We broke through the window right as the tank hit the Hall of Echoes' marble floor, shattering a half-dozen more windows and spewing out fire and flak that peppered my back and shoulders as we careened through the air. Merritt writhed in my grip somewhat, as most women would when a man grabbed out of nowhere. To keep myself focused, I'd stowed Yuta and Geoffrey's spirits in my mind at the instant of the blast.

I could bring them back out once we landed.

For my own benefit, I still kept my perception of time somewhat slowed as we hurtled over the courtyard. I had to stiffen myself to keep my head, arms, and torso sticking over Merritt's back and get a clear view.

One floor up didn't seem that far until you experienced it without the benefit of a floor holding you up from below. Though the power pulsing through my flight-plexuses was doing its darnedest to counteract the pull of gravity, gravity was winning, making the admittedly exhilarating experience less like flying and more like falling slowly.

Everything trembled as we careened straight ahead, and not just because of the turbulence. Bullets and lasers grazed my tail as we flew. An aerostat veered out of the way, narrowly avoiding crashing into me. Andalon had grabbed onto my back, clinging to one of my emerging spines for dear life.

Even with my perceptions sped up, things still happened far too quickly.

Merritt screamed, sending out spores in a stream that drifted to the ground in a curtain of green mist.

She wrapped her arms around me as I tightened my hold on her. I fired up the right side of my plexus cocoon and sent us banking to the left.

"Genneth!"

Yuta's spirit screamed in my mind.

Fudge!

Silver-eye, incoming!

Activating the section of plexus above me, I tilted my path downward to evade. General Labs' wrecked façade came rushing toward us at a mile a minute. I shoved some oomph into the left side of my plexus cocoon to veer hard to the right, making for a broad turn that bashed my tail against GL's front wall. I didn't let up with the turn until I was moving in the direction of the garage's entrance ramp directly below and ahead of us.

But I'd turned too much.

The building flew toward me. We flew over the street, my face barely a foot off the ground.

I could have reached out and touched the dirt if I wanted to.

Andalon screamed. "You're gonna crash!" Andalon yelled.

I adjusted my heading at the last second, firing my psychic thrusters to line us up perfectly with the garage's entrance.

Well, almost perfectly.

Part of my tail thwacked against the entryway's edge as we passed through the opening, tumbled down the ramp and slammed onto the sea-tiled floor. We hit the floor hard. Merritt's body had been curled underneath mine, so I was shielded from the worst of the impact. I conjured a forcefield dead ahead as we bounced off the tile floor, but instead of stopping us, all my forcefield accomplished was to serve as something for me to smack into. The blow stunned me long enough that I lost my coils' grip on Merritt.

The two of us came undone. Everything spun. Silver-eyes and fungal abominations zipped across my field of vision as my worldview whirled.

And then I crashed back-first into a row of cars.

With screams and roars ringing in my ears, I pushed off the cars, shoving one of them away and flopping onto my belly. Then I started to get up off the ground, only to remember halfway through the movement that I was now half-snake and that I could—and then immediately did—use the section of my body beneath my human waist to lift my forepart off the ground.

I sped up my thoughts until time slowed to a crawl, until Andalon was the only source of movement in sight. Twitchily, she turned left and right, looking this way and that, both overwhelmed and terribly frightened by everything that was happening around us—and, honestly, I couldn't blame her. The garage was a madhouse. About a dozen transformees/wyrms were engaged in a battle that refused to stay earthbound. They swam up against the ceiling, and chased each other around the support columns.

I spotted Dr. Rathpalla and Karl hovering, frozen mid-air, tangled up with two silver-eyed wyrms who were all claws and scales.

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Heck, it was like I'd just pressed the Pause button on a multiplayer video game battle-royale.

I saw Larry the Janitor gripping a car in both claws like one of those giant anime swords. I'd paused time just as he was about to bring the vehicle crashing down on a silver-eye's head.

By the Angel…

I saw Nurse Costran, more transformed than I'd seen her last, and with her five eyes washed through with silver. I'd paused while one of her eyes had been flickering between gold and silver. The sight gave me a possibly misplaced hope that maybe she could still be brought back to her senses.

Andalon…? I thought-asked, is Yuth still in there? Can we save her?

Andalon stared at Yuth for a worried moment, but then nodded resolutely. She pointed at the half-gold eye. "Look. Her see."

Does that mean we can save her? I thought-asked.

"Maybe."

I just hoped it would be enough.

Then, there were the real monsters: the abominations.

I'd never seen this many in one place. It was a hecking swarm of them, and they came in all shapes and sizes. It was as if someone had put biology into a blender, glued the remains together, and breathed life into them in a grotesque parody of true flesh and blood. I saw tentacles and wings, and things with too many limbs. Fleshy balls of animalian potpourri flit through the air, flapping medleys of wings. Tentacled sea urchins roved across the floor alongside boulder-like hulks that lumbering forward four broad, stalwart legs. Limbs spidered across the floor in spindly boutonnières, skittering over waylaid cars.

Judging by their postures, the critters didn't seem to be doing much beyond moving toward the surface. It was almost as if they were running away.

No. Don't be naïve, I told myself.

They weren't running; they were regrouping. But for what?

Huh…

"What is it, Mr. Genneth?" Andalon asked.

Looking around, I thought-said, from what I can tell, I think the silver-eyes and the good wyrms are fighting over the fungus monsters.

"Because whoever eats 'em will get the bigly-est and wyrmly-est, right?" Andalon asked.

Exactly.

Both forces were in dual struggle, trying to simultaneously absorb as many of the fungal creatures as they could while also keeping their opponents from doing the same. At the moment, it looked like they were locked in a chaotic stalemate. The floor was arched over in the serpentine forms of warring. The intertwined combatants, thrashed, rolled, and turned, desperate to keep their rivals from reaching the fungus creatures that were skittering passed. Some of my allies had taken to launching the critters across the room with psychokinetic blasts just to keep them out of the enemy's grasp. And Merritt and I had come rocketing into this chaos like Norms straight out of Hell.

I could just barely make out Merritt's body in the far left corner of my vision. After spending a couple seconds straining to see if she was near one of the fungus creatures, I remembered I could just use my wyrmsight, which I did, immediately, and which just as immediately revealed the telltale aura of the fungus within the body of one of a passing walking boulders.

"So, what are you gonna do?" Andalon asked.

I'm going to go down to the third level. I'll have to do my best to keep my body from absorbing any of the fungal creatures.

That surprised Andalon. "What?" she asked. "Why?"

I can't afford to lose my ability to speak before I've been reunited with Pel and the kids.

"What about the silvery sees?"

I'll do what I can, but right now, getting to Heggy and the others is my priority. I can't let the silver-eyes absorb them!

Andalon clenched her fists and nodded with resolve.

With everything planned out, all that remained was to buckle down and, as Heggy might have put it, "Git 'er done."

This was going to be nuts…

I let time resume, but at slightly less than full speed. It was easier for me to follow things that way.

But the result wasn't at all what I'd been expecting. All at once, all of the fungus creatures changed trajectories, veering toward me like they were iron filings and I was covered in magnets from head to toe.

I paused time again.

Andalon, why are they—

Her eyes widened in alarm. "—It wants you, Mr. Genneth!" she yelled. "I can feel it! I can feel it!"

The fungus wanted to stop me. It wanted to force feed me biomass until my transformation was complete, so that it could turn me silver-eyed and steal &alon's power for itself.

Well, fudge that!, I thought.

I was not about to let a sentient plague ruin my family reunion!

Letting time flow once more, I spread my arms and surrounded myself in a protective, dome-shaped force-field that glowed in ribbons of blue and gold through my thickened wyrmsight as the tide of creatures descended on me. For a moment, my view was drowned in writhing nightmares, but I pressed on, knocking—and in some cases, smearing—the little buggers out of the way as I slithered forward. I pulled myself over a car, stumbled around a support column.

Move move move!

I couldn't let them touch me under any circumstances!

Really, it was like that classic childhood game, the floor is lava, only here, the lava chased you.

Wanting to conserve as much of my energy as I could, I shrunk my forcefield and loosened its shape, making it "flexible", so that I could stick my arms through the forcefield and bend it around them to fit, like the protective plastic seal on one of the special darkpox beds. As an added benefit, the forcefield was great for swatting the squirming hordes away.

Three transformees launched themselves at the fungus creatures with a scream.

I darted away as quickly as I could.

Thinning my wyrmsight, removing from view the bright colors from all the magic, I turned my head to get a better look at Merritt. As I'd seen, Merritt had crashed into one of the quadrupedal boulders, flopping down onto it, belly first. The effects were taking shape with startling speed. The creature's flesh was already beginning to fold around her. Merritt's body reciprocated the invitation, sending out tendrils to incorporate the fresh biomass into itself.

"Who's that?"

Ibrahim?

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