I finally had the time to use my lunch break. There wasn’t an immediate crisis to preoccupy me, and I was hungry to the point of being afraid of what would happen when I ate. I was halfway to the cafeteria when I got a laconic text message from Brand.

You need to come down to the lab. 1Ba318. You know where it is. This is important, Gen. Please.

That was unusual. Dr. Nowston’s text messages tended to be as detailed and articulate as the man himself was in person. I had no intention of leaving Brand hanging. I’d beat myself up if I failed to act upon something Pel or Brand had said was important. Yes, it gave me yet another thing to worry about, but, there was a chance—however small—that a ray of sunshine might have finally come my way. And I wasn’t going to pass that up for anything.

I really needed some good news right now, or—better yet—a victory.

Brand’s preferred laboratory for self-encloisterment was on the first basement level, and I’d paid him enough visits over the years to have both the room number and multiple different routes to and from it long since committed to memory, and that was before you factored in the recent, transformation-associated changes in my memory.

If only I felt the same way about the environment down there.

I doubted I would ever get used to the eerie, echoing white noise ambience that perpetually stirred in the hospital’s expansive underbelly. It immediately brought this morning’s autopsy of Frank Isafobe to mind, and I just as immediately stamped it out by playing my clarinet sonata in my head. I did not want to confront Frank’s ghost, or deal with his viscera dropping down from up above.

To my surprise, it worked. And not just that…

I pressed my hand against the painted stucco walls as I stopped in my tracks.

I heard my sonata. I didn’t just imagine it or remember the sound. I heard the music in my ears, piano accompaniment and all. It was from the second movement, the last movement I’d managed to complete to something approximating my satisfaction.

A scherzo for Dana.

It began with a moto perpetuo piano solo introduction, in the minor, climbing up and down. The feeling was of fog rolling in over the bay, or rain just beginning to fall. The clarinet entered more like an accompaniment to the piano than a true solo, intoning a soft, nervous near-arpeggio. Then, just like Dana always did, the piano kicked things into high gear, forcing the clarinet to dodge its way past the descending fourths chord progressions the piano threw its way. Contrapuntal interactions built tensions, and then with a great cinematic whoosh up a modulating hill and a brief silence, we landed in a garden in the clouds, the clarinet dancing through a happy, lilting, elfin melody, by turns wistful, nervous, boisterous, and playful.

Just like Dana.

And then the first section returned, and everything was an adventure again.

Just like Dana.

The music played in studio-quality surround-sound, enveloping me in my epitaph for my sister. Then came the codetta and its cadences, leading into the central section—the trio—and… I almost wished it would stop—not because I didn’t want to hear it, but because of what I knew would happen once I did.

The lunch melody.

It was simple: just the statement of the melody, an elaborating variation, a repeat of the beginning, and a close—maybe three-and-a-half minutes at most, depending on how I played it—but I could never play the whole thing without stopping, simply because I broke down by the end. I was still undecided about how I wanted the final movement to end, but, at the moment, the trio’s lunch melody was the only moment of true, unblemished sunshine in my whole sonata. It was a lunch with my sister, burgers, fries, soda, ice-cream pebbles and all. It was the feeling of a golden afternoon, where you could laugh and smile and maybe a little more unhealthily than you should, while music played in the background and cars whisked on by, dogs sticking their heads out of the windows, their jaws slobbering in the wind and the sun. It was a moment where time and worries were meaningless—just words, and the kind that really couldn’t hurt you.

After the trio, the movement would more-or-less repeat the opening section, but my private concert cut itself off as I broke into tears as the lunch melody died away.

I took my PPE off, stowed it in a nearby waste-bin, put my work console in my coat, and then wiped my face on my sleeve, spending a minute leaning back against the wall, breathing deeply with my eyes closed.

“I miss you Dana,” I muttered, as I opened my eyes and shook my head. My words died to a whisper. “I miss you so much…” I lifted my eyes to the ceiling lights.

“Crud…” I muttered.

I didn’t want anyone else to lose the people they loved.

I was going to get Andalon’s help. I was going to deal with Frank. I was going to help Merritt, Kurt, Bethany, Lopé/Paul, Charles/Werumed-San, and everyone else—even Letty. I had to.

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Self-refrigerating body bags were stacked up against the wall in a long line. And all of them were full.

I muttered under my breath. “C’mon, Brand, I need my ray of sunshine.”

Room 1Ba318 was just around the corner.

I entered the research-grade pathological laboratory to find Dr. Nowston hard at work with Dr. Skorbinka. Brand liked to describe his lab as ‘a place for squares, by squares,’ and he was right on point. Whoever had designed it had a fetish for quadrangles. Square-shaped fluorescent lights lit a square-shaped room, at the center of which stood four, square-shaped columns, each located at one of the four points of an imaginary square. Steely gray desks were arranged in a square around each of the four columns, with consoles as square-shaped as the tabletops they were embedded in. A countertop wound its way all around the room, the same color as the desks, interrupted only by a small, square gap through which the door to the room could swing without impediment. The drawers and cabinets beneath the countertop were, obviously, square in shape, as were the glass-paned doors of the cabinets up above them. The only contents of the room that weren’t square were the myriad tools and machines scattered about, and the people that used them—though I suspected the designer would have made them square if it had been within his power to do so.

The lab usually had a handful of researchers busy at work, so it was surprising to find it virtually empty. Drs. Nowston, Skorbinka, and myself were its only occupants, not counting the pieces of patients pouched, packaged, or phialed away in the refrigerated storage units.

But the thing that most stuck out to me were the dazzling lights surrounding the microscope on the counter closest to Brand. Wires and threads orbited and glistened in many colors, twitching with something like a heartbeat or a brainwave.

Immediately, I knew what they had to show me: a sample of the fungus. There was no mistaking that aura. I figured they’d want me to see it for myself, so I thinned my wyrmsight.

Dr. Skorbinka scratched his bristly sideburns contemplatively, as he swiveled his stool around, sizing me up from head to toe. He stared at me like I was a piece of meat at the supermarket on sale for half price. I treated the moment just like I would a security check at the airport, waiting patiently until he was done.

“Nowston Brand,” he said, looking over his shoulder to where Dr. Nowston sat, several socially-distanced feet away, “we have company.”

Brand turned around on his stool. “What?”

Brand’s work tended to leave him Moonstruck, to the point he would genuinely forget about facts of life that most of us took for granted, things like sleep, the existence of other people, or the importance of personal hygiene.

“Who would—ah! Genneth!” Dr. Nowston’s eyes lit up as soon as he saw me. “Finally! You’re here!” He nodded excitedly. The motions shook his fractal broccoli sponge curls where they weren’t held down by his laboratory goggles.

“So… what’s going on?" I asked.

“You really trust this man, Nowston Brand?” Dr. Skorbinka asked, eyeing me warily. “He not destroy research?” He raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips. “Or steal?”

“With my life, Mistelann,” Brand said, rolling over to press his hand atop the mycologist’s shoulder. “I’d trust him with my life.” He retracted his arm and rolled back to his workstation.

I noticed my pathologist friend was even more jittery than usual. He rapped his fingers on the countertop in a constant, erratic rhythm while rapidly quivering his thigh.

“Brand, are you alright,?” I asked. “You seem… agitated.”

Nodding, he blinked and waved his hand in an extravagant gesture. “I—I mean,” he clacked his teeth, “yes and no… and no… and yes.” Then, he cocked his head to the side and sighed. “Fine, if you really want to know, I feel like I need to have a seizure or two just to get the extra excitement outta me.” He spun a half-turn on his stool. “But I’m also petrified and possibly even losing my goddamn mind…” he locked eyes with me, “so I guess it averages out to a nasty case of the jitters… maybe? I mean… having the jitters is better than screaming bloody murder? Right?”

“Okay, something is definitely wrong,” I said, “and I need you to tell me everything right now, because I don’t think I’ll survive any more drawn-out exposition.” I cleared my throat.

I wanted the details, stat.

Dr. Skorbinka glared at me mischievously. “Everything—including crime.”

“Crime?”

“Erick Gulliver, our head of Pathology, might say he isn’t going to cede any of his authority to the government,” Brand said, “but, the way he’s been running the labs says differently. It’s like they’re under martial law. Nobody who isn’t a lab director has gotten to see any of the biopsy samples from the infected patients; and if any have, they’re being kept under lock and key.”

My hopes were gradually being eclipsed.

“I’m still not quite sure what to make of it,” Brand continued. “From what I saw in Mr. Isafobe’s autopsy, NFP-20 redefines the meaning of the word virulence. The precise mode of transmission has yet to be announced, but, even if we take the most conservative approach and assume disease spreads solely through direct contact with body fluids, the microbial bio-loads present in exudates, sputum, blood, and skin exuviae are so high that I’d bet even a single micro-droplet would be enough to infect someone. So…” he exhaled and frowned, “I guess it does kinda make sense to keep access restricted, especially when we’re still awaiting an official pronouncement about the probability and/or extent to which airborne transmission has been occurring.”

Dr. Skorbinka chuckled as he adjusted his microscope’s magnification settings. Looking up from his work, he turned to me. “Is every Trenton-man as naïve as Brand, Dr. Howle?”

“What do you mean?” I asked him. “What are you getting at?”

“We are in… deep shit, comrade,” Dr. Skorbinka said. The mycologist’s expression was somber and stark. He pushed off the countertop, rolling away on his stool. “See for yourself.” He gestured at the microscope.

“I thought you said you were having trouble accessing samples,” I said.

Dr. Skorbinka nodded. “Quite. Is crime of which I spoke.”

I narrowed my gaze. “Where did you get these samples?”

“From a skin biopsy I snuck off the late Frank Isafobe,” Brand replied, with a toothy grin.

“Without approval?” I asked.

Dr. Skorbinka snorted in amusement. “Where I come from, researchers cannot make progress without being… how do you say?—ah: proactive.”

“Am I really qualified for this?” I asked.

“You’d be surprised at how much an ‘amateur’ like you is able to see,” Brand answered, nodding encouragingly. “You know more than enough; we can fill in the rest of the details for you. But first, you need to see it. Otherwise… you’re not gonna believe it.”

And so, leaning over, I looked.