The Wyrms of &alon

“Wait,” Jonan said.

I stuck out my hand. Geoffrey saw it, and then said, “Hold,” softly.

We all stopped, huddling against the wall, near the corner where the corridor merged with another in a T-shaped intersection.

“Where?” I asked—Jonan, not Geoffrey.

“To your left, there’s a group passing by.”

“I can hear them,” Morgan said.

We could just barely make out boot soles tromping on the vinyl floor.

“Are they—”

“—No,” Jonan said, interrupting me. “They’re not going your way. It looks like Ani’s distraction is paying off.”

“When do we move, Howle?” Bever asked.

I started to speak to Jonan, saying, “Just tell me wh—”

“—Now!” he said, almost yelling in my ears. “Go! Go! Now!”

“Let’s go!” I hissed. “Move!”

We turned left.

“Alright,” Jonan said, “the stairwell should be at the next right.”

“We know,” I told him. “Karl still has the map on his console.”

The whole situation had me breathless. If you’d told me I was living an episode of The Guardians of Time, I’d have believed it. Here I was, a nerdy neuropsychiatrist, stealthing through a hospital with a bunch of time traveling knights from the Third Crusade, who also happened to believe that I was a sorcerer working under the Angel’s employ.

And then things got even weirder. Here and there, seemingly without rhyme or reason, doors started going shut. Hologram projectors turned on of their own volition, filling the hallways with flickering images that couldn’t have belonged there less, even if they’d tried. It was like my hyperphantasia, only this time, everyone could see it.

Holographic dogs bolting between holographic trees. Holographic mascots going over safety instructions. Everything you could think of, and more. We even passed footage from a holographic rendition of an episode of The Guardians of Time.

The sights had spooked Geoffrey and his friends, but I managed to get them to take it in stride.

Now, if only everyone else could have done so as easily.

All things considered, we were doing pretty good. Karl was directing the knights using the map his console had plotted for them, and Jonan was doing his job of being our eye in the sky. He knew the route we’d intended to take, and had been alerting us if and when we needed to modify it to avoid getting caught.

Unfortunately, sometimes, you just had to lay low and wait.

Other than serving as Jonan’s mouthpiece, my most important contribution to the mission so far was in convincing the knights that walking into the lab through its front door would spell disaster. Thankfully, they listened, and I helped Karl chart a new course to GL, through the back entrance, accessible from the first basement level.

“Jonan says there are fewer people down there,” I said.

Pushing ahead with a small burst of psychokinetic speed, I took the lead, directing the knights to an antique stairwell. It didn’t even have a door separating the hallway from the landing. We attracted the stares of a couple passing nurses, but they were too exhausted and broken to raise a fuss over it.

I was about to start going down the stairs one by one when Jonan yelled into my ears: “Shit! There’s a group of soldiers coming your way!”

“Another one!?” I muttered.

I wouldn’t have time to hobble down the staircase.

I summoned Andalon to my side with a well-placed thought.

I looked her in the eyes. “If I screw up, please help,” I said.

And she nodded.

After a split-second with my hands on the railing, looking with trepidation down the shaft in the middle of the stairwell, I let my powers fly. I sprung up off the ground, vaulting over the railing and then plummeting downward through the shaft. The stairs rushed past me as I fell.

Worst case scenario, I broke my legs, and that wasn’t really a problem, since I couldn’t feel them anymore, anyhow.

Andalon swooped down through the air, flying after me.

Thickening my wyrmsight, I gathered plexus threads underneath me. The blue and gold filaments writhed beneath my feet, like flames, as I poured power into upward thrust. My fall slowed precipitously, leaving me nearly motionless as I reached the bottom, my feet hovering inches above the floor.

I banished the flaming filaments, falling to the floor with a soft thud.

The knights stared at me, wide-eyed.

“You would be a terror on the battlefield,” Bever said.

“Is there any reason you are accompanying us, Dr. Howle,” Karl asked, “or is it merely the Angel’s will?”

“It’s… a lot of things,” I said. “The plague that has struck our world is no ordinary disease,” I said. “It’s an extension of Hell itself.”

“Any fool with eyes can see that,” Morgan said, grimly.

Karl nodded. “We saw the… videos.”

Wow, I guess the zombie videos really had gone viral if even folks from the early 17th century had seen them.

“The Green Death is doing what scripture foretold,” I said, “as you’ve probably surmised.”

“Yes,” Geoffrey said, with a nod. “This pestilence is raising Hell’s armies; it’s as plain as day. Hell has come to conquer our land—our world—and the Mewnees are accomplices.”

Ordinarily, I loathed anything even remotely jingoistic, but, given that these men had just been plucked from a state of war to reclaim their—our—homeland, I figured they deserved some slack.

Duncan, Bever, and Morgan nodded gravely.

“Um, hello?” Jonan said. “You still need to get moving! I can’t see you right now. There aren’t any cameras in that old stairwell.”

“Jonan tells me we need to get a move on,” I said.

The others nodded, and off we went.

As we walked, Yuta emerged from thin air, unseen by the others. His form coalesced as if from mist. He leaned against the wall of the hallway, with his katana at his hip. “How can you be so sure that your religion’s myths explain these extraordinary events?” he asked. “That strikes me as presumptuous.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” I asked.

“It just seems too good to be true,” Yuta said.

“Well,” I said, “it’s either that, or Mr. Himichi’s manga, take your pick.”

Closing his eyes, Yuta snorted and sighed.

“Dr. Howle?” Karl asked, staring.

I bowed my head in apology. “My apologies,” I said. I was about to slow time to come up with an explanation when one suddenly came to me. “As a sorcerer,” I said, “I can commune with spirits of the dead, so… sometimes it will seem as if I am talking to people who aren’t there. I promise, they are, it’s only that you can’t see them.”

I turned back to the others. “Again, I apologize for not having mentioned this before.”

Karl looked up from the console in his hand. “The entrance to the laboratory Dr. Howle informed us of should be just up ahead, around the corner.”

“Jonan, is the way clear?” I asked.

“I, uh—oh shit,” he said.

My heart sank. “What’s going on?”

“Doctor?” Morgan said, turning back to face me.

“Gotta go!” Jonan said.

The radio feed immediately cut out.

“I think someone has found Dr. Derric,” I said. “We’ll be on our own from here on out.”

“All the more reason to hurry,” Bever said.

We moved down the hall, only to stop as Duncan shot out his arm. “Quiet!” he hissed. “Someone’s coming!”

Thickening my wyrmsight, I confirmed it for myself. Being able to detect the fungus in people’s bodies gave me a kind of X-ray vision. While there were a bit too many people on the ground floor—my wyrmsight could not distinguish between oncoming nurses and oncoming soldiers—the first basement level of GL we were now in was much more sparsely populated, which made the tactic viable.

I saw a small cluster of fungal aura tromping toward us—the warm bodies of still-living soldiers.

At least, I hoped they were still soldiers.

We all froze stiff as a group of soldiers ran down the hologram-struck hallway. Even Andalon held perfectly still.

We retreated down a side corridor as they passed by.

It’s alright, I told myself, I can do this. We’re nearly there.

“I think the coast is clear,” I said.

“Forward,” Geoffrey said.

Nodding, we rushed ahead, crossing the intersection. The corridor on the other side turned to the left. I’d visited GL’s main lab a couple times before, and, consulting my memories as we rounded the corner, I stuck out my arm and hissed, “Wait, stop!”

The knights’ armor clinked beneath their hospital gowns as they stopped.

“What is it?” Bever demanded.

“Just wait a second,” I said. I crept ahead, thickening my wyrmsight as I peeked around the corner.

Oh fudge, I thought.

What I saw made me bite my lip.

Around the corner was the translucent wall of frosted glass that marked the back entrance to GL’s Main Lab. The Main Lab was effectively a complex within the hospital complex. Past the double doors in the middle of the frosted glass, there was a long, broad corridor-room that served as the heart of the Main Lab. It was T-shaped, with the doors in the middle of the wide part of the T. Down the left and right branches lay offices, meeting rooms, utility closets, and the like. The labs themselves were clustered around the corridor-room’s main axis, behind more walls of frosted glass. Standing in the hallway, were it not for the bright lighting, you’d think we were lost in an icy cave in the dead of winter.

At the far side of the hall lay another set of double doors. These let out into a reception lobby, past which stood the double doors that led into the garage, where the bulk of Vernon’s troops were still standing guard—assuming Jonan’s intel was still reliable.

With a moment’s thought, I hyperphantasized a zoomable mini-map of the area in the lower right-hand corner of my vision.

Glancing around the corner, I confirmed my wyrmsight’s findings with my human eyes. There was a group of maybe half a dozen people standing in the main corridor, spaced out in an orderly fashion. They were little more than blurs through the semi-transparent plastic wall, though they glowed with fungal aura beneath my wyrmsight. For what it was worth, I didn’t see any transformees among them.

I should have known it wouldn’t be as simple as waltzing in and freeing Nina and the others.

“What is it, Sir?” Karl asked.

I turned around to face him. “There’s a pair of doors around the corner. The labs are in rooms that branch off to either side of the corridor beyond those doors.”

“That’s good,” Bever said.

Andalon broke out in an optimistic smile.

“But… there are soldiers in the corridor,” I said.

“That is not good,” Bever said.

Andalon’s smile turned to a worried frown, one that I shared.

“What are you going to do?” she asked me.

But none of the knights seemed to share my dismay.

Bever lifted his axe. “We prepared for this.”

“Yes,” I said, “but, I…” I sighed. “Maybe there’s a chance we can reason with them.”

“This is war, Dr. Howle,” Geoffrey said. “People die in war. That is why we abhor it.” He motioned his head toward the corner.

Yuta appeared at my side, once again, as if from mist. He shook his head. “The sadist has a point,” he said. “There is no way around this. Blood will have to be shed.”

“What makes him a sadist?” I whispered.

“I never met a Trenton rebel who wasn’t twisted by hate. They used Darkpox against innocents, Dr. Howle. They were as merciless as their oppressors.”

“Dr. Howle?” Karl asked.

“I…” I shook my head. “What if they have guns? They’ll kill you before you get a blow in edgewise, even if their infections make them slower to respond—and, for the record, they are infected. Are you sure you can beat them at their own game?” I asked.

“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon said, “can you stop ‘em without hurting them?”

Nodding, Geoffrey, stamped the base of his halberd’s shaft on the floor. “If it is for the Lass,” he said, “I will happily give my life. The Last Days have come. If Paradise is to be mine, I will find out soon enough.” He coughed, and then closed his eyes. “One way or another.”

Morgan tamped the haft of his pike onto the vinyl. “All will be lost if we hesitate.”

Panicking a little, I slowed time. Everyone but Yuta and Andalon seemed to freeze in place.

“Are you alright, Dr. Howle?” Yuta asked. He held his arms to the side, and there was a look of concern on his face.

I’m fine, I thought-said.

Yuta stepped back in shock. He looked around, trying to find the source of my voice.

You’re hearing my thoughts, I thought-said.

“Why can’t you move?” he asked.

I’ve made myself think more quickly. This makes time seem to pass more slowly.

“For what purpose?” he asked.

“It gives him a chance to do his thinks,” Andalon said.

I would have nodded if I could.

Yes, I thought-said.

And that’s when it hit me.

Back when the knights first arrived, I’d done “necromancy” by exploiting Andalon’s ability to hack into and countervail the fungus. I’d been able to control the infected with that power, I’d been able to control the infected, and even clear away the hold the fungus had over them, releasing them from their zombified state.

Andalon, I thought-asked, remember when we stopped the zombies?

Clenching her fists, Andalon walked up to me and stood tall. She brimmed with excitement.

“Yeah?” she asked.

I was about to find out if my necromantic powers were true to their name.

Could I use that power to control people who are infected, even if they aren’t zombies? I asked.

Lowering her head slightly, Andalon pursed her lips in thought. Oddly, I noticed she rubbed a finger on her throat. She rebounded a moment later.

“Amplersandalon says yes!”

“What?” Yuta asked.

I returned my perception of time to normal.

I figured the knights ought to hear this as well.

“I have an idea,” I said.