A lot of things happened after that—after Storn collapsing due to his exposure to Merritt’s spores, I mean. By sheer luck, some nurses passing nearby had heard my cry for help, and came running to Storn’s aid within a matter of seconds. I explained what happened, and they berated me for taking Storn into the “Norm Zone”, as they called it. The moment was as terrifying as it was awkward, a surreal combination, I know. But, what else could it be, when the nurses who were helping me save my friend and neighbor’s life were as tired and sickly as he was? They were wearing their PPE for other people’s protection, not their own.

It would be a little while longer before I learned about what happened to Nina.

It was too late for them.

I wondered how much longer they’d be able to continue working before the disease took the rest of their strength.

By another stroke of luck, the nurses had had an empty hospital bed on hand. It was filthy, stained with blood and black ooze, but it was a bed and we had a need for it, so it would have to do.

We stripped off Storn’s spore-contaminated clothes. I hobbled over to the nearest incinerator chute and tossed them in, only to find that Storn had started seizing. The nurses wheeled him off to intensive care, and though I wanted to help, they’d brusquely told me off, saying I’d done enough already—and not in a good way.

Andalon winked back into existence as soon as the nurses were out of earshot. I’d asked her to keep her distance while I was dealing with them, and I wasn’t exactly in the mood to doppelganger myself.

I had Merritt on the mind. I had those mysterious gestures of hers—tapping her chest, then pointing at me—playing on repeat inside my head. I was fixating on it so strongly, my hyperphantasia had come off its leash and started to have its way with my surroundings. The surfaces of the walls, floor, and ceiling in the hallway where I stood were undulating, as if they were being stretched around the body of a wyrm. Then, from all over, clawed arms thrusted out and tapped and pointed.

Focusing, I closed my eyes and willed away the unwanted images.

“Mr. Genneth?”

I opened my eyes. “Yes, Andalon?” I asked, exasperated.

It wasn’t her fault, though, it was mine.

It was mine.

“Mrs. BokBok could see you.”

“What?”

“Mrs. BokBok has wyrmeh sees,” Andalon said, “just like you.”

A shiver ran down to the tip of my tail as I made an O with my mouth. “She was able to see my plexuses…” I muttered. No, not just that. She’d also have been able to see the wyrm transformation aura coursing over my body.

Suddenly, Merritt’s gestures made a whole lotta sense.

Fudge.

I leaned against a wall, weighed down by dismay.

“What is it?” Andalon asked.

I looked her in the eyes. “Merritt could see that I’m a transformee,” I said. “I…” I bit my lip. My voice cracked.

Knowing Merritt’s personality, she couldn’t have been asking me about whether I knew that I was infected. Merritt wasn’t anyone’s fool; she had a smart head on her shoulders, so she wouldn’t have been asking me if I knew that I was a transformee. Though there were a lot of conditions that you could have without being aware of it, a Type Two case of the Green Death was not one of them.

No, with the way Merritt thought, always putting others before herself, there was only one possible interpretation.

“I think she was asking if she had been the one to infect me,” I said.

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Obviously, me and my guilty conscience meant I had no choice but to immediately haul my butt back through the warning-tape-covered door in the sepia barrier, and from there down the hallway to Operating Theater 12.

When I arrived, I found the plastic tunnel had begun to deflate, not that it had any air in it; rather, its walls were coming down. The last vestiges of Merritt’s spore waves were settling onto the floor, lightly dusting it. The effect was quite dramatic: black burn marks blossomed on the vinyl like toxic flowers, their nectar powdery and sizzling. Fearing what it might do to my hazmat suit, I kept my distance from it, treating it like it was a whale carcass rotting on the beach.

“Merritt?” I called.

Mrs. Elbock slithered into view a moment later. This time, she kept her distance, choosing to lean against the operating theater’s far wall. After another struggle against her transfigured body, she managed to wind herself into a sloppy coil, two turns high.

Swallowing hard, I stepped forward, with Andalon floating at my side. Corroded fragments of plastic and glass crunched beneath my feet.

Merritt must have spent some time thinking about what to do, because, this time, instead of trying to “talk” to us, she tapped one of her claws right below one of her rearmost pair of eyes. After that, she extended her forepart over her coils, lowering herself to the floor until she was close enough to dig her claw into the vinyl. I cringed at the sound of her scraping a question mark into the floor. The symbol was crooked and horribly misshapen, mostly because Merritt had gone out of her way to draw it upside down, so that it looked right-side up to me.

After doing this, she made the gesture from before—first claw to chest, then pointing it at me—only this time, she added a final tap of her claw on the question mark on the floor.

At this point, I was crying freely. My whole body tingled with what Andalon would have probably called “sad-happiness”. It was sobering to see Merritt fully transformed. Her grotesque wyrm form was a grave reminder that my humanity was on borrowed time.

It was one thing to see a wyrm on TV. It was another to face one down with my own two eyes while realizing that I was looking at my future.

And yet, despite that, it was crystal clear to me that she was still the same, meek, lovable, worry-prone sweetheart I’d come to know over the years. Horrifying, fantastical circumstances notwithstanding, this, right here, was peak Merritt-ness. The only way it could have been more Merritt-y was if she’d had a cherry casserole baking the oven. I had no doubt that, if—by some miracle—we managed to get her into a properly stocked kitchen before this was all over, Merritt would have at least tried to bake a cherry casserole, or whatever other treat she was able to cook up.

There was no doubt about it. Not even the slightest shadow. On the inside, Merritt was still the same person, and that knowledge brought me immense relief. It was like letting go of a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. Though I wasn’t going to stay human much longer, I would remain Genneth—plus or minus a few extra copies.

Sniffling, I took a deep breath—not that I needed to breathe anymore. (Again, old habits…) With a psychokinetic wave, I swept away the glass on the floor and the spores clinging to the air, clearing the way for me to step up to the operating theater’s broken double doors. As I did so, Merritt raised her head.

It was clear she knew that I knew that she knew.

Shaking my head, I sighed. “It wasn’t your fault, Merritt,” I said. “Later that day—the day you came to me—the Dressfeldt Shooter Aicken Wognivitch spat in my face as we were wheeling him into the hospital. He later died in surgery, of what was probably one of the first Type One cases of the Green Death that we had here at WeElMed. It wasn’t you. By the Angel, it wasn’t you.”

More wyrm scales rustled along the floor as Cassius came into view. Spores and polyphony spread ahead of him in short spurts. He craned his neck around as he looked toward me.

“Fudge…” I muttered.

Cassius was more or less the same size as Merritt, only dark blue compared to her dark green. His claws were grayish, and his wyrm-head was as bald as his human head had been. Unlike Merritt, he didn’t have a trace of horns. He didn’t have a mane, either. Instead, multiple short, wide vanes jutted out from his flanks, looking somewhat like pieces of shelf fungus growing from a fallen tree trunk, only without any flimsy gills strung up beneath them.

Cassius didn’t even try to say anything. He just stared at me, narrowing all six of his eyes. He made a V with two claws, pointed at his snout, and then at me, obviously meaning, “I’m watching you,” only to slink away a moment later.

So, he knew, too.

I sighed.

“Merritt,” I said, looking her in the eyes, “I swear to you, I’m going to fix this. Somehow. I’m going to make this right.” I shook my head. “There’s so much more going on here than you know.” I nodded. “Storn is going into intensive care. He collapsed after I brought him outside. With the help of an Odenskaya mycologist, we’ve begun using an experimental treatment for the Type One infection. I’ll make Storn a priority.”

Suddenly, I bent forward and groaned, while clutching my stomach.

Fudge.

Hunger hit me like a tsunami.

I guess it was that time of day again.

Saliva started to pool in my mouth.

Merritt lurched forward, clearly concerned for my well-being.

I wanted to believe I was worthy of her regard, but it was a hard sell, to say the least.

I reached out with my arm. “It’s alright, I’m just hungry.” I nodded. “There’s so much I want to tell you. There are transformees here who are ‘off the grid’, so to speak. If I can’t manage to make it back here in time, I’ll tell them to pay you a visit. Maybe they’ll be able to work something out.” I looked her in the eyes again. “You don’t need to go through this alone, Merritt—neither you, nor Cassius. Just,” I sighed, “please, stay here, for now. It’s…” I turned to look down the hallway. “It’s dangerous out there.”

She nodded, and then I lumbered off as quickly as I could.

It was time to quest for food.