The woman in the body bag was… ravaged. She was a mannequin ruin covered in ivy and briars, only the ivy was leafless and the briars were dark as night and both crept beneath her skin. The clumps of hair littering the body bag still bore streaks of neon green dye. Fungal masses emerged from rifts in her skull, crowning her death’s head in mottled antlers. Her skin was like wet silk. The hyphae filaments shot darkly through her conquered blood vessels.

Yet, most frightful of all was the young woman’s belly, tumid, and egg-like, like a puffball about to burst. Fungal growths encroached Ileene’s womb with their fronds and blurry fingertips, embracing it like a wreath.

“Ileene Plotsky, everybody,” Brand said. “Cause of death: multiple organ failure due to sepsis and cytokine storms as a result of a Type One NFP-20 by infection.”

“But what happened to the fetus…?” I muttered.

Andalon’s words dripped into my mind.

“The lil’ guy is really scared, Mr. Genneth,” she said, speaking without a body. “He’s not real smart.”

The knowledge didn’t comfort me.

Dr. Horosha carefully studied Ileene’s corpse. His motes passed through her body and the table, though without any apparent effect.

“Let me remind everyone that our primary objective during this procedure is to vacate the fetus from the womb,” he said. “We have Drs. Derric and Lokanok to thank for discovering that the fetus was infected along with the patient. Moreover, the sonogram images of the fetus are consistent with the bodily transformations observed so far in Type-Two patients, though we have reason to believe that this unique case might be more advanced than any of its type which have hitherto encountered.” He looked at Brand and Dr. Skorbinka. “This is an extraction procedure, first and foremost.”

The two doctors nodded, but I shuddered.

Dr. Horosha raised an eyebrow. “Is something the matter, Dr. Howle?”

I lowered my gaze. “I…” I exhaled in frustration, “I don’t like dead children,” I said.

“Few people do,” Dr. Horosha replied, nodding in what I hoped was understanding. “Dr. Howle, you are under no pressure to be here,” he added. “If you are too uncomfortable with this, feel free to step out and return at a later point in the examination. This is a trying time for us all, and does us no good to accumulate any more stress than is absolutely necessary. I would not hold it against you in the slightest; an unhealthy doctor is of little use to anyone.”

Though I still couldn’t get a read on him, his concern seemed genuine.

I nodded. “I appreciate that, Dr. Horosha,” I said, “but I need to be here.”

That got a raise out of his eyebrow. “Oh? Might I enquire why? Unlike our autopsy of Mr. Isafobe, which was for the benefit of E Ward’s Crisis Management Team, the present autopsy is primarily for purposes of targeted research, and,” he bowed in consolation, “and I mean this with the utmost respect, but… a morgue is hardly a place for a neuropsychiatric specialist.”

I swallowed hard. “I need to be here,” I said. “I need to know what happens to them.” I ended in an almost-whisper.

Dr. Skorbinka cleared his throat with more than a hint of impatience, reaching out with a waiting hand.

With a nod, Brand picked the scalpel up from the metal tray mounted on sliding legs above the surface of the autopsy table and handed the tool to Mistelann. He glanced back at me.

“Genneth, you’re closest to the hose,” he said. “In case of spillage, when you spray, direct the water toward the sink,” he pointed to the sink at the end of the table. “It minimizes the resultant mess.”

Dr. Skorbinka grabbed the scalpel from Brand’s hand.

“Actually,” I said, catching a glare from Mistelann, “if you don’t mind me asking,” I turned to Dr. Horosha, “what’s an Infectious Disease Specialist doing in a morgue?”

“One must first know the devil before one can heal him of his malice,” Dr. Horosha replied, with a subtle smile.

Dr. Skorbinka cleared his throat loudly. The sound echoed in the room. “I am making incision now.”

The mycologist pressed the blade against the lower middle portion of Ileene’s abdomen. He pushed down. Black ooze poured from the cut.

Leaning forward, Brand pressed his fingers onto Ileene’s lower abdomen.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He looked back at me, over his shoulder, light gleaming in the lenses of his loops. “Someone needs to help pull the flesh back as Mistelann goes for the uterus,” he said.

I cleared some gunk from my throat. “Let me do it.”

Brand stared at me for a moment, perplexed. “I thought you got squeamish about this stuff, Genneth.”

“I do, but I dislike being dead weight even more.” I added a chuckle for good measure.

While that wasn’t untrue, it wasn’t the full truth, either, and the full truth was that, as far as I was concerned, I was disposable—I was already infected. My three colleagues weren’t.

Better I than them.

Brand stepped back. “Stand on the other side, then.”

I did so, stepping around to the other side of the examination table, turning to face the others where they stood, on the end opposite the sink.

I put my hands on the dead woman’s belly.

“I cut now,” Mistelann announced.

Brand looked at the mycologist’s hands, and then locked eyes with me. “Okay, pull.”

Nodding, I dug my fingers onto either side of the incision, making sure to stick my arms beneath and around Dr. Skorbinka’s. Flabby wetness pressed against my gloves and my sweat-smeared palms. With a tug, I pulled back Ileene’s dermis and the subcutaneous fat and the muscle beneath. It peeled off like refrigerated lasagna.

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Angel…

It was medical school all over again.

There were many truths we learned in medical school: the wonder and horror of human biology, death’s inescapable certainty. But few were as memorable or sobering as the moment when you opened up your first cadaver and realized just how flimsy the human body really was. We really were mostly water, and any feelings of strength or physical robustness were mostly illusory.

Brand reached in between our interwoven arms and secured Ileene’s flesh with clamps.

I pulled away.

Ileene’s uterus was a swollen egg and a rotting onion all at once, suffused with the Green Death’s characteristic sickly sweet stench. Even with a face mask and a visor, the musty, earthen odor of spoiled fruit was so thick, you could have touched it. The uterus was barely recognizable, swollen with the amniotic sac’s tense contours. Fungal threads grew in scribbles all over the central uterine body. And, just like Ileene’s skin, the uterine tissue had been drained of its color, leaving it with an eerily appearance reminiscent of filthy wet chalk. Dark, blurry stains were faintly visible underneath.

We watched with bated breath, leaning in, as Dr. Skorbinka brought the scalpel down onto the uterus and cut through.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon yelled. “Something’s wrong!”

I flinched, though no one noticed it.

What is it?

I turned to look.

She was crying.

“The baby… it’s bad.” She wept. “He’s broken. It didn’t work.”

What didn’t—

—Pop.

Black fluid sprayed out onto Brand and Mistelann in a mix of thick clumps and a thin, watery solution. Dr. Skorbinka got the worst of it; it splattered across his visor. The lower half of Brand’s PPE gown was drenched. Liquid darkness flowed down fluid and viscous, dripping onto the floor. The mixture’s viscous components blocked the overflow channels on either side of the examination table. Ileene’s broken womb was like a fountain. Vile watery fluid spilled over the tables edges, pooling on the floor, its rancid sweetness flowing along the spaces between the tiles.

And then, at the fountain’s heart, something moved. A sinuous limb lolled in the darkness.

“Mr. Genneth!”

A verminous thing wriggled out from the dregs of the womb.

“Holy Angel!” I staggered back, “Holy Queen!”

Suddenly, Dr. Horosha was the least of my worries.

An eellike form flopped its ooze-slicked body against the table, struggling to be free, flicking gobs in every direction. Faster than any of us could react, it slipped over the edge of the table, smacking wetly onto the floor.

We all scrambled. Brand and Mistelann staggered back in shock. Dr. Horosha bent over and dove to the floor. His white mote veil whirled faster and faster.

A thrashing tail swept the fluid across the tile floor. The creature skittered out of sight, darting beneath the examination table’s legs.

Trembling, Mistelann seized up as he tried to wipe the slime off his visor, cursing in Odenskaya.

“W-w-w-w-what the fuck?!” Brand shouted.

“He’s so scared!” Andalon screamed. “Help! H—”

Wincing in pain, she clutched her head. Then she opened her eyes and light flashed out.

And I saw ghosts.

They were twisted, fractured beings, like Frank’s spirit had been, tainted by darkness. Parts were like swarms of crystals, others strings of motes. Uncertain limbs flickered like flame. Other parts weren’t there at all.

They twitched and buzzed like corrupted signals, floating through the room, phasing through whatever they passed.

For an instant, I thought I’d left my wyrmsight on. But I hadn’t.

This wasn’t like outside in the hallway. This was…—

—One of the wraiths lunged at me. I scrambled back.

“Mr. Genneth!”

Ducking down, I rushed over to the side of the autopsy table, fumbling as I grabbed hold of the cleaning hose. Out of sight, one of the spirits shrieked. My spine twitched; I dropped the hose, and then scraped at the floor to pick it back up off the slimy tile.

I darted around the table, nearly slipping on the sludge underfoot while Andalon sobbed hysterically. I pointed the hose at my colleagues—

—But no water came.

“Wha?” I stammered. “It’s—”

“—Turn it on, Howle Genneth! Turn it on!”

I doubled back. The wheel squeaked as I turned it.

Andalon shrieked.

Three ghosts turned around on the far side of the room. They turned around and floated back toward us on half-formed legs.

“No!” Brand shrieked. “If there are any gaps in the PPE, we’re done for!”

I froze, losing hold of the hose. The nozzle clattered to the floor just as the hose began to writhe with water’s flow. The metal nozzle scraped across the white tile as the water blasted the dark ooze in every direction, spraying it through air and ghosts alike. I bent over to pick up the hose as Andalon crawled around to the back of the autopsy table. Water drummed against my visor, obscuring my vision, but my fingers soon found purchase. The hose tensed in my grip.

“Mr. Genneth! Do something!”

Aiming downward—not wanting to spray the black fluids onto them—I pointed the nozzle at Brand and Mistelann, hitting them and pretty much everything in between. Water streamed over the edges of the autopsy table. My colleagues guarded their heads with their arms.

At the same time—holding the hose in both hands—I called upon my imagination. Blocks extruded out of the walls and stretched across the room, phasing through the other tables and bodies as they pressed up against one another in the middle, closing off the other half of the room.

The ghosts let out unearthly shrieks, phasing through the walls as if they weren’t there. I mean, the walls weren’t there—but neither were the ghosts—so they should have been affected by the walls, just like Esmé and Joe-Bob had been.

But they weren’t. They weren’t!

Andalon, what’s going on?!

“I don’t know!” she cried. “I don’t know!”

The ghosts clawed through the air as they hurtled forward.

“My leg!” Mistelann screamed. “There is something on my leg!”

I was halfway in the clear, but I wasn’t done yet.

I aimed the nozzle downward.

The water pushed the darkness away in every direction, and with it a lithe, twining form that squealed and rasped as it tumbled across the tile. There was an ugly thump as the mutant fetus smacked against the strips of black tile on the misty blue walls. Little arms below a neck without shoulders strained to reach as the remnants of rotting, malformed fingers snapped off and fell to the floor. It flopped, lashing its tail, but its motions were slowing.

And to my shock, the ghosts took notice, turning their twisted, ravaged forms toward the struggling abomination.

Their bodies flickered.

I gasped in awe and horror.

Andalon… I think…

“It’s going dark, Mr. Genneth…” I glanced back to see Andalon on her knees, wrapped up in her own arms. She cried—but this time, there was no fear.

Just sorrow.

I think these are the fetus’ ghosts…

I wasn’t the only person turning into a wyrm, and nothing Andalon had said implied that I was the only transformee whose mind was being remade into a mausoleum for the souls of the dead.

“It’s going dark. It’s so cold,” she burbled. “So cold…”

The ghosts twitched irregularly as they faded.

I stepped forward toward the misbegotten child.

My spine tingled all the way down to my tail. The floor might as well have been electrified beneath my footsteps as we slowly stepped toward it. Details crystallized as we drew closer and closer. Ridges—once, a human spinal column—bulged from its back. Robust, yet crippled arms sprouted lizard-like from a torso that lacked any trace of a human shoulder girdle. Spines pierced up along its back and tail like reeds in river mud, leading up to a head crowned in something half-way between horns and slender, budding mushrooms. Golden pustules glistened at the center of its withered ears. And its face.

Oh God, its face…

I staggered back.

There were bits and pieces of a nascent human face, but they hung from the creature’s head in shreds and dregs, studded with dangling pieces of malformed jawbone, as if the face was sloughing off to make way for the emergent snout. A snout with no eyes. A snout with no mouth.

Then the ghosts vanished altogether.

The twisted child flailed in its death throes. Its tail’s weltering coils flicked gleet and slime across sweeping water, though moving slower, now, and slower still, until it moved its last, collapsing with a wet slap, until the only remaining sounds were the gush of water from the fallen hose and the drip drip drip of water off the table’s edge, slow and slowly fading, falling like plaintive tears from the eternal silence of Ileene Plotsky’s corrupted corpse.