The Wyrms of &alon

Jonan closed his eyes and groaned.

“It has come to the attention of Dr. Howle and myself that one of our Type Two NFP-20 patients is turning into a monster—a… a snake-man.”

Heggy’s eyes narrowed. Her gaze was laser-like in its intensity. “This is no time for fun and games, Dr. Derric.”

“This is neither fun nor a game,” Jonan replied.

Jonan approached the wall-console and pulled a sliding keyboard out from the slot in the wall directly beneath the console. After a flurry of keystrokes, the projector brought a large, pitch-black into view on the wall.

With a push of a button, a video began to play.

“What you’re seeing now is live footage from a security camera near Room E57. Last night, Genneth and I took the liberty of… sequestering the patient you see here, and for all the obvious reasons.”

Heggy’s eyes bulged in her skull. Her shoulders twitched.

Ani gaped. She brought her hand to cover her mouth, having completely forgotten the F-99 mask and plastic visor that were in the way. She looked like she was about to throw up. Most unsettlingly of all—maybe even more unsettling than the sight of Kurt’s deformed body… Dr. Horosha just… stared.

Was that how he showed fear? Or was he genuinely unfazed by what he was seeing?

I honestly couldn’t tell.

“From how Dr. Howle reacted,” Jonan continued, “it was clear to me he hadn’t any prior knowledge of this.” Furrowing his brow, he turned to Heggy and Dr. Horosha. “Did either of you know about this?”

“Hell no!” Heggy said, rapping her knuckles against the desk.

However, Dr. Horosha closed his eyes and sighed. “Yes,” he said, opening his eyes. “I knew. This was part of the reason I was transferred to Trenton. You must understand: the Green Death appeared everywhere, simultaneously, and it did so almost overnight. Even DAISHU was caught off guard. It completely violated all of our models for the near future. We have barely seventy-two hours’ worth of a lead on this pandemic. Even so, enough has transpired and enough details have arisen for it to have become necessary to suppress certain information. DAISHU does not do this lightly, and ideally, it will only be a temporary measure. The alternative would have been mass panic, the complete dissolution of the global economy, and the outbreak of war, revolution, and wanton violence worldwide.”

The man spoke with a steeled, almost mechanical calm. It only made his words that much more disturbing.

So… if DAISHU was caught off guard…

Heggy blinked incredulously. “DAISHU was caught off guard?”

“It is troubling, I know,” Dr. Horosha said, with a nod. He looked up to the footage of Kurt. “While a satisfactory explanation of what is happening to these people has yet to be found, DAISHU’s current position is that we proceed under the assumption that this… transformation will eventually manifest in all Type Two cases of NFP-20 infection.”

Jonan clapped his gloves together. It was like the room had been caught in a trance, and the sound of his clapping had broken the spell.

“If that’s the case, that seals the deal,” Jonan said. “The only sensible option before us is to find a means of identifying the Type Two cases and separating them from everyone else, just like we did with Kurt, and we need to do it ASAP. And there can’t be any visitors allowed.”

“No visitors?” Ani said. “Jonan, what about their families?”

Dr. Horosha nodded again. “I agree with Dr. Derric. For the time being, minimizing potential sources of mass panic is paramount. The only higher priority is the development of a viable treatment for the Green Death.”

“So,” Ani said, “what are we going to tell these people’s families when they ask where their loved ones have gone?”

“That the risk of infection is too great,” Jonan answered.

“If it is any consolation, Dr. Lokanok, that is, in all likelihood, the truth,” Dr. Horosha said.

“But…”

“I don’t like it any more than you do, Dr. Lokanok,” Heggy said, “but, honestly… I think Dr. Derric’s got the right of it.”

Ani stood up. She propped her hands on the table, leaning forward. “Separating families during a time of crisis, and on false pretenses, no less?” Her tone was one of outrage. “Quarantines are meant to contain people, not secrets! Trying to use them for any other purpose is just begging for trouble. Once secrets tunnel their way out, there’s no chance of plugging up those holes. And once the public loses its trust in our institutions, it’s going to stay like that for a very, very long time, and we don’t have the luxury to slowly build it back up all over again.”

Dr. Arbond nodded. “I’m with Dr. Lokanok on this. It seems mighty unwise to give people reasons to doubt us, or—worse—to start conspirin’ against us. If there are psychopaths among these transformees, or whatever you wanna call ‘em, I’m all for sequestering them, but, man, let the nice ones see their damn families. Besides, we might need their help if the psychos get rowdy.”

“What about the national guard?” Heggy said.

Ani sputtered. “The—the national guard? They’d kill our patients with their bullets faster than the Green Death ever would.” She threw up her hands in rage. “If you’re that keen on killing innocent people, why not cut out the middleman and just tell everyone who’s come down with NFP-20 to inject bleach into their veins?”Ani’s long, dark hair quivered defiantly beneath her hair net.

“Mind your tone, Dr. Lokanok.” Heggy’s golden eyebrows furrowed.

“Enough,” Jonan said. “There’s too much to do. Let’s vote; let’s pick our poison, and be done with it. Obviously, I vote in favor of my sequestration proposal.” He raised his hand.

Heggy exhaled. “I second it.”

“As do I,” Dr. Horosha said.

“I’m voting no,” Ani said. She turned to Dr. Arbond.

Cassius nodded. “That’ll be a no from me, as well.”

Ani turned to me.

I shook my head. “I don’t know what to think, Ani. I really don’t.”

“Please, Genneth… don’t tell me you agree with this.”

Sighing, I crossed my arms and leaned forward onto the table. “On the one hand, I do think there’s some medical merit to Dr. Derric’s argument, mean-spirited though it may be. On the other hand,” I licked my lips. “What if one of us ends up like Kurt?” I asked.

As long as I had the floor, I might as well try to float a trial balloon. Something to test the waters.

“Will we lock them away, too—no questions asked?” I said. Passion poured into my words. “And if those transformee colleagues of ours do resent us for sequestering them, wouldn’t that just be adding more kindle to the fire? We still don’t know the whole picture. We don’t know what these transformees are becoming. We don’t know how long it will take, nor what they’ll be able to do as these changes play out, not to mention if and when they ever finish.” I shook my head. “But…what I do know is that,” I scoffed, “I really… really don’t like having to lie, especially to people who are suffering.”

Clenching my fists, I sniffled. This was far, far more difficult than I could ever have imagined.

I locked eyes with Cassius, and then with Jonan. “I’m taking Dr. Arbond’s stance as well.” I nodded.

“So it’s a tie,” Heggy said.

Ani looked around “Now what?”

But it seemed Jonan had already found the answer. With a couple of well-paced taps on the screen of his PortaCon, Jonan turned his head toward the image projected on the wall. The still of Kurt sequestered in Room 268 cut to blue for a second before being replaced by the familiar window of a videophone call, which promptly pinged as the person on the other end accepted it.

We didn’t need to guess who it was; the text on the screen answered that question for us:

Dialing Dir. Hobwell…

Director Hobwell’s office appeared, projected onto the wall like some kind of vision of a spiritual prison. The chair, however, was empty, and sat off to the side instead of its usual position directly behind Hobwell’s mahogany desk. Off-camera, however, we could hear the Director’s voice loud and clear.

“Beast’s teeth!” he yelled, “there it goes again, Marietta!” He dripped with contempt. “There! It! Goes! Again! Were the memos really not good enough for these people!? I can’t even type up a response or reply to a call before some other petitioner comes around and interrupts. It almost makes me wish I was infected. At least then, I’d get a break!”

“You have another call, sir,” Marietta said.

“I swear, if it’s Dieter asking me to shell out for his cockamamie anti-mask mandate again, I’m gonna ask Gozu-san if I can borrow a couple of his hit men.”

Heavy footsteps stomped on wood and carpet, only to stop before Director Hobwell came into view.

“No, you know what,” he said, “from now on, if it’s anything less than a Priority Two call, tell them to message me instead.”

“The current call is Priority Two,” Marietta said. “One of the administrative bodies under your direct supervision has had a tie vote.”

Groaning wordlessly, Director Hobwell trod into view around the side of his desk, pulling his chair into place as he planted himself in his seat. He pinched bits of his beard in between his fingers and twisted the hairs, and then picked another patch and twisted it, too. His beard and sideburns were well on their way to becoming a garden of graying brambles. Finally, the Director rolled his chair forward and glared at the camera in the console on his desk.

“What?” He almost spat out the word.

Jonan literally bowed in self-reproach. “Forgive me, sir, I didn’t realize you were—”

“—No. No one realizes.” Director Hobwell shook his finger at the screen. “But you’re in it, now. You called. You didn’t need to—everything’s going to shit!—but you did call, so we’re fucking doing this.”

Hobwell’s forehead glistened with sweat. Sighing, he pulled the stylus out of his console and began to repeatedly tap its tip on his desk in a neurotic rhythm.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Jonan entered some commands into the keyboard by the well, and then followed up with several taps to his PortaCon’s touchscreen.

“Well, what is it?” Hobwell demanded. His stylus was like a woodpecker, pecking away at the tabletop. “What could possibly be so pressing as to—”

—A window popped open in the upper left-hand corner of the projection, in which the footage of Kurt from last night that we’d just seen played once more.

Director Hobwell turned paler than sun-bleached concrete. He made the Bond-sign three times in a row, and then tightly clasped his hands together and intoned a protective prayer.

“Oh Blessèd Angel, O Angel of Light,” he prayed, “forgive us our trespasses; stand with us against the shadow of death; protect us from the baleful Night.”

We waited a moment longer for Hobwell to finish his prayer. At the end, he self-consciously straightened his hair.

Director Hobwell whimpered. “I’m…” The gray pallor in his face gave way to a blush of shame. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Closing his eyes, Harold Hobwell cleared his throat and took a deep breath. It was like watching a pufferfish re-inflate, but then the impetus leaked out from some unseen hole and the Director deflated all over again, slumping onto his desk with a harried, anguished sigh.

“I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that Dr. Horosha here is some kind of DAISHU agent,” Jonan said. “He’s informed us that this is probably going to happen to most if not all of the Type Two cases. And it’s likely to get even worse than this.”

Director Hobwell squeezed his eyes shut and swore under his breath. “Shit.” When he opened his eyes, he looked at us with genuine desperation.“Please tell me you’ve come up with a plan for this.”

“Dr. Derric did come up with something, sir,” I said, “but… the up-or-down vote on it ended in a tie.”

Hobwell raised an eyebrow. “What was the proposal?”

Jonan explained it, and then Ani gave her impassioned rebuttal all over again.

“Fuck,” Hobwell swore. He let go of his stylus and then patted his palms on his desk several times over. “Okay… as of now,” he said, “I’m making Dr. Derric’s plan our official policy. I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he added, with a mutter, “but I think I might actually be glad you called me. I can give the same marching orders to everyone else. It should simply things somewhat, at least until the next crisis explodes onto my desk.”

Obviously, Ani wasn’t happy with this news. “But sir—”

“—Hold on, Dr. Lokanok,” the Director said, “I’m not finished yet. In deference to your compassionate concerns, I will grant CMT physicians such as yourself the discretion to decide what—if anything—to tell the patients and their immediate family.”

The Director turned his attention to me. “I’m sure Dr. Howle will be of great help in this regard, and if he isn’t, he’s bound to know people who are. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s finally time for me to put in a call to my superiors. I’ve been a loyal DAISHU employee since you were in high school, Howle. I’m not going to let them keep secrets. Not again. Not this time.”

Then the screen turned to black.

Fudge.