Nora stood at the entrance to the cleanroom’s sani-station and watched as Tolly tried to scrub all traces of Soren from her skin. The young woman wasn’t weeping. Instead, she appeared to Nora more frustrated than anything as she worked a small brush back and forth across her skin and under her nails.

  “That wasn’t Soren, Tolly. You know that– he died long before now – you know that wasn’t him?” Nora asked hesitantly.

  Tolly’s head hung as she stopped scrubbing.

  “I know,” she admitted, “it's just… he called me Blane. He confused me with the last memory he had of my sister. He’s done that before.”

  “So you think maybe he was lucid?”

  “Maybe for a moment,” said Tolly, “Then… I don’t know. He became this.”

  Nora looked down at her own hands, still wet with the black fluid that Oscar had conjured from Soren’s remains. Then, supposing she should clean it off, she joined Tolly at the sink.

  “What if we have it now– whatever infected Soren?” Tolly asked.

  “No, I don’t think that’s the case,” said Nora, “Oscar says this is the cure.”

  Tolly stopped scrubbing and looked over the sink. “Oh no, I’ve washed it all down.”

  “It’s fine,” Nora said, placing a hand on Tolly’s back after she finished and dried her hands. She didn’t want to cause the girl more pain, knowing there was a lot more of the black fluid still laying out on the terrace. Tolly seemed to relax.

  “You think we can stop it?” Tolly asked, “Stop Bordeaux from happening all over again?”

  “Oscar seems to think so. And we have the resources of three Matriarchs at our disposal. I’m sure we’ll be able to get the cure out to where it needs to go.”

  “Miran mentioned the dust storms. What’s your take on that?” asked Tolly.

  “I have some ideas I would like to run by you,” said Nora, “when you’re up for it. For now, though, the hardest task. We need to synthesise the adapted phage in Oscar’s sample so that it can be aerosolized. Can I trust you with that?”

  Tolly nodded with a sigh. “Do I need to go back out there and scoop up some of it?

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Oscar. He entered the room, his face still drained in a way similar to their first meeting on Belltower, holding a large vessel of the black fluid. “This should be sufficient. How are you feeling, Tolly?”

  Nora could see Tolly’s apprehension at the sight of Oscar, something that Nora struggled to fight down herself. It wasn’t until Tolly met Oscar’s gaze with a genuine smile that Nora realised who the strongest of them was.

  “Did you know you could do that– with Soren’s body?” Tolly asked.

  “In truth? No,” he said, “I felt I needed help and that Soren's biomass might still retain a flicker of willpower that I might harness. It wasn’t until I engaged with his mind that I could glimpse the meddling of the augurs tasked by my brother. At that moment, I could feel what was needed to reverse it.”

  “It will still take some work to synthesise a mass amount from the sample,” said Tolly as she took the sample and got to work at the cleanroom bioprinter.

  “Thank you, Oscar,” Nora said. “I think it’s time you and I work on the next monumental task; this delivery system.”

  “Right,” he said, as Oscar and Nora assumed their positions at the central workbench. “I assume by now you’ve pieced together that the phage needs to be turned into an aerosol compound?”

  “You should give me a little credit. Your biology still confuses the hell out of me, but the fundamentals of viral dispersal remain the same. The question is, how do we get the aerosol into the dust storms? Do we wait for one to just pop up and then toss the sample in and hope for the best?”

  “Not so elegantly. Any model that relies on naturally occurring dust storms to bind to and carry the aerosol, places dispersal at a number of weeks for the first effects to begin to show, remains problematic. No, I think we need something much quicker.”

  “So we will have to induce a dust storm, give something for the aerosol to bind to, but how?” asked Nora.

  Just then, Miran entered the cleanroom with a bulletin opened on her terminal. Casting it to the wallscreen, Nora watched as a recording played back and showed a scuffle of Umar Hari’s guardsmen as they rushed in and out of frame, waving and mouthing orders at each other. Then, the larger of Hari’s bodyguards, the silent man that had interrupted them in the cleanroom earlier that day, uttered a single phrase that sent her stomach into knots.

  On-screen, a loud crash not unlike the splintering of wood and stone preceded the words, “he’s coming.” After that, the bulletin closed, triggering an attachment to open; a geotag affixed to it by one of the guardsmen. A blip registered on a map of the estate level they were on as it moved through the halls towards them with alarming speed.

  “That was sent to me only a few moments ago,” Miran said, behind a determined scowl, “I need to know what’s coming.”

  Oscar looked over at her, apprehension at upsetting the woman washed across his face, though for only a moment when he said, “We must prepare. Something that was once your friend Hari is approaching.”

  “You can sense it, Oscar?” asked Nora, “what’s happened to him?”

  “He has suffered a similar transformation to that of Soren, though from what I can tell, far more violent. Thus, the figure that we will soon be faced with will not resemble Hari. Instead, it has been twisted into a weapon.”

  “Monster,” said Tolly in a haunted realisation.

  “A drone?” asked Nora.

  “What do we do?” asked Miran. “I’ve come face-to-face with Ghede only twice before and watched as they tore their way through thick body armour.”

  “Tolly is quite right,” said Oscar, “what we will soon face will be far closer to what she has seen, though far more sinister. I can hear my brother’s influence call to me as the monster draws near as if he were steering it. They mean to stop us.”

  “Then how do we stop it?” asked Nora, “None of us here are soldiers.”

  “This falls upon me,” said Oscar.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “No, Oscar,” said Tolly. “You’re too weak.”

  “I admit I am far depleted, but,” Oscar said as he neared the cleanroom exit, “what other choice do we have?”

  Oscar zipped up his Mobius envirosuit, clicked in and tightened his helmet, and stepped through the exit closing the door behind him. Then, opening a bulletin to Nora, he said, “do lockup after me?”

  Nora tapped a command on her terminal, engaging contamination protocols and locking the cleanroom doors.

  Nora, Miran and Tolly watched as the wallscreen switched to show Oscar as he walked the estate corridors, beelining in the direction of the oncoming blip. Just as Oscar seemed to round the corner to come face-to-face with the Hari monster, he paused and realised something was wrong.

  “Where is it?” asked Tolly. Nora didn’t know how to answer. Instead, keeping her eyes glued to the wallscreen, she and Miran both flinched as a single, solitary mouse crept out from under a wall-lining bench seat. On its back, a chunk of tar-covered flash and a blinking yellow light.

  “It’s the geotag,” Miran said as Nora zoomed in.

  “Where is–” Tolly reiterated, just as it crashed through the observation room’s ceiling behind them. The three turned to see Hari, now monstrous and having grown nearly a metre in height, his once soft noble flesh now torn and nubilous. His eyes had nearly shut behind sallow swelling, and his mouth hung open.

  The monster Hari shrieked in a way that Nora felt it infiltrating the back of her mind, pushing on her lizard brain. Hari slammed on the glass pane that separated them from the observation room. Miran drew her sidearm and levelled it at the creature.

  “It can’t get through that, can it?” asked Tolly.

  “No– definitely not,” Nora assured her.

  The creature slammed on the glass again, shaking the cleanroom.

  “You’re sure?” Miran asked.

  Nora shrugged slowly.

  “That’s reassuring,” said Miran. “I doubt I have enough shots to stop this thing.”

  Another slam of the glass was followed by a deeper shriek that echoed throughout the cleanroom, disconnected from the creature. Nora, unsure what to do, started tapping on her terminal, pulling up a view from outside the cleanroom. Oscar was there, pounding on the cleanroom blast door in a futile attempt to be noticed.

  “Let him in,” Tolly pleaded, “open the door for Oscar.”

  “I can’t; I would have to disengage the lockdown,” said Nora.

  The beast slammed again.

  Nora inspected the creature, its face drawn and cragged, still vaguely resembled the Patriarch. Its arms were swollen and doubled in width and rippling with torn flesh, which it threw at the glass without pause. It still wore the tatters of a silken bedgown, now shredded and slumped around its waist. The beast was massive, and were it not presently trying to break in and kill them, Nora would have found it fascinating. But, of all the pitfalls she might have expected when her research team began diving into the first samples back on Belltower, never had she imagined she would be faced with this.

  As the creature continued to rail against the glass, Nora counted themselves lucky to have found themselves in such a secure place. The glass, despite the rapture, held firm, discharging the shock it absorbed into the surrounding wall. Then, as Nora traced the ripple of the glass on another swing over to where the glass met the wall, she noticed something that caused her to grip her terminal.

  “What is it?” Miran asked, sensing her discomfort.

  Nora said nothing. Instead, she pointed to the spot on the wall that was taking the brunt of the monster’s beating, to where a crack was beginning to form.

  “Gods...” said Tolly.

  Another swing and the glass began to pull away from the wall.

  “It’s getting in,” said Miran. “Any ideas?”

  Nora thought for a moment, remembering the very reason why the creature was assaulting the cleanroom.

  “Captain Ignacio, dear?” Nora said, “tell me you’ve had a chance to synthesise some of that compound?”

  Tolly nodded.

  “What are you thinking, Doctor?” asked Miran as she stepped toward the glass, corralling Tolly and Nora behind her like a herdsman protecting her flock.

  Nora opened a bulletin to Oscar.

  “Oscar, are you still out there?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am here,” he said. “Is the Patriarch in yet– can you open up?”

  “Actually,” Nora thought, remembering the dust storm and their plan to aerosolize the cure.

  She thought back to her arrival at the estate, and the lush fields of the grounds, some of which were blanketed with burgeoning underbrush, some and even more important were those that bred endless rows of vegetable crops not seen anywhere else on her flight over the planet's surface. All of which were orchestrated by tending bots, and the fields were broken up by nothing but a smattering of prismatic domes that rose above and sprouted puffs of vapour over the crops’ canopy line.

  “Oscar, I need you to get something for me. Those crop spraying pylons out past the terrace, you know the ones?” she said.

  Oscar nodded.

  “I need you to get the vaporizer mechanism inside. Bring it here, and hurry.”

  “Right,” Oscar said, closing the bulletin as he rushed off down the hallway and left them alone with the monster.

  The monster continued to hammer its fists on the glass, each time pushing the gap between the wall wider. Hari screamed again, breaching any attempt at calm Nora could muster. Her rational mind knew she had precious moments to enact her plan, but the voice that crawled at the back of her pleaded her to give in, to run, to panic. Tolly was busy tapping commands on her terminal and the various wallscreens on the cleanroom’s equipment, instructing it to churn out something. Finally, with the chime of the nanoscale bioprinter, a single cartridge was extruded filled with a tempestuous vapour.

  “I believe this is what you asked for, Doctor Gaul,” Tolly said as she rushed over and handed her the cartridge.

  The monster Hari threw its fists one more time, folding the glass just enough out from the wall to get its fingers in. The beast jammed its paw into the gap and began to pry, pulling the glass outward from the cleanroom like opening up a can of powdered vaske. Miran levelled her pistol at the hole and opened fire.

  The first shot missed, embedding itself in the cleanroom wall just centimetres from the gap. The second and third landed, shearing the monster’s index and middle fingers from their stumps. The beast flinched, staggering back and shrieking, only to return to the gap and resume prying with more enthusiasm than before.

  “Any time now, Doctor,” Miran barked.

  Just as the monster finally worked the gap wide enough to fit its torso through, folding the glass outward like a shattered rug, it began to force its way through. Tolly yelped as the beast pushed its way across jagged shards, grating its skin with a shriek. She stepped back into the far corner closest to the door.

  “Doctor, now!” Tolly said, pleading for Nora to open the door and let Oscar in.

  Nora hesitated only for a moment. Then, mustering her remaining will, she tapped a command on her terminal, ending the lockdown. The warning lights ceased, and all outer locks clicked open. The door to her right slid wide, and Oscar paced in, slamming a salvaged crop sprayer onto the cleanroom workbench. Instead of the inner spraying mechanism, Oscar had heaved the whole pylon, which Nora supposed had to be over ninety kilos.

  Oscar moved past them, brushing Miran to the side. The monster Hari finally slipped through, leaving behind a shucking of flesh and hair. It crashed down onto the cleanroom floor right in front of Oscar, sweeping a wide ride arm at Oscar’s head.

  The creature’s swing connected, smashing the blast visor of Oscar’s helmet. Oscar didn’t flinch. Instead, grabbing hold of Hari’s broad paw, he began grappling the creature. The monster fought back as it tried to sweep its arms at Oscar. But Oscar was too close, hugging in to Hari’s torso tightly, he denied the monster further movement into the room.

  Miran opened fire again, sinking the last of her rounds into Hari’s head and neck. Black fluid splattered on the crumpled glass and wall behind them and down onto Oscar’s envirosuit. The creature continued to struggle as Oscar strained to keep it contained. Several times the monster got an arm loose and would swing and tear at Oscar to let go, shedding Oscar’s envirosuit down to his Mobius coveralls and tearing at the flesh underneath.

  Oscar shed the gloves from his suit and stuffed his hands deep inside the ragged folds of the monster’s moulting skin. His face strained, echoed by that of the monster’s, as he began to focus. Oscar coaxed his Will into the colossus and commanded it to slow. Throughout the cleanroom, Nora could feel an unmitigable ennui filter in. And as she worked to crudely force the newly printed vapour cartridge into the sprayer’s central rig, she finally heard a click followed by a hiss as it dispensed into the pylon’s canister.

  The monster that was Hari began to stiffen, its wide sweeping arms grew heavier, and Oscar loosened its grip.

  “Now would be nice, Nora,” Oscar pleaded, his voice weary.

  Nora was ready. Knocking the pylon off the cleanroom workbench, she tapped a command on her terminal as it fell. The pylon slammed onto the concrete floor just as a plume of white vapour spouted out the top, pointed at the monster’s midsection. Quickly, a cloud began to form as the mist consumed all space in the room.

  Nora coughed as the vapour entered her eyes, her lungs, and her mouth. Tolly and Miran began to struggle as well, Miran dropping her pistol as she tried to swat away the expanding cloud. The stench was horrid, the taste even stranger, and for what felt like hours, Nora was laden with the all-consuming mist.