The Wyrms of &alon

Figuring I’d already caused enough problems, I didn’t want to cause any more trouble by further delaying the autopsy. I stepped back into the autopsy room. To my astonishment… Dr. Horosha’s mote-veil was still there. Whatever Andalon had done to my eyes, it wasn’t dependent on her presence.

I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, nor did I know if I wanted to find out.

Getting a second look at them, now that I knew what my own powers looked like, I could tell that Dr. Horosha’s light-show was both similar and different. The shapes weren’t the same as mine: particles and wayward dust-hairs instead of lengthy, woven threads, and the colors were off, too; no blues or golds, just white.

He had to be responsible for it. There wasn’t any other logical explanation for what I was seeing. But this raised so many questions.

Why did he have powers? Was he possibly involved with Andalon, or—worse—with the fungus? Was he an agent of the Angel? A new Lassedite? Why did his powers look different from mine? What on earth was he using them for?—that was a big one.

And what did it all mean?

I’m sure if anyone else had been able to see it, they would have asked Dr. Horosha about it, if not arrested him outright. So, it stood to reason that he didn’t know that I could see it, or, worse, that he did know, but was slick enough to keep me from catching on.

I can’t believe this.

It was a dead end. I couldn’t ask him—or anyone else!—about it without outing myself in the process.

Fudge.

I just had to compartmentalize; shunt the knowledge away for later, and hope that I’d be able to suss out its secrets, because if I actively tried to do so, I’d probably drive myself crazy in the process.

I noted the faces as I approached: in addition to Dr. Horosha and Brand, Heggy was there, as were Jonan and Ani. However, the sixth face was new to me. Trim sideburns framed three of the four sides of the newcomer’s perpetually dour expression, which had the attitude of complete indifference which you’d expect from someone who’d spent the better part of his life staring down microscope eyepieces. You could have made bookshelves out of his brushy, heavy-set eye-brows. I’d guess he was in his thirties, or thereabouts. Surprisingly, the man’s short hair was tidy and well-kept; if it hadn’t been, he’d have been a dead ringer for the mad scientist character archetype—and those usually didn’t end well.

Brand stretched his hand toward the man. “Genneth, this is my colleague, Dr. Mistelann Skorbinka. He’s from our mycological department. Well,” Brand raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, “technically, he is officially affiliated with the Cartin Center, but Mistelann’s been kind enough to lend us healthcare professionals a helping hand whenever the need presents itself.”

Dr. Skorbinka glanced at Brand, furrowing his bushy brow. “Howle Genneth?”

I nodded. “The one and only.” In lieu of a handshake, I just bowed respectfully at him, mindful of keeping my distance.

“You have…” he eyed me warily, “very noticeable bow-tie.”

“I, uh… thanks, I guess,” I said.

Dr. Skorbinka sounded like a character from one of Ivan Vatchnikov’s brooding psychological novels, heavy Odensky accent and all. Hopefully, it wouldn’t end in murder, madness, and debauchery.

A light brushed across the mycologist’s forehead. I blinked, thinking I’d got something in my eye, but when I looked again—focusing more intently—the light was there again. And not just there. It was all over his body.

It was… beautiful. It wasn’t anything like my powers or Dr. Horosha’s. Compared to this, those seemed almost artificial. Soft plumes of color rose and fell, soft and all aura-like, all across Dr. Skorbinka’s body, but most of all, concentrated around his head. The hues changed almost continuously, with gentle bursts of color bubbling up and disappearing, like dolphins surfacing to breathe.

Since no one else was saying anything, I figured it had to be something to do with the changes Andalon had wrought in my eyes.

Reaching up, Brand pulled down a metal arm from the ceiling, at the end of which was a camera-like device which he then turned and adjusted until its lens was pointed at the body bag below. The ShunWare logo emblazoned on the metal arm—ShunWare being a subsidiary of DAISHU, like virtually everything else—confirmed my guess as to what it was.

A holographic recorder.

As I watched Brand move, I realized I could see the same light and color in his body, though its rhythms and patterns were completely different from Dr. Skorbinka’s. The more I focused, the stronger the lights appeared to me, until I saw them in all of my colleagues. They surrounded the body bag on the table like psychedelic ghosts. The body bag itself shone bright, like a beacon, or a pyrotechnic display. And when I looked around, small (distant?) lights studded nearly every inch of my vision. Some of them even moved.

Overwhelmed, I narrowed my eyes. My head throbbed.

“Any reason you’re using the holorecorder, Dr. Nowston?” Jonan asked. “We’ve already got the standard security camera footage,” he added, tilting his head toward the camera up the corner of the room. “Holorecordings gobble up RAM like crazy.”

“I heard they can even record whispers, now,” Ani said.

Incredible…

When they talked… the lights in my colleagues’ bodies were synchronized. The colors rose and fell with their thoughts and movements. An arm bent, and colors softly pulsed at the biceps and elbow. A spot on the left sides of their heads glowed and churned as they spoke.

Holy Angel.

That wasn’t just any spot. That was Brown’s Area. That specific section of the brain’s frontal lobe was known to play a key role in language production.

Was I seeing their nervous systems? Their consciousnesses?

Their souls?

Intrigued, I stepped forward, momentarily forgetting distancing protocols.

“Ladies and gentleman: time is wasting,” Heggy said, looking each of us in the eye, one by one.

Jonan nodded. “I absolutely agree, Dr. Marteneiss.”

“Huh…” Ani looked around. “Where’s Dr. Arbond?”

“Busy taking something out of someone,” Brand replied, “and probably also puttin’ something else back in.”

As I stepped forward, a phantom-like thing—a living mist, formless and swirling—flowed out of the blazing corpse and into my body, leaving me with a brief sensation of lightheadedness. I scuffed my loafers on the floor as I scuttled back, and I had to bite my lips to keep myself from yelping.

Brand pushed the power button on the holorecorder. Green LEDs flickered on as the device whirred to life. A small screen directly behind the lens turned on, displaying the camera’s live feed.

Brand turned to Jonan. “To answer your question, Dr. Derric, the 3D playback is for Dr. Arbond’s benefit. When push comes to shove, if anyone is going to end up cutting into a living Type One case of the Green Death, it’s almost certainly gonna be him, so it’s prudent to give him a head’s up, don’tcha think?”

Jonan nodded in agreement once more.

At the moment, the tray above the sink had been slid forward so that it was above the body bag’s proximal end. Stepping up to the tray, Brand grabbed a scalpel and then bowed his head at Dr. Skorbinka.

“Mistelann, if you would do us the honor, please.”

“But of course,” the mycologist replied, returning the bow.

I didn’t move a muscle as Dr. Skorbinka unzipped the body bag. The sound seemed to stretch on forever. More mist-wisps flew into me, as if someone, somewhere, was opening a valve and letting it out. But I didn’t react; I just stared. It was like looking into the Sun, and seeing something beyond the light. It was overwhelming.

Closing my eyes, I had to fight the urge to rub at my temples.

Make it stop. Please, it’s too much. It’s too much.

Heggy whistled. “Lordy loo, if I didn’t know any better, I’d have said he’d been beaten to death by a spiked club.”

My head throbbed. My ears buzzed.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I muttered.

“You can say that again, Dr. Howle,” Ani said.

The discomfort faded in the darkness. Eventually, I risked opening my eyes once again.

The light was still there. The corpse glowed, yes, but it had dialed back significantly. With the overwhelming brightness no longer in the way, I could see what was going on.

It was the most extraordinary pyrotechnic display I’d ever seen. Spiky, multicolored light raved across the ravaged corpse. The kaleidoscopic raiment formed something like a crown atop the man’s head.

Though I couldn’t detect any consciousness-light from my colleagues’ bodies, I suspected that was just because I’d tamped down my new sense. Just by focusing on them, I could start to see their consciousness light coalesce into view; that was good enough for me, and I stopped myself from pushing the matter further. I didn’t want to give myself another eye-ache.

My heart went out to Merritt. I wouldn’t be surprised if, someday soon, I would be asking her for tips about how to deal with acquired synesthesia.

“May I present Mr. Frank Isafobe,” Brand said.

As usual, Heggy’s descriptions were right on point. Necrotic ulcers marred poor Frank Isafobe’s body. Dark filaments branched out from the ulcers where they’d grown above and below the pale, almost transparent, grayish-blue tinted skin. His flesh was shriveled and pockmarked in places, looking like a moldy orange rind. Weirdest of all were the irregular, bulbous masses that had grown out from the largest ulcers. The growths were smooth and dry, made from a fleshy substance mottled in hues of earth and night.

Brand continued: “The victim is male; agèd forty-five; third-generation Tzaban immigrant. Cause of death…” He paused. “Why isn’t there a cause of death written?”

Jonan bit his lip. “I’m… still working on that,” he said, glancing downward.

Leaning to the side, Brand skimmed his eyes over his console’s screen where he’d left it on the adjacent examination table. “It says here you were his attending physician. Hell… you were the one that signed off on his death certificate. How could you do that without knowing the cause?”

Jonan interweaved his fingers. “I’m still waffling between several differential diagnoses,” he replied. “Sepsis, sepsis with cytokine shock syndrome, cardiac arrest—”

“—Alright, alright, I get it.” Nodding, Brand waved his hand dismissively.

“Well,” Ani asked, stepping forward, “what was the time of death, at least?”

Brand flicked his finger across his console screen. “Eleven and a half hours ago,” he answered, looking back at Dr. Lokanok.

Dr. Skorbinka grumbled in agitation, clearly distressed by the state of the corpse on the table. “Significant growth must have occurred post-mortem. True, most fungi are saprotrophic, eaters of death and decay.” He shook his head. “Still, growth of this rapidity… it is astonishing.”

“It almost beggars belief,” Dr. Horosha added.

Brand grabbed the scalpel from the tray. “Not necessarily,” he said.

Knowing my friend, a tangential explanation was imminent.

“Case in point,” Brand said, “giant kelp.”

Ani looked perplexed. “Kelp?”

Brand nodded. “Yeah. The kind you can find right off the coast. It can grow up to two feet per day. Per day,” he added, emphatically bobbing his head.

“Now ain’t that somethin’…” Heggy muttered.

Brand’s pathological brilliance was on full display as he explained the reasons for giant kelp’s extreme growth rate while effortlessly cutting Frank’s chest open, starting from an incision at the base of the man’s neck.

“It’s all thanks to the kelp’s nutrient distribution system,” Brand explained. “An organism can only grow as fast and efficiently as it can distribute nutrients to its growth centers. The principal obstacle, of course, being the differential scaling of volume and surface area.”

He drew the scalpel down across Frank’s torso, skirting around the navel and ending at the crotch.

“Within individual organisms, biological distribution networks tend toward reticulated, vascularized structures—branches and branched and branches—so as to maximize surface area. To that end, the structure of the trumpet hyphae present in giant kelp allows them to deliver nutrients far, far more effectively and efficiently than the phloem and xylem tissue of vascular plants; that’s why giant kelp are giants. Maybe something similar’s goin’ on with—”

—Brand’s eyes suddenly darted toward a dark, viscous purulence that had begun to seep out from the wound. He retracted his arm. “Oh, hell no…”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Corpses don’t bleed, Dr. Howle,” Jonan explained. “You need to have blood pressure to bleed, and you need a heartbeat to have blood pressure.”

Ani stepped forward, puckering her lips in thought. “So, there has to be something inside Mr. Isafobe’s body cavity which is displacing the fluids inside him.”

The scalpel clinked as Brand dropped it in the metal tray. He then picked up the shears and began cutting through the connective tissue. I averted my eyes as Brand started to peel back the flesh on either side of the lengthy incision. The process was like opening up a rotten pomegranate. I only looked back once the dirty deed was done.

Unfortunately, I immediately regretted it.

The human gut didn’t sit fully exposed beneath the skin, fat, and muscle of our abdomen. Instead, there was an apron of veiny connective tissue beneath the muscle—the peritoneum—which covered our intestines and the neighboring organs.

Mr. Isafobe’s peritoneum was necrotic. It looked like a burnt, moth-eaten baby bib. It barely offered any resistance to Brand’s scalpel.

There was a collective gasp as Dr. Nowston pulled the rotten peritoneum out of the way.