Cole loitered in the shadows outside the hospital room, chewing a caramel pastille he’d looted from the staff lounge. For the last week he had essentially subsisted off snacks, and sugary fatigue was beginning to set in. The newcomers would need feeding too. He resolved to offer them delivery for breakfast, get himself a big set of sausage and pancakes on top of whatever they chose. Until then, Jasmine and Maya appeared perfectly satisfied staring at their phones, which he’d allowed them to keep following a pretty fruitless inspection of their latest chats and photos. Orchid was sleeping, which she’d spent most of her time doing as of late.

The hall was quiet and the lights dimmed, but it wasn’t because the hospital was unattended, nor were they trying to create a relaxing atmosphere for their undead patients. The hall had simply become a taboo zone. It was clear as day the condition wasn’t contagious, but science didn’t stop judgment; did it ever? It was all about the visuals.

Orchid was the mainstay of people’s fears. She was beginning to rot, there was no doubt about it, and she was lethargic though she tried to hide it with her usual charming front. Maya was doing alright, one of her hands had fully regained sensation (while the other still hung limp, but seemed to be slowly attaching dark tendrils into the wrist it was plastered to.) Jasmine was absolutely fine; her wounds were all external and her blood, gums, cuts were all clear. Cole was tempted to discharge her.

But a part of him worried about letting any of them go. The same part that sort of - no, really - hoped that Rai and the assistant would be able to pull the remaining girl out of hiding, put her into the same room and they’d clear things up once and for all. And the one-shattered picture could be complete.

It was all visual.

There had been giggly rumors swirling around that Cole saw himself as a dad or a dating prospect, to Orchid in particular. Let them prattle on. Gossip helped the peanut gallery overlook the fact that he hadn’t accomplished very much in terms of treatment.

Cole had done all he could to avoid being involved in end-of-life care. As a doctor he believed that nobody deserved to live in suffering, or be forced to lie comatose and defenseless, but he’d never jump at the chance to do the honors. If it were a friend or family attached to that plug that needed pulling – well, he tried not to think of that. It probably spoke to a lack of real dedication, some deep-seated issues when it came to relationships. He hadn’t had contact with his folks in years and was officially engaged but completely unattached to a woman who he hadn’t seen in months.

“Family” was a volunteer affair for him. Considering his age and occupation, to accidentally obtain one was unthinkable. Unfortunately, he’d volunteered here.

No, he tried to insist, the problem was all visual. The ‘optics’, Cadmus would say. Not a guy with an artistic mind, that one. Orchid coming here had been such a beautiful miracle, a real opportunity, at first. An alchemical study fallen into his lap. Somebody had to answer for this; it would be a learning experience. Then the army had trampled over the possibilities with their dirt-crusted boots. Everything was confidential and could not be compromised to save even a single life, they had no intention of patching up a single one of their own mistakes.

Cole didn’t like seeing a body withering away in pieces, with nothing he could do to stop it. Magic always seemed to make problems it refused to solve. Any questioning got you shoved back, told the world was better off if you stayed uninformed. As if it were a blessing to be underfoot, there to mop up the scat of those born up high, with the right powers. 

Some mop he was. Orchid’s condition in the last six hours he’d describe as similar to rubber shriveling on hot asphalt.

Cole told the room that he was taking a bathroom break. He worried that he’d come back and one or more would be gone. But Maya and Jasmine were still shaken from their encounters with the alleged slasher-guide-infiltrator. And of course, Orchid wasn’t about to run anywhere.

The lights were dimmed in the bathroom too. Had admin forsaken the whole floor?

After the lights had flickered on, warmed themselves up, Cole checked himself in the mirror. He was pasty under the fluorescents; his unshaved jaw looked like it was sprouting mildew. And there was the bruised eye. The blue mark was haloed in bile-yellow - hideous, but it was on the mend. Once he’d had enough of himself, he began his approach of the urinals. He did so slowly, from a good distance away. He had once seen a fat spider the size of his hand sitting right on one of the drains, and the image haunted his nightmares. Just as bad was the memory of the black pulp mashed against the porcelain, handiwork of the brave intern he’d sheepishly called over ‘for a look’.

The spider was just another wretched thing he hasn’t been able to save. Or have the guts to clear away with his own two hands.

Stepping sideways crab-style, he must have looked like an idiot to the assailant waiting around the corner.

Something hit the back of his neck and pushed him against one of the plastic barriers.

“I cannot believe I thought you meant well,” said a breathy, almost tearful voice.

It had been a shock, but he wasn’t being held down with much force. The attacker’s hand flailed at Cole’s side and he realised he was hanging in a failed armlock.

“Chasing them all into a hospital, you sick son of—” and a wet cough.

Cole pushed - or more fittingly, brushed off - the craggy hand on his neck. Standing behind him was an older man with a face so swollen and yellow it resembled mashed potatoes. His one unswollen eye was surrounded by a purple continent of a bruise that made Cole’s own busted eye look insignificant. He was hunched, and his bloated gut under his sweatshirt (some sort of varsity outfit that Cole imagined was stolen) seemed to be bending and bulging in layers, like an accordion.

It was the John Doe who’d fled the morgue with Hazel. The reason for the ‘project’, survivor of the original E34 trial.

This was also the old man who’d visited twice the previous week, attempted to get at Orchid’s room, been branded a pervert and chased out. Cole had been a bit too embarrassed to tell this to Rai. It would stay between him and Axelle.

He also dreaded to think that the man he’d laughed out of the waiting room was the insidious mastermind; the zombie leader, the drug distributor, and manipulator of impressionable, mentally ill women. Looking at the man in front of him, Cole’s dread fused with indignance. How could he have known this was the man in charge? He’d never seen a person so literally broken. Fin had obviously hit even harder times since they’d last met.

But he did look very much a zombie.

“Glad the receptionist didn’t catch you this time,” Cole said.

“Oh, you’re— just the doctor.” Fin stumbled over one of the urinals like he was going to vomit. One of his legs moved stiffly, as if the knee was broken. “I thought you were — no, it’s not important.”

From under his sweater came a multitudinous crinkling.

Fin looked ready to fall into the bowl like a drunk, perhaps pass out like one too. Cole grabbed him under the arm (where his hand met a conspicuous lump) and helped him to the door. “Keep it together. I think your ‘granddaughter’ is ready to see you now.”

—

“Fin, you moron,” Orchid snapped. “I was never gonna let my grandpa set foot in here. Should have said you were a cousin, or something.”

Jasmine had rushed to help when they fumbled through the door. Maya only rose once their new patient was seated. “Where were you all this time, Fin?”

Shuddering pathetically under a hospital blanket and white doctor’s coat (which Cole hoped would pass as a disguise should someone peek at the cameras) Fin hung his head. “I’m sorry.”

“I went to see the two investigators you mentioned and you never followed up. Were you okay?”

Cole marveled at how quickly they fell all over this strange dismantled excuse of a person. Fin looked overwhelmed himself; by the attention, the lights, the noise and his own swollen being.

Fin stuck his hands into his sweatshirt, pitched forward and dropped a large plastic bag. On the back of his head, there was a gelatinous swelling, blotchy with black and gray mounds. “Orchid, you should take these. I think you’ll be able to… reattach, once your blood’s refreshed. I never expected…”

Orchid stared him down. She was just a head, but she’d gotten in her practice. And Fin seemed so low, a crushed earthworm could have looked down on him.

“I didn’t expect you’d go so far,” Fin said in a tiny voice.

“Are these the pills?” Cole lifted the bag Fin had dropped. There had to be over a hundred pills in the bag, nearly a dozen blister pack sheets. Fin didn’t answer, instead falling into a fit of hyperventilation. “Fin? You doing alright? You should lie down.”

Fin wrenched himself upright. “Maya, would you be able to contact those two investigators again?”

“Where is Hazel?”

“That’s another reason why I came… I thought she might be here. She’s upset with me, I think.” Fin exchanged a doleful look with Jasmine. “We were worried about you, Maya. After what happened to Orchid...” Finally he deigned to talk to Cole again. “She’s purging.”

“Hm? Explain, please.” He was making small talk; Cole had suspected the truth for a while.

“She didn’t do a full regimen. One overdose can only last so long.” Fin made a halfhearted attempt to grab for the bag. There was more plastic crinkling from under his clothes, along with a sort of watery growling noise and he shrank back. “I should have said more. I should have given all the warnings - but I didn’t think-”

“Hazel got us all carried away,” Jasmine said.

“Am I supposed to eat them?” Orchid called from the bed.

“I, uh-” Fin looked from her head, to her body, to her head again.

“We could inject it with a syringe,” Cole said. “That’s how Aquila got her E34 when she wouldn’t have been able to swallow a pill. How much do you recommend?”

Fin shrugged his shoulders uselessly.

“The test on the cooker in her house didn’t reveal any other chemicals. Maybe they used some water…” Cole rooted around for supplies. “If the drug does eventually flush, best we use a fresh syringe to avoid infection. What do you say?”

Orchid’s face had regained a bit of light, a bit of color. It was hope in her eyes, for that moment before she choked it back down. Not for the first time Cole thought her a dedicated performer.

Cole popped out a few of the pills and stared at the shiny black capsules for a while. He felt as if he were handling bullets. Tiny things could do so much damage, be of such outlandish consequences. Only this pill and the powder it contained weren’t intended to kill. Just the opposite - not that the results were any less horrifying.

His fiance had said she liked how much of a ‘mad scientist’ he came off as, reading his magic newsgroups and how he’d once tried to apply for magician training. Cole liked it too, up until he considered what his actual job was. He was just a janitor in the grand scheme of things. If it was madness she was looking for, she should trawl the pubs of the army enclave.

The pill produced a thick black syrup. As he deliberated, and finally swabbed a spot for injection on the neck of Orchid’s prone, headless body, he nearly hit Jasmine, who had been standing just by his elbow.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Can I help clean up…?”

“Leave it for now.”

She was a morbid one, Cole thought. A nice, well-off kid like that wouldn’t have had the opportunity to fulfill her darker impulses, until recently. She liked being at the hospital.

He placed Orchid’s head above her neck before doing another infusion near her throat, or what approximated it. The response was immediate. He was adjusting her braid, and wondering what to do with the black bulb hanging from the neck wound when the entire growth began bubbling - only the bubbles didn’t burst, but extended like sprouts erupting from a seed pod, strands crawling over the bed until the roots from the torso and the head linked. She began to cough; she was trying to resist it, but the convulsions were coming.

“Stay still if you can,” Fin was saying. Or sobbing, from the cadence of his breaths.

“Jas, can you help me hold her?” Cole asked.

Orchid shot him a filthy look between spasms but Jasmine was only too willing. Yes, it would be nice to have them all in, to see the pressure they put on each other. With Hazel, it would be a real tinderbox.

“Fin, let me help you-” Maya cried, somewhere across the room. Fin had pulled something else from his multitudes with shaky hands, another plastic bag, which he fumbled to open and dropped. Impeccable timing, Cole groaned to himself.

“We need to call the policemen,” Fin said. “Hazel - she could be targeted by - by…”

“The guide?” Maya asked, shrilly.

Fin was collecting what he’d dropped; at least six cheap-looking cell phones. “I don’t know who he is, but I have to talk to him before– the point is, she doesn’t know-” The phones went flying again as he keeled to the floor.

Leaving Jasmine to monitor the situation on the bed (which seemed to be leveling out) Cole went to check on him. “I’m not sure how you hope to defend anyone looking like this,” he said, a little imperious.

Sweeping aside the scattered phones, Cole hoisted him face-up, feeling several lumpy weights roll with him. Perhaps foolishly, he checked Fin’s temperature, his pulse. There wasn’t much of either. He wasn’t sweating, he was cold and bloodless, but he was breathing, for some reason.

Cole waved at Maya. “Can you get me the scissors from the shelf?”

Maya did so with great efficiency, so she could back into a corner and look away as soon as possible. “Fin, I can call the police from my phone. What should I tell them?”

Fin sat up, looked determined, and gurgled something incoherent.

“Can we discuss this when all of you are feeling up to it?” Cole snapped. He cut open Fin’s shirt, and almost threw what he saw back down on the floor and backed into the corner with Maya. “What in the world happened to you?”

Fin’s body was a wreck, atrophied in a way that didn’t result in thinness or paleness, but something contorted and blotchy. There were multiple grayish-black abscesses like the one on his neck, but Cole realized he must have been using some kind of cosmetics to get his face to a vaguely natural shade. His torso was made of a yellow, almost greenish dough that looked too tight and completely misshapen at the same time. There was the plastic crinkling sound again, too, only he didn’t see anything that might have caused it. Fin’s stomach, or thereabouts, gurgled.

Cole grit his teeth again, for what felt like the fifth time in minutes. He must have ground his molars down to discs now. He looked from the scissors, to Maya. “Scalpel from the table by Orchid. Please.”

Maya edged over, trying not to look at anything. “It’s dirty.”

It doesn’t matter, he’s already dead, Cole wanted to say. But he managed a more polite, “This seems urgent. Can you bring me that basin too?”

“I fell on the road,” Fin whispered, almost proudly. (Without revealing anything useful, Cole thought. Typical.) “It wasn’t the first time. I try not to do things that will make important pieces come apart. Because… it takes longer for everything to join up, and if my arms flew off - uh, I prefer to keep my arms on because then I can push things back inside if I have to.”

Fin made a sort of crunching noise when Cole shoved him over the basin. He was rough; revenge for pushing him into a urinal, and because the rambling was getting on his nerves. Cole made a small cut at the base of one of the lumps on Fin’s neck.

“The swelling goes down eventually,” Fin mumbled. “But it’s better the insides don’t get like that, you know?”

All Cole ‘knew’ was the discharge of fluid was disappointingly slow. What drained was an opaque gray, not the black or brown or red he was expecting, and had a watery consistency. Not blood and not E34. He didn’t want to think about the specifics for the moment. At least the pustules didn’t stink. That was something Cole was grateful the army alchemists had managed to engineer. Fin smelled like exhaust and detergent, but lacked the essence of anything organic.

“When I went to get Hazel, I knew I’d have to regain consciousness as soon as possible so I packed, er, you might not want to look at that yet.”

Cole paused with the scalpel hovering above Fin’s midsection, clearing away some sticky bandages from between the folds. No — it was masking tape? Fin whined but he didn’t feel like hearing much more. Without breaking eye contact, he made the cut. It scared him more than Fin, he thought. Fin didn’t react to the pain at all, if there was any.

He sliced through skin and flattened muscle the color of jerky, and the blade snagged on a dark plastic sheet. In Fin’s abdomen was a sodden, squashed garbage bag that wrapped in everything important. Cole paused, lowering the scalpel. With everything packed, bound and taped together, Fin could take a fall (or a collision with a truck in the wee hours of the morning) and keep all in precious insides close, rather than have to go back to find his lower intestine, or end up in the morgue without arms to open the vault; feet to stand and stumble off on.

He did not envy the mangled creature, but had to respect the haphazard efforts it took to stay put together. At the same time, his observations made him smug. This was the glorious outcome of the E34 experiment. A suicidal man who wrapped himself in tape and kept his organs in a garbage can liner.

This was what the great laboratories of the magical scientists, the furtive alchemists of the army, were lauded for. What a joke. To think, at one point he wanted to join them. To be crazy enough to make something like this.

Sawing through the plastic, he saw some darker substance that might have actually been blood. No, it was one of those hideous pulsating black bulbs, then another, large as a fist. They sat among the organs, connected to them, squashed flat in places.

He pushed the guts apart and to the side and began to cut and pull to dislodge the bag. As the plastic came loose he began to smell blood and old rancid food for some reason thought finally. Maybe that word was Fin’s namesake. Made you look, made you wait.

Cole’s heart felt satisfied, even if his stomach was doing somersaults. Mad scientist for real, for the hour, at least.

—

Rai and Sao stood to either side of the doorway so Cole could walk out. He teetered a little and pressed a hand to his forehead, grimacing. “Head’s killing me. I’m going to rest in the staff room for a while. Call me when you’re done.” His face, which was pale on the best of days, had become ghostly. “And don’t touch any of the containers lying around. For your own good.” He did a double take at Sao. “What happened to your face?”

Sao touched it absently. He had washed all the crusted makeup off in the Rock Pool’s bathroom sink and hadn’t replaced it after his nap at Rai’s. “Problem in the powder room.”

“Did you tell anyone else he’s here?” Rai was quick to steer Cole away from the topic of unmade faces.

“I’m not in a state to tell anyone anything. You’re only here because the girls helped him make the call and dragged me on the line.” With that, he padded away into the night.

They entered the brightly lit room. Despite the warning, Rai immediately began inspecting the buckets by the door that appeared to be filled with wet plaster of a leached brownish color. One of them was a little darker, and had a dark stringy substance floating in it like kelp.

“Rai,” Jasmine breathed. She was perched on one of the beds in plain white shorts and a tee shirt. Unadorned and scrubbed of blood, she looked much younger than she had when they last saw her.

“You missed the stripshow, Investigator,” Orchid laughed from her bed.

They both looked at her. Sao felt his stomach lurch and settle, pulled two ways. Her head was placed over her body, now papered over the front with a hospital gown, and there was a thick black necklace of fluid connecting the pieces. Her limbs weren’t moving, and her skin was still marbled with raised black veins, but her coloration - top down - had regained some warmth. He could see her freckles again.

“You’re fixed,” Rai said.

“Oh, really. I’d give you a high five but I can’t move yet. Still - things looking up. And I don’t say that lightly. Huh, and your friend’s going for a natural skin look today?”

“Problem in the powder room,” Rai said.

“Cool,” was Orchid’s equanimous reply. “An improvement.”

Rai began to approach her - and jumped as he passed one of the beds. Following his gaze, Sao almost leapt from his skin when he saw it too. Sitting on one of the half curtained enclosures was the clay-coloured man from the morgue photo. When they looked at him he seemed to shrink back, then held perfectly still, as if they’d stop noticing and just walk on by.

Rai swooped in like a hawk.

The man was in decently good shape, Sao thought. But then, few wouldn’t seem healthy when compared to how they looked on a mortuary table. His face wasn’t exactly smooth, but sagged with ordinary wrinkles, without swelling or bruising as Rai had described seeing. There was a thick but neat line of stitches on his neck, and a thinner line of stitches going down the middle of his face to the corner of his mouth. In a conspicuously clean spring-green sweatshirt and pants set, he looked comfortable; almost sprightly.

“The doctor helped me a lot,” he said, in a familiar, damp voice. His gaze dropped to his stomach.

“I told you, it was sexy stuff,” Orchid insisted.

“No, it wasn’t!” Maya cried. For some reason she had set up a seat in the far corner of the room.

Rai offered a gloved hand to Fin, who shook it without even glancing at the glow around the wrists. Rai gave the defensive line for Sao, “He has a condition.” Sao smiled. Perhaps finding him less menacing, Fin raised his head and smiled back. It was a smile so weak it might crumble any minute and take the whole face and man down with it, but it was honest. Fin had the impression of being too tired to lie.

“I’m glad you two agreed to talk to me again, after the motel…” Fin slurred off the end of the sentence.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. We’ve been wanting to meet, Fin. Is that your real name?”

“It’s what I use.” He backed up a few inches on the bed. “I’m sorry if that’s rude. Not that I’m here to give you a hard time. I owe you explanations. I know.” Fin tilted his head in Orchid’s direction. “I should have come sooner, or been smarter about it. I’m sorry, Orchid. I just didn’t expect you to do it… like that.”

Orchid made a blubbery noise and turned her head (with some effort; it was a bit more difficult bouncing about now that she was anchored to her body).

“I completely forgot how fickle the drug is in the early phases. It’s been almost eight years for me. I don’t feel much, which is probably for the best.”

Sao thought that sounded terribly sad.

“No cold or heat. That can be convenient. Pain, I sometimes think I just forgot. I feel sensations, but they don’t seem… bad or good anymore. And I do get hungry. But the point is, the healing. The full course for me was six months long. For the whole body to adapt and start producing the black fluid on its own. And even then, the parts need to be kept together to recover from injury. The brain and heart try to reach out, but even then, something has to push or pull them back together. That’s why I use a bag. And tape.”

“I’m sorry?” Rai asked. There was a snickering from Orchid and inexplicably, Jasmine.

“Cole can tell you more. I gave him the rest of the pills too, for study. In any case, he gave Orchid the fresh dose she needed.” Again the frail, unhappy smile. “We were also told to take amphetamines before training and combat in the early phases. It would ensure the brain stayed aware during a fatal, or supposedly fatal, experience. Or else the body might think it’s dead. Of course for us, that was just passing out - but - maybe that was preferable. I’m sorry you had to experience the waking death Orchid. You said that you weren’t taking substances anym-”

“I know, I know. Lay off, will you?” Orchid resettled herself in a huff.

“Sorry.” Fin looked at his shoes.

“I’m surprised it was as easy as injecting more,” Rai said. “Sounds nuts, but the drug works better than we thought.”

“The effects are strong in the early stages. But a resistance builds without the controlled doses. And if an injury is incurred without anyone nearby to help, or the separation of parts isn’t as clean as…” Fin dared another glance at Orchid. “I don’t remember all the warnings from the original trial. Sorry. Is… there anything else?”

“Plenty.” Rai pulled Cole's chair over and lumped himself into it. “How did you get my assistant’s number?”

“It was a new phone, too,” Sao said.

“Um. Sorry.” Apologizing was clearly Fin’s natural state of being. “I overheard, from the streets under the bridge. When Orchid’s attempt went so… strangely I spent a while by Aquila’s apartment hoping to see her and ask what happened. But the police came on Sunday and carried her out so I knew she didn’t do it. As they left I saw you two and… you mentioned the possibility of military coverups. I thought you were good ones.”

“And that’s also where I told Rai my new number. Of course.” Sao thought of what Free had said, about him and Rai being easy to tail. Lengthy periods of ‘shooting the breeze’. If only Rai has just been left alone to focus in silence. But Sao felt strangely defensive of his involvement. It was fortunate during one such loitering session they’d caught Fin’s attention. And his trust, though Sao wondered if they deserved it.

Rai continued on. “You knew Aquila personally, right? But you didn’t take part in the lawsuit. You seemed to suspect something went bad with the E34 drug tests, but never came forward. Why was that?”

“I was just a coward. But… you’re right, things never boded well for Aquila’s case; the army had taken precaution from the start.” Fin frowned and sagged forward. He sat incredibly still. When breathing or talking, only the barest upper portion of him seemed to move. His appendages hung limp and useless, too tired to gesture. There was something artificial about him, brought to movement by a force that wasn’t quite human life. “I was disowned when I was a teen. I entered the military, the experiment, with all that publicly declared. I needed the money badly, and the requirements were minimal. I found the majority of those approved - everyone I met, everyone Aquila uncovered - were of similar situations. Alone. Orphans; widows and widowers; desperate, estranged or abandoned… and we trusted nobody, not even each other. We only had eyes and ears for the trial managers. The source of our meals and pay. When the experiment closed - that’s when it dawned on me, why we were chosen.”

“After the experiment ended is when lawsuits began. Zombies suing the army.”

“Not to fruition. There was nothing so dramatic because the proof and the support weren’t there. Aquila was frustrated why she couldn’t find families or friends of the other participants to testify. She was sister to Blase, so she couldn’t see the truth. She was an agent for years - for ten, she was undercover. Her death was faked, so thoroughly it didn’t reach the eyes of the research department. So at time of his recruitment, Blase was officially an orphan. He was accepted. Zombified. And his sister came back from the dead herself… they could have been our salvation…”

“Then the army got lucky. He and all the others who thought to complain took up the offer for remedial treatment.”

“The experiment was always disorganized on the administrative side. It was thought that the wrap-up procedure had been miscommunicated, as well. It wasn’t the fault of the scientists… so it seemed.” He muttered that, as if still afraid of badmouthing his one-time superiors. “Blase and the others went in to be cured and they never came out.”

“You suspected foul play. Did you tell Aquila?”

“I… wasn’t sure. She did more research than me. I didn’t know any of the families that well, never went to the trials or interviews with the others. I never deployed so I didn’t sustain any injuries to show, I wouldn’t be useful. I only got news through Aquila. She came to suspect the army’s offer of treatment, all on her own, anyway.” Fin slumped, his arms so slack they nearly reached his feet. His stitches strained, pieces of his person threatening to slide apart. “And I was cowardly. She reached out to me multiple times, but I…”

“You hid.”

“I don’t know. I was afraid of the military too. A coverup. She mentioned the word once, and it suddenly made sense. Why we could never reach anyone who’d gone in for the ‘remedial treatment.’ Why Aquila never heard from her brother again. I dread to think or know what the final treatment was. How can there be a cure? Once someone’s fully changed like me, what way out is there? If there was an easy solution, wouldn’t they have just made it public? Even being chopped up and crushed doesn’t end it. At best, Blase is detained. Likely permanently disabled. Or worse. And will be, forever. We’re akin to radioactive waste. No good way to get rid of us but to break the bodies up and put it in containment, far away.” Fin sniffled and coughed. No tears, though, it was more of an allergic break. “One evening, I thought I saw military police waiting around my home. Cars, stiff uniforms - I ran and never went back. I stuck to the streets. Always seeing someone over my shoulder...”

“And testing your limits.”

“Not… intentionally. I didn’t intend to go hungry or be mauled by drunks. Or be hit by a bus. Except for when–” His head suddenly jerked aside in a spasm. “I learned I’d have to live with what I was. I considered trying to sell blood, body parts, the last batches of pills, but that would attract attention. And I don’t think the blood effect’s transferrable… still, being mildly invincible saved me a few concerns. I suppose.”

“And you were in touch with Aquila.”

“I knew her number, and where she lived from past meetings. But I didn’t want to put her out any more. Her lawsuit didn’t work. When she realized her brother was essentially gone, Aquila publicly announced she was going to keep trying, but she never forced me to do anything.”

“And somehow, you fell in with a group of young women.”

“Yes. Force was what I needed, probably. It feels so long but it was just a month ago. I met Hazel while scavenging the alleys behind restaurants. She took me up to their meeting spot. And, well… it was very different from anything I’d known.”

He motioned them close, and dropped to a confederate whisper. “I was taken aback. Young people are… very accepting. Insightful, compared to how I remembered. It’s been so long since I was young, but I was never so self-contained, or so worldly.”

Maya and Orchid were eyeballing him intensely. Sao wondered why he’d bother hiding compliments from them.

“When I first tried to move them out of their fatalistic talks, Hazel turned to me and said, ‘stop trying me with your neurotypical expectations.’ Like a little politician. The word means ‘normal.’ I thought it sounded quite flattering.”

He clearly still found it flattering.

“They had extensive experience with psychiatric treatments. There was no hesitation to talk about it; they’d all seen multiple specialists, traded detailed stories and evaluations. Kept diaries of appointments and medicines. Well, not Hazel. I wondered if the others kept record for Hazel to look at...”

To judge, Sao thought, if they ‘qualified’ for sadness or even for death. Shown they’d put in the compensatory work if not.

“But they also knew that just being told to think positively, get pills or run to the arms of doctors or the police, wasn’t a cure-all. Especially when you have a reason to stay hidden. They immediately understood why I didn’t see those avenues as safe. Luckily the girls, while they were critical, were determined not to let circumstances get the better of them. They think of the future in all aspects, which may be what fills them with such anxiety. And even with all their troubles… they wanted to devise a new way to help me, a person who’d never been any good for anyone. The plan was they’d put the drug and the story out to the public. Not the court or the official press - the youth platforms. Their world. Widespread, online, future-thinking; make it hard to erase. Something Aquila, with her life of trained secrecy, couldn’t envision on her own.”

It was a terribly effusive assessment of Hazel and her crew. They sounded like angels - not the griffin-angels but the angels of original myth. Humanity’s vanguards. Sao smiled. But Rai was frowning, chewing at his glove’s fingertip. “This plan only came up after Hazel tried to kill herself.”

“Yes. I suspected she would… that’s why I gave her the pills.”

“And told her they’d give her a quick, painless death.”

“It was wrong, I know. But I just didn’t want to lose her. And they spoke of another friend they’d lost… Jasmine and the others would be devastated.”

“You read Hazel correctly. She did try to die, and you saved her. And she was grateful.”

Fin’s face raised its sagging mouth slightly. There was a blip of energy in that loose clay, though it didn’t hold. “But I ended up getting them wrapped into my problems.”

“They wanted to be in it. And Aquila got into the new plan, too.”

“Aquila. I will never forgive myself for pulling her in. After Jasmine’s difficulty, for some reason I thought it would be good to have her help. Aquila was so enthused about it, she thought it was a wonderful idea. She had one or two new contacts she was hoping could be involved. ‘You could be the one to turn this all around’, she said. I keep hearing her voice, even though I know…”

“She’s not dead.”

“It’s just awful. The ‘guide’, you’ve been calling him. I wondered if one of Aquila’s new contacts was this man, or a military mole. The one who orchestrated Orchid’s death and found the others.”

“We have a pretty good idea of who he is…” Rai glanced at Sao. “It’s likely he’s working on behalf of an independent criminal organization. Not military, or not directly related to it. We suspect he launched flashy attacks on Orchid, Maya and Jasmine to draw you out, so he can obtain the drug.”

“Really? That’s a relief. I’ve been wanting to meet him again. There should be no problem, then.”

Sao felt his blood chill. He hadn’t expected such easy submission.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to meet him on your own,” Rai quickly added.

“I don’t think he’s a bad person, but I did think there was a misunderstanding.” The prospect of a non-military assailant had injected even more life into Fin. His eyes, a washed-out yellow (like his hair, like his skin) widened. Bumps on their watery surface glittered under the fluorescent lights. “It was just a short conversation, outside Maya’s hotel room, before you two came out. He accused me of orchestrating it all - a way to see girls harmed. He said he’d keep going after them as long as I did. You see, he thought he was protecting them from me.”

Sao wanted to shake him. For a man supposedly hiding for his life, his trust really was won too fast. Perhaps it was desperation.

“He wasn’t exactly coming at them peacefully either,” Rai said.

“But you said he was just trying to get my attention. And he wasn’t wrong to be upset. Nobody should ever have been harmed in the first place.” Fin’s gaze dropped back to his lap. His eyes became dull clumps once again. “Do you know where he is?”

“We know where he works.”

“I need to talk to him. If not, I need to tell Hazel how he’s unset the plan. I came here to find her, now it’s even more urgent. She could do anything…”

“Is that why you were telling her to stop the campaign? It just made her upset.” Jasmine said quietly. She had approached the bedside so stealthily they hadn’t noticed until she spoke. “Stopping for the sake of safety? Hazel doesn’t think like that.”

Fin suddenly looked very tired and fell backward onto the bed. “You’re right. There are other considerations. I need to think on how to approach her.”

His skin sagged as it settled, bunching up and falling over the stitches. With his jumper hiked up slightly, Sao saw at least half a dozen additional lines of wiry black thread on his stomach. They were clean and looked very secure. Perhaps already healed. For some reason or another, Rai’s description of his college girlfriend’s scars lurched to the forefront of his mind. Burns and holes and lines. Why was the world so full of pain?

“I should tell you I’m officially suspended from this case,” Rai said. “But my last report will be an attempt to get police to take this false guide in for questioning. Whatever his reasons, he’s physically assaulted multiple people now. If we can stay in touch, I’ll let you know when. It will be safer for Hazel afterward.”

“I still don’t think he’s entirely ill-intentioned…”

The continued defense of Free irked Sao, though he knew it shouldn’t have. “Fin, you should get some rest. Especially if you just received some sort of treatment.”

“Yeah.” Rai stood up and pushed the chair back to Cole’s favorite spot across from Orchid’s bed (where she was now snoring peacefully, the ring of black at her throat burbling.) “And you must be tired.”

“I am. I always am.”

He sounded so forlorn, so feeble, and in that moment it registered to Sao as incredibly suspicious. Hostility rose in his conscience, brief as a flame. How could the most fragile creature in the world have lived multiple falls, traffic slams, ten years in the hot and cold under mountains of fear and stress, and who knew what else? He wasn’t weak, in fact he was inhumanly strong. “Fin,” he said, standing by the bed even as Rai made to leave. “Please don’t go anywhere. This man - Freenet - he’s dangerous. Even if you’re both on the same page, he may act in ways you won’t expect.”

There was no change in the prone form, but he was not sure what he was expecting; it was difficult to look more subservient, more distressed and spiritless, than Fin did as a baseline.

The irritation was gone. Sao felt his energy leave him.

Lying on the bed, a lump of unset clay in green sweats, Fin croaked, “I know. I have to tell Hazel.”

—

The lights were lowered when Cole returned. Although he’d assured himself it would be the case, he was relieved to see none of the flock had made a break for it. Maya had some headphones in, and nodded to him drowsily when he entered. She was probably the one who had lowered the lights. Orchid and Jasmine were sleeping. In the windows he was surprised to see the glimmer of stars. After such a smoggy day it was a welcome sight.

When he put his face up to the glass, the largest of the stars began puttering off to the west. It was only a helicopter.

Fin was on his bed, lying at an angle as if he’d been thrown, limbs askance like a straw effigy. Assuming even a full-fledged zombie closed its eyes in rest (of which Cole could not be totally sure) he was awake.

Cole stood over him, ready to administer. “So, how long would it take for a broken bone of yours to heal?” He had done precious little resting himself in the staffroom and instead prepared a notepad of questions.

Fin gave him a dazed look. “It depends on the bone. 24-48 hours if I have to say. Sometimes I mess up the alignment, like the leg today and I have to…”

The rest of the answer was incoherent. But Cole could make an educated guess. “So, you say you feel hunger. What happens when you eat? As far as you know, does your digestive system work as usual? Is excretion the way it was before you took the drug?”

This question made the patient uncomfortable enough to scrape himself off the bed.

Cole pressed his shoulder back down before he could squirm away. “The military has been wholly unhelpful. Considering your theory of a coverup, it’s not surprising. The girls make for lively conversation, but none of them know as much as you do about this stuff.” He tossed the notepad onto the bedside table. “Nothing has to go on record - it’s all personal curiosity. I want to learn as much as I can about E34 before it gets swept under the rug.”

Fin regarded him with a wide-eyed wholesomeness that was both sudden and unpleasant. “It won’t. That’s Hazel’s plan.”

They stared at each other and then at the window. There were still a few stars that were real.

“I haven’t seen any other doctors or nurses come in. You’ve been the only one who cares for the girls,” Fin muttered. “They must seem fragile to you. It’s understandable that you feel parental-”

“No. Just thinking that sets us all up for disappointment. I take it you feel something different?”

“To me, they’re some of the strongest people imaginable. I feel more like an infant to the collective, sometimes. But it’s not the worst feeling after so long with… nothing to believe in.” Fin scraped the bedframe with a jaundiced thumb. “I wasn’t kicked out until I was seventeen. I had two younger brothers.”

“I’m sorry. You survived, though.”

“I couldn’t do anything right. That’s why I had to go.” Fin slid backward on the bed, out of Cole’s reach and sat up again against the headboard. “Can you do me a favor?”

Cole collected his notebook. “I’ve done plenty for you.”

“Can I beg you for something, then?”

Another call for a volunteer. Cole closed his eyes and feigned consideration. What he was really thinking of, what immediately cropped up in the dark instead of the spider in the urinal now was the guts tangled in plastic, all out of place, and his bare hands shoving them up and down and back and around, like a game he used to have as a kid. Put the little plastic organs in their place, according to the diagram. The real-life version added new features such as texture, spillage, bones floating all over the place like carrots in soup, plenty of gray pus and a weepy face with a voice to match coming out of the tinny speaker.

“What happens when the military comes back? They will, to check on the girls eventually, you said…” Fin trailed off again.

“You’ll have to go, I guess.”

“Go?”

Fin’s voice made such a dramatic, terrified upswing that Orchid stirred in her sleep. Her head turned left and right, and her arm was pulled - no, it made a small, but active movement - to swat at some unseen pest. A motion so perfectly alive and irritated. Cole felt half a week’s worth of tension fall from him like a tonne of snow.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Fin. I have a feeling you’ll be out of the hospital by then.” He turned back. “So, what did you want to grovel for?”

Fin jumped back to attention at the question. He’d been watching Orchid too. “F-first, I need to switch phones. I’ve been doing this to stop anyone tracking my old numbers…”

‘First’ is it? As he plunged his hand in the plastic bag handed to him, Cole considered he wasn’t the only one with a list.