It had taken a bit of maneuvering to explain what happened after I ran out of Room 268 and took down the specter with Andalon’s help. Fortunately, Heggy had been there, so she was able to vouch for me that running out a room screaming was not unprecedented behavior for me. That helped a lot. It also meant the falsehood hole I’d dug myself into had gotten a couple feet deeper.
It turned out that management had pumped gas in through the ventilation shafts of Room 268—laughing gas (nitrous oxide), to be precise—which they’d released after seeing the live feed from the security camera footage, realizing what was happening, and that the transformees were out of control. The “spigot-heads” had been gas masks. Dr. Marteneiss and a platoon of nurses had been given clearance to go in and sedate the patients in Room 268. And not just clearance; Director Hobwell had outright ordered it; they just hadn’t expected the laughing gas would further destabilize the transformees, instead of lulling them into a pliable, soporific euphoric state. When things finally calmed down, it was only because Heggy and the nurses succeeded in sedating them with notxifell. That would keep the situation under control at least until the transformees next woke. Honestly, I was amazed I’d gotten through the whole thing unscathed.
Guile was not my strong suit.
No one has a perfect working relationship with every character attribute—or, if such a person did exist, I’d yet to meet them. As for myself, I’d never had a good relationship with guile. The relationship was doomed from the start. My first encounter with guile was in elementary school, in sixth grade, during an impromptu spelling test.
“Genneth,” Mrs. Haberman had said. “Spell guile.”
Little young me sat abashed for a good twenty seconds with frightened hamster noises scampering around inside my head until—in a very uncertain voice—thinking back to the list of vocabulary words we had to learn that month, I asked: “Do you mean gweel?”
A good chunk of my classmates outright laughed at me, and I felt pretty down about it until early in the evening when, while on a consolatory dinner at O’Malleigh’s, Dana told me: “Hey, you spelled it right, didn’tcha? So pepper up!” Even now, over three decades later, I was still trying to learn how to “pepper up” on demand.
As for the concept of guile, it and I were rarely, if ever, on good speaking terms. On more than one occasion, I’d lain awake at night worrying that if I died before my wife, at my funeral, Pel would tell the story of how I’d tried to surprise her by hiding our engagement ring inside a pecan pie—her favorite—and how things had gone south for a while, and then north—and north right in my face—as we rushed over to the kitchen sink to get it back.
Hopefully, my victory against Frank’s ghost would prove to be the start of an award-winning lucky streak.
Fidgeting with my bow-tie, I glanced down to the pocket in my PPE. The scenes I’d helped Marvyn film were stowed in a file on my console. Hopefully, it would pack enough of a punch to do the trick.
I looked over to the other corner of the elevator at Ani, just as she did exactly the same to me. We blurted out our words at the same time:
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.
“You don’t need to do this, Genneth,” she said.
Lowering her gaze in embarrassment, Dr. Lokanok shook her head. Out of nervous habit, she raised a glove-covered hand to run her fingers through her long, dark hair, only to stop when she remembered the PPE was in the way. It made me wonder how much longer it would be before we finally got used to the darn things.
Muzak played in the background, oblivious to the tension of the moment. My legs were feeling sorer than ever. It had been several hours since my final encounter with Frank’s ghost, and my legs didn’t seem to be getting any better. I’d lost all feeling in my feet, and paresthesias danced up my lower legs, particularly when I stood in place for any length of time. Fortunately, Ani and I had approached the elevator at just the right time and were able to immediately get on.
I locked eyes with her. “You go first.”
Ani sighed. She interwove her fingers, cracking them as she stretched her arms out in front of her. “If you hadn’t wanted me to accompany you, I doubt you would have called me and whispered your fiendish plan.” She smiled playfully. “I’m the one that started this, Dr. Howle. I want to see it through. Besides,” she added, “I think we’re both here because we want this victory.”
I paused, staring at her. She’d taken the words right out of my mouth. “You’re sure you’re not a psychiatrist?” I asked, dead-pan.
“Nah, it’s just my Girl Power, firing on all cylinders, that,” she glanced up at the ceiling, “and some help from the Big Three.” She grinned—only to sigh a moment later. She clasped her hands together and whispered one of the Orisons beneath her breath, though I couldn’t make out any words beyond “children”.
Ani closed her eyes for a moment as she made the Bondsign, stroking her fingers along her PPE visor four times: across, down, across and up. For a second, she looked at me, hopeful—no doubt expecting me to repeat the gesture, but, sighing, I smiled sadly and shook my head.
“Do you still not believe?” Ani asked, softly.
“It’s not that I don’t,” I said, “it’s that I don’t know.” He put on a smile to try and change the tone. “I know I believe in you, and in the rest of the team, and in what we’re trying to do right now.”
She nodded. “I hope you find your way.”
“I do, too,” I said.
Ani paused briefly. “There have been too many deaths already.” She sniffled, speaking in a hushed voice. “I need a win, Genneth…”
Ani’s worry was plain to see. It never ceased to amaze me how people like Ani all-too-often came packaged with clinical depression. Was there something about sunshine that drew storm clouds? Or did we notice the sunshine only because of how fiercely it raged against the dark?
“That reminds me,” I added, softly, “I’ll need to send a note to the pharmacy about refilling your prescription.”
She nodded. “Thanks.” Dr. Lokanok lowered her head. “Do you think it will work?”
“I don’t know, but I want to believe it will.”
Finally, the elevator doors slid open, letting us out onto the familiar, chocolate-scented hallway on the Administration Building’s fifth floor. We went through a changing area and doffed all of our PPE except for our masks, and then marched down the carpeted floor and straight into Hobwell’s office.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
There was no point in me rubbing my lucky bow-tie in the hopes of finding Marietta off duty again. Not even my bow-tie could make that miracle happen more than once a week. And, lo and behold, Marietta was there. Both Ani and I expected to get the usual resistance from Hobwell’s secretary, but what we hadn’t expected was to find her fully decked out in PPE. Marietta looked for all the world like a deep-sea diver as she sat at her desk, barraged by endless waves of messages, phone-calls, videophone calls, pager alerts, and Angel-knows-what else.
Ani walked up to Marietta’s desk. “We need to see Director Hobwell immediately.”
Marietta looked up and scowled. “Back!” She snapped. “10 feet! Now!” The secretary pointed forward. Nail extensions poked out like claws against her lime green gloves.
Ani complied.
The secretary cleared her throat as she adjusted several mounted consoles’ positions, swinging their metal support arms out of the way.
“So, you want to see Harold?” Marietta asked.
“Yes,” I said. I took a step forward—though, not too close.
Rolling her eyes, Marietta shook her head. “So does every other schmo in this goddamn city,” She turned to face one of her many consoles. “No, not you Dr. Moonpulp, I was talking to—”
Ani decided that was more than permission for her. I followed suit. We entered the Director’s office.
Marietta popped up from her seat. “—Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” The shell of arm-mounted consoles surrounding her slowed her down, stopping her from reaching us.
We closed the door to Hobwell’s office, and that was that.
Harold’s distressed visage flicked up from his desktop console the instant we closed the door. He sputtered. “H-Howle? What’s the meaning of this?”
“There are resources we have and patients who need them, but Dr. Marteneiss is tying our hands, all in the name of policy,” Ani said. “It’s an outrage!”
Dr. Lokanok kept her composure throughout. This was typical of her; Ani kept a lid on herself whenever authority figures were near. Unfortunately for us, it wasn’t necessary to shake fists or slam a table to get a rise out of Director Hobwell. As soon as the words had left Ani’s lips, Harold’s mustache drooped and his boiled-egg face blanched.
Sensing the imminent storm, I immediately shifted to damage control, and tried to soften her words’ blow. “I don’t know if it’s an outrage,” I said, glaring at Ani, “but,” I looked back to Hobwell, “it’s definitely troubling, sir.”
“You know what’s an outrage!?” Director Hobwell roared, mustache bristling, “You two, barging in here like you own the place. And you, Howle,” he turned to me, glowering, stabbing his finger at me, “I already told you and Dr. Derric what was going on. But, no, that wasn’t good enough for you! You have the audacity to come in here and talk back to me? I already told you: no!” Exhaling, Harold Hobwell centered himself, straightening his tie. “If you weren’t one of the CMT leaders, I’d have security come and throw you out onto the street. The city raptors could eat you, for all I care!” With a huff, Director Hobwell rolled his eyes and turned to Ani. “I don’t like it any more than you do,” he explained, sternly, but not cruelly, “but it’s DAISHU policy. The Board of Trustees doesn’t take kindly to violations; we’re talking about the fund-confiscating kind of unkindness, here.”
“You’re not the first person to tell me this today,” Ani said.
“So,” Hobwell replied—sensing a conspiracy—“you admit to flagrantly wasting my time with this selfish interruption of yours?”
Ani’s eyes bore into me.
My sister’s words filtered through my head.
You’re a superhero, Nethgen, don’t ever forget it.
Clearing my throat, I took a deep breath.
“I’m not here because I’m questioning your authority, Sir,” I said, “if anything, it’s the opposite. There’s been a development, and I felt it would be prudent to inform you ASAP.”
Director Hobwell’s eyebrows made like a drawbridge and flattened. “Development? The hell is that supposed to mean? Unless it involves mass death or the prevention thereof, I don’t want to—”
“—I know you have a direct line to the Trustees, Sir,” I said, “and I think our superiors at DAISHU would prefer advance warning before an imminent public-relations disaster.”
Hobwell stuttered like a jackhammer. “P-P—disaster?” The Director suddenly went quiet. I had his full, undivided attention.
Smiling at me, Ani nodded her head. She followed my lead. “There’s a troublingly large number of young children among those uninsured patients, Director Hobwell,” she said. “They’re waiting for hours and hours on end in our lobbies, waiting rooms, and reception areas while the rich old folks are walking up to the reception desks and receiving premium care on demand.”
“I don’t quite follow,” Hobwell said.
I pointed at the floor. “Right this moment, there are two reporters doing an in-depth profile piece on the conditions in WeElMed’s reception areas at the outset of the pandemic. Though they’ve already gathered quite a bit of footage, they wanted to do a live broadcast right then and there,” I waved my hand, “they said something about ‘chronicling the injustice of it all’, but, knowing the trouble that could cause for us and our desperately needed funding, after pleading with them, I managed to get them to wait for a bit, at least long enough for us to go see you and check if you had anything to say or do about the matter before they begin.” I shook my head. “But I’m worried they might not wait much longer. They might even have tried to pull a fast one on me.” I nodded. “The reporters these days, they’re very slick, you know,” I added.
Hobwell wheezed like a stalling engine. He sputtered, “How did they—” but then bit his lip, clamping his mouth shut. His right hand played a trill on an invisible piano, rap-a-tap tapping on his mahogany desk. The boiled egg blanched. I could picture his brain flapping around inside his skull like a fish out of water.
Right on cue, the fish—a halibut, I think—appeared on his desk and flapped about, gasping desperately. It startled me, but only a little. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, and when I opened my eyes, the fish was gone.
“Ch-Children, you say?” Harold’s voice cracked.
“Yes.” I nodded sincerely. “The reporter was kind enough to lend me the footage.” I pulled my console out of my pocket. “Would you like to see it?”
Hobwell’s arms tensed—twin snakes, prepared to strike.
“Sir, if I don’t give this back to them, they’ll take us to court. And, given the current political climate, I—”
“—Just play the damn thing already!” Hobwell snapped, mustache twitching on his upper lip.
I slipped the jump drive into the port on my console, tapped the screen a couple of times, and played the video.
I’d never seen an exorcism before, but I imagined that it must have looked something like what I saw transpire in Harold Hobwell’s face. All five stages of grief were present: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Really, the things kids these days could do with just a couple of apps at their disposal was downright crazy.
The expertly edited montage showed wizened socialites in furs and dentures getting handed off to nurses to be given their treatment almost the instant they and their manservants arrived at the hospital’s reception desks. Behind this cavalcade of entitlement, suffering children sat in rows of seats, waiting for treatment that would probably never come. Many of the kids were ashen-skinned, their fingers and lips tinted in cyanotic blues. One particularly gruesome shot showed a young boy of uncertain race shivering in place as fungal threads had begun to emerge from the base of his left eye’s cornea.
It only got more damaging from there.
“Turn it off!” Hobwell howled. “Turn it off.”
I complied.
“Fuck!” He swore. Seething, he clenched his fist and slammed his desk. “Beast eat their bones!”
He glanced at Ani. “Did you happen to catch which news-channel they belonged to?”
“CBN,” she replied, nodding assuredly. “I think I overheard them saying they were going to take it straight to Ilzee.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re right. They did!” I smiled. “I love the Ilzee Rambone show,” I added. It was probably more enthusiasm than was necessary.
Harold Hobwell blanched like over-boiled corn.
“The reporters told me they would be fine with me giving you the recording,” I pulled the jump drive out of my console, “provided that the lower-priority patients get equal access to treatment.”
I didn’t know what divine revelation looked like; I’d never seen it before, let alone experienced it myself, but, at that moment, I think Director Hobwell gave me a pretty good approximation of one. His eyes went wide and his mouth gaped. He clapped his lips together twice.
“Are…” he gurgled, “are you blackmailing me, Dr. Howle?” He was more stupefied than angry.
Compared to all the other problems on my plate, this was a piece of cake. “You can use that word if you want to, Sir.” I smirked. “I prefer to call it… gweel.”