Cassius and I were locked in silence for about half a minute before he ended the call with a long sigh. I nearly felt like I was about to have an existential meltdown, but then something in me decided to give it a rain check. It was a strange sensation, really, reminiscent of my brief doubled consciousness experience in the morning. There was a quadrant of my mind that was shaking and reeling, but it seemed I’d somehow bypassed the trauma altogether, as if my head had multiple faces and the face of misery was buried inside my skull, facing inward, ready to come out with a push of a button. I felt it in there, pulsing and weeping. I wanted to comfort it, but I didn’t know how, and I was afraid that reaching out to the feeling would drag it out into the open where it would interfere with my obligations.

The least I could do was follow through with Cassius’ request. After all, there weren’t many people who had the phone number to Brand Nowston’s personal console: there were his parents—who’d I’d yet to have the pleasure of meeting—the International Society of Pathology, the publication offices of sundry academic journals, and me. Brand made a point of never setting his console to vibrate in response to a call except for people who had his personal number. With most folks, this wouldn’t have mattered, but with Brand, it did, and that was because of his music habits. For whatever reason, Brand liked listening to dissonant music, and not just your garden variety dissonant music, but the kinds that would shock a rooster into laying an egg; loud, elemental noises; iridescent chaos; burning cats; demon whispers—and he listened to them being played on full blast. More than once, Brand had told me it helped him focus, and not just because it helped keep people away. I… did not like that sort of music, and yet Brand couldn’t live without it.

The mysteries of the human brain.

I relayed Cassius’ message to him; Brand responded with a “Fuck,” and that was all. Though I made a point of keeping that sort of language off my tongue—I think Sessions School was to blame—I agreed with the spirit of his use of the word and the gravity with which he employed it.

But I had my own business to attend to. Horrible, people-eating business. I left the cafeteria, donned a fresh set of PPE, and went on my way.

I could picture the transformees in Room 268, lost in a dreamless, drug-induced stupor. They’d spent the better part of an entire day unconscious, unable to eat and stave off their hunger, and I didn’t need to imagine the kinds of consequences that would have. I’d seen them first-hand. I’d lived them.

“Oh God…” I shivered.

We needed to wake them up now, and make sure they were fed. It would be better and safer for us all if the transformees were fed at regular intervals, and to do that, they needed to be awake. Yes, if they were awake, we’d have to worry about their dangerous psychokinetic powers, but having them awake and satiated was far more preferable to having them awake and hungry. I mean, Werumed-san (a.k.a. Charles Johnathan Twist.) already scared the belasses out of me—and anyone else with half a brain. I did not want to learn what he (it?) was like when he was hangry.

That was a reasonable request, right?

Heggy had told me it had been Director Hobwell’s call to have Room 268’s patients sedated. So, I whipped out my console and dialed the Director’s office, even though I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t going to go over well.

This was going to be a real fudge-fest.

The videophone call went through. As usual, Marietta was the one to respond. The secretary shook her head as we locked eyes.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Howle,” she said, “but Harold doesn’t want to speak to you. In fact, he told me to tell you to, and I quote, ‘go fuck yourself, and your mother, too.’ Apologies for the language.” She tilted her head to the side. “The point is: there’s no point in trying.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Please, Marietta, you need to explain to him that we have to un-sedate the Type Two patients in Room 268 ASAP. If we don’t feed them at regular intervals, they’re going to go hog wild on us. It’ll make yesterday’s insanity seem like child’s play.”

Marietta—bless her heart—conveyed my request. Foul language I dared not repeat came roaring out the door to Director Hobwell’s office and made it clear that the grudge he was holding against me for having technically blackmailed him—and, more importantly, his superiors at DAISHU—into providing medical treatment for uninsured children wasn’t going to be relinquished anytime soon.

“Told ya so,” she said, turning to face me once again.

“Show him the footage from the disaster in Theater 12,” I said. “That’s what we’ll have to deal with if we don’t—”

Marietta sighed. “—He’s already seen the footage, Dr. Howle.” She closed her eyes. “Harold’s currently in a conference call about it.”

Flibbertigibbet!

I sighed. “Well, thanks for trying.”

Frustrated, I hung up.

It seemed like I was going to have to get creative.

I crossed back into Ward E, looking for the nearest elevator to ride up to the second floor. Meanwhile, the hectic surge of new patients was continuing unabated. Disarray was a constant, as was the coughing, the sputum, the slime, and the malefic hyphae. Beds were being kept out in the hallways just to accommodate the surge. As I followed the Elevator sign and turned down a hall, I saw two physicians in the process of confronting a third.

“You’re putting everyone else at risk,” they said, breaking the news to their colleague that he was infected.

“You have to stop doing your rounds,” they said.

He coughed. “So, you,” he coughed again, “you want me to lay down while the rest of us,” he coughed once more, “are getting swamped?” He panted heavily, air coming to him only with difficulty.

By then, all three of them were weeping, and it took all of my willpower to make myself turn around and walk the other way instead of rushing up to them and screaming my guilt for all the world to hear.

More sins, courtesy of Genneth Howle, sinner extraordinaire.

Portholes to Hell opened in the sides of the hallways. I kept my gaze focused on the floor, trying my best to ignore them. I had to take the elevator up to Room 268. My feet were so numb, they might as well have been sandbags stuffed into my loafers.

As of yesterday evening, 268, once an old new infectious disease ward, was now the first of Ward E’s designated transformee sequestration rooms. For me, the most upsetting part was that all the patients within were out cold, sedated to the point of unconsciousness.

I couldn’t exactly interact with them when they were like that, now, could I?

But then, glancing at the console by the doors and reading the names of the three newcomers to be sequestered within 268, I discovered the situation was even more upsetting than I could have ever imagined.

Beast’s teeth.

One of the three new arrivals was none other than Mrs. Maryon Palmwitch. Kreston’s mother.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Taking a shaky breath, I tried to focus on something other than my rising tide of guilt. I tried thinking of happy thoughts. Puppies. Kittens. Unicorns and rainbows.

But then I had to stop myself when the very things I’d imagined started emerging from the walls and ceiling around me. Things were already creepy enough as-is.

Clenching my fists, I walked in through the double doors leading into the vestibule, and then through the second pair and into the main room, with its green-painted pipes overhead and its rows of old, metal-framed beds on either side. The window the living Werumed-san mascot had broken yesterday evening was already covered up by a plastic window pane, almost certainly aerosol-sprayed. Sprayable plastic was useful when you wanted to fix something in a jiffy.

My words to Merritt echoed in my ears:

I’ll go check up on them right away!

Well, I was here.

Now what?

I sighed.

There had to be something I could do!

Like any good self-respecting neuropsychologist would tell you, getting patients out of a sedated state was a simple matter of administering an appropriate amount of a stimulant—the key words being appropriate and amount. Too much, and the patient would wake up rabid and raving; too little, and you ran the risk of giving too much if you kept trying to finagle the right dosage. It was kind of like a game of blackjack, except with a risk of seizures or heart attacks instead of a mere loss of betting money.

Just to be sure, I checked the patient roster on the console, to see if some faithful worker had inputted a record of the dosages given to subdue the transformees last night.

“Crud,” I grumbled.

Nope, nothing.

Time to call Heggy.

I went back to the videophone feature and dialed Dr. Marteneiss. Heggy had been the one to lead yesterday evening’s transformee sedation team during the fiasco with Frank’s ghost, so if I wanted to rouse the transformees from their sedated states, she was probably the best person to turn to.

First, though, I went out and carried a stool from the vestibule into Room 268, set it in front of the wall-mounted console, and—minding my tail—carefully took a seat.

My legs were killing me.

The videophone call rang one-and-a-half times before Heggy’s face popped up on the screen.

“Yeah, Genneth?”

I waved my hand at the transformees lying unconscious in Room 268, briefly stepping aside from the console long enough for Heggy to see both my location and the subjects of my concerns.

Dr. Marteneiss’ expression sulled beneath her golden, curling tresses. Her hair was as frizzy as ever; like thunder, if thunder could form waterfalls. “I see you’re back in the Nightmare Room,” she said.

I grimaced. “The Nightmare Room?”

“That’s what everyone’s callin’ it,” Heggy said, nodding dourly, “and it doesn’t help that it’s been spreading on word of mouth without any evidence to back it up. You know what they say: shadows breed terrors.”

“Wait, what?” I asked.

She nodded. “That’s right, last night, you were busy blackmailing the Director.” Her eyes widened as she chastised me. “You didn’t hear the rest of the details.”

“What details?”

“We had to get one of our best IT guys—Pfefferman, I think— to take the security camera feed from Type Two sequestration areas and hide it behind a separate layer of encryption. Your little stunt with the CBN reporters has made the big-wigs even tetchier than usual. They want total media control, and want to keep it that way for as long as possible. It didn’t help that the IT guy got to work right as a hacker was trying to access the footage.“

I was flabbergasted. “Who would hack a hospital nowadays? And during a pandemic?!”

Once upon a time, before I’d been born, ne’er-do-wells with a flair for unscrupulousness and coding could—and often did—hack into hospital mainframes and seal off access to patients’ health records, demanding exorbitant ransom payments to free the data. The hand chip system had put an end to that problem, and so many others.

“Dunno,” Heggy said, shaking her head.

For a moment, I wondered if it might have been Dr. Derric. Jonan clearly had skill with technology, and I still couldn’t account for how he knew about the supposedly clandestine CMT briefings Hobwell had given the day before yesterday. Or was I just being biased against him?

Only time could tell.

I cleared my throat. “Heggy, is there—” but I stopped myself.

As the well-known saying went, death and taxes were among life’s few certainties. Another was that Dr. Heggy Marteneiss was going to be a stickler for the rules. Asking her point blank about the proper stimulant dosage was guaranteed to land me in hot water.

But there was a better approach to take; a sinful, manipulative one, yes, but a more effective one, all the same.

“Heggy,” I said, “I’ve noticed the patients’ charts don’t have a record for the dosages of sedatives they were administered last night.”

Dr. Marteneiss’ brow furrowed. “Oh, Hell, you’re right!”

“I can enter them myself,” I said.

Heggy nodded. The scene playing out behind her swerved to the side as she turned and stepped down a hallway. Coughs and moans ran rampant in the background.

“We used two 12 milliliter doses of Noxtifell. 10 milligram per milliliter concentration.”

I gasped. “Twelve? And twice?”

“The first doses didn’t take.”

In order to make myself feel slightly less awful for misleading Heggy like this, I immediately entered the dosage information for all the patients, editing their profiles’ charts en masse.

“Thanks.” Heggy lowered her voice. “If you don’t mind me askin’, what’s brought you back to the Nightmare room?”

I glanced over my shoulder at the sedated transformees. “There have been new developments, and I wanted to investigate them.”

“What kind of developments?” Heggy raised an eyebrow. She drew close to the screen of her console, magnifying her expression’s effect. “And why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. You’re right,” I nodded, “I should have. It’s just…” I sighed. “Every other moment is another disaster in the making. I’ve been running around like a headless chicken. First, I was so hungry, I felt like I was about to starve, and then Dr. Arbond called me mid-meal, and—”

“—Cassius,” Heggy whispered. “How is he?” Concern weighed on Dr. Marteneiss’ face. It stretched her wrinkles, aging her ten years in three seconds. But then she exhaled. “No, I’m sorry.” Heggy shook her head. “I’m getting off topic.”

I shook my head. “Heggy, it’s perfectly natural to—”

“—It’s like my Grandpa Versor said: an admiral’s gotta tame his heart. Feelings are for servicemen. It’s up to us to rise above the fray.”

“Heggy…” I ached for her.

Dr. Marteneiss shook her head. “It can wait ’til I’m on break.” She nodded, resolute. “Back on topic: what are these new developments?”

“Some Type Two patients have been claiming to be able to see and interact with the ghosts of the dead,” I said, explaining what Merritt and I had experienced.

I looked over the unconscious transformees behind me.

No doubt, they’d soon be seeing ghosts of their own.

I’d spent a second mulling over whether or not it was worth dressing the statement up in something approximating accurate medical terminology, but I’d swiftly given up. ‘Audiovisual and tactile hallucinations’ just didn’t do it justice.

Heggy frowned.

“They’re seeing dead people.” I was emphatic. “And not just any dead people, but recently dead people. People who died of the Green Death. People we’ve treated.” I swallowed hard as I recited the names. “Frank Isafobe, Kreston Palmwitch, Anatole Jones, Esmé Fowler, Spence O’Handrin, Eunice Sawyer, Joe-Bob O’Houlighan, Ileene Plotsky—”

“—Queen’s Light!” Heggy swore. “Shit!” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “You’ve got to be kiddin’ me!” She huffed. “Now what’s a gal supposed to do with a hot potato like that?”

“That’s what I’d like to ask them about,” I said, “among other things.”

Here, I goofed.

Heggy’s forehead furrowed. “Wait a minute. They’re all out cold. How could you…” She blinked. “Let me guess: you want to wake them up.”

I nodded and sighed. “Guilty as charged.”

“Well, you’ll have to take it up with Director Hobwell. The sedate-‘em-all policy are his orders, and I don’t have sufficient rank to countervail them.”

“But—”

I must have had a tell on my face, because Dr. Marteneiss narrowed her eyes and glowered at me, like I was a wayward spider.

“—Angel’s grace, Genneth,” her eyes rolled circles in their sockets, “please don’t be stupid enough to try sneaking some doses of stimulants in there to wake them up. You’re better than that.”

“But, if I did it carefully—”

“—No.” Heggy gripped her console with both hands. “No buts. I don’t care about intentions. Insubordination is insubordination. Hell, even if you wanted to do it, you’d have to take out the cameras first, and trust me, that would get you fired quicker than an assault rifle in a Costranak drug cartel. You remember the story about my great-great-grandpappy Zachariah Marteneiss, right? He was just a captain in the Navy when Sheen tabled the Republic and hauled out the Prelatory, and—”

I cleared my throat. “—Yes, Heggy, I remember the story. Your grugru Zach was the captain of the Moonsigh, and while the rest of the Army, Navy, and Air Force got splintered along partisan lines when the Civil War hit, Zach stuck to his orders and obeyed the chain of command.”

Heggy nodded. “And earned himself a Rear Admiralty as a reward!” she said, emphatically. “That’s why the Opposition lost to the Prelatory. It’s a fool’s errand to go about defyin’ authority you ain’t powerful enough to overcome, or at least make a decent dent in. At best, you’ll make yourself a martyr; at worst, you’ll make everything worse—for everyone. And, Genneth—”

I nodded. “—I don’t want to make things worse for everyone.”

“Well then—”

Suddenly, Heggy turned to the side, drawn by voices in the background. “—Shit,” she said. “Well, I gotta go. We should have the Type Two diagnostic test ready shortly. I’ll let ya know when it’s done.” She smirked. “I’ve volunteered Ward E’s CMT to play the part of the lab rats.” The screen turned black as she ended the call.

Gosh darn it!