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“Shit,” Sophia said, and kicked up her pace to a quick jog. Emma trailed along behind a little slower, willing to let her parahuman friend take point on anything that made her take a tone like that.
As Emma got to the top of the hill, she saw why: the hole was empty. It had only been about four feet deep to begin with, and two feet of that was taken up by the big cardboard box. But the dirt they’d shoveled on top had been disturbed and fallen in. “She got out?” Emma asked, a little disappointed. She’d been looking forward to the unearthing.
“Looks like.” Sophia said, crouching down next to the the oval of freshly turned dirt. She touched a footprint, then looked up and ordered, “Show me the bottoms of your shoes.”
Emma rolled her eyes and turned around to kick up one foot. “It’s not that big a deal,” she said. “It’s not like anyone’s going to believe her. Jesus, who would do something like this?”
“Mads wasn’t thrilled with the idea,” Sophia reminded her. “Put your foot down, this one’s yours from before.” She moved on to another footprint on the other side. This one wasn’t pointing back towards Brockton Bay.
Emma scowled at the reminder that her other friend wasn’t nearly so committed. Whatever. Madison was fun enough at school, but she wasn’t a survivor. Emma watched Sophia take a few steps into the woods, searching for another footprint. She noticed something Sophia wasn’t looking for: the dull, angry red cap of a mushroom.
“Hey, do you think that’s one of the shrooms you can get high off of?” Emma asked, pointing at it with a grin.
Sophia spared it barely a glance and shrugged. “Dunno anything about shrooms. I’m not running your ass to the hospital if it kills you.”
“Killjoy,” Emma muttered. She went to the mushroom and kneeled down next to it, more out of boredom than because she wanted to try it. “C’mon, why are you trying to track her? She’ll be at school on Monday, same as ever. Either that or she finally got the fucking message, and she’ll stop coming completely.”
Whatever Sophia was going to answer, Emma missed it. Because she’d reached out and picked one of the stalks, and it wilted and burst into a cloud of heavy brown smoke in her hand.
“Ugh!” she shrieked, falling over backward in her hurry to get away from the stuff as fast as possibly. “Oh, so gross! Ew, ew, ew!”
Sophia snorted with laughter, finally abandoning her attempt to track Taylor through the woods. She came over to help her friend get upright, holding out a hand to haul Emma to her feet. “Told you not to mess with it, dumbass.”
“What ever,” Emma said. “Let’s just go. This isn’t fun.”
Taylor wasn’t at school on Monday, Emma noticed. And she was happy to go a day without seeing that face and its reminder of her weaker days, but somehow uneasy as well. She wouldn’t have been able to eat her lunch even if she had brought one, so really it was lucky she was on a diet.
Emma ruled over her lunch table, watching two of the other girls snipe each other down with false compliments. Both watched her out of the corner of their eyes, looking for approval, looking to see who was winning. Screw what Sophia said: this was real power.
Emma smiled and nodded at one of them, agreeing. She opened her mouth to speak -
And coughed, involuntarily and with no warning. The rush of air deeper into her lungs had irritated something. Maybe she was coming down with a cold. She scowled.
Emma stopped outside her front door, frowning at the flowerbeds along the front and sides of the house. They were turning brown and ugly as fall took a harsh hold on them. She crouched down in a sheltered corner between the stoop and the wall, pushed the layer of mulch away, and dug a shallow hole with one hand. The earth was loose, dirt clumping under her perfect nails, but she didn’t mind. When the hole was a few inches deep, she leaned over and spat in it.
She hummed happily to herself as she pushed the dirt and mulch back in over her saliva, patting it down firmly. Then she stood, brushed her hand off on her jeans, and went inside.
In the morning, a beautiful tiny red mushroom was pushing up through the mulch. Emma didn’t seem to notice it when she left for school.
On Tuesday, Emma went to the school nurse for her cough, where she was prescribed with a cup of water and a half hour laying down on one of the cots. It was pretty much what she expected, which was why she chose to use the time to miss gym class. People were in and out of the nurse’s office the whole time; apparently this chest cold was going around. Taylor still wasn’t in school.
On Wednesday, neither was Emma.
Annie woke with a start, coming straight to full wakefulness out of a dream she already couldn’t remember. She sat up and glanced at the glowing red clock in the corner, which told her that it was two in the morning and nobody in their right minds should be awake right now. So why was she up?
She wasn’t cold and didn’t have to pee. She wasn’t particularly thirsty, although her throat was a little scratchy. Moving slowly, Annie pushed the covers down with her feet and swung out of bed. Maybe someone was in the house, she thought. But that was kind of silly, and probably not it. She took her phone and went downstairs, figuring she could get a glass of water for her throat and call 911 if it turned out someone had broken in.
There was no one on the first floor of the house; Annie shrugged and poured herself some water out of the filtered pitcher in the fridge. She walked around as she took a few shorts sips of it, went to go look out their big picture window at the front of the house.
The glass slipped out of her nerveless fingers and thumped quietly against the plush carpet, water soaking in under Annie’s feet. She stared out the window, remembering with a horrible certainty that what had woken her up was the sound of the front door closing.
Emma was at the edge of the front yard, digging bare-handed at the ground. She’d ripped up a circle of grass and was scooping up clumps of hard dirt with inhuman strength. The streetlights illuminated her hands, wet with dew and red with blood; she had broken off several nails in her vigor.
And as Annie’s sister knelt in front of her work and panted with the effort, a heavy dark mist like smoke poured out of her with every breath. There was something glowing in her mouth.
“Let me go!” Emma screamed, thrashing against the restraints. “Let me go, let me go, let me go! I have to dig for them! I have to help them grow!” Brown smoke seeped from between her clenched teeth with every word.
The man who had opened the ambulance doors stepped back. “What the fuck?” he asked, looking at the paramedics who were helping the restraints hold.
“Did you not fucking radio ahead, John?” one of the medics shouted up toward the front. Half his face was obscured by a surgical mask. He turned back to the other man. “Get a fucking mask on, we have no idea what this shit is. Gotta be parahuman fuckery, look at her mouth.”
Emma screeched then, showing them exactly what he meant: coating her tongue and soft palate, every fleshy part of her mouth, there were small glowing blue mushroom caps.
“Fuck!” the other paramedic cursed, as Emma broke through one of the straps. He dove onto her wrist, pinning it with his full body weight. “Sedatives?”
“She’s already on enough to kill a horse. If you wanna risk it, you go right ahead.”
The rest of the receiving team rushed in, all wearing their own surgical masks. Emma’s stretcher was wheeled out and new restraints strapped on. The paramedic stayed on top of her, pinning her down just in case.
“We called for Panacea,” a nurse reported. “She didn’t want to come, but Sam managed to convince the Dallons that it really is an emergency. Is that safe?” She nodded at the brown smoke.
“Probably not, that’s why we’re wearing the masks. We should all decontam after we get her secured,” one of the doctors said. “Put her in a clean room, nobody goes in or out without hazmats. Who found her?”
“Family. They’re following, should be here soon,” the paramedic reported.
“Stick them in decontamination too.”
Emma didn’t calm down at all when they got her into the clean room. It took six orderlies to strap her down, and there was no way they could get her hooked up to any kind of machine with the way she thrashed. Even when left alone, her family watched on a camera as she continued to groan and squirm.
“What’s wrong with her?” Annie asked, holding her mother. Zoe was in tears against her daughter’s shoulder, unable to even look at the screen. “What is that stuff?”
“We don’t know,” Doctor Stevens said. “Never seen anything like it. Panacea is on her way.”
Panacea arrived at three in the morning, yawning and grouchier than usual, still in her pajamas. “Shouldn’t she be in one of those suits?” Allen asked, watching her walk straight into the clean room.
“Her power lets her nullify anything that comes in contact with her skin. She is her own hazmat suit, essentially,” Stevens said. He leaned forward, peering closer at the monitor. Panacea was touching the girl’s arm, which meant there should be some results soon…
Emma had gone quiet the moment Panacea entered. Her eyes followed the other girl as she approached. Her mouth was still open, revealing the blue glow and spilling smoke.
Amy looked closer as well, curious despite her annoyance at being woken up. She stopped at the side of the bed and stared at Emma, then turned around to glance at the camera in the corner.
“They’re in her eyes, too,” Panacea reported.
“Oh my god!” Zoe cried, clutching at Annie.
“Mom, she’ll be fine,” Annie said, clutching her back. Panacea was here; she could heal anything. It was going to be fine.
Panacea touched Emma’s arm. Emma tried her best not to let her, shrinking back as far as the restraints allowed, but of course the effort was futile. Eyes closed for concentration, Panacea’s brows drew together; she frowned.
Emma began to grin, blue light gleaming between her teeth.
Amy jerked away, stumbling in her haste. She stared wide-eyed at the girl on the bed. Emma was still grinning, insane and satisfied.
“I - I can’t do anything.” Panacea stuttered, then looked at the camera again. “I can’t heal her. I can’t work with dead tissue. I’m sorry. Whatever this thing is, it’s not your daughter anymore. It’s just using her dead body.”
In the observation room, Zoe screamed and had to be held back from destroying the screen, shouting “No! You heal her, you have to heal her! Save her!”
Allen’s face was bloodless pale, his knuckles white as his hands clenched the back of the chair he was standing behind.
Annie sobbed and held her mother, dragging them both to the floor.
Stevens stepped away quietly to make a phone call.
In the clean room, the corpse of Emma Barnes smiled.
“Was this you?”
Allen asked it quietly, tiredly. He stood next to Sophia, neither looking at the other.
“Was it something she did with you?” he clarified. “I know you let her… tag along sometimes.” More intensely, with anger, he demanded again, “Was it you? ”
Sophia shook her head mutely, unwilling to respond.
They watched for a moment as the team in hazmat suits flicked on their flamethrowers, aiming them at the cluster of red mushrooms growing in front of the Barnes’ house. The stalks were as high as the house and thicker around than a tree, the caps towering above the roofs of the suburb. Delicate gills underneath fluttered in the sudden heat, blackening at the edges.
“It wasn’t my work that made her a target,” Sophia said finally. It was a kind of truth.
Allen took a deep breath, esophagus hitching on a single cough as he let it out slowly. He cleared his throat. “Please don’t come back here again. I know you were Emma’s best friend these last couple years, and I’ll always be grateful for what you did for us, but… it wouldn’t be good. If you stayed.”
Sophia stared at him, her jaw clenching. Her gaze swung away, toward the mushroom as it crumbled in fire. Its poisonous brown spores ignited easily.
“...Fine,” Sophia said. “I’ll go.” She turned her back to the fire, took a few steps away. Stopped briefly and said, “You should really get that cough looked at, Mister Barnes.”
Armsmaster prowled the edges of the oval with a large scanner in both hands, alternating his gaze between the ground and his readings. Kid Win stood back a little farther with his own version, a cobbled-together mess with mismatched dials on the top. He couldn’t stop glancing at Shadow Stalker.
Stalker stared at the depression in the ground, the only thing left of the hole she and Emma had dug. It was filled with thriving red-capped mushrooms. They led away from the grave in two trails like footprints, one set going back toward the Bay, and the other set leading farther into the woods.
“It wasn’t like this before,” Stalker offered. Her hands shifted behind her back.
“Hm.” Was Armsmaster’s response. To Kid Win he said, “The ground seems to be unnaturally warm here. Are you getting anything else unusual?”
“Um, I’ve got mine calibrated to check for the spores,” Kid reported. He turned his scanner around, showing the screen. “Nothing yet.”
Armsmaster nodded. “The suits should protect us, but that’s good to know.” They were all in dark grey hazmat suits, the air filtered before they breathed it.
“Don’t touch them,” Stalker said. “That’s all it took for her to get Emma.”
For all the reaction he gave, Armsmaster might not have even heard her.
“I could have kept this hidden,” Stalker argued, shifting from one foot to the other. “Coulda kept it secret. If I didn’t tell you, you’d never have known.”
No response. Kid Win stared at her fully, his jaw set and nostrils flared.
Softening her tone, trying to sound more reasonable, she continued, “Am I going to get - ”
“You buried a girl alive here,” Armsmaster growled. “You get nothing. You’ll be lucky not to get the Birdcage. Take her back to the van, she’s not needed here.”
Shadow Stalker glared between Armsmaster and Kid Win, hateful. She was furiously angry, but that was nothing new lately. Ever since Emma died, Sophia felt like she was teetering on the edge of ravening madness. She wasn’t going to beg them.
The PRT trooper behind her put a hand on the electrified cuffs that bound her hands at her back. The three others pointed their foam guns, escorting her back out of the woods.
When they were out of sight, Armsmaster straightened up and said loudly, “Is anyone out there?”
“Sir?” Kid asked. “Mine shows no life signs.”
“It wouldn’t,” Armsmaster replied in a mutter. Projecting again he tried, “Hello?”
And she appeared from between two trees. It seemed like she might have been standing there the entire time, and they had only just seen her.
She was stick-thin and pale, her black hair trailing in filthy straggling strands down her shoulders. The whites and pupils of her eyes were glowing blue like the Barnes girl’s, her dark irises turned black by contrast. Her mouth was full of the same glowing mushrooms, as she opened it and said, “You found my grave.”
“We did,” Armsmaster said. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, Taylor. You were wronged. Anyone would have taken revenge for what they did to you.”
She tilted her head and didn’t say anything. Kid noticed there were no spores pouring from her mouth, and that there was a small blue cap growing out of one ear. He tried not to gag.
“Can you control these?” Armsmaster asked. “Can you make them stop growing?”
“I can,” Taylor confirmed, her head going back upright. “I don’t want revenge. I never wanted revenge.”
“Good, that’s good,” Armsmaster said. He hoped his tone was soothing. “If - ”
“I just wanted my friend back,” Taylor continued. She smiled and held out one hand. There were cuts going across the inside of her forearm, sprouting white-speckled gray caps, and a deep one in the middle of her palm leaked spores and what looked like part of a root system. “And now I have her. Do you want to be friends?”
“Probably not the way you’d like me to be,” Armsmaster said after a moment. Kid Win swallowed heavily and took shallow breaths. If he vomited inside his hazmat suit, he wouldn’t be able to take it off. “I need you to stop the spread of your mushrooms. It’s scaring people.”
“I can make them not afraid,” Taylor offered. “That’s what the mushrooms are for. You’re the ones burning them, making people stay away.” She said it accusingly.
“If you don’t stop, we will be forced to make you,” Armsmaster warned. He signalled behind his back for Kid Win to leave, which the Ward did gratefully. Armsmaster could surely handle this alone.
Taylor raised one arm again, stroking the mushrooms growing out of it with her other hand. “My children,” she murmured. “They only eat dead things, you know. Dead, decaying, rotting. Anywhere you find a corpse, the mushrooms will be there breaking it down, returning new life to the soil. They can smell where they are needed.”
She looked up, transfixing Armsmaster with a hypnotic blue gaze. “I can smell your rotten heart from here, Armsmaster.”
Back at the van, Kid Win waited with Shadow Stalker.
“How could you do that?” he asked, unable to stop himself any longer.
Stalker didn’t reply. How could she admit the truth? That it was Emma’s idea, that Emma hated the Hebert girl, that Sophia was willing to put up with a hell of a lot to make Emma happy. She would kill for her friend, so what was a little torture?
And the Hebert girl nearly asked for it, walking around with her head up like she thought she was worth something.
“We always thought you were kind of a bitch,” Kid Win said, with a surprising venom. “But I never thought you could do something like this. This is… sick, Stalker. And you got at least four people killed because of it.”
Shadow Stalker leaned her head back against the side of the van and fumed.
“But you don’t care, I guess,” his tone was bitter now. “Because it won’t affect you. I hope they do put you into the Birdcage.”
Stalker rolled her head against the wall to look at him. She sneered, “How’s your throat feel?”
Kid Win was saved from answering by Armsmaster, who hopped in the open back doors and pulled them shut behind himself. “Let’s go,” he ordered shortly, sitting down in the last open seat. “Decontam procedures.”
Killer mist sprayed down from nozzles on the ceiling and up from the floor, filling the cabin. It was quickly vented back out by quietly whirring fans, and once it was finished Armsmaster was the first to take his hazmat suit helmet off. His usual hero costume helmet was underneath it, but he could breath easier.
“What happened?” Kid Win asked.
“She agreed to stop the mushrooms in the city if we give her that patch of land to cultivate. I still have to take the offer to Piggot, but I think she’ll accept. We’ll wall off her section, install some flamethrowers, and take her out the second she breaks the deal.” When he’d finished speaking, Armsmaster pulled a flask of water out of his armor and took a deep gulp. He cleared his throat.
Shadow Stalker watched, and didn’t say a thing.
The screen was taunting black, and then the camera feed connected. It showed them a bare-bones hospital room viewed from a corner of the ceiling, crammed with four beds instead of the one it had been meant to hold. There were four people in the room to fill the beds: two young women, and older woman, and an older man. They laid on their cots as quiet and motionless as the dead.
“How far along are the parents and sister?” Piggot asked, taking in the scene.
“Vitals tanked around midday Wednesday for the sister,” Armsmaster said, calling the report up on his HUD. “Parents died together at six o’clock Wednesday night. Symptoms before death were coughing, sore throat, odd behavior they couldn’t explain. This thing has a Stranger effect.”
“And they’re all like the first one?”
Armsmaster suppressed a cough, cleared his throat, and said, “You mean ambulatory? Yes. They all talk. If it weren’t for the visual elements, they do seem like perfectly normal humans. But according to Panacea and what readings we’ve been able to take, they are one hundred percent deceased.”
“Fucking zombies,” Piggot swore under her breath. “Alright, give me audio.”
Armsmaster connected the mic and stood back to observe.
“I am addressing Emma Barnes, or the person controlling her corpse.” Piggot said, leaning into the mic on her desk. “Can you hear me?”
The youngest woman in the room opened her eyes. They were glowing blue all the way through, lit from within by the mushrooms growing inside her body. Armsmaster itched to get a brain scan.
Emma sat up slowly, swung her legs to hang over the side of the bed, and rotated her head to stare at the camera.
“Are you going to let us go?” she asked. Blue light and dark spores leaked out of her mouth every time she opened it.
“That depends on how cooperative you are about answering my questions,” Piggot lied. “Are you Emma? Or are you controlling her?”
The girl looked a little annoyed, shaking her head. “I’m Emma. You already met Taylor, do I even look like her?”
Piggot turned a little to glance at Armsmaster. She said into the mic, “I didn’t meet Taylor, that was Armsmaster.”
“He’s there with you, isn’t he?”
Piggot sat upright, looking around the room. It was just herself and Armsmaster in her office, and there were no cameras. She demanded, “How do you know that?”
“Don’t let her rile you,” Armsmaster warned. “It could have just been a guess.”
“She told him how,” Emma replied. “The little rot eaters know where they are needed. Death, decay, new life. Ugh, and you are festering.”
Piggot muted the mic for a moment. “She’s playing mind games.” She unmuted it. “Okay, Emma. Tell me what your Master wants.”
“Friends,” Emma answered immediately. She put her fingers against one elbow and scratched at the outside of that arm, raking her shortened nails against the skin until it was red. “And children. She wants us all to grow strong. She wants to eat the rot out of us and make room for new growth.” She paused, smiling at something nobody else could see.
“Hebert called the mushrooms her children in the forest,” Armsmaster reminded. “And she said something else about rot….” But he couldn’t remember what it was exactly.
Emma raised a hand to her mouth and licked it, laying down a stripe of saliva and spores mixed together. She wiped it on her opposite forearm, and then repeated the process on the other side.
“Your Master tried to bargain when she met Armsmaster,” Piggot said. “And friends weren’t part of that deal. Is she breaking her word already?”
“There was no deal,” Emma said. “That was something Armsmaster made up. He had to say something to get those people to go back to the city without asking questions.”
“There was a deal,” Armsmaster denied. He leaned over the desk, into the microphone. “Don’t lie, girl. I spoke to your Master, she offered those terms.”
Piggot’s mouth was a thin line. She nudged Armsmaster out of the way and said, “Why would Armsmaster lie about that?”
“She told him to come back here and give you a message. Do you remember it yet?”
Piggot touched a button under her desk, watching Armsmaster out of the corner of one eye. To the girl on the screen, she said, “Trying to turn us against each other won’t work. I trust Armsmaster with my life. He wore a hazmat suit the entire time he was out there, he couldn’t have been infected.”
“Hazmat suits don’t matter when the rot is already inside you,” Armsmaster said as he stepped away from her desk. He remembered now.
Piggot pressed the button again, but she wasn’t hopeful; the response should have been instantaneous the first time.
“I blocked that signal,” Armsmaster confirmed. “Sorry, Piggot. If it’s any consolation, being like this… it feels amazing. It’s like a part of me has been dead my whole life, and I’ve had to drag it around. It’s a weight off my shoulders.”
Piggot’s mind raced, eyes darting around the room. Armsmaster was faster, stronger, better equipped. She couldn’t reach the door and he was disabling her signal -
But there was one thing he couldn’t easily disable. She could still scream.
Piggot backed away from him, and he let her go. She took a deep breath; still he only watched. The air hit the bottom of her lungs. She coughed.
The scream died in her throat, suffocated under the coughing fit.
“Don’t worry, she’s getting faster.” Armsmaster said. “It should be over soon. A few more deep breaths.”
The windows didn’t open but there was a gun in her desk. She dove for it, panting as shallowly as she could, desperate. Armsmaster stood back and didn’t try to stop her. She yanked open the desk drawer, flung out a file laying on top, and closed her hand around the grip.
Piggot looked up at Armsmaster. Was there time? Could she get him before she was taken herself? Maybe. Couldn’t risk it. She put the muzzle in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
Armsmaster sighed and turned off his active noise cancelling field. Anyone passing in the hall outside would have heard a dull thump, like a desk drawer closing too quickly. He bent down, hooked his arms under Piggot’s, and dragged her body to a more comfortable position on the floor. As he stood up, he noticed that the computer screen was still showing Emma Barnes, now viewing the lichen growing on her arms with a satisfied look.
“Thank you for reminding me,” Armsmaster said into the microphone. “I’m going to cut the transmission and get to work now.”
Emma glanced up and nodded. “Make her proud, Colin.”
On Friday night, the PRT, Protectorate, and National Guard moved in on Brockton Bay. The checkpoints went up simultaneously on every street and road into the city, turning back cars from every direction. No one in, no one out.
By that point, the people inside knew something was very wrong. The first group to rush a checkpoint were gunned down; there were no more attempts to break the line, and the corpses were left untouched. After a while, the bodies stood up and shuffled away.
The barrier rose at dawn on Saturday as the last generator was slotted into place. Brockton Bay and its surrounding areas were cut off from the rest of the world.