Well, Nurse Exeter blw her brains out. From what I heard after arriving on the scene, I would have tried to find Dr. Derric to chastise him for having been so callously indifferent to human life, but no one who’d witnessed the suicide seemed to have any complaints about it.


    Everyone was just worn down to the bone.


    “Hell” didn’t even begin to describe it.


    equal parts physical and spiritual. It was as much a state of being as it was a place, a cesspit for the aftermath of the uncreated Chaos from which the world was wrought. Were it not for mankind’s hubris, the darkness would have stayed buried. But our disobedience planted a terrible seed down in that darkness, one which—as legends foretold—would flower, bringing about the Last Days.


    In did not. For that alone, faithful Lassediles praised s a Angelits that the Godheaddid not want  in Paradise, in eternal communion with the divine. Though the Angel wept for every soul that failed to reach paradise, the Godhead would not violate our free will by forcing us to be where we did not wish to be.


    The Lassedites taught that our sake. For all its pleasures, Paradises was said to be an unbearable torment for those unrepentant souls who had not bound themselves to the Light and accepted the Angel as their savior. The presence of pure goodness would burn them in unending agony. In this way, Hell was a kindness. Whether through depravity or temperament, even the most recalcitrant souls would be able to find refuge in Hell, in a place more suited to However, because God was goodness, the head’s presence did not touch, . Hell was bereft of these things, and it was proper that it be that way. The eternal suffering of the souls in Hell was God’s justice.


    Or so I was told.


    According to legend, every   had to be done, because Hell could not exist since As the Old Believers taught, the dreams of pagan witches and foreign seers were the reverberations of the Beast’s daily journey, misinterpreted by the ancients as the words of their false gods. Racing through Hell, the holy light would stream off the Beast’s hide, boiling the souls of the damned as it crushed their corpses beneath its feet


    But the Beast could stay in Hell in perpetuity, because that would harm the souls that resided there. When dawn came, twould ave Hell’s depths, and go to sleep in sacred places across the world, basking in the Sun’s holy light. Meanwhile, the souls below would sHell’s, freezing again—ing—waiting to be broken on the Beast’s next return


    And so it would be, for all eternity.


    , I wondered if Hell was even half as horrid as what I saw in WeElMed’.


    Bodies littered the floor, scattered here  there in clumps,  leaning against a wall. The boundary between life and death surprise by twitching like dying flies Infectious black ooze curdled on lips still moist with lipstick.


    I wondered: how many of them still remembered  another  d?


    After seeing how Andalon reacted to all the bodies, I asked her to stay in the not-here-place.


    I didn’t want to see her cry.


    Soldiers had to pry bodies apart where the fungus had begun to grow out and fuse them.


    I had to keep my wyrmsight thinned, otherwise I’d have gone blind. The halls were so thick with spirits, it almost looked like the hospital was being swallowed by fog. Voices whispered at the edges of my awareness as the constant stream of spirits uploaded into my mind.


    I also kept my distance from the corpses, terrified I’d get peckish.


    I  Ani and Jonan spending  spare moment disposrespectful discretion as they could manage, just to give the patients  the crowded lobb a more comfortable breathe their last.


    Nearly everyone was coughing, even among the staff.


    We were dropping like flies.


    I kept vacillating with my emotions. Should I try to be stoic, or would it be unbecoming of me to let myself become ?


    I didn’t know.


    chaos  calloused minds.  design flaws. Half the time, our minds’ efforts to help us only made things worse.  shoved repeated trauma into the dark corners of our memories.  shock and horror more concerned with protecting our psyche than with he capacity to make emotionally informed  in times of crisis. Victims of rape and other sexual abuse often unable to fight back—unable to cry out,  scream or run—because the age-old tonic immobility reflex let muscle control go AWOLpredator  we were dead and no longer worth the trouble.


    Suddenly, a shout from Dr. Derric pulled me out of my daze.


    “Doc!” e ran past the now-unstaffed reception desk. “Fuck!”  yelled. “Room , Nurse Kaylin—”


    “—That’s mine! My patient is—”


    Someone screamed


    Jonan and I rushed toward the sound. Two nurses were in a tug of war over a bag of IV fluid. Dosed with the mycophage, no doubt, by the way the fluid shimmered in the light.


    Fighting over a false cure. Had we really sunk so low?


    “Wait!” I yelled “Stop!”


    But it was too late. The bag , splashing  all over the nurses’ gunk-stained scrubs and the  floor underfoot.


    familiar howl ripped through the hallway“GET THE DEFIBRILLATOR!”


    Nurse Kaylin.


    I’d barely turned around whendtoI had to slow my perception of time for a couple seconds, just to process what the thing was.


    DHe’d given me the defibrillator.


    The thing was beige on top, gray on the bottom, and had the texture of something extruded from a first-generation 3D-printer—all pitted and pockmarked. electrodes were attached by way of two helical plastic cables.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    I swore“Fudge, this thing is probably older than my mother-in-law”


    “The spores, the green stuff,” Jonan said, “it’s corroded a shit-ton of our equipment.”


    “I’m well aware,” I said.


    I was about to run off to help Nurse Kaylin when I realized something was missing. “here’s the conducting gel?”


    “Gone Same goes for our reserve stores of antibiotics and antimycotics.”


    “HE’S FUCKING CODING!!” Kaylin swore


    , pushing me forward. “”


    I had to summon a plexal chestpiece to keep me from falling onto my belly.


    I lumbered over to the disaster as quickly as I could.


    “Angel’s breath,” I hissed.


    Dr. Mistelann Skorbinkna lay on the bed. He was shirtless, though the lower half of his body was still covered in his work clothes. His skin was an almost greenish gray. Ulcerous crevasses dug  his body. Fungal filaments gathered beneath his skin like hair  trapthe fluorescent lights. The ECG screamed and warbled, flopping irregularly. And his O2 perfusion was…


    No, I thought, shaking my head.


    The readouts on the machines by Mistelann’s bed indicated he was Angel-knew.


    Kaylin flailed as she tried to wrap blue rubber wet-suit around Mistelann’s body. She had to fling herself onto  body to make up for her limited reach.


    “What’s going on?” I asked.


    , coughing like mad I saw gobs of black ooze crusted on the inner surface of her translucent F-99 face mask. The thing was positively dripping.


    “I can’t fucking put on the NASG and defibrillate!”


    “What’s—”


    NASG! !” she gasped. “AHer sentences came out in laconic spurts as she struggled to breathe.”


    “Jess, stop!” I yelled. “You’re going to kill yourself!” I turned my head toward the doorway and screamed: “Jonan!”


    “Coming!” Jonan yelled.


    He stormed in a moment later. His eyes bulged in his sockets as he coughed. “Holy shit!” he said, upon seeing Nurse Kaylin. “Get that woman off her feet now.”


    Jess glared daggers at both of us. “Can’t stop. Won’t remember. Gotta keep going. Gotta keep going!”


    “Jess!” Jonan and I yelled.


    She toppled onto me. A wall of psychokinesis at my back kept me from tumbling with her.


    I pushed her onto her feet.


    She winced in pain as she coughed. W-


    ! Jonan said.


    batted me away with  hand stead herself by grabbing onto Mistelann’s beder glove fingers the sheets and the mattress.


    “ gel substitute”Even through her rebreather, breaths were ragged and crinkly, like bubble wrap popping.


    Gagging—eyes rolling—she ripped off her mask and spewed black ooze over the foot of Mistelann’s bed.


    “Shit!” Jonan cursed.


    “What can we use?” I asked.


    Jess stammered. “I… I…” Her usual tack-like sharpness was nowhere to be seen.  rebreather,


    Did she even have any blood vessels anymore?


    Then, as if by magic, my marvelous memory pulled something useful out from the depths of my mind.


    Chasing Zebras, one of the better hospital medical dramas filled on the premises. I flashed back to, hyperphantasizing its cold open right in front of me, in the middle of a moment of slowed time.


    an unseasonably hot autumn afternoon, the brilliant, audaciously misanthropic Dr. Jerald Homestead  in line at a local electronics store to pay money to the shopkeeper, Jack personal psilocybin supplierunder the pretense of purchasing a decorative LED bulb uddenlythe customer arguing with Jack  into cardiac arrest. Homestead grab  capacitors off a shelf, rip them from thepackaging, and use them as a makeshift defibrillator


    “You’re gonna defibrillate him?” Jack asked.


    “No shit,” Homestead replied, lifting the capacitors up to his forehead and wiping them on his skin to pick up the sweat.


    “What the hell are you doing?” Jack asked.


    “Sa,” Homestead replied, “it conducts !”


    Mistelann’s fever-burning body was wet with .


    “We don’t need it!” I said. “Sweat conducts electricity, and he’s covered in it.”


    F, that’s good, Jonan said.


    Jess “o the electrodes” , in between coughs.


    I set the between Mistelann’s legs. rabb the electrodes by their handles smeared their surfaces over the mycologist’s drenched chest, lubricating them with his sweat.


    Jonan ran up to the machine and pulled Jess out of the way.


    “Lift them up! I’m setting the voltage


    I did.


    “Clear—go!”


    Jess fell to her knees. She kept reaching toward Mistelann.


    I pressed the electrodes onto Dr. Skorbinkna’s chest. lectric charge coursed through him. His legs clonked against the defibrillator’s plastic


    The ECG sputtered.


    “Come on, Mistelann!” I begged.


    “Again!” Kaylin yelled.


    darted around me to the other side of the bed to secure the remaining velcro straps to bind the rubber NASG  body.


    I pressed the electrodes to Dr. Skorbinkna’s chest once .


    His heart leapt. The ECG showed a steady pulse:


    55 bpm


    Weak, but better than nothing.


    “We’ve got a pulse!”  yelled.


    ’s Jess, though Jonan responded.


    “Late stage cases bleed internallyIt’s like their bodies are being broken down from the inside out.”


    “You think I don’t know that!?” I said.


    “We’re out of  transfusion The NASG squeezes you, pushing blood to the heart, lungs, and brain where it’s most needed.”


    Mistelann’s body sputtered. His eyes fluttered open.


    “Where… where…” He spoke in a drawl suggest possible temporal lobe damagehough that was the least of his problems.


    His head lolled on his sweat-matted pillow.


    “Dr. Skorbinkna?” I asked.


    He turned to me. “Brand?”glistened . is sideburns


    “I’m Dr. Howle, Mistelann,” I said. “Genneth Howle.”


    “Fr… Friend of Brand?”  jaw hung open. He tried to move, but his limbs wouldn’t obey him.


    He didn’t remember me.


    Flibbertigibbet…


    Dr. Skorbinka bed my; a breeze could have knocked him away. His hands and fingers , unable to stay still.


    is nervous system cm apart at the seams.


    “Where is Brand? Where?” He squeezed my arm pitifully. “I… I…”


    “He wants Dr. Nowston?”  .


    I glanced at , looking back over my shoulder. “Brand is… indisposed right now.”


    “Brand!” Mistelann cried. “Brand! Brand!” He wept. Blood mixed with the tears.


    “No, no. It’ll… It’ll be alright, Mistelann. We have the mycophage,” I said, desperate. “We—”


    —Jess coughed. “Genneth, the myc—”


    —Dr. Skobrikna curled his head and chest upward. “Myco…phage?


    ven as neck muscles spasmed and gave out on him flash of recognition in  eyes. He started coughing after that, but it wasn’t like the other coughs. It took a second for me to match the exhausted grimace and the tears in his eyes with what I knew of his sardonic personality before I put two and two together.


    was laughing.


    grim mirth tore open the skin on his cheeksfollow the paths of the dark filaments underneath.


    “No hope. No chance. There was no chance. e gurgled“oomed… from tart.”


    He wept. “Meaningless. All eaningless.”


    Suddenly, a strange, almost cherubic light crept into his eyes. mouth saggragged tear.


    “Friend of BrandPlease. Give  my kisses. All my kisses.”


    I nodded. “I will, Mistelann.” I gently squeezed his hand. “I promise I will.”


    A wisp of a smile graced the dying man’s face. “Keep  bright and warm,” he whispered. But then  smile faded. “It is cold,” he said, drawing his arms around himself, shivering. “So cold.” His body shuddered. Dark. DarkMistelann’s limbs twitched, toecurling. “Please, friend… tell him I… wanted but… ”


    The breath went out of his chest. Dr. Skorbinkna’s body gave one last, gentle rattle, and then, he fell still.


    I shouted over the EG’s pure tone. “Mistelann!”


    I reached for the defibrillator’s paddles, but  stilled my hands, grabbing me by the arm.


    “He’s… he’s gone, .”e looked me in the eyes.


    A moment later, a quiet groan came from , followed by a slap and a crack


    Jonan and I looked down to see Jess on her belly, face down.


    Jonan got to his knees and shook her. “Jess! Jess!”


    Pushing, he rolled her onto her back.


    I gasped. “No…”


    Rolling Nurse Kaylin revealed a trail of black ooze on the ground, trickling out from a crack in her skull. Little bits of blood intermingled with the darkness.


    Like I said: “Hell” didn’t even begin to describe it.