Page 104 of Installment Immortality

“Okay,” I gasped. “Good thing: I doubt the alkabyiftiris slime knows how to operate the elevator, and Carl wasn’t really trying to catch us, which means he’s still in there enough to be resisting.”

“Is there any getting him back from this?” asked Malena, an edge of panic in her voice that I didn’t care for very much. It’s easy to panic when you run into something out of a horror movie. All the stories tell us that panic is probably a good idea, and that if we run fast enough, we can get away from whatever it is that’s chasing us.

They don’t point out that anyone whodidn’tget away won’t be writing their story down for others to take notes from, or that statistically, most people who run get chased. I gave Malena a stern look.

“Breathe,” I said. “Getting Carl back—no, probably not. He was far enough gone, just looking at him, that he’s probably already as good as dead. If we can get him to St. Giles’s, they might be able to scrape enough slime out of his system that he’ll be able to say goodbye to his loved ones. My concern right now needs to be the rest of the building.”

Malena stared at me. “That’scold,Val.”

“Always take care of the living before you take care of the dead, and if you aren’t sure which category someone falls into, always take care of the most people you possibly can.” The elevatorreached the ground floor and stopped. I leaned over and cracked the shield on the emergency stop before flipping the switch. The elevator alarm began to ring, shrill and insistent.

Malena hissed between her teeth and glared at me. “What did you do that for?”

“I don’tthinkalkabyiftiris slime knows how to operate the elevator, but seeing more food could motivate it to learn,” I said. “Carl has a lot of prefrontal cortex to consume, and to be quite honest, no one’s sure how much the slime can actually learn from its victims, versus how much it can make things seem like a good idea. I’m betting Carl didn’t wake up going ‘Hmm I should remove all the in-building filters so this slime monster that’s eating all my soft bits can spread more easily through the pipes.’ Something had to suggest it to him.”

“Slime doesn’t have a brain. How can itthink?”

“Science is full of fun little mysteries like that, that aren’t actually fun for anyone except for possibly the science itself,” I said. “Regardless, we need Carl to stay in the basement. I can lock the stairwell door from here, and the elevator will only be out of commission until I reset the emergency switch, which I can do from the manager’s office on this floor.”

My feet hurt, my knees ached, and I had never needed to pee so badly in my entire life. I almost wanted to laugh at the dubious look on Malena’s face, which seemed to imply that she was surprised I had a solution that didn’t require me to climb stairs. Oh she of little faith.

“Okay. So what are we going to do now?”

“Back to Roz’s apartment. Come on.” I started waddling down the hall, pausing halfway there to lock the door leading to the basement stairs, then continuing onward to Roz’s apartment. Malena paced me, patches of black and orange scales appearing and disappearing on her arms as her body attempted to shift under the stress.

Roz opened the door almost as soon as I finished knocking, the snakes on her head hissing wildly. About half of them were looking back toward the kitchen, while the rest focused on us as the intruders into their territory.

“Hey, Roz,” I said.

“How’s Carl?” she asked.

I shook my head. “He probably encountered the slime somewhere down in the sewers, and carried it back here before he knew he was infected. He’s not dead yet, but we’re not getting him back without a miracle that I doubt even the Caladrius at St. Giles’s can pull off. But he doesn’t appear to have succeeded in spreading the slime to anyone else yet. How’s your sink friend?”

“Still stuck. I managed to put the plug back in when I saw it moving that way. I stopped the slime with a ladle so I could reach in without getting tagged.”

“And you’resureit didn’t touch you?”

She nodded. “I like to think I would have noticed if it had.”

“All right. You’re a lesser gorgon, yes?”

“Yes. You knew that. It’s on my rental application, and I know you have copies of those. Why?”

“I just wanted to be absolutely sure.” There are three known varieties of gorgon. Only the greater gorgon can actually petrify with a glance—stories of the other varieties doing that exact thing are exaggerated, and probably spread by the gorgons themselves, because it makes them sound far more terrifying if they canallturn you to stone with a look. The venom in their hair can do a lot worse, regardless of species.

But lesser gorgonscanparalyze people. It’s just more like the biotoxins found in some algae. So paralytic shellfish poisoning, contracted ocularly. Which is a terrifying-enough concept, and really doesn’t need the additional horror of turning into stone as an inescapable secondary consequence.

Roz looked uncertain. “Well, you can be sure now. Why?”

“Carl has been infected by the alkabyiftiris slime. It’s advanced enough that it’s visible to the naked eye, and I don’t think he’s going to get better. I’d ask if you were willing to let your hair bite him, but we don’t want that stuff getting on your teeth. Which leaves eyes. If we all go down to the basement and Malena lures him out, you can look at him without your glasses. That should paralyze him. Then we wrap him in a tarp and tote him over to St. Giles’s, in case they can help him after all. The slime has infiltrated a lot of his body. Probably most of it, by percentage. But I’m not a doctor, and maybe there’s something they can do.”

“And if there’s not?” asked Malena.

“Then they stand a better chance of stabilizing him while they contact his family than we do,” I said. “I’ll call the dragons from the hospital, get them to send someone over here and flush the pipes. Clearing out an alkabyiftiris slime that isn’t inside a body is pretty straightforward, or we’d have a lot more issues with the stuff. We’ll just kill it, and alert the bogeyman and hidebehind communities, so they can go looking for the source.”

“You’ve thought this through.”

“My family’s dealt with this stuff before,” I said, grimly. The mice performed stirring recreations of the time we’d almost lost Grandma Alice to alkabyiftiris slime, and they had always terrified me when I was a child.

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