"Silver-eyes!?" I yelled.

Andalon nodded vigorously. Both Yuta and Geoffrey looked on in alarm.

"If it's even half as bad as what we fought in Lantor," Count Athelmarch said. He shook his head.

Merritt sat beside me, like a snake waiting for her charmer. She was obviously agitated, and if I had to guess, it was probably out of concern for her husband and I. In a gesture of support, Merritt put claws on my flank, and let out a soft, plaintive coo.

"What's she saying, Andalon?"

"Mrs. BokBok wants to know what's wrong!"

I should have known. I rolled my eyes, but then shook my head.

The wounds on my back tingled unpleasantly as they slowly began to shut.

I turned to Merritt and explained what was going on. "The fungus can take control of transformees and wyrms," I said. "When this happens our eyes turn silver."

Merritt crooned. "Is there anything you can do to stop it, she says?" Andalon translated.

Again, I shook my head. "I don't know, but—"

—More explosions rocked the air, shaking the building from its foundations.

Merritt looked up at the ceiling in fear.

"Merritt!".

She looked me in the eyes and spoke. As she did, I hyperphantasized Andalon's translations to have the sound of Mrs. Elbock's human voice. "

"Yes, Genneth?" she said.

It felt like ages since I'd last heard her speak.

"Unfortunately," I said, "there's just too much to explain, and not enough time to do it. Fortunately, I have a fix for that." Daring to smile a little, I reached out to her with a claw. "Let me—"

—But then my console quivered and blared from inside my coat pocket.

Apparently, I had an incoming videophone call.

Not wanting to rip my pocket open, I gently gripped my PortCon with my claws against my coat, to get a literal feel of the device's position inside my pocket. With a little help from my wyrm memory, I then knew exactly where to softly press with a force spike to make my console think I'd just tapped the Accept Call button.

"Genneth, is that—wait, what the hell?"

It was Heggy!

"Why can't I see anything?"

A choir of wyrms sang in the distance. The sound sent shivers down to the tip of my tail.

"Genneth!" Yuta yelled, unsheathing his kana once more.

"I'm sorry Heggy, but this is really kind of an emergency right now," I said. "Just tell me what you need to tell me!"

Just then, my console's speakers started making some truly horrifying noises: inhuman shrieks, beastly roars, gunfire, and human screams.

"We're pinned down in the third basement level!" Heggy said. Her voice briefly dimmed. "Where the hell are we?" she asked.

She must have turned away from her console.

All I heard of the reply was, "Nea— —org"; the rest was drowned out in the background noise.

"Near the morgue!" Heggy said, speaking back into her console, loud and clear. Get yourself and your cohorts down here, pronto! We'r being—"

—But then the call cut off with a crash and a scream.

I looked at my four companions.

"I need to get down there, now!" I said.

I started to slither off, but Andalon, Merritt, Yuta, and Geoffrey followed behind me.

Yuta stared gravely at the injuries on my back. "You're injured, Genneth."

"Yes, I noticed," I said. "It'll fix itself soon enough."

"Genneth, I don't know what to do," Merritt said. "What should I do?"

And that stopped me in my tracks. I looked over my shoulder at her.

"C'mon, Merritt, follow me," I said. "Stay close, and… get ready for a fight."

She nodded.

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"We'll keep her safe," Geoffrey said, hoisting up his halberd.

Yuta nodded.

And then we were off. We quickly made our way away from the operating theater and out through the sepia barrier.

Andalon floated up beside me and translated Merritt's latest sounds.

"How are you going to get to the basement?"

"Fudge…"

I briefly paused time to think.

We couldn't take the elevator. I think I might have been able to fit inside, but Merritt was definitely going to have trouble—she was several feet longer and several inches thicker than I was, after all. But, even if she could manage it, we'd still have to take two trips, and there was just no I was going to leave Merritt alone up here. Not again. As for alternatives, the staircase was the most obvious one, but if people were using them to flee the battle, our bodies would obstruct the passage, or, worse, absorb the bystanders on the way down.

"What about through the garage?" Geoffrey suggested.

I unpaused time

"Flibbertigibbet," I muttered, "that could work!"

"What could work?" Merritt asked.

I looked to face her. "We can get there through the garage," I explained. "We'll exit onto the garage's first floor and then make our way down and through it. We can then re-enter the hospital through the entrance on the garage's third floor, right where we'll be needed."

This could work!

We slithered onward.

I passed a group of ragged-looking soldiers, who didn't even bother to shoot me. Everyone just kept moving.

"Genneth," Geoffrey said, "tell them your plans. They can spread the word."

Good idea, I thought-said.

I waved my claws to get the soldiers' attention. "Hey!"

One of them stopped and turned to me. "What is it?"

"If you see any other helpful wyrms," I said, "tell them they're needed in the hospital's third basement level, near the morgue. I'll be heading down through the garage."

The soldier nodded and ran off.

We made it to the Hall of Echoes in no time, and met only one wyrm along the way. It was silver-eye, and Merritt had gone to town on them leaving Yuta, Geoffrey, and I staring in disbelief as Mrs. Elbock tore through the silver-eye's snout holes until its head looked like a blown-up shotgun from an old cartoon.

Once she was done, Merritt just nuzzled my chest, while Andalon watched on with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes.

"Such a good wyrmeh…" she muttered.

I had to say, Merritt had chosen a really excellent time to finally take up my past advice about refraining from holing up her frustrations inside herself.

Once again, I was back at the Hall of Echoes' mezzanine. Fierce combat was playing out on the ground floor, bullets and lasers strafing across the marble as soldiers up and down the grand atrium's many floors blasted a silver-eye thrashing on the ground floor, in the wrestling grip of a fellow snake-below-the-waist transformee—a former patient, no doubt. She still had her hospital gown.

Spores and psychokinetic blades flew through the air as the two of them fought. The building reverberated with their blows. At one point, the two combatants ricocheted off a car that someone had chucked through one of the long, tall windows by the grand entrance up front.

"Mr. Genneth!" Andalon said.

Turning toward Andalon, I then saw Merritt pointing a claw at an unbroken window beside the grand entrance.

What I saw made my jaw drop.

"Daikenja preserve us," Yuta muttered.

I could scarcely recognize the Garden Court. It was as if a bomb had gone off, and a big one at that. Silver-eyed wyrms swam round and round the air, launching attacks at the hospital's central wing. They weaved back and forth, blasting open a section of the building's façade as they swam close, only to eelishly dart away a moment later, and then come around for the next run.

"Andalon," I said, "what are they doing?"

"I…" she shook her head. "I don't know."

Tanks and other artillery were out in full force. A soldier standing on one of the exposed, wrecked floors of the Pediatrics building fired a shoulder-mounted bazooka, launching a rocket at one of the silver-eyes, which exploded in a burst of flame.

From off to the side, two aerostats came swerved into view and started firing on the wyrms.

One launched another missile.

"General Marteneiss' forces aren't holding back," Geoffrey said.

Merritt trumpeted softly.

"It can't be safe to go out there, Genneth," she said.

"I know!" I said, glancing at her.

One of the wyrms chased after an aerostat and then coiled around it like a boa constrictor and crushed it in its grasp midair.

That gave me a crazy idea.

"We'll have to jump," I said, staring at the window.

Yuta and Geoffrey stared at me like I was nuts.

I slithered up the short flight of stairs to the walkway on the Hall's first level. The cloistered walkway ran along the wall up to the front where it curved around and passed over the main entrance and the tall glass windows to either side.

I pointed. "That window is wide enough for Merritt and I to squeeze through."

Merritt pressed her claw-tips together in worry. "W-What?"

"I can either try and leap into the hole in the middle of the Garden Court or slide through the air along a 90° turn and slip into one of the entrance ramps and get down to the garage that way."

"This is insane," Geoffrey said.

"I'm well aware," I said.

Boy, I was really on a roll with these quips, wasn't I?

With the silver-eyes circling over the hole, and my concerns about my ability to stop myself in the middle of the vertical drop that would happen if I tried to yeet myself into the Undergreen through its collapsed roof, I figured it would be better to take my chances with the turn and slide. As a bonus, gliding through the air would give me a chance to better control my landing—I hoped.

Also…

I glanced back at Mrs. Elbock.

…I'd need to take Merritt with me, before the Hall of Echoes collapsed on top of us.

"Mr. Genneth, I think this is a very not-good idea," Andalon said.

The building rumbled around us. Debris fell from the ceiling.

"Hurry," I said, "there's no time!"

I slithered across the walkway, toward the window, with my companions following behind me, Merritt included. Knowing Mrs. Elbock, she was almost certainly doing it out of her concern for my well-being rather than from a genuine desire to participate.

Slowing time, I stared at the window and its lattice of diagonal crossbars to figure out just how I was going to do this. But, wouldn't you know it, right that second, a tank crashed through the roof and fell toward the floor, but slowly, as if through molasses.

Aw, to heck with it!

Wrapping my arms around Merritt's chest, I twined my body around hers as best as I could. We must have looked like the twin serpents of the old caduceus—that pagan staff of healing.

I didn't need my wyrmsight as I wove the plexus around the two of us. I knew the scintillating fibers well enough already, and my wyrm memory was more than enough to fill the gap. For my own benefit, I hyperphantasized the shimmering ribbons of blue and gold as they tied around us in a vivid cocoon. To maximize control and stability, I oriented all the force vectors outward from myself, and then added a second layer underneath that like a rug, pointed downward to counteract the pull.

It was time to fly.

"But, Mr. Genneth," Andalon said, floating up beside me, "you don't know how to fly."

Neither do the birds, I thought-said, but they still do it anyway.

Then I let time resume, and launched the two of us through the window.

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