Shaking her head, Ani waved her hands in a dismissive gesture. “I’m sorry, Genneth. I’m all over the place.”

That she was.

“This is supposed to be about Jonan, not my mother.”

“We’re all out of sorts, Ani,” I said.

But Ani just doubled down on her outrage. “Yeah, well Jonan Derric is out of line!” she yelled, her eyebrows deeply angled behind her glasses.

We stopped in our tracks. I stepped off the side, into a vending machine niche. Much like the one I’d visited with Storn, this one had been ravaged of all its supplies. They hadn’t just eaten the plastic plants, they’d gotten the ceramic pots, too! Faintly blackened rings of dust and spores covered the floor where the pots had once stood.

Andalon sat down on the floor beside us, unseen to all but me. Her pale gray nightgown splayed on the floor. Meanwhile, Ani’s posture slumped.

“I’m sorry,” she said, apologizing for her angry outburst, “it’s just… I’ve been running low on idealism. It’s this plague. It doesn’t stop. I’m worried I don’t even know what’s real anymore. Even in my dreams, I’m working my shifts.”

It was a bad sign, to say the least.

“Ani, what happened?” I asked.”What did Jonan do? I’ll be honest: I don’t really trust him. I know he’s a hard worker, but, still…”

“Jonan is too zealous for his own good,” Ani replied. “Sometimes I worry he might be too much of a fixer upper, even for me,” she added. She looked me in the eyes. “Genneth, up till now, I hadn’t told any of my friends or family that my parents are here, and are infected.”

I furrowed my brow. “But…” I stammered. “You just showed me a message Jonan sent you, where he gave you condolences about what happened to your parents! Is he a time-traveler, too? This doesn’t make any sense.”

Ani nodded. “I asked him the same thing, and you know what he told me?”

“What?” I asked.

“He’d hacked into my console,” she said.

“What?!” I yelled.

Several patients seated in the hallway turned to the noise. The rest didn’t, either because they were unconscious or dead.

So many bodies…

Andalon’s eyebrows leapt up. “What’s hack-ing?” she asked.

I gave a quick thought-answer: Jonan looked where he wasn’t supposed to look.

Andalon pouted. “Bad JoJo!” she said.

You could say that again.

“Yeah,” Ani said. “You heard it right, and he said it so casually, too. He’s spyware and everything. Apparently, he’s been monitoring my text messages and social media posts for years. He says it’s for my protection.”

“Doesn’t this make him a stalker?” I asked.

But Ani shook her head. “That’s just it: when he says he thinks it’s for ‘my protection’, I know he means it one-hundred percent.” She glanced at the floor. “I don’t know whether to punch him or kiss him.”

“Social distancing guidelines recommend you avoid doing either,” I said.

Ani gave me such a look.

I raised my hands defensively—even though I’d probably deserved it.

“At the risk of being obtuse,” I asked, “isn’t it a bit petty to be worried about this, considering everything else that’s going on right now.”

Ani stared for a long time—not at me, but slightly askance. When she spoke, her words were fragile and impossibly sweet, like a pear made of glass, shattered on the sidewalk. She whispered.

“He’s my Light, Genneth. I don’t want to think ill of him. I can’t. I… I don’t know what I’d do if—”

I fought my instinct to reach out and grab Ani by the hands, but then fought against that fight and did it anyway, grabbing her hands and squeezing them tightly.

“—You don’t need to say anything else.” I shook my head. “I completely understand.” I sighed. “I’m all too familiar with the pain that comes from having a conflict hovering over a deeply felt bond.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“Then come on,” Ani said, “he’s this way.”

Ani led me to one of the several side hallways we were using to deal with the massive patient overflow. The situation was completely out of control. Just days ago, the patients that had been coming into Central Wing’s five wards had been mostly coughers, and snifflers, their complexions flushed or wan, with something worse stick out from the surge every once in a while, whether it stumbled through the sliding doors or got rolled out from an ambulance and rushed down the hall.

But now, it was everywhere.

People stumbled in, bent over their loved ones’ shoulders, moaning as they spurted out ooze and vomit. I saw faces, arms, and legs bruised and bloodied by the infection’s touch. Tremulous voices wailed and cried, asking unanswerable questions about things they no longer remembered.

It was hard not to gainsay that all this was really happening. It barely felt like real life anymore. It was more like we were the reels of an auteur’s horror movie. The same scenes played out time and again, perhaps with minor variations, as if the film’s deranged director expected to stumble upon the right way of doing it through the method of exhaustion.

And Jonan was there, right in the thick of it.

He was checking up on patients one at a time, moving with an uncompromising, almost mechanical industriousness as he made up for the time slot he’d spent working with Lark. Even some of the soldiers stared. Compared to him, Heggy seemed almost slothful.

In my years working in healthcare, Dr. Derric was as near to a miracle worker as I’d ever seen. It was a shame he was so full of himself.

We walked toward him, only for Ani to rush up and wallop him with a smack of her hand before I could react. Though, to be clear, as Jules put it, I was a “total wuss”, and as such knew essentially nothing about how to beat someone up, even I could tell that Ani’s slap left much to be desired. From what I’d seen, it looked like she’d been trying to hit so as to maximize pain without either injuring him, or compromising his PPE. If she hadn’t loudly shouted, “Jonan, you jerk!” as she slapped him, you might have thought it was a show of affection.

Or, perhaps, some sort of sexual fetish—not that I would judge.

Jonan leered at Dr. Lokanok for a moment, before saying, almost lecherously, “Hit me baby one more time…”

We both stared at him.

“Really, nothing?” he said, after a moment’s silence. “Fine.” He rolled his eyes. “What is it? Not to be rude, but,” he gestured at the people around him, “I have my work cut out for me.”

“I have some things I’d like to ask you, Dr. Derric,” I said, “in private.”

He leaned over and tapped some icons on a nearby console. “There, I’ve requisitioned a replacement for myself.” He reached out to us, as if we were about to handcuff him. “Do with me what you will,” he said.

We stepped out of the triage area into an adjacent hallway, and then through a door and into a stairwell, just for good measure.

Ani let him have it before I could even open my mouth.

“I still can’t believe you were bullheaded enough to think I’d be happy to hear my boyfriend was spying on me!”

Jonan snorted. “You’re fine with DAISHU spying on you,” he said.

Ani shook her head in confusion. “What?”

Jonan raised an eyebrow. Somehow, he still managed to look suave, even with a mask on his face and a hairnet over his golden hair.

“It wasn’t obvious already?” he said. “I mean, you attended a Reform Party rally, Ani. Don’t tell me you really believed that you could go out and advocate for stuff reinstating personal and corporate income taxes without getting monitored by DAISHU. Before the plague hit, they were still trying to get the social credit system they have back in Mu established here in Trenton, but—for once—the racism of the racists over in the National Diet ended up being a good thing, because it kept the lobbyists from getting what they wanted. Until then—and, again, before the plague hit—they would have settled for monitoring your personal communications, which they did, and I know because I stopped them. I trapped the spyware in an isolated subroutine. And no amount of system updates is going to set that bugger free, let me tell you. I’m keeping you safe, Ani.”

“Keeping me safe?” Ani replied, grim and mocking. “Jonan,” she pointed at the wall, “there are literal zombies out there! That doesn’t change the fact that you’re still spying on me.”

Jonan nodded. “True, it was more meaningful back when DAISHU and scammers were still a threat. They’re not going to be much of a problem for the foreseeable future.”

“You two can continue this argument in your spare time,” I said. “Right now, though, there’s a more pressing concern.” I looked Dr. Derric straight in the eyes. “Dr. Marteneiss tells me that our supply of barbicane is basically gone—even though it shouldn’t be. Heggy already has enough on her plate to deal with. We all do,” I said.

“So?”

“So…” I said, echoing Jonan, only without the condescending tone, “I seem to recall you extorting a worker at the dispensary a couple days ago. Her name was Mildred, and you asked for a big fat bottle of barbicane.”

Jonan narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you sure you’re not being paranoid, Dr. Howle?”

“I wonder what Mildred would have to say if I asked her?” I replied.

“Good luck with that,” he said, “she’s dead. Everyone’s dying.” He looked up at the stairs coiled overhead. “Yeah, that’s always been true, but it’s never been quite as true as it is now.” He turned away from us. “Talk to whoever you want to talk to, I’m just trying to do my job.”

“So you are responsible!” I said, shaking my fist in victory. Doing so let me feel my fingertips crumble as they rubbed against my gloves, which definitely dampened my sense of triumph.

“Jonan,” Ani said, “why are you doing this?”

For a moment, he looked her in the eyes, but then sighed and lowered his gaze. “It’s because of you-know-what.”

Ani’s arms suddenly went slack at her sides. “Oh,” she said.

I looked at both of them, utterly lost. “I… I feel like I’m missing something here.”

“He’s—”

“—No no,” Jonan said, interrupting Ani, “I’ll explain it.” Looking me in the eyes, Jonan stuck out his hands and spun two fingers around in a tight circle. “Gather the crew. I’m gonna say this once, and only once.”

“Jonan…” Ani said, crestfallen.

“We can’t just drop everything on your command, Dr. Derric,” I said.

Jonan shrugged. “Then sync our next lunch break, or something. Schedule a time that works for you. Let me know, and I’ll be there—I swear. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have dying people I need to console.”

And then he walked off, leaving Ani and I staring, mouths agape.

“I guess we’d better tell Heggy about this,” I muttered.