Even without a heartbeat, the sight took Karl's breath away, leaving him shivering in terror.
A half-dozen wyrms had just crested over the buildings, all of them nearly fully transformed, and all of them with gleaming silver eyes.
Nurse Costran turned to Karl. "What—what's going on!?" she said. "What does it mean!?"
Bever and Ichigo turned to Karl, as well.
Everybody was looking at him.
At first, Karl was frightened, but then he clenched his fists and steeled his resolve.
Just like Geoffrey would.
Ichigo floated up and raised his katanas to the sky. "Let me at them!" He glanced down at Karl. "I'll stop them, I—"
"—No, don't!" Karl said. "We're outmatched."
The wyrms swam through the air in great circles, keening their otherworldly songs. The sounds made Karl's spines stand up all along his back.
"Karl!" Bever yelled. "Something's happening!" He pointed off to the side.
Turning, Karl watched as the chunks of wyrms and transformees scattered across the Garden Court started to quiver and roll. Tendrils spiderwebbed out from the chunks. Some of the tendrils sank into the earth like roots, while pulled in other nearby pieces of flesh, both wyrm and not; both living and dead. Screaming soldiers fired their weapons or tried to run, only to be absorbed by reforming wyrms.
Glistening eyes blinked open in battalions, here, there, everywhere.
Gold. Gold. Silver.
Silver.
And then silver again, and again and again.
It spread like a plague.
Karl screamed. "The fungus is taking control of them!"
All the immobilized transformees began to writhe in place. The moments broke through dirt and pavement, shooting cracks across the ground.
Dr. Rathpalla, Larry…
The entwined bodies came apart. Wyrms' roots pulled up chunks of the ground as they retracted. Intermingling melded flesh shrunk away as the transformees separated. And one after another, their eyes flickered into silver. The change spread from one end of the courtyard to the other.
Karl turned to Nurse Costran. "We have to help them!"
She nodded.
Hovering low to the ground, they skidded toward the entangled transformees.
"Get Dr. Rathpalla first!" Yuth said.
Transformees pulled free from the rooted, log-like structures and flew upward, joining the wyrms circling overhead.
Karl and Yuth skidded to a stop beside Dr. Rathpalla, their underbellies scraping against the setts. With their powers and their claws, they grabbed him by the arms, waist, and tail and pulled.
"Quickly!" Yuth yelled.
More of the immobilized wyrms were coming apart with each passing second, their eyes blossoming in silver.
"No!" Karl yelled.
What could he do to stop this? What could any of them do?
Horrifying, organ-like screams drew Karl's attention to the garage's entrance ramps.
No no no!
His allies were losing their will one by one. The garage transformees tried to stop themselves. They tried to stop each other, grabbing, clawing, yelling—but it was no good.
The fungus was taking over their minds, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
Larry pulled himself free of his "partner", and then bellowed right as their eyes went silver.
Karl kept pulling on Dr. Rathpalla's body. Just then, a breeze brushed against his side. Turning, Karl saw that Larry had flown up alongside him.
"Pull!" Karl yelled.
Larry joined in the effort.
Finally, with a sharp snap, the thickest of the tendrils coming off Dr. Rathpalla's body broke.
"Now!" Yuth said. "Now!"
Karl tugged with all his strength. He put so much force into motion that it sent him and Dr. Rathpalla rolling backward as the psychiatrist broke free.
The two transformees crashed into a patch of dirt nearby. A second later, the wyrm Dr. Rathpalla had just separated from turned silver-eyed and rose off the ground.
The psychiatrist clambered away as Karl righted himself.
Oddly, though the silver-eyes' numbers had more than doubled, Karl noticed more than half of the now-silver-eyed transformees chose to simply fly away.
"No, look," Bever said, hearing Karl's thoughts, "it's only the weak ones that are leaving!"
He was right! The transformees that stayed were the ones closest to being fully-fledged wyrms.
"The fungus is protecting them until they fully change!" Ichigo said.
Oh no…
Suddenly, waves of unseen power rippled down from above. The air was so thick with magic, he could almost see it. Vibration was everywhere, as if the space around them had been put over a hot flame.
The sensation sent shivers down Karl's spine and tail.
Screams broke out all around.
Overhead, the silvers that had stayed had started bombarding the hospital with psychokinetic attacks.
Dr. Rathpalla looked up and yelled. "They're focusing on the main building!"
The defenders rushed to intercept the attacks, but with little effect. A couple of sheets of plexuses sliced through some of the blasts and swatted others away, but most of the barrage hit its target, tearing through the building's roof and walls. Windows and façade chunks rained down as entire sections of the roof caved in.
Yuth levitated off the ground to fly up to strike the silver-eyes, but Karl reached out with his powers and pulled her back.
She squirmed in his invisible grip and turned around. "What are you doing?"
"You can't go!" Karl said, staring fearful at the wyrms. "The fungus will take you if you get too close! You'll go silver-eyed, too!"
If there was one upside to all this, it was that the silver-eyes seemed to be ignoring the remaining golden-eyed transformees among the hospital's defenders.
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But for how long?
Overhead, something cracked. Dr. Rathpalla reacted immediately, raising his arms to the sky to weave a dome-shaped forcefield over the group's heads. The magic shielded them from a section of the roof that had just fallen on top of them.
"We need to get people out of the hospital!" he said. "It's going to collapse!"
Dr. Rathpalla looked up at the masonry floating mere inches above their heads.
Yuth stared at Larry, Rathpalla, and Karl. "Fine," she said, "go ahead. I don't know why they're only attacking the Central Wing, but you can get people out through the underground entrances, in the garage."
"What about you?" Karl asked.
"I'll stay down here. I'll attack the silver-eyes from a distance."
Larry's eyes bulged. "Yuth, that's insane!"
"You don't need to dote over me, Lare," the nurse replied. "I can take care of myself." She looked up at the wyrms. "Hopefully, I'll be able to draw their attention away from the hospital."
Yuth gave one last look-over to the handful of allied stragglers that hadn't yet gone silver-eyed. "C'mon people let's give these silver-eyed snakes a taste of their own medicine!"
I have a bad feeling about this, Karl thought. He tried to voice it. "But—"
Yuth cut him off. "—No buts," she said, tensing her tail along the ground.
Nurse Costran closed her eyes and spread her arms.
Karl could tell she was preparing to do something big, and she wasn't alone. Several other transformees slithered toward her and quickly followed suit.
"Quickly," Yuth yelled. "Get going!"
— — —
Don't pop pimples on the Triangle of Death.
Scared out of his mind, Jonan ran as fast as he could, but it just wasn't fast enough.
He couldn't outrun his fear, or the sounds of trumpets and organs and wyrms and their roars. People ran like mad as gunfire, laser beams, spore breath and fricken invisible energy attacks burst across the hallways, failing to evade them, more often than. Wyrms and transformees were snapping folks up like dolphins schooling fish. His chest burned like mad. Hot and cold flashes shook his whole body. The gun was heavily weighing down his arm, making his shoulder feel like it was about to get ripped clean out of its socket, and on top of all that, he still kept up with his memory refreshers.
Ani is the gal for me.
Tetracycline antibiotics can interfere with tooth calcification.
Beta blockers can help lower an excessively high heart rate.
Always tell Ani her glasses look great.
Glucagon is a twenty-nine unit-long amino acid released by the—
—But then Jonan realized he didn't remember where he was supposed to be going.
He coughed and ran. A silver-eyed wyrm flew across the hallway behind him.
"Fucking fuck, fucking—"
—Jonan's eyes went wide.
"The basement!" he hissed.
They were trying to get to the basement!
But where to go?
Jonan reached out with his free arm to push himself around the bend as he turned left at the next intersection.
"Ani!" he screamed.
He saw her Ani standing by a wall down a hallway off to the side. She was holding a stairwell door open and waving people in.
"This way! This way!"
Beast's teeth, she's just so fucking awesome.
The sight almost made Jonan forget that he was dying.
She saw him, too, because she staggered away from the door and yelled. "J-Jonan!" But she didn't need to tell him what to do. He responded automatically, running up to her and grabbing the door with his free hand.
"How did you survive?" she asked.
"The cavalry arrived."
As if on cue, looking down the hallway from where he came, Jonan saw a transformee in clerical grab get launched backward through the air, emerging from one side of the intersection and disappearing behind another.
"I can't believe it…" Ani said.
She'd been hurt so much, she was scared to feel joy—and Jonan couldn't bear that.
He waved his head toward the open stairwell. "C'mon, get going!"
A trio of medical personnel came running through the open door.
But Ani wasn't buying it. "I'm not leaving you," she said. "Not again!"
"I'll be right behind you. I promise. Now… go!"
Ani stared him in the eyes for a moment and then tramped down the stairs with a nod.
Jonan started to follow her, but then a fresh crop of screams broke out from around the corner.
Shit.
Jonan turned around on the spot, his soles squeaking on the vinyl floor turned. There were two nurses running down the hallway.
Jonan waved the nurses toward the door with the tip of his gun.
"Here!"
Unfortunately, the two fine ladies stared at the weapon like deers at headlights, and Jonan was all out of patience.
"Hurry the fuck up!" he yelled, and his timing couldn't have been better.
Just then, a transformee barreled through the corridor's walls, demolishing them one after another as it flew past. The nurses screamed and ran for dear life, disappearing down the stairwell not a moment too soon.
Jonan started descending the steps for a second time—
—SHWOOM.
Jonan felt the fiber-singeing heat, first. Turning around, he saw an honest-to-Queen firebolt snake down the corridor, and set the transformee on fire.
Dr. Derric's jaw went slack and silent.
Greg and Dr. Nowston slithered down the hallway a moment later, chasing after the transformee who was now writhing in pain on the floor as he burned alive.
Though Greg kept moving, cracking his fingers with zeal, Dr. Nowston stopped for a second and locked eyes with Jonan.
He didn't need to ask.
"Dr. Marteneiss is leading us down to the basement," Jonan said. "We're heading to the Matter Printers! Send any other survivors our way!"
The transformee pathologist nodded. "Shoe-ah." He waved a clawed hand. "Nowe geh go-win."
Jonan gladly closed the door and hurried down the stairs.
He'd promised Ani, after all.
Jonan's shoes clip-clopped down the tightly wound antique metal staircase as he descended, hips and knees pumping with every step. Staggering onto the landing of the first sub-basement, hunched over, panting in agony, Jonan clutched his broken ribs as he stopped and noticed the message life was sending him: if you keep going like this, you're probably going to die.
Not wanting that, he opted to take the elevator, and, fortunately, there was one just down the hall. By yet another small miracle, the elevator doors opened the instant he pressed the button. The elevator's expansive interior was unoccupied, not counting the corpse in the opposite corner or the transformee who was (rather noisily) devouring them.
Jonan's gut instinct was to turn away and run like hell, but then he realized he would be okay.
The transformee was wearing PPE, face mask and all. Yes, it might have meant he was a nutcase, but, more importantly, it also meant that he was a very, very responsible WeElMed employee, which commanded both Jonan's respect and trust.
Blithely aloof elevator muzak trickled out through the speakers in the ceiling as Jonan pressed the button for the third sub-basement and the elevator began its descent. No doubt noticing the muzak—which just really didn't match the mood in the air in the slightest—the transformee looked up from their meal and turned to face Jonan.
The transformee's face was… horrifying? (There were probably better words than that, but Jonan just couldn't remember any.)
A wyrm snout had pushed its way out of the center of the transformee's face, like a drill, with skin and bones sloughing off on either side.
Jonan grimaced. "Ew…"
The transformee's tail tensed as its multiple eyes darted to the gun in Jonan's hands.
Dr. Derric raised both his hands in a defensive gesture.
"It's no problem," he said, "I'm just passing through." He coughed. "Uh… you do you."
Nodding, the transformee gave Jonan a sharply clawed thumb's up and returned to their meal.
All that PPE made quite a bit of noise as the transformee's transformation resumed with gusto.
Jonan dashed out of the elevator and into the hallway, leaving the friendly neighborhood transformee to his or her fate. The air was musty and damp, and shockingly sweet. If Jonan didn't know any better, he'd have thought someone was making sweet-n-sour fruit dummies nearby. The way the pipes and tubes rattled overhead made him wonder if something was wriggling through them.
Jonan tried to think happy thoughts, but, other than Ani, he kept on coming up empty.
Ani, whose mother in law is nice, but religious, and whose father is a dick.
A sonic menagerie was coming through from either end of the hallway, and it took a second for Jonan to parse it, especially over all the echoes, but, gradually, the noises came into focus.
Screams. Sobs. Footsteps. Nervous voices. Eerie rumbles quaked in the depths.
Following his ears, Jonan turned around a nearby corner, and right into Heggy.
Dr. Marteneiss staggered back from their mutual impact like a jackrabbit on crack.
She heaved her submachine gun. "Holy mackerel, Jonan! You fucking scared me half to death!"
Dr. Marteneiss' group had grown. It was more than a dozen people, now, and still more refugees were trickling down through the door at the base of a nearby stairwell. Everyone was crowded into a narrow hallway. Several people sat hunched over on the floor with their backs to the walls. Everyone with a gun stood up straight and tall, staying vigilant, or as vigilant as medical personnel at the end of their rope at the end of the world could be.
Then, from down the hall, someone yelled, and they yelled his name.
"Jonan! Is that—"
More footsteps thumped down the stairwell. The people by the door moved out of the way to make room for Ani to step out with a few stragglers.
Jonan looked Heggy in the eye. "If you'll excuse me, Dr. Marteneiss…"
Handing off his gun to Dr. B'zool, Jonan elbowed his way through the group and made a beeline toward Ani.
He didn't care that his body and mind felt like flaming mud and a used paper towel at the bottom of a blender, respectively. Every fiber of his being was present and accounted for as he ran up to the love of his life and hugged her nearly tight enough to kill.
Then the whole building shook. People screamed as light fixtures overhead flickered. Some went dark altogether. Things burst. Metal cramped and broke. Drywall strained and cracked.
Somewhere in the unsteady darkness, Jonan heard bodies slithering across the floor, along with a crazy crew of hisses and growls.
The walls shook again.
Then the light flickered on, and he saw the creatures: fungal abominations Worse: the creatures saw him.
The monsters of amalgamated biology reached and grasped as they skittered forward on greedy tendrils and claws. Behind and beneath them, Jonan heard footsteps. Massive, plodding footsteps, like drums in the deep.
"Run!" Heggy yelled.
And the monsters roared.
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