I froze.

“Idiot!” another voice (Hank?) hissed. “Keep yelling like that, why don’t you?”

Andalon phased through the wall as she darted out into the hallway and then back into the room. “Some wyrmy guys are coming, Mr. Genneth!” She clapped her hands excitedly. “You can make friends with them!”

Angel!

My thoughts raced.

No! Not now!

“Wha?” Andalon’s expression fell. “Is something wrong?”

Gah!

Rising to my feet, I hopped forward with my good leg while tugging my slacks by the waistband, trying to pull out my tail. I flexed my tail, curling it as best as I could—at least, that’s what I hoped I was doing. It was like threading a needle in reverse, oh and the needle was my pants!

“Or do you want them to know we’re looking for people to eat?”

Fudge fudge fudge fudge fudge!

The voices were getting closer!

In a whirl, flailing my tail, I rushed over to the countertop and pulled out a fresh pair of latex gloves from the dispenser. My attempt to put a glove on my mutated left hand was a panicked jumble of stress and sweat and mild grape flavor!

More fabric ripped down south.

Startled, I pulled on the glove too hard, and my index finger broke through the latex.

“Flibbertigibbet!” I tossed the ripped glove into my mouth. It bubbled as it dissolved in my saliva.

It was kind of like grape soda. Surprisingly tasty, all things considered.

Hank bellowed: “Dammit, Ellen, hurry up already!”

“My legs feel like fried noodles!” a third voice said—a woman’s.

“Can’t we just dump her?” the first voice (Quincy?) asked.

“Try that, and I’ll eat you,” the woman said. “He was my father-in-law. I let you two bozos have pieces of him. You owe me. You help me find more to eat, and in exchange, I won’t rat you out. That was the deal.”

Hank hissed. “Just zip it, Quincy.”

“We shouldn’t have split the last one!” Quincy snapped back.

Out of time, I undid the buttons on my cufflinks, unfurling my coat sleeves like I was an M-pop idol about to strut onto the stage. With my cufflinks unbuttoned, my coat sleeves were long enough to just barely cover my hands.

“Yes!” I shouted.

By a minor miracle, I’d managed to flick just the right muscles to tug my tail out of my pants.

“Oh fudge…” I muttered.

“Hannnnk!” Quincy yelled.

My tail dangled over the waistbands of my pants and undergarments, affording me an overwhelming new range of motion. Freed from its confines, the base of my tail was free to swell wider, uncomfortably straining the aforementioned waistbands.

It was only a matter of seconds before the interlopers found me. My agitation made my tail act up. It swept side to side along the floor, entirely against my wishes. The cold touch of the vinyl floor took me completely by surprise, sending goosebumps across my tail, all the way up to my neck. I tried to hold my tail still as best as I could, but that was easier said than done. It was like trying to stop my tongue from moving. It was weird and unnatural. So, I settled for trying to hide it behind my leg.

Again, easier said than done.

“Mr. Genneth, they’re right outside!” Andalon said.

Here goes nothing…

I went for what Heggy might have called the “shock and awe” approach. Taking a deep breath, I strode out into the hallway with as much swagger as I could muster, saying, “Who’s there?!” in a forced loud voice—my attempt to sound commanding.

I failed spectacularly.

“Hank?” I said, stunned. “Hank Adams?”

Hank and Quincy weren’t strangers. Hank Adams was one of Ward E’s nurses—emphasis on the “was”. For a second, I thought he was wearing a custom pair of scrubs—that was the only way to explain the cacophony of red, black, and green all over his body—only to realize it was all-natural. Nurse Adams’ standard-issue pale blue scrubs were completely covered in death and gore. As for Quincy, my now-photographic memory told me he was the fellow by the reception desk—likely an IT guy—who, as Andalon had told me this morning, had been thinking that he was turning into a zombie.

As a pair, Hank and Quincy radiated a “cop-buddy”-like aura, only instead of good cop bad cop, it was hungry cop (Hank) and even hungrier cop (Quincy).

But knowing who they were didn’t keep me from gasping at what I saw.

Hank had to be at least twelve feet tall. Three-fourths of that was split unevenly between his neck and torso.

If I had to eyeball it, 30% had gone to his neck and 70% had gone to his torso.

If there were any changes to his legs, I couldn’t see them. Hank’s shirt had been shredded in two. The lower half clung to his waist, while the upper dangled from his arms, not far below the point where his neck curled along the ceiling of the hallway.

Quincy, meanwhile, was lugging six full feet of tail behind him. The thing was as thick as his torso. Like Hank, Quincy was still wearing his work clothes, though unlike the nurse, the IT guy had dispensed with any pretense of pants. Scaly, dark brown wyrm flesh had fully smoothed over his naked crotch. His legs were patches of pallid, sickly, almost translucent skin run through by a widening veiny mesh of bruise-colored necrosis. He had a cartoonishly bow-legged stance, thanks to the wide gap his tail had spread between his legs.

But it was Quincy’s eyes that made me gasp. There was nothing human about them. His eyes were great golden golf-balls. They bulged in his still-human eye-sockets, glistening—jewel-like—in the light. His eyelids couldn’t fully close over them. Like the sockets, his eyelids were still all-too human.

I didn’t want to think about what they’d been eating to get that way.

In situations such as this, it was a good idea to stay on the offensive, interrogating the interlopers like I was an Inquisitor of old.

I would have made for a terrible inquisitor.

“What are you doing?” I said. “And at this hour?”

I sounded like I was chastising a bunch of little kids.

Quincy stared at me like I was insane—or, at least, that was how I interpreted his slack-jawed stare. Those eyes of his made it difficult for me to read his expression.

But then he did something I could recognize: he narrowed his eyes.

“Wait… I’ve seen you before…”

From above my head, Nurse Adams cleared his throat.

I looked up at him.

He waved at me, smiling. “Hey… Dr. Howle…”

Even I couldn’t have smiled as awkwardly as that.

“You know this guy?” the woman asked.

As for her—Ellen—I’d never seen her before. She was tomboyish, and probably looked younger than she actually was. She was a potpourri of colors: red blouse, blue jeans, white skin, brown hair, and black lipstick.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

No, not lipstick.

Fungal ooze.

Her hands had fully transformed into wyrm claws: three fingers and a thumb. Unlike Maryon’s hands, Ellen’s were still human-sized.

Hank nodded in the affirmative, which bumped the back of his head against the ceiling. Reflexively, he tried to rub away the pain, but his arms didn’t reach that far.

“He’s part of the team that runs Ward E,” he explained, “where Quincy and I work.”

“Uh… do you have any food?” the woman asked me. “Even scraps?” After I didn’t immediately respond, she pursed her lips and added a perfunctory, coquettish, “Please?”

“Mr. Genneth!”

I flinched as Andalon strode out through the wall.

Andalon waved her arms. “Watch out!”

I was about to ask Andalon for more details, but then said details asserted themselves with gusto.

Ellen barreled at me, shoulder first.

A net-shaped plexus seethed in front of Quincy.

Son of a beehive!

“Sorry about this, Doc…” Hank muttered. His shadow lurched forward in the hallway’s dim light.

The lights automatically dimmed at night.

He was trying to crush me!

Scampering back, I drew up my reserves of power. Thankfully, not only was Andalon at my side, but—for once—I wasn’t hungry.

I was invigorated.

I reached out to the first idea that flashed in my mind.

A force-field.

I need a force-field!

Problem: I did not know how to make a force-field.

No time like the present.

Andalon, hide!

Nodding, the spirit-girl darted out of sight, disappearing into the wall.

Stepping forward on my numb feet, I thickened my wyrmsight and started to do, well… force-field… things.

What else would you call it?

Willing blue and gold threads into being, I thought-wove them into a thick plexus wall. It pulsed with impossible, fractal geometries. I waved my arms in tight circles, spreading my fingers and claws and claw-fingers as wide as they could go, wiping my hands across my force-field like a manic mime, imbuing every inch of it with the command to push back at whatever struck them. And then I let the energy flow.

Step One. Step Two. Step Three. And all of it in the span of a second and a half.

With a flash on my wyrmsight, the plexus blinked out of existence, and, in the process, sent pure kinetic energy exploding toward my attackers in a wave that visibly rippled the air. It rocketed into my attackers.

The tomboy bore the brunt of it; Ellen was hurtled some twenty feet back, tumbling into a supine stop on the floor.

Hank flailed like an inflatable arm-flailing tube-man as he toppled backward, flattened by my force attack.

I wish I could have said the same about Quincy.

The IT guy had thrown his plexus at me before he’d let its energies flow. Our attacks were like a pair of lightning bolts, only his flashed a split second after mine. I barely had enough time to plaster psychic anchors on my hands and feet.

Our blasts crashed into one another, mostly canceling each other out—equal and opposite forces, and all that.

Mostly.

Plenty of kinetic energy reached us. Quincy fell as he skidded, yelping in pain as he landed on his tail. As for his wave, it hit me like a truck. I screamed as the impact flailed me around like a flag in the wind—tail and all—though it stopped short of sending me flying, because I’d managed to secure psychic anchors on an arm and leg—but just an arm and a leg.

Quincy’s magical attack slammed crushing pressure onto my chest and stomach, stretching my clothes taut against my skin. I stopped myself from flailing by weaving two more anchor-plexuses for my other arm and leg. All the while, I continuously poured power into them to keep them active.

Quincy rose to his necrotic knees and roared. “You’re one of us?!” His tail lashed behind him. “Why didn’t you say so?” His eyelids pulled away from the golden globes in his eye-sockets as he sneered. “You just wanted all the food for yourself, you greedy lying asshole!”

As he bent his legs, ready to leap at me like a wild animal, a scream shot out further down the hall.

Everyone stopped to turn and look. Hank’s head bobbed as he lifted his long neck toward the source of the noise.

A flashlight beam illuminated the long, savage, grooves Ellen’s claws had scraped in the floor after she’d been thrown by my force-blast. Strips of vinyl curled up from the grooves, shining in the flashlight’s cone. Those same claws dug into the floor one more as she righted herself and turned to meet the flashlight’s carrier.

A portly, ashen figure had waddled out from around the corner down the hall. Both of his trembling hands were clasped around the handle of a taser. The “flashlight” was a small LED lamp mounted atop the weapon’s business end. The man’s dark uniform and matching brimmed hat identified him as a police officer—almost certainly part of WeElMed’s EPD contingent. Dark tendrils bruised his skin. He stammered “I” in rapid, shallow breaths, jaw hanging slack.

I’d barely turned toward the man when he fired his taser at Ellen. The sound of her pain was inhuman; something like a bellow and a whistle, low and high at the same time.

But the electrical current hadn’t fazed her. No: it made her rage spike. Snarling, Ellen leapt, pouncing at the officer, flinging him backward onto the wall with her preternatural strength. The man moaned as he hit the wall. He crumpled to his knees, dropping his flashlight taser.

“Hey!” Hank snapped, waddling toward the dying man. “Don’t hog him!”

Quincy belted out a beastly polyphonic howl as he followed him.

But the officer wasn’t out for the count. Before anyone could react, he pulled out a pistol and fired at his attackers. One of the bullets grazed Quincy’s nearly naked scalp; no blood poured out from the wound. The other shots tore holes through Hank’s scrubs.

“Stop!” I yelled, waving my arms. “Stop!”

But of course, no one was listening. Thankfully, I didn’t need them to listen.

Almost without thinking, as I waved my arms, I swaddled plexuses around my mutating hands. The things seethed with my outrage, and with a flick of my wrists, I launched two powered waves through the air. The soundless swells buffeted Hank, Quincy, and the officer. The two transformees staggered to the floor.

Then the officer screamed.

Hank had flung a plexus around one of the officer’s arms, wrapping the blue and gold weave around the limb like a net. While Hank struggled to get back to his feet, the plexus flared, summoning a force that ripped the officer’s arm right out of the socket. Black ooze and torn ligaments stuck out from where Hank had uprooted the man’s arm. Then, stretching his jaws impossibly wide—ripping his cheeks, breaking his bones—Hank stuffed the limb down his gullet.

Hank’s mouth, throat, and esophagus absorbed the fresh flesh, sending rivulets of processed biomass flowing beneath his skin. The trails converged on his neck and torso and added to them, lengthening them right before our eyes. Half of the flesh-flow diverted onto Hank’s arm, pumping it up with mass as they settled in place around the limb. Claws burst from his fingertips with explosive cracks of skin and bone.

For a brief second, Hank’s jaw dangled limply from his face, like a broken door. With a single motion, he ripped his jaw off his face, crushed the bone in his claws, and stuffed it down the throat-cavern beneath the toothy overhang of his upper jaw.

Hank’s bullet wounds instantly stitched themselves shut.

“Shit…” Quincy gasped.

Horrified, boiling with anger, I sprinted toward them. A volley of glowing plexus-frisbees suddenly appeared.

Ellen!

I couldn’t dodge them. Each successive impact knocked me back squeaking my loafers’ soles against the vinyl. Two of Ellen’s plexus-frisbees slammed into Hank’s lengthy torso, sending him to his knees, knocking the officer’s arm out of Hank’s mouth. The half-dissolved arm skipped across the vinyl like a stone on a pond, slowly rolling to a stop a good way away.

Ellen seized the opportunity she’d made. Rearing up, she tackled Hank with a yell, knocking him to the side, out of her way, and away from the dying officer.

Hank snapped with rage as he rolled onto his back, spewing out black gobs instead of words.

The officer flailed on the floor, desperate to get away, even as he bled out in black and red.

“Get your own damn food!” Quincy yelled, bellowing at Ellen while I focused on shaping my next attack.

Quincy pounded power into the floor with a stomp of his rotting foot. Plexus threads shot through the vinyl as the floor trembled beneath our feet, knocking everyone else off balance. With Ellen staggered, Quincy tackled her and snarled. She tried to grab him and parry the blow, but Hank reared up just in time to slap Ellen in the face with a buckler-shaped plexus he’d woven over his hand. The psychokinetic blow knocked her onto her back.

I ran forward, hoping to pull them to the ground with a plexus net like I had with the police outside of Room 268, when Quincy tripped by sweeping his tail across the floor. Before I could respond, he whipped around—half hips, half tail—slamming his tail into me and knocking me down. I hit the floor on my side. There was an awful crack as my hips bashed against my PortaCon cracked. I yelled in pain, bracing myself with my arms as I tried to roll onto my belly.

“Stay out of this, Genneth!” Hank yelled. “He’s ours!”

I looked up just in time to see Hank smack his body down onto mine, keeping me pinned in place while Quincy leapt at the officer.

I struggled against Hank’s weight, pushing up off the floor with my mismatched hand as best I could.

But I was too late.

The infected police officer let out a blood-curdling scream—the last he’d ever utter.

“No!” I screamed.

Ellen and Quincy pounced on him like a pair of hyenas. Ellen tore into the portly man with her claws, drawing deep wounds that oozed blood and darkness.

Hank pressed the wind out of me with an elbow to the small of my back. While I groaned in pain, Hank took the opportunity and dove into the feast playing out behind him.

They were peeling him apart like a pastry.

The three transformees butted against each other, competing for his viscera. Black glop slicked between fingers and claws as they scooped deformed organs out of that poor man’s devastated anatomy and stuffed them down their throats.

Much of the grim feast didn’t even reach their mouths. Wherever the dying man’s flesh touched the parts of the transformee’s bodies that had turned into wyrmflesh, the corpse-chunks melted into the transformees’ bodies, as if every last wyrm-scale was a cell of slavering tongue. Tiny filaments sprouted from their hide and plunged into the infection, sucking the eviscerated organs into their bodies. The converted biomass crawled beneath their skin in bulging trails that wandered across their forms until they found the place they were meant to be and settled into it, fully assimilated

The whole time, I lay on my belly, watching, frozen in place—absolutely frozen. I was afraid of moving; afraid of what might happen if I moved. Afraid of being eaten. Afraid of eating.

Two figures rushed out from around the corner. One was human, the other, a transformee. My wyrmsight showed a cocoon of motes swirling around the man.

I shivered as halos of psychokinetic music blossomed around the three cannibals’ heads. The colors were unlike mine. Unlike Nina’s. I saw reds and purples and oranges, and twisted into zigzag cages and swirling particle drifts—shapes I’d never seen before

The halos flashed.

Air puffed against my face, blowing away from the three transformees in front of me. They opened their mouths as if to scream, but they made no sound. They gasped for breath. Their hands flew to their necks. Hank had to bend over just to be able to reach. Ellen clawed at the air for a couple seconds before her eyes fluttered and she fell backward, unconscious. Hank and Quincy passed out moments later, their tails making quite the thud as they struck the floor.

Then, stepping forward, Dr. Suisei Horosha glanced down at me and extended his gloved hand.

“Hello again, Dr. Howle,” he said, smiling at me through his PPE—plastic visor; transparent mask. “Fancy seeing you here.”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me up. Beneath my wyrmsight, I watched his magic motes swirled around like a wind-whipped snowdrift. We stared at each other face to face. His had the serene, unreadable smile of a porcelain mask. And mine?

I was a fudging mess.