at best, but here, it was just what the doctor ordered (the doctor being me).

Like most people, I had a Socialife account, but I hardly used it, other than posting pictures of myself once a year, on my birthday. I’d started doing it as a kid, at Dana’s recommendation. It was her way of trying to get me out of my shell. Unfortunately, it was now little more than a photo montage of my slow march toward death.

But this was solely about my use of Socialife as a civilian. As a (neuro)psychiatrist, however, the situation was completely different. For the psychiatric industry, social media was nothing short of an Angelsend. As you’d expect, DAISHU had been the one to first make the connection. The collection of purchases, posts, Bounces, Pops, and Followings that made up a person’s digital footprint provided all the information an organization could ever want to know about them. Social media was the magical tool that could turn a person into a statistic. And the best part? We did it to ourselves, eager and willing. Social media preserved the experiences that defined our lives, forming a digital sepulcher, only for the living instead of the dead.

It was just a matter of forensics. By knowing your digital footprint, you could be forecast; your preferred products and services could be guessed ahead of time. How you voted on any particular issue could be predicted, and, in some cases, even swayed. To working professionals like myself who needed information about people to make a living, social media was a blessing from the Sun. Knowing what a patient had posted on social media provided a wealth of information about their psychological state and history which might not have come through in a one-on-one session.

So, the way I figured, if I wanted to get to know Mr. Isafobe, I might as well see the digital breadcrumbs he’d left behind.

Whipping out my console, I was immediately greeted by a barrage of warnings and notifications as I opened the Socialife app. DAISHU censorship was in full force. From the looks of things, they were cracking down on conspiracy theorists of all sorts, though I imagined they were also trying to suppress some of the pandemic’s more frightening details.

The transformees. The powers. The… exploding heads.

But that wasn’t what I was here for.

I typed Frank’s name into the search engine.

Bingo.

There he was.

His page was inundated by posts from his friends and family, sending messages of encouragement, prayer, and hope.

“You’ll get through this!”

“I love you, Dad!”

“We’ll see you soon, Frank. Maybe another day at the beach?”

I had to fight back tears as I read them.

“I know this birthday wasn’t very good, but maybe my next one will be even better!”

My fight failed miserably. That last one had been from his daughter. Jonan told me all about Frank’s desire to make it to his little girl’s pizza party.

It turned out Frank had been a relatively active Socialife user.

He liked athletics. He liked going to the beach; he played beach volleyball. He helped coach his daughter’s water polo team. He liked pictures of cute animals doing silly things. He was a rabid ultimate frisbee fan, utterly devoted to the Crownsleep Catapults. He’d been overjoyed when the Catapults beat their perennial Trueshore rivals, the Dawnhome Fangs.

Fudge.

I remembered that game. Even I’d found it thrilling—and I wasn’t a sports fan by any means

The more I read, the more I learned more about the man whose corrupted spirit now tormented me. Frank had liked paintings from the early First Republic; his favorites were Janson, Lemmings, and—especially—Croythmarch. The man had been a devoted father, husband, brother, and son. He wasn’t perfect (who was?); he had a pretty crude sense of humor, and he certainly drank a lot—the photos of him with his friends doing a pub-crawl made that plain. Mr. Isafboe was also a textbook example of the so-called conspicuous consumer, particularly when it came to Crownsleep Catapults and their franchise. He could be rash and brash, and he had an unfortunate tendency to get dragged into long, petty arguments.

Really, Frank was just an ordinary guy, maybe even better than ordinary. He didn’t post death threats. He didn’t bully or troll. He wasn’t cruel, twisted, or malicious. He didn’t want to sicc firing squads on the people who disagreed with him. He just liked posting lots of pictures of himself wearing Catapults memorabilia—T-shirt, helmet, foam “Number One!” hand, and the like—especially whenever anyone mentioned the Fangs.

He even went to Church.

He didn’t deserve to be a demon.

I put my console to sleep and stuffed it into my PPE gown.

Could I say the same for myself?

I wanted to say “yes”, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

I still blamed myself for Rale’s death.

Why did good things happen to bad people?

But still… it made no sense. Why had he turned? Why not others? Why not Aicken?

But, wait: for all I knew, perhaps Aicken’s soul was on its way to becoming a demon, and would have become one, had Andalon not blasted him—

—A tingle shot from my neck all the way down my spine.

If wyrms were demons, why would Andalon disintegrate a piece of grade-A demon material like Aicken Wognivitch with an energy blast like he was just a villain from an animé? Was it because she didn’t remember that she was working with demons? Or… was it because she really was trying to fight them?

Trying to fight the darkness…

“Guh!” I groaned aloud, stomping my foot in frustration.

This would have been a perfect time to ask Andalon questions, but she wasn’t talking to me because she was mad at me!

Andalon! I shouted in my thoughts. Andalon, get out here, now! Andalon!!

Nope. Nothing.

I huffed out breath.

Fudge.