One of these days, someone was going to discover the neurochemical factors that made people like Brand Nowston the way they were and then figure out a way to mass produce it and sell it to the general public. On that day, I imagine humanity would either advance in leaps and bounds, or burn itself to a crisp. Possibly both.

Likely both.

Last time we’d spoken, my friend had told me he was doubting his sanity. Now, truth be told, I worried I was beginning to doubt his.

“I had a huge backlog of biopsy samples to analyze,” Brand had said, after the videophone call had gone through, “but Pathology swept my schedule clean and put me on the Plotsky autopsy. So you know it’s got to be big.”

Brand liked to say he was a compass for DAISHU Health’s current interests, and, honestly, he was probably on to something. Whenever something important happened on this side of the country—be it biological or biology-adjacent—it inevitably seemed to get sent to Brand one way or another. He’d once bragged that he could identify celebrities by the slides of the biopsies of their gonads, and I had always been a bit too squeamish to pursue the matter further, particularly once Brand had started talking about the cloning vats.

At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, that the red tape—which, previously, had been keeping Brand from easily acquiring NFP-20 samples—had suddenly been sliced to ribbons likely implied that DAISHU was starting to take NFP-20 seriously as a threat to their bottom line. Or, perhaps, maybe they thought they were closing in on a cure.

One can only hope.

“So, can I participate?” I’d asked.

“Sure!” he’d replied.

And, just like that, I was on autopsy duty.

Again.

At least the trip was a simple elevator ride down to the basement.

West Elpeck Medical’s myriad basement levels were labyrinthine—more like the winding innards of a manufacturing plant than a hospital. Though, considering that we had an honest to goodness manufacturing plant down there—the industrial-scale matter printer array on Basement Level 3—that wasn’t entirely surprising. And it was even less surprising if you knew the local history.

Like I had told myself, details like these really did help keep some of my stress at bay.

Much of history was literally beneath our feet. People left waste and wreckage where it lay, and if storms or floods didn’t bring sediment to cover it up, something new would likely get built on top of it by later generations. What might have been someone’s home two or three thousand years ago was now a sub-sub basement or sub-sub-sub basement,preserved, repurposed, or simply forgotten altogether. The skyscraper my in-laws lived in—and owned—rested atop four floors of ancient construction, the deepest of which even predated Angelfall itself. Apparently, the bottom-most floor had once been a beer brewery. Last time I’d had the unpleasure of visiting my mother-in-law, I’d discovered the ancient ruin had been refitted and repurposed as a gentrified dive bar by the name of Forty Feet Under. WeElMed was like that, too, except with templars and barracks. At any given time, among the autopsy rooms, morgues, and laboratories, you could likely find an archeological dig or two if you knew where to look.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Speaking of changes, it was hard to ignore the transformation underway in WeElMed’s basements as I made my way to the autopsy room. The hallways were being repurposed into crypts. Staff and custodial workers wrapped in the white synthetics and cloudy visors of high-grade PPE lugged around rolling shelves stuffed with body-bagged corpses. It was hard not to compare what I saw now to what I’d seen yesterday morning when I’d passed by this same route. We were autopsying Ileene in 2Ba452, the same room we’d autopsied Frank Isafobe yesterday morning.

“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon asked, “what’s a dive bar?”

I’ll tell you when you’re older.

Thinking about details like the dive bar underneath my in-laws’ skyscraper helped me fool myself into feeling like there was a possibility that I was calm, even though I really, really wasn’t. See, while I might have known Ileene’s fetus was turning into a wyrm, you know who didn’t? Dr. Brand Nowston. I didn’t need a fortune cookie to tell me that couldn’t mean anything but trouble—or, worse, a surprise.

I made it about halfway to my destination before I had to stop. My thighs were tired, lagging, and dead, and everything below my shins was almost totally numb. Only the slightest tingling sensations reminded me I still had feet or ankles at all. And though that would have been enough to contend with on its own, it wasn’t on its own. I was also lightheaded; dizzy, almost.

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On a hunch, I widened my wyrmsight, thickening it in a strip that ran across my field of vision.

Oh no.

“Wow…” Andalon whispered, “that’s a lotta ghosties.”

They were everywhere; a jellyfish bloom of formless things of mist and light floating through the hollows of hospital’s depths. With the wyrmsight, I could match what I saw to what I felt. And, the lightheadedness? The dizziness? That was the feeling of the ghosts’ souls being archived within me as they passed through my body. The sight made my imagination run wild, hyperphantasizing the halls into ancient places of column and marble. On the one hand, being able to give myself customizable hallucinations helped break up the monotony—and horror—of the sights around me. On the other hand, it made me feel like I was losing my mind all over again. Leaning against a wall, I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing with a meditative intensity, wiping my field of vision clean of any wyrmsight.

I exhaled as I opened my eyes. The ghosts were gone, as were the soaring marble ceilings.

If only the bags of bodies could be removed so easily.

I hurried to the changing room, doffing my PPE and donning a fresh set, along with the many-lensed spider-like headpiece that I still didn’t know how to use.

Entering the autopsy room revealed it had become even drearier than it was on the first time around. Still, as I closed the door behind me, I took a moment to savor the silence that sucked away the omnipresent sounds of coughing.

It was the silence of a tomb. Every one of 2Ba452’s examination tables was occupied by a corpse draped in an opaque plastic veil. Unless you counted the dead, the autopsy of Ileene Plotsky was not as well-attended as Frank Isafobe’s had been. Other than Brand and I—and Andalon, assuming she counted—we had just Dr. Mistelann Skorbinkna—our angular mycologist—and Dr. Horosha. Only half of the ceiling’s fluorescent lights were on; my colleagues had gathered in the wan light, circled around the autopsy table that no doubt bore Ileene’s corpse. The rest of the room was in a twilight state. The square tiles underfoot were as pale as death. The room’s misty blue walls seemed like compressed fog, held together only by the two forbidding black stripes that wound all the way around.

What would happen if you broke them, I wonder? Would the room dissolve into the fog, lost to another world?

Probably not, but it certainly felt that way.

Horosha smiled as approached me, inscrutable as ever.

I still didn’t know what to make of Dr. Horosha. Our tall, pale, and handsome Infectious Disease Specialist on loan from Noyoko General was an enigma through and through. Though he’d freely outed himself as being in direct connection with higher ups at DAISHU, the admission had only thickened his aura of mystery. Outside of group meetings of Ward E’s CMT, I hadn’t really gotten a chance to know the guy. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been too big of a problem. I was good at reading people; it was part of my job description. And yet, Suisei Horosha was the rare shell I couldn’t crack.

But, as I’d learned yesterday, it seemed things went deeper than I could have ever imagined.

Just to be sure, I thickened my wyrmsight in a small spot right over Dr. Horosha, and then immediately dimmed it once I saw wanted I wanted to see.

Yep.

The veil of snowy white motes slowly revolving around Dr. Horosha’s body was still there, doing… whatever it was doing.

“An autopsy room is uncanny territory for a neuropsychiatrist, would you not agree?” As usual, Horosha’s Trenton was eerily perfect.

His mote-veil followed him as he moved.

“So is a pandemic,” I said, with a slight smirk. I shrugged. “But what else can you do?”

Nodding politely, Dr. Horosha stepped aside, taking his veil with him. I felt nothing as the motes phased through me.

A thought occurred to me.

Andalon, can you hear Dr. Horosha’s thoughts?

“Nuh-uh,” she shook her head.

So he’s not a transformee.

If he was, she’d have been able to read his mind. Did that mean…?

Is he like Nina?

“Maybe?” Andalon said.

I muttered under my breath. “The plot thickens…”

Brand turned away from his conversation with the mycologist. “There you are, Genneth.” He smirked.

Smiling—bowing slightly—I waved my hand and walked toward the table. My legs very much appreciated that there was a stool within reach. I rolled it out from under the other table and took my seat, mindful not to crush my tail in the process.

“We have been awaiting you, Howle Genneth,” Dr. Skorbinka said, gruffly. His dark sideburns seemed even more bristly than usual against the rim of his motorized rebreather mask.

“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “My new… duties have been taking a toll on me, much more than I would have thought.”

“Tardiness is like Polovian goose,” Dr. Skorbinka said. “Is most… inauspicious.”

The Polovian goose. Now there was a detail I could lose myself in.

I plucked the information from a memory—in this case, a nature documentary.

The red goose was one of the worst birds to see in an auguring—an omen of death, loss, and grief, probably because their southern migration was a sign that winter was coming. Even today, an avion catching sight of a flock migrating south during morning Dawnsight was enough to shut down church for the day in all but the most liberal Lasseditic denominations. Old Believers—the kind of Lassediles that populated Mistelann’s Odenksy homeland—often went as far to shutter their churches for a full week after spying a V of Polovian geese honking overhead.

Brand nodded.

“Things are pretty bad, aren’t they?”

I nodded back. “Something tells me this is only the beginning.”

Brand’s expression flattened into a solemn nod.

Mistelann turned to the both of us. “Enough of dally-dilly. We begin now.”

Turning to the body bag on the adjacent table, Brand then bowed slightly to the mycologist—a standard show of respect. “I did the last one, Mistelann. You can take the lead here.”

I pursed my lip. “Wait, shouldn’t our top pathologist lead this autopsy?” I said. I glanced at Dr. Skorbinka. “No offense.”

Dr. Skorbinka nodded deeply. “No offense received.” He tapped his fingers together on his left hand. “In my research, there are many corpses. Bats, frogs, leezards, salamanders, coleoptera, hymenoptera,” he paused, “fish,” he added, with a nod. “Death is not stranger.”

Just like during Mr. Isafobe’s autopsy, as Dr. Skorbinka unzipped the body bag containing the corpse of Ileene Plotsky, a strange lightheadedness teetered into my head. Thankfully, sitting on the stool kept me from staggering.

“Oy…” Mistelann muttered. The mycologist clicked his tongue.