“What is it?” I asked.

Ani looked away.

“Ani, please, tell me.”

She looked me in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Genneth.” She shook her head. “It’s not my place to tell it.”

Suddenly, Andalon looked up at me, her eyes wide with panic. “Mr. Genneth!” she yelled. An invisible wind whipped at her pale nightgown’s hem.

What’s wrong?, I thought-asked.

“Something awful is happening! They’re hurting a wyrmeh! They’re,” she blubbered, “they’re—”

—Where? I asked.

She pointed at a seemingly random wall. A quick check of my mental map of WeElMed told me she was probably pointing toward the central courtyard.

Ani must have noticed my concern, because she turned to me and asked, “Genneth, what’s wrong.”

“I…” I stammered. Fortunately our consoles buzzed at once.

Ani and I pulled our PortaCons out of our hazmat suits’ belly pockets.

The message waiting for me was not a good one.

There’s gunfire out in the central courtyard!

Ani gasped. “Genneth…” She looked at me. “Get my parents the mycophage ASAP,” she said. “I’ll deal with this bullshit.”

She ran off down the hall.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon yelled, insistent.

“This can’t wait, can it?” I asked.

“No!” Andalon yelled.

Fricassee me! I thought.

I hopped to it, running down the hall as fast as my atrophying legs could carry me. I turned down the hall, taking a quicker, crazier route than Ani had taken, bypassing beds and death and Wards A, B, and C as I ran down the main corridor, into the Hall of Echoes, and out onto the street.

If I passed Ani on the way, I hadn’t seen her.

It was evening now, the sun having set behind Crusader Hill’s storied curves. The military’s black metal fortifications had grown substantially from what I’d seen earlier that morning. All of the watchtowers were up and running, spotlights and all, most of which were trained on the General Labs building, to the left of the Central Wing. People of all stripes had gathered along the cordons in the street and in the Garden Court, though most of them looked to be healthcare workers.

I wish I could have said they stood unopposed. Unfortunately, they were facing off with soldiers wielding riot gear: transparent shields to keep the crowds at bay, and softly electrical clubs for when the shields weren’t enough.

Where, Andalon? I thought-asked.

The blue-haired spirit floated forward and up, and then turned around and looked down at me.

“There!” she said, pointing through the heart of the crowd, toward GL.

Importantly, Andalon wasn’t pointing straight ahead at the big, ornate old building on the left side of the Garden Court Drive.

She was pointing down.

“Fudge,” I muttered.

Just in case it wasn’t already painfully obvious, I had a really bad feeling about this.

Down meant basement. And basement meant… well, too many things.

At the risk of judging a book by its cover, it was hard not to worry that Vernon and his men had something to do with this.

Though WeElMed’s basements—particularly the first level—connected nearly all of its buildings together, the underground extensions were deepest in two places: beneath the Central Wing, and beneath GL—the General Labs building. GL’s basements spread out like roots—or fungal mycelium, as Brand or Mistelann might have said—linking GL up all of the surrounding buildings’ basement-level labs. GL was to WeElMed what the liver was to the human body. It was the main hub for testing, analysis, and research, and it had more machines in it than it did people.

WeElMed’s main laboratory was on GL’s first basement level. The building’s above-ground floors were used for surgery and medical and biochemical research, as well as for classes for students of Elpeck Medical School.

Back in the Second Empire, GL was Elpeck Medical School, but then, in the middle of the First Republic, they’d gotten a fancy new campus of their own out by Marshdale, about a forty minute drive away from WeElMed (traffic pending).

Andalon floated down to me. “Are they doin’ something there?” she asked.

I sighed.

“Well,” I muttered, “there’s only one way to find out.”

Scanning my cufflink-soldered chip over my PortaCon, I brought up my profile on the WeElMed app, complete with all the latest information about how I was the member of a Ward’s Crisis Management Team, and all the shiny privileges that came with it. Grabbing my console in both hands, I lifted it up with its screen facing forward as I charged across the old stone street and onto the Garden Court.

“Mr. Genneth, that way!” Andalon said, pointing down at the ground.

Instead of stepping onto the grass, I turned to the left and went down the stairs that sunk below the garden’s low-lying wall, heading toward the underground Undergreen Galleria. Of course, this took me right into a military checkpoint.

The stairs down to the Galleria weren’t direct, but opened up onto a spacious landing halfway down. At the moment, a handful of soldiers were standing there, atop a tiled floor that had been scuffed up almost beyond recognition.

They raised their weapons at me, but I thrusted my console in their faces.

“I’m medical,” I said, “let me through.”

They nodded and stepped out of the way.

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I slung my console under my arm as I went down the remaining half-flight of stairs to the Galleria floor, sliding my fingers down the metal handrail.

Despite the urgency, I couldn’t help but slow down and gawk as I stepped out into the Galleria Under the Green.

Heggy’s brother knew how to keep things ship-shape, that’s for sure.

In barely twelve hours, Undergreen had undergone an astonishing transformation.

A week ago, before the world had ended, the Undergreen was high up on the list of Elpeck’s premiere commercial venues. The Undergreen was an ivory dream beneath the courtyard’s lush gardens, formed by two halves of a hexagonal, shop-lined corridor that wound around an open, central area. A lattice of stalwart, square, polished granite columns stood on the Galleria’s white tiled floors. Shafts of fading daylight rained down through the skylights in the ceiling—artful caps of glass and steel that rose up like gazebos among the gardens’ verdure. The design guaranteed a constant flow of air and light through the space all day long. Even now, with night approaching, I could feel the air as it pressed against my hazmat suit.

A week ago, the Undergreen’s central area would have been filled with people talking as they sat at its tables, munching on something from one of the Galleria’s shops, or from one of the glass-walled kiosks around the humble fountain, among the pillars. Now, all of it was gone. Most of the tables had been ripped out of the ground, and the kiosks were being used as operation centers or meeting rooms. The two halves of the hexagon’s shopping corridors had been sealed off, to be used as barracks and munitions depots.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon shouted.

“I know,” I muttered.

I wasn’t blind.

Turning to the left, I passed beyond the left-hand half-hexagon, approaching the long glass wall that separated the Undergreen from the first level of WeElMed’s celebrated main parking garage. Through the glass, I saw crowds of people pushing against the guards stationed at entrances to Central Wing and GL’s first basement levels, as well as the mouths of the staircases leading to GL’s main entrance. As I walked up to the double doors in the middle of the glass, I got a near-panoramic view of the garage’s first floor.

“Flibbertigibbet,” I muttered.

Tanks and troop transports sat in the garage and its driveways, in stark relief against the mosaic seascapes on the columns, floors, and walls.

I opened the doors and stepped through. The parking garage’s air was as dank and stale air as ever, though it now boasted hints of burning metal. I heard sparks and soldering.

“What are they doing?” Andalon asked.

Maybe some kind of repairs?, I wondered.

Andalon followed alongside me as I walked up behind a column, which I gripped, hidden from sight in the shadow of an orange mosaic octopus.

“Shit!” someone yelled.

The scream came from behind me—through the open glass doors.

“Don’t shoot!” yelled another. “Don’t shoot! Just keep them away from the Undergreen.”

I turned around and looked.

And then gulped.

The dam had burst. The guards manning the stairs had been overwhelmed.

People streamed down the stairs, flooding the Galleria with their coughs, yells, and footsteps. Soldiers started corralling the crowd as the tide of onlookers moved toward the open doors in the middle of the glass wall.

“Regroup!” someone said.

I recognized that voice.

Looking ahead, past the column, I saw Heggy’s brother. He stood at the other side of the garage, in front of the entrance to GL’s main basement lab. He was still wearing his black hazmat suit.

“To me!” he called. His voice boomed off the garage’s walls.

His suit must have come with a built-in megaphone.

He wasn’t alone, though. He was flanked by what could only be several elite soldiers. Their armor was sleek and white—helmets round—with dark parts on the undersides of their arms and legs and a black, chevron shaped visor covering their faces.

Their slender, white guns were unlike anything I’d ever seen.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon said, nervously.

In seconds, I found myself trapped between two walls, one in front of me, the other behind. Behind, a crowd of angry, terrified civilians—patients and healthcare workers alike. In front, a line of soldiers with riot shields upheld, marching to meet them. The tension was almost unbearable.

The crowd shouted.

“What’s going on?!”

“I heard shooting!”

“I saw wounded men!”

“Why were you holding us back?!”

Spying a narrow, unoccupied—and very uncomfortable-looking—gap between a structural pillar and a parked car, I darted forward and ducked into it, hiding behind the car in the likely event someone decided to start shooting.

“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon said, “use your wyrmy sees!”

Good idea, I thought.

I thickened my wyrmsight, but only on the part of my field of vision where I had a clear view of the entrance to GL’s basement lab, making sure to avoid thickened wyrmsight where the crowd happened to be.

Or, for that matter, where the soldiers happened to be.

I knew what I’d see if I’d thickened it there, and I had no interest in seeing any of it.

It would only make me more upset.

As my wyrmsight thickened, I could make out the fungus’ riotous, multicolored aura filling GL’s rooms immediately adjacent to the garage.

Andalon floated up beside me. “What about the wyrmeh?” she asked, full of worry.

I focused.

“There,” I whispered. “I see it.”

I detected the tell-tale violet, ultramarine runic circuitry of a transformee, though the signals were rather faint. Whether that was because the walls were thick enough to interfere with my wyrmsight, or it was because I was seeing something located in a room that wasn’t immediately adjacent to the garage, I didn’t know.

Andalon rose up over the cars in front of me, and pointed. “Mr. Genneth, look!”

A steady trickle of nebulous, phantom forms was wafting out through the walls.

“Spirits,” I muttered.

The spirits were moving up and out, rising into the ceiling as they crossed the garage.

“I got it,” Andalon said. “I got it.”

“Wait,” I stammered, “wha—”

—But Andalon floated up and away, toward the spirits, who she approached and touched, one by one. She touched them all, swooping and banking about. Sometimes it was with a tap of her fingertips, other times, she simply flew through them while en route to another. Copies of the spirits peeled off their spectral forms when she touched them. The copies rushed toward me, like moths to a flame, soundlessly disappearing into my body. Every contact made me ripple with gentle lightheadedness—the feeling of these souls being uploaded into me.

And then someone climbed onto the roof of a parked car and yelled.

“Quiet!”

It was General Marteneiss.

Silence rippled through the crowd.

“You want an explanation?” he said. “I’m more than happy to give one.”

He stood up tall. “Under my supervision, and the supervision of my most trusted scientific advisors, we are conductin’ research to try and understand—” but then his voice petered out. “You know what,” he said, “to heck with formality!” He shook his head. “It won’t matter once I’m dead.”

Confusion rippled through the crowd.

Vernon coughed softly, which everyone heard, thanks to his fancy, armored hazmat suit’s built-in megaphone. He cleared his throat.

“You see those doors, folks?”

He pointed at the doors into GL’s basement.

“We’ll… we’re experimenting on zombies in there.”

Gasps and yelps echoed through the garage. Even some of the soldiers with the riot shields looked up at their commanding officer in shock.

“Any sounds of combat you might hear are our brave men and women in uniform doin’ what needs to be done to keep these experiments goin’.” Pausing, the General looked down in dejection. “An experiment went wrong, and, unfortunately… we just lost Dr. Albert Ironshard and two very brave men. Forgive me for not givin’ a eulogy; there are too many that I need to give, and I start, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to stop.” He sniffled.

He was crying.

Holy Angel…

The crowd’s anger transformed into grief.

“I’m gonna be level with you,” Vernon continued. “High Command has given me an ultimatum. Either we figure out why WeElMed isn’t overrun with zombies and use that secret to save what’s left of the world, or this city and everyone and everything in it is going to be nuked until even the atoms are blown to smithereens. These experiments of ours have already killed people, and they’ll doubtless kill more before we’re through, but… they’re our only hope.”

The crowd was so quiet, we could hear the sounds of Vernon smacking his lips.

“So,” he said, “would y’all kindly stay away from these labs?”

I walked out from behind the car. Many eyes looked at me.

“How will we know if something’s gone wrong?” I asked.

I was willing to trust Vernon Marteneiss for the simple reason that Heggy trusted him. As far as I was concerned, anyone Dr. Marteneiss trusted was someone worth trusting. But, I did not trust the system from which he’d come.

In response to my question, the General nodded and then pressed his fingers onto the console built into the forearm of his hazmat suit. “Show them the alarm, Jerry,” he muttered. “Three seconds.”

The air filled with shrill sirens’ shrieks. Turning around to face the source of the sound, I saw flashes of red light pouring down through the Undergreen’s skylights.

Three seconds later, the sound ceased.

“We’ve set up an alarm system,” Vernon explained. “If y’all hear that sound, or see the lights on the watchtowers flashin’ red, then y’all have my permission to freak the fuck out. But, for your sake and ours, just stay out of our way.” He looked over the crowd, and then over his own men.

“Dis-missed!” he said, in a loud, clear voice.

The crowd quickly dispersed.

I turned off my wyrmsight as I entered the Central Wing from its garage entrance.

General Marteneiss wasn’t giving us the full story. There was a transformee in GL’s main lab, and Vernon hadn’t said a word about it. If the good General was anything like his sister, he wouldn’t lie. But unfortunately, the truth and the whole truth were two very different propositions.

Thankfully, I wouldn’t need to take the General at his word. Whatever had happened in that lab, I was going to hear about it straight from the (spirit) horse’s mouth.