With a squeeze of the tongs in his grip, Dr. Nesbitt carefully tugged at the resected flesh, revealing the tissue that lay below. The surgeon wrinkled his brow. “It’s like opening a rotting onion, only… it’s sweet.”

The sickly sweet stench of the autopsied corpse came flooding back to me. I couldn’t imagine how much more intense it must have been, down in the operating theater, but the looks on the surgeons’ faces helped. The slick, dark-green flesh continued mostly unabated. Only near the base of the extended peel did a healthy, deep pink sliver come into view.

“Fuck,” Dr. Nesbitt cursed, “how deep does this go? Do you think it might even go down through the basement membrane?”

“It’s damn extensive,” Cassius said, “kinda looks like what cancer would look like if a basal cell carcinoma got cancer.”

At that, Brand’s eyes went wide. Popping up from his crouch, Dr. Nowston walked over to guard-rail and pressed the intercom button.

“Where’s the inflammatory response?”

Below, Cassius looked up. He stared at Brand for a moment, blinking twice, before the realization hit him too.

“He’s right, Dr. Arbond,” Dr. Mistwalker said. “There’s no pus, no inflammation. It’s like there’s no immune reaction whatsoever. I know that can sometimes happen with cancers, but, for a pathogenic infection?”

“We should be looking at a cellular war zone,” Dr. Nesbitt said, “but there isn’t any. Where is it?”

If anything, from what I could see, it looked like the war had already been won—decisively.

“If the fungus can suppress the immune response like this,” Dr. Arbond said, “we’re defenseless. We’re up shit creek.”

I rose from my seat and I walked to stand beside Dr. Nowston. Images of the sick patients I’d seen Jonan treating flooded into my mind, of Mr. and Mrs. Plotsky, and of so many others.

“Dr. Arbond,” I said, pressing the intercom button, “I’ve seen more than enough Type One cases to know that their bodies are fighting back as hard as they can.”

“But this is a Type Two case, right?” Dr. Mistwalker pointed at Merritt’s exposed wyrm flesh. “I mean, if that isn’t an aberrant growth, I don’t know what is!”

Dr. Nesbitt turned away, examining the blood assay chart projected overhead. “I wonder why Type Two would cause such extreme immunosuppression.” He crossed his arms. “ALICE, show only molecules with known anti-inflammatory function.”

Most of the colored indicator strips vanished.

“Fuck,” Cassius swore, pointing the scalpel at the display, “look at that damn interleukin level! It’s through the roof!” He turned to Dr. Nesbitt. “Garm, as soon as we’re done, take her in for a full blood assay. I want to see everything—even the things I’ve never heard of. There’s got to be a fucking explanation for this!”

And there was: Andalon.

I could only assume that the lack of an inflammatory response was her work… somehow. I mean, it was basic biology—homeostasis and all that—that slowly transforming us into wyrms from within would get a hard “no” from our immune systems. Without anything to temper the transformees’ immune responses, our bodies might very well kill us, much like how Ileene Plotsky had died from septic shock. And I doubt Andalon would have been happy with such an outcome. Given that Andalon was psychologically indistinguishable from a five year old little girl, how she managed to pull this off was, of course, a complete mystery. Unfortunately, I didn’t tell my colleagues about it because I was too afraid of the consequences. Afraid like a coward.

Afraid like a sinner.

A sound like fingernails on a chalkboard shot through the operating theater flinching me out of my thoughts.

“This is fucked up, man,” Cassius swore. “Real fucked up.”

“Try again,” Dr. Mistwalker said.

Brand and I watched as Cassius brought the scalpel down onto the dark hide exposed in the depths of Merritt’s shoulder. The blade scraped ineffectually against the flesh, letting out that awful noise once again, and—

“—Were those sparks?” Brand muttered.

“Well…” Cassius said, shaking his head, “there go our biopsy hopes.” He turned to his colleagues. “Get out the endoscope and feed it in while I close the patient back up.”

“Dr. Arbond!” Dr. Mistwalker called out in alarm. “The incision—look!”

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Cassius’ back was turned when it happened, but I saw it, as did pretty much everyone else in the amphitheater. As he’d turned around, he’d released his hold on the strip of skin, allowing gravity to tug it back into place. He’d also pushed up against the microscope’s arm, bringing one of the incisions directly beneath the microscope’s lens.

Everywhere, gasps broke out.

In a matter of seconds we watched the tissue shown on the microscope feed knit itself back together in real time. The green-black hue of the flesh beneath Merritt’s skin infiltrated the slivers of space on either side of her incisions. Hyphae reached up from the darkness below to stitch the wound shut from within, leaving what, at first glance, seemed like a dark scar. But the microscope feed revealed its fine, tessellated texture, identifying it as wyrm flesh, freshly bubbled up through the surgeons’ incisions like tar from the earth.

“Motherfucker…” Cassius whispered.

Cassius had gotten out the resin wand, intent on sealing the wound, but lost his grip at the sight of the self-sealing wound. Only a surprisingly sprightly reflex from the bald, agèd surgeon stopped the expensive piece of hardware from bashing onto the floor. Dr. Arbond stared at the resin wand in his hand, and then passed a fretful gaze to his colleagues. His voice cracked.

“Did we just see… what I think we just saw?”

I couldn’t recall having ever heard his voice break before.

“Maybe,” Dr. Nesbitt suggested, nervously, “maybe we should stop now. Let’s just take a biopsy—a skin biopsy—and call it a day.”

“Francyne,” Cassius said, “you saw it… close up?”

Dr. Mistwalker nodded. “The resected strip plopped back in place all on its own.” She frowned. “No, there’s more. I think it was slowly moving the whole time. I just didn’t notice it until the end.”

Cassius groaned. “The patient started stitchin’ herself up almost as soon as I’d made the incision, then.”

“Dr. Arbond?” Dr. Nesbitt said.

Dr. Arbond raised his arms and clenched his hands into fists. “Garm,” he said, turning to the surgeon, “I’m going to need you to monitor the edges of this fucking incision, especially the corners. Use tongs and clamps to hold it open, got it?”

Dr. Nesbitt nodded.

Cassius looked up at the audience. He locked eyes with Brand and I.

“We’re going in,” he said.

It took a moment for them to set up the ventilator, and another moment to stuff another tube down Merritt’s throat.

“Not too deep,” Cassius chided. “We don’t want a repeat of…” but his words failed him.

Drs. Mistwalker and Nesbitt nodded anxiously.

Dr. Arbond waved his hand over the scanner on the ventilator’s main body, and the machine’s motor revved to life. The ventilator filled the theater with its quiet hum, soon an accompaniment to a maimed waltz of valve claps and hissing hydraulics.

The three surgeons diligently leaned their workstation, running antiseptic-laden swabs across Merritt’s chest. Then, scalpel in hand, Dr. Arbond made an incision in the gap between Merritt’s breasts.

At this point, we were all holding our breaths.

“Where—where’s the blood?” Dr. Nesbitt asked.

“Peel back the skin,” Cassius demanded. Then he stuck out his hand. “Saw.”

“Doctor?”

Cassius set the scalpel down on the surgical tray and then turned to Dr. Mistwalker.

“Saw.”

She handed it to him.

“I am now sawing through the sternum,” he said.

I closed my eyes. Bones and saws were not a combination I wanted to have burned into my now-photographic memory.

About a minute later, widespread gasps shot through the amphitheater, startling me back to attention.

“Bite me…” Cassius muttered.

Dr. Mistwalker made the Bondsign.

Clamps on either side of Merritt’s opened chest held her skin at bay, ensuring a clear view of the nightmares within. The forms in her thoracic cavity were reminiscent of organs, though their particular identities were lost beneath the gobs of dark, bile-colored mucilage that covered… everything.

“S-Suction,” Cassius said.

Dr. Nesbitt inserted the suction tube and turned it on.

“Get as much of it as you can.”

It came off easily.

“What…?” Dr. Nesbitt lurched forward.

“Stop!” Dr. Arbond yelled. He reached for Dr. Nesbitt. “Stop the suction!”

The switch was flipped off.

“What is this…?” Cassius whispered.

All of them leaned forward.

“No, no,” Cassius said, “step back.” He looked up at Brand and I. “Let them see.”

And we did.

With the slime sucked out of the way, structures came into view. Thick, fibrous cobwebs crisscrossed Merritt’s thoracic cavity, dark and green, providing a scaffolding for the swollen trunk of fungal tissue that ran ramrod through her innards. The growth was seeped like tar over Merritt’s lungs and heart; looping tendrils grasped at her ribs, subsuming them into her developing fungal core. I remember from medical school the sight of fresh human lungs: twin wads of pink chewing gum that swelled, chewing itself as the mortician pumped it full of air. But Merritt’s lungs? There was only one lobe: a fractal fruit, nodulous and dark, waxy and tumid, filling her body as it shuddered and grew before our eyes.

“This is unreal…” Dr. Nesbitt said.

Sweat gleamed on Dr. Mistwalker’s forehead, beneath the lamps overhead and the light in her hazmat suit’s headpiece.

“I think we should cut through those… ligaments, first,” she said.

Slowly, Dr. Arbond nodded. “We’ll do it together.”

He handed her a scalpel as he grabbed one for himself.

Dr. Mistwalker reached in, scalpel in hand.

“Ready… now.”

They cut, yet the fungal ligaments did not yield.

No.

They sang.

The filaments sang; a violin string vibrating beneath a scalpel bow. The song was a shriek; a high note, like metal on metal. It bounced off walls; we covered our ears.

Everyone stared in shock.

“Cassius?” Dr. Nesbitt muttered.

Cassius shook his head, blinking rapidly. He handed his scalpel to the surgeon. “Try the main body.”

Dr. Nesbitt did as instructed.

This time, there was barely any noise, just a soft scrape as Dr. Nesbitt pressed the scalpel onto the mass.

“It’s not cutting,” he said.

“Let me try again,” Cassius replied.

And he did.

“Fucking bullshit!” Dr. Arbond kicked the base of the operating table. “It’s not working!”

“Maybe we should try using heat?” Dr. Mistwalker suggested. “The cauterizer?”

Cassius nodded. “Go ahead.”

The surgeon grabbed one of the cabled tools holstered on the machine behind her and squeezed the activation trigger, bringing the tip toward the growths. The cauterizer glowed like a flame.

There was a soft pop as a great plume of spores whipped out into the air—green, almost like mist. It fell gently, the particles seeming to dance in the light, like a fever dream of winter. For a moment, it was almost beautiful.

Then came the screams.