I scrambled to pick the console off the ground. I stared at the screen for a second as a shiver ran all the way down to the tip of my tail where it curled around my thigh. I tapped the screen and accepted the call.

Bethany’s face filled the screen. The shadows around her…

Was she hiding under a bed?

“Dr. Howle!” Tears streamed down her cheeks. Whatever console she was using was trembling in her hands. “Help!” she whispered, her jaw wide. “Help! It’s—”

—Scream cut Bethany off as the bed lifted up. The console flung out of her hands. Everything spun.

I plopped my console into the pocket of my PPE gown and ran like the wind on feet as numb as bricks, my tail rasping against my thigh, clambering up the stairs like a madman. I pushed myself off the handrail to boost my speed.

I’m coming, Bethany! I’m coming.

I was willing to bet this was Frank’s doing. The malevolent specter must have struck, only this time, it wasn’t targeting me.

It was targeting my patients.

Andalon hovered along with me as I climbed. Soon, I reached the second floor. I charged through the door on the landing, out into the hall.

Andalon! I bit my lip, screaming into my mind as loudly as I could.

I ran down the hall, and then around two corners.

I think Frank’s ghost is back. Can you help make him go away, like you did with Aicken?

There was a brief pause.

Just one more corridor, I thought.

“Yeah! Andalon can help! Andalon likes to help!” She flew behind me, her nightgown fluttering by her feet.

I sighed with relief, but because I was running, I caused myself a minor coughing fit instead.

I can do this, I told myself. I can stop anyone else from being hurt!

Arriving outside Room 268, I swiped my hand-chip over the scanner on the console by the doors. The room was under restricted access. A transparent electro-polymer layer embedded inside the panes of glass in the doors kept the windows tinted black, so that no one could look inside. The tinting vanished as the scanner recognized my permission to enter the room.

The doors clicked open.

I was about to rush into the vestibule when—

—Fudge.

I was being foolish.

Leaning my dead back against the wall, I whipped out my console once more and quickly dashed out a text message to Dr. Marteneiss.

Heggy, something nasty is going down in Room 268. Bring in the cavalry! I’m going in on my own to bide time. Yes, I know it’s stupid.

I had to go back to put in the apostrophe, because—darn it!—I was not going to be able to look death in the face knowing that my last words had a grammar error!

I stabbed the Send button, tapped my console off, stuffed it in my PPE gown pocket and zipped into the vestibule.

The inner doors were flung wide open. I ran at the sight, clenching my fists, bracing myself to face the monstrous specter. My loafers squeaked on the lacquered floor as I skid to a stop.

The good news? It wasn’t Frank’s ghost! The bad news? It wasn’t Frank’s ghost!

Metal clanged against metal. An invisible force shoved one of the empty beds into its neighbor.

“You nutcase!” Letty screeched. “You fucking EVIL WHOOPIE CUSHION!”

The witch was levitating over her bed. Her legs dangled beneath her, plastered in liver spots. A nimbus of blue and gold swirled around her.

She was using her powers to pin Werumed-san against the wall, much like she had done with me in the Quiet Ward. The mascot’s pancake of a head trembled. The blond patches of felt hair brushed over the shutters on the window, making them rattle and crinkle.

Everyone in the room, absolutely everyone was covered by the violet and ultramarine lacework energy bindings that I’d seen in myself and several others. There was no doubt about it: that stuff was a tell-tale sign of a Type Two infection—of a transformee.

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But I’d have to deal with the implications later.

Letty slowly squeezed her hand into a fist as she raised her arm.

Werumed-san shot up against the wall. The mascot twitched oddly as the psychokinetic weave pulsed around him. Either the man within couldn’t flail his limbs, or he didn’t know how.

“Letty! Please!” I pled, “calm down!”

“I WAS WATCHING THAT!” she yelled, completely ignoring me.

Looking down, I saw that something had ripped Letty’s precious console from the foldable pipe on which it had been mounted. Sprigs of severed wires poked up from the tear.

Beast’s teeth! That’s what this is about?

I almost couldn’t believe it.

If I had to take a guess, the mascot had acted up and the resulting psychokinetic outburst had ripped the console from its mount, thus depriving the mean-spirited hag of her ability to watch VOL News.

Couldn’t she just have moved to another bed?

“Mr. Genneth! Watch out!”

I looked down to see Andalon running up to me.

Immediately, I regretted my inner sarcasm.

Psychokinetic force detonated overhead, with Werumed-san as its epicenter. I flicked my head up only to get buffeted with waves of power like desert wind. The shutters on the window crumpled and tore; the glass below exploded. The window’s antique frame thrashed.

An instinct I didn’t know I had flared in me as the wave of force slammed into me and knocked me to the ground. Music in the colors of sun and sky spilled out from my face like a geyser. The flow rushed upward, spraying the shattered glass across Werumed-san and the wall. Shards dug into the plaster, sticking like lost claws. The fragments headed at the mascot simply whipped around him, entirely deflected.

I felt like I’d just run around the block. My breaths panted.

The back of my head hit the back of my PPE visor as I fell onto the floor. Glass fell in soft hail. I flinched and closed my eyes, even though my visor and gown completely protected me.

Andalon bounced up and down happily, frolicking in the shards.

“Look, Mr. Genneth! Look!”

Oh, heck no…

From out of the corner of my vision, Werumed-san came floating past, swathed in glistening psychokinesis. His limbs dangled uselessly while his pancake head shook back and forth and twisted from side to side. If there were any words in them, I couldn’t tell.

I rolled onto my side and pushed myself up just as Werumed-san stuck his arms out, flailing them as if he was possessed.

As far as I could tell, he might have been.

The man in the suit screeched in a voice that was more like many instead of one, with layers of tones both high and low.

“I AM DEAD!! WERUMED-SAN LIVES!!”

All the beds lurched away from him as psychokinetic force rippled out from him, flinging pillows and sheets in every direction, and rattling cabinets’ doors and shelves. It sent Letty crashing into a cabinet at her back. She slumped to the ground while Kurt and I toppled to the floor. Merritt was ripped from her bed and skid to a stop on the floor in a tangle of sheets. One of the beds lifted back, showing Lopé on his knees and elbows, cowering beside Bethany, covering his face with his hands, weeping as he muttered “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” again and again.

“I told you to stay away from him!” Kurt yelled.

“Genneth!” Merritt cried, “help!”

The mascot floated to the center of the room. Winds rippled out from him, fluttering bedsheets and rattling window shutters. Cold, loud air drafted in through the broken window, filling the room with sirens’ cries.

The mascot shrieked. “HE LIVES!!” He spasmed, either in agony or ecstasy. “HE LIVES!!”

Or both.

I locked eyes with Kurt. The hero of the Dressfeldt massacre stared at me with the eyes of a frightened dog. I could only imagine the fear he saw in my eyes.

Werumed-san’s body began to vibrate faster and faster.

My stomach sank several stories down. I’d played enough video games to know what that meant.

“Kurt!” I yelled, “Help me!” I glanced back at Bethany and Lopé. “Help!” I motioned my head at the floating mascot.

I have a feeling I’m going to regret this.

Andalon, meanwhile, jumped up and down and waved her arms, cheering me on. “Go, Mr. Genneth! Go, Mr. Genneth!”

For a moment, I kinda smiled, and then I leapt and the levitating mascot, grabbing him by the legs. The force of Werumed-san’s powers pulled upward against me, but I had a full suit of PPE and wasn’t in the best physical shape, so gravity won out.

Two pairs of arms reached out to help pull the mascot down. Kurt’s tail dragged on the floor as he rushed up to join me. The other pair—

—Bethany?

The young black woman gritted her teeth in a fearsome scowl. I was lucky not to have been on the receiving end of it.

We leaned back with our body weight as we pulled.

The mascot sank like a stone, as did Bethany and I. I saw Kurt leap on the mascot right as I hit the floor. I yelped in pain.

I’d landed right on my tail. But as I pushed myself up off the ground, I stopped, noticing that a sweet scent crept into the room. It wasn’t the sickly sweet, earthy caramelized stench of NFP-20 infection that had come to coat every inch of the hospital. But, still, it was oddly familiar.

Lightheadedness crept into me, but not in a bad way. This wasn’t an oncoming-panic-attack lightheadedness.

Slowly, the room began to spin.

Something pulled the rug out from under my disquiet. Chemical euphoria papered over my angst. My tongue grew fat in my mouth. Something instinctive in me urged me to my feet, but I staggered. I had to grasp to the foot of a bed just to keep myself from falling to the floor like a slippery halibut.

Halibut. That’s a funny-sounding word.

Something was wrong.

The sweet smell had grown quite strong.

I looked around. I wasn't the only one exhibiting odd behavior. Letty was cackling, even as she lay on the floor with her back against the wall. Lopé had crawled out from under his bed and was barking like a dog. Behind me, Bethany sighed in pleasure, and over by the far wall, Merritt giggled.

“Mr. Genneth! Something’s happening!” Andalon looked around, frightened and concerned.

What’s… going? On?

I felt intoxicated.

Behind me, the doors slammed open like a thunderclap. I flicked my head to the right to see what it was. People were storming into the room, only it looked like they had sink spigots instead of heads.

Kurt rolled off Werumed-san. The mascot twitched. If there’d been snow, he’d have made snow angels.

Alarm rang off in my gut. Even through the mental haze, I knew that Kurt shouldn’t have moved off the mascot.

“Kurt,” I said, my tongue thick in my mouth, “get back on—”

—But then, everything went south.