Though I had many bad habits, few aggrieved me (or my family) more than my tendency to flake out and renege on my promises. Going forward, I vowed to be better than how I was before. I wanted to be dependable, someone whose word was worth its weight in gold.

I'd made a promise to Jonan to help Lark, and I meant to keep it.

I'd made a promise to Storn and Merritt to help them, and I meant to keep it.

I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I'd abandoned them, most of all in this time of great need.

I would not be able to leave the hospital in good conscience to rescue Pel and the kids until Verune's forces were dealt with, assuming they could be dealt with. And if we couldn't, well… I wasn't going to leave the hospital until I was confident that the other transformees would be able to stay safe, or as safe as you could be before factoring in the possible threat of nuclear annihilation, but we'd cross that bridge if and when we got to it.

Assuming Lark was still in the same room she'd been in when she first arrived, of the souls I needed to save, hers was currently the closest.

A group of four soldiers came around the corner as I slithered down the hall. They immediately raised their rifles at me, but I quickly raised my hands and yelled, "Don't shoot, I'm a doctor". It took them a couple of seconds to realize that if I was lying and meant them harm, I could have already killed them with my psychokinesis.

"But he hasn't," one of them said, "so he's probably telling the truth."

Nodding and then continued on their way, marching down the hallway, and likely toward certain death.

I took care not to touch any of the corpses (or remains thereof) as I slithered forward. I needed to keep forestalling my transformation, if only to not lose my ability to speak.

I passed a trauma center where some nurses were cowering in terror, behind an examination table. They were well-hidden to the naked eye, but not to my wyrmsight, in which the fungal aura aglow in their bodies was like lightning against the night sky.

I soon arrived at Lark's room. The door was open and—

"—Fudge!"

Through the patch of thickened wyrmsight in the corner of my vision, I could make out the telltale violet and ultramarine figurations of the aura signifying a fellow transformee, and it wasn't a small patch, either.

And it was directly inside Lark's room.

Not wasting a second, I blasted the door off its hinges and threw myself into the room. The transformee was still human enough to mostly fit inside the dove robe he or she wore, save for a dark red tail sticking out from the hem and trailing along the floor behind them.

Slowing my perception of time—leaving the door floating mid-air and the transformee frozen looking over their shoulder—I took a moment to get the lay of the land. The readout from the ECG by Lark's bed was erratic. I didn't know how much longer the singer would live, though, by the utterly ravaged state of her comatose body, it couldn't have been much more than an hour or two. At that stage, passing transformees could absorb Lark's soul just by being in close proximity to the singer's body. And—speak of the Norm!—thickening my wyrmsight, I saw Lark's spirit—a nebulous, mist-like form—caught between her body and the transformee.

Nope nope nope.

I was not going to let this happen!

Letting time move again, the door smacked against the footboard of Lark's bed, causing the transformee—who'd been leaning against it—to slip and fall forward. Without a second to lose, I pulled my plexuses off Yuta and Geoffrey's bodies and weapons, meshed the two weaves together, and threw it on the transformee like a net. The transformee shrieked—a feminine voice—as I let my power flow through the net yanking her away from Lark's body and slamming her into a walls

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Lark's soul adjusted course, floating toward where the transformee lay, stunned, in the corner of the room.

I split my plexus, gave it back to Yuta and Geoffrey, and then lunged for Lark's soul.

"Stop her!" I yelled.

I reached out and grabbed Lark's head, and unlike with Suisei, this time, I didn't hesitate to squeezed hard and yank the body's head off its shoulders. Multiple roots of fungal growth ripped out along with what I presumed was Lark's spine, though everything was so overgrown with fungus that I couldn't tell which was which. Nodules bulged along the roots like the pods you'd find on a legume.

The wave of exhaustion and hunger that passed through me as Yuta and Geoffrey sliced the transformee in thirds was counteracted by the feelings of pleasure, vigor, and satiation flowing out from my hand as I absorbed Lark. The featureless, mist-like form of the singer's soul suddenly pulled away from the transformee and disappeared into my chest.

I'd got her!

My hand twitched as it absorbed Lark's flesh. The biomass crawled up my arm and, from there, began to distribute itself along my upper body, driving my scales a little bit further across my torso. There was a soft tearing sound as the lumps on my back ripped holes through my coat, having grown long and thin. Two weights popped out on either side of the back of my head.

Those were probably horns.

I slithered out the room as quickly as I could; Yuta and Geoffrey phased through the walls and ran alongside me.

Next up: Storn.

Coming to the next hallway intersection, I looked on in horror as three transformees feasted on fleeing passersby. Their bodies grew longer as they fed, climaxing with wyrm snouts and eyes blossomed from what remained of their human faces.

Off to the side, I sensed a cluster of transformees approaching. I could see their auras. At first, I panicked, but then I checked my mental map of the hospital and realized what direction they'd come from.

That had to be the self-help group!

Yuta and Geoffrey looked at one another and then dashed off to attack the wyrms in the hallway, but I recalled the spirits to my side with a pointed thought.

The warriors watched at me in confusion as I slithered toward the approaching friendlies no one else could see.

"We have to stop them!" Geoffrey said, pointing his halberd at the people-eaters

Brand and the others are just seconds away, I thought-said. I'll join them once I've freed Merritt and Storn.

I managed to get a good way down the hall and even around another corner before the enemy wyrms finally noticed me.

They couldn't have had worse timing.

"Surrender, ebildoers!" Brand yelled, trumpeting a war-cry.

The three enemy transformees turned toward the sound.

I rolled my eyes as I slithered out of sight.

Storn was next.

As I approached Storn's room, I found a group of doctors huddling inside the room next door. I could have gone inside, but I didn't, not wanting to scare them half to death. Instead, I stood outside the door and said, in a quiet voice. "Head to the matter printer lab in the basement. Dr. Marteneiss and others will be there. They have weapons, and allies. If you get attacked along the way, just shout for Kurt or Greg."

I watched the doctors stare back at me through the window in the door.

It couldn't be helped, I suppose.

I opened the door to Storn's room and slithered in, using my powers to close the door behind me.

Meanwhile, the doctors left their room and set off running.

I smiled—but that smile was short-lived.

The first thing I noticed inside Storn's room was the steady, high pitched drone of a dead man's electrocardiogram.

After so many decades of grouseless, dutiful service, the old submarine had finally been scuttled. Once, Storn had told me he'd liked to be buried at sea.

"There's a romance to it, Howle," he'd said. "Wind and rain grind the world into salt and dust that sloughs off and sinks beneath the waves. In death, all the Godhead's creatures return to their beginnings. To pass into that great vastness, myself… there's a romance to that. Nobility."

Would that I could oblige him.

It pained me to see the state in which my crusty old neighbor had left this life, tousled among sheets splattered over with dark discharge and spores. His body was still twisted by the pain of its last gasps, leaving his ulcerated, fungus-riddled buttocks sticking out to the side.

Through my still-thickened wyrmsight, I watched a pale fog lift off Storn's chest and flow into me. I wanted to linger to pay my respects, but I couldn't; I just didn't have the time.

Still, I couldn't help but to tidy up his corpse as best I could, using a hand-shaped plexus to move him onto his back. I straightened his hospital gown and pulled out the sheets, draping the latter over his head, covering what the fungus had done to him. I left his arms uncovered, so that the next visitor wouldn't need to wonder or worry about what was waiting for them beneath the shroud.

Then, closing my eyes, I wrapped my claws around his skull, and squeezed and pulled, feeling the briefest sense of lightheadedness as the rest of Storn Elbock's essence flowed into me.

I opened my eyes.

"Did you know him?" Yuta asked.

I nodded. "He was my neighbor."

There was silence.

"Where to, next?" Geoffrey asked.

I glanced back at Storn. "His wife."

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