As he entered the final lines of code into the console terminal to repurpose the hospital's network of holographic projectors in this time of crisis, Jonan would have breathed a sigh of relief, had he not been coughing up a storm.

Turning off the lights in the small IT room, Jonan shut the door behind him and set off in a run. Up ahead, the hallway opened up to a four way intersection. Jonan knew he should have known which way to go, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember.

He couldn't remember a lot of things.

He couldn't remember his parent's names or his college years, let alone the details for navigating the hospital's innards. His hobbies were now, at best, like half-remembered dreams. His family was reduced to a collection of wiry outlines in deep fog, cut through by distorted voices, often with more yelling than he would have liked.

Still, he was happy that he hadn't forgotten that most of his family was inbred human garbage. Dying was bad enough, but dying while thinking his aunts and uncles were decent human beings, now that was just a step too far.

For what it was worth, Jonan was proud to have held on to what was most important to him, primarily by repeating it to himself inside his mind.

Ani. Amazing. Important. The woman of your dreams.

He made sure to think about her at least once every five minutes.

Funnily enough, at the moment, most of his medical knowledge was still intact. He remembered glycolysis and the cytochromes, and that mixing nitric acid with hydrochloric acid made a fluid that could melt gold. He'd also held on to his knowledge of computers, and—of course—to his memories of Ani. And now that his knowledge of computers and programming had worked their last miracle, he could dispense with all that tech know-how without regret.

It had only really ever gotten him into trouble, anyway, and Jonan had resolved to use as much of his mind as he could, for as long as it was still his to use.

For a second time in under a week, Jonan had set the hospital's holographic projectors loose, giving them free rein to show anything and everything. The result? Walking through the hospital was like living in a video game, except while on crack.

Bipedal lions dressed like ancient Polovian soldiers—complete with swords in hand—marched down the hallway opposite Jonan on the intersection. A swarm of hummingbirds zipped around in the intersection, glistening in imaginary sunlight as they darted their beaks in and out of flowers that weren't there.

Yeah, his case of the Green Death was making every step he took feel like death itself. Also, the homicidal transformees prowling the hospital would definitely kill him if they saw him, but, man, what a way to go that would be.

Turning to the left, he heard—and saw—a transformee come slithering around the corner, clad in a priest's Mallard robe.

"—Shit," Jonan muttered.

The guy stared back, both at Jonan, and at the holographic hummingbirds, with a look of confusion puckering his face.

For a split second, Jonan got to bask in the peerless, nigh-orgasmic pleasure of knowing that he'd been absolutely right.

No matter how freakish the transformees looked on the outside, inside, they were still people: fallible, stupid, irrational, unreasonable, unimaginative people—exactly the kind who would waste precious seconds staring in confusion at some holograms that had appeared out of nowhere.

Jonan grabbed those precious seconds and used them to turn around and run back the way he came. And though his lungs were on fire and his limbs were on ice, he kept thinking about Ani. Ani Ani Ani. Ani with the dark brown hair and those glasses, so adorably large.

Jonan remembered there was a patient he was concerned about. A patient with a name like a bird who had an ailment that, for some reason, made Jonan feel really, really awkward, even if he could quite remember the details.

Then he remembered those details, and he wished that he hadn't.

Stumbling into a large open area, Jonan stopped and panted for breath. A countertop encircled a couple square support columns in the center of the room. After gasping in for breath—fuck, that hurt—he started running again, bumping into screams and people in equal measure. Some of the doctors and nurses were fleeing like mad, while others had sat down on the floor or on an unoccupied seat—not that there were many to be found—waiting for death to have its way with them, however it willed.

A bouquet of screams got cut short—literally—as a serpentine transformee slithered around a corner and chopped people to pieces with flicks of its claws. Across the room, men in sleek, white uniforms came tromping down another hallway, bearing matching guns.

Soldiers, Jonan thought.

People ran, banging the corpse-laden beds left out in the hallways against the wall to pushed off them for some extra speed. Some of the bystanders fell, spewing green-tinted black ooze onto the vinyl as they crashed onto the floor.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Few, if any, of them got back up.

Heat, sound, and light burst as the elite troopers fired their laser rifles. They aimed the steady red streams at the hallway's ceiling, right in front of the approaching transformee.

Jonan ran up to them and started berating them for their stupidity. "Are you guys trying to bring the roof down on our heads!?" he yelled, his words staggered by coughs. He pointed at the transformee, who was cackling in delight as they ripped a fungus-ravaged patient to pieces.

"Shoot their human parts you dumbasses!" Jonan barked.

"What good will that do?!" a soldier yelled. "The bullets just bounce off!"

"It'll fucking hurt 'em, that's what!"

They soldiers trained their fire away from the ceiling, leaving a charred, burning wound festering in its place. Their bullets and lasers quickly charbroiled the transformee's still human face, making it flail in agony and drop the body in its claws to the floor.

It was a small victory, but a victory all the same. Even so, Jonan didn't have any time to savor it. He needed to find Ani. She wasn't responding to his text messages, and with everyone running for their lives, it wasn't like he could stop to ask if anyone had seen her.

It made him fear the worst

So, he did the only thing he could do: he ran. He went down a hall and around a corner, and then around a second corner when he saw the wyrm that had been slithering down the first corner. He then felt a great deal of pain; someone else had been coming around that second corner at the same time.

They crashed, bouncing off each other's PPE. Yelling and coughing came first, only to stop as they recognized each others' voices.

"Jonan?" Ani said.

"Ani?"

In that moment, Jonan wished he could stop time, if only to get a chance to hug the woman he loved for as long as either of them wanted.

But he couldn't.

He looked her in the eyes. "Run!"

He grabbed her hand and held it tight, never wanting to let go.

Bodies flew, few of which were still alive. Jonan and Ani darted this way and that, beneath the flying equipment and the psychic blades slicing through the air, looking for survivors and doing their best to get them out of harm's way.

The hallway led to another four-way intersection.

"Wait!" Jonan stuck out his arm.

He'd heard that eeriest of sounds: like a living pipe organ, stalking its prey.

A transformee floated down the hallway.

Not slithered, floated.

"Fuck me," Jonan cursed, "that's right, they can fly!"

"Jonan!" Ani screamed.

They ran back the way they came. Jonan looked over his shoulder; the transformee swerved around the corner with ease. Suddenly, Ani pushed him off and pulled away.

"Ani!"

Dashing off to the side, Ani pulled a bed away from the wall, to block the path, and then went on running.

Jonan followed suit, rolling another bed in the transformee's path.

"You can't stop me!" the monster said, in a barely human growl.

Jonan pushed himself to run even harder, but his foot never hit the floor.

The next thing he knew, he couldn't move, yet move he did. His body floated up off the floor, rigid and immobile—and Ani's did the same

Both of them screamed.

They revolved midair.

The transformee leered at them. "Oh boy, a snack! Just the thing I was looking for." He smacked his lips. His sporey saliva hissed where it dripped onto the floor.

He had his claws out facing them as he trapped them with his powers.

If I'm about to die, Jonan thought, I might as well go out with a bang.

He just wished the visor of his PPE wasn't in the way. Plastic was a notoriously effective obstacle to romance.

Jonan looked Ani in the eyes. "Ani Lokanok, knowing and loving you have been the greatest privilege of my life."

Ani's breath caught in her throat. "J-Jonan…?"

She wept.

"Lovebirds, eh?" the transformee said.

Jonan glared at him. "Better than anything you're ever going to get, buddy."

The transformee spit out spores and snarled.

Jonan closed his eyes and prepared himself to face the infinite, only for the infinite to yell in a very familiar voice.

"This is for my brother, you son of a bitch!"

Jonan opened his eyes to see Dr. Marteneiss, Dr. B'zool, several other colleagues loaded to the teeth with what he dimly recognized from many hours spent deathmatching on Call of Honor multiplayer as submachine guns and semi-automatics.

And they were fully fucking loaded.

Even better, the transformee had been stupid enough to turn around and look.

Really, Andalon had picked some truly awful candidates to ascend to wyrmhood.

"Heggy?" Ani said, but she was quickly drowned out by the sound and fury of a posse of gun-toting healthcare professionals giving a murderous mutant a face-full of a hot lead.

Ani and Jonan fell to the floor as the transformee lost its psychic grip on them. It shrieked in agony.

Now Jonan knew where Dr. Marteneiss had gone. She'd raided the security office.

Jonan grabbed Ani's hand and helped her up off the floor. Heggy and the others briefly ceased firing to give the two of them room to pass behind the group of armed medical personnel.

The bullets had macerated the transformee's human face and chest. His already tattered dark uniform was in ruins.

"Did you just shoot me, bitch!?" As the transformee spoke, gobs of flesh came loose from his face and fell to the floor.

"What the fuck are you doin', corporal?" Heggy demanded, glowering at the transformee.

Jonan noticed the shock and anger in Heggy's glare. It was worse than anything he'd ever seen from her.

The transformee's black uniform… it was military! He even had the helmet.

The transformee glowered right back at her. "I'm tired of being on the losing side," he said.

"Well," Heggy replied, "then you can eat lead!" She fired, as did everyone else.

The transformee raised his claws to his face with a snarl. The bullets bounced off the back of his scaly hands. Heggy and the others fired again, and again, raining empty bullet casings onto the floor.

The monster grinned.

They hadn't gotten a single shot in.

The transformee reared back and took a deep breath.

All the color went out of Heggy's face. "Fuck…" she muttered, turning. "Run!" she yelled.

The transformee lashed out like a viper, spewing spores every-which-way; everyone scattered. A burning pain flared in Jonan's chest, forcing him down to his knees, coughing like mad as he gasped for breath.

Ani screamed.

Jonan managed to raise his head and turn toward the approaching wave of spores.

He reached out and grabbed Ani's hand and held it tight, ready for death, when two armored, weapon-bearing voids suddenly cut through the spore stream. The current of spores passed around them to either side.

Jonan swore he saw one of the silhouettes had a fucking katana.

Then, from off to the side, Jonan saw a blade of force slice into the cloud, parting it to either side, clearing a path to the transformee, while holding the clouds at bay.

And then a voice yelled, both familiar and not. "Out of the way!"

My voice.

Behind it came the roars of the wyrms pursuing me down the hall.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.