“What have you done, you manic?” Emily shouted over the screams of her fellow committee members. “What is that?”

  It was a good question.

  I wonder if…?

  Right. That wasn’t exactly news, but it was nice to be sure. At that moment, there was a heavy clunk from the door. A klaxon started blaring, and a red light started flashing.

  “Contamination Alert!” a recorded voice started repeating.

  Dr Liwei was saying something, but I couldn’t hear her over everything. “Cloridan, could you…” I yelled and pointed at the alarm. I wasn’t sure if he could hear me, but either he could, or he was thinking the same thing.

  The alarm separated into two pieces. I could see the outline of Cloridan’s form as he cut it in half, but to the others in the room, it must have looked like I destroyed the speaker by pointing at it.

  The scientists stared at me, shocked into silence by either the sudden cessation of the klaxon or my admittedly impressive psychic powers. Riding the wave, I pointed at the flashing red light. They all stared as it, too, was destroyed.

  “This is it?” I asked Dr Liwei. “This is your big plan? Infecting us all with the virus?”

  She coughed slightly. They were all coughing; the smoke had covered the entire room by now. It didn’t seem too bad, just a slight irritation. My Emmisary didn’t need to breathe, so I was all right. Cloridan was going to need a healing spell. Fortunately, I had a healer right outside the door.

  “Not at all!” Dr Liwei said once she’d cleared her throat. She pressed another button on her phone. I thought about having Cloridan take it away but decided to wait and see where this led.

  This button caused the main projector to display four camera views. It only took me a moment to work out that they were from the eye cameras of some of the surviving cyber-zombies. They were in their own smoke-filled rooms, operating some kind of machinery. There were people in there, too. They were coughing and pointing at the zombies. They seemed confused about what was happening, but they didn’t try interfering with whatever the zombies were doing.

  Dr Liwei was happy to provide commentary. “As you can see, I’ve activated the final contingency programming on the cyber-zombies. They’re being loaded up with biosol dispersion canisters. Once that’s done, they’ll head for the Containment zone. Those fools won’t be ready for zombies with weapons! The line will be breached, and the virus will be free!”

  I looked over at Dr Archer. “I think we found your containment breach,” I said dryly. He had the grace to look embarrassed.

  “Okay, but you know we’re going to stop you, right?” I said to Dr Liwei. “Maybe we just take that phone off you, and it has a button that stops the whole thing. Or we do it the hard way, but we do stop it, you know?”

  “You can’t!” she declared. She looked down at her phone. “There isn’t any way to stop it, and you can’t leave this room! Quarantine protocols have been triggered!”

  “She’s right,” Dr Archer claimed. “Once the protocols were triggered, the doors sealed, and the air supply was isolated. Any attempt at breaking through the doors will trigger a pyrothermal purge.”

  Outside, I was having a hard time convincing everyone to stay put. I was glad I had, though. A pyrothermal purge sounded uncomfortable.

  “That’s right!” Dr Liwei cried triumphantly. “There is nothing you can do but watch through the eyes of our creations! Over the next few days, you will slowly succumb and become one with God.”

  “The next few days?” I asked. “I hope you brought snacks and drinks, because we might not make it that long.”

  “It doesn’t matter how you die,” Dr Liwei said. “The virus will take you anyway.”

  “Good to know,” I said. “Is that it then?”

  “What do you mean? You’re going to die and serve God. That’s all there is—that’s all there ever was!”

  She started cackling madly, which I took as my cue that she was out of useful information.

  “Cloridan, please recover her phone… gently,” I said. I didn’t wait for a response. “Dr Archer, there is an override for the quarantine, isn’t there?”

  “Of course,” he said with cool detachment. “However, it can only be triggered from outside the quarantine zone.”

  I smiled. “Would it happen to be triggered by the button outside that just started glowing red?”

  He stared at me. “Yes,” he finally said. “How do you…?”

  I ignored his question and looked around the room. “Who knows anything about this biosol stuff?” I asked. The smoke had mostly cleared, but I was pretty sure that just meant it had settled on every surface, still just as infectious as ever.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Dr. Raul Vargas tore his gaze away from watching Dr Linwei wrestle with an invisible person. “I developed it,” he said with a wry smile. “Can I assist you in some way?”

  I looked at him suspiciously. Was he… happy about dying to his own creation? It was very mad scientist of him. I didn’t say anything about it, though, he might have taken it as approval. Instead, I just asked. “How do we clear it up? Does cold affect it?”

  “Well.” He gave me what he must have meant as a suave smile. “The liquid medium does freeze at 28 degrees Fahrenheit. When that happens, it will denature the payload relatively quickly.”

  “How quickly?” I did the math. That was about minus two degrees in real units. It seemed doable.

  “About a minute,” he replied. “If you were thinking of rigging the air conditioning, it won’t work. The condensation cycle—”

  “Thanks, I’ve got it,” I interrupted. Outside, I was giving everybody instructions. I looked around. Cloridan had retrieved the phone and was currently holding Dr Linwei off with one hand, which she seemed to be biting.

  Everything seemed to be in order. Outside, I pressed the red button.

  Inside, everybody jumped at the loud klunk from the door. It slid open, and the cold came in.

  “Well, it’s been real, folks,” I said. It made sure everyone was looking at me when I cancelled the spell and returned to just having one set of perceptions.

  The gasps and one shriek that came out of the room were a little gratifying, I had to admit. I strode into the room on a carpet of ice and a billow of fog worthy of any rock star. That was courtesy of Borys.

  “Nice fog,” I said. It seemed to impress the rubes.

  “It’s not deliberate,” Borys called from behind. “The warm air is getting chilled when it comes in and…”

  I shot him an irritated glance.

  Never explain the magic trick.

  I kept that comment to myself as that would be even worse for my entrance. Instead, I just held up my hand for the phone. Cloridan tossed it over and held Dr Linwei back when she made a lunge for it.

  “Huh. It’s locked. Hold her.”

  I came forward slowly, making sure to stay on the ice. I’d have Felicia diagnose me after this, but it made sense to minimise the risk. Felicia was entering the room now, going around curing the disease in the gathered scientists. Curing the disease while the host was still alive was a lot easier.

  “Hold out her hand,” I said to Cloridan. Dr Linwei was struggling against his grip, but she was still a Threat 10 monster, like all the others.

  “Fingerprint ID,” I mused. “Facial recognition would have been even easier to defeat, I think. It depends on whether [Disguise] changes fingerprints, and I’ve never checked. If it was a PIN code, I guess I would have had to make an effort to get it out of you.”

  She looked at me without any comprehension of what I was talking about. Not that it mattered. I pressed the phone against her index finger and found myself looking at her unlocked phone.

  It was a familiar-looking OS. Probably a knock-off, but the important thing was I could easily find the most recently used app.

  “NeuroSync Override,” I said aloud. “Anyone know about this app?”

  “Our controller program, the one we use to update the Zombie’s programming, is called NeuroSync,” Sam Wexler said. He glared at Dr Linwei “It’s not a phone app, though. One of the techs must have coded it for her.”

  “Maybe. It’s nice and user-friendly, though,” I said. That might have been overstating it. The app could do a limited number of things, and they were all listed out. That might not have been ideal from a useability standpoint, but it meant that I could easily find the option I wanted.

  “Emergency Shutdown,” I said. Dr Linwei growled and struggled harder, but it made no difference to Cloridan. “No one thinks this is going to do something stupid like shut down the base, do they?”

  “NeuroSync doesn’t control the base,” Sam said. “But taking control of the projector means that she’s compromised more than just NeuroSync.”

  “Hmm.” I went looking for how she did that. There wasn’t anything in the app that I could see, but when I went back to the next most recent app, VLC Remote.

  “Ah, that’s the ticket,” I said. There were more than just four streams from the zombie headcams, and I found I could switch between them. “Okay, that’s separate.”

  I went back to the first app and selected Emergency Shutdown. Then ‘Select All’ and Confirm to be sure.

  The video feeds all went dead. Dr Linwei let out a long, keening wail of despair. Felicia healed another committee member.

  “And so the zombie apocalypse ends, not with a bang or a whimper but with an ‘are you sure’ dialogue box,” I said. I looked around for the ball of confetti.

  “Well? Are we done yet?” I asked the air.

  “I haven’t healed everyone yet,” Felicia reminded me. “If she infected the rest of the base, we might have to get everyone else out.

  “Oh, I hope not,” I moaned. “Here, do Cloridan next.”

  I cancelled his invisibility. Felicia could target an invisible person with healing spells, but she couldn’t get feedback on how they were working. The committee members made the requisite jump of surprise when Cloridan appeared out of thin air, but it was muted. They’d just watched Dr Linwei struggle with air for the last five minutes. They had to suspect something was up.

  “Should I cure her as well?” Felicia asked, pointing at Dr Linwei. “I don’t think she wants to be healed.”

  “She’s infectious, so I don’t care what she wants,” I said.

  “This isn’t the end, unbeliever,” the doctor snarled. “I’ll find a way to spread the Holy Word.”

  “You might as well let her go, Cloridan,” I noted. “She should be harmless now.”

  Cloridan shrugged and let her go. She immediately took a swing at me. I caught her fist easily.

  “Harmless, like I said. Are you going to behave, or do I need to put you in a time-out?”

  She screamed and swung her other fist at me.

  [Improved Blind]

  Felicia looked at me reproachfully. “Now she’s going to hurt herself bumping into walls,” she said.

  I shrugged and dragged her over to the other committee members. They looked nervously at the black bubble around her head. Honestly, they should be used to spells by now.

  “You can look after her,” I told them. “Hopefully, this will all be done by the time the spell wears off.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Dr Emily snapped.

  “It means that you’ve succeeded!” crowed a very familiar voice. The projector fired up again, showing a giant version of a very familiar face. “Congratulations!”

  “Who is that?” Dr Emily asked. “How did he get in our systems?”

  “That, doctors, is Axel, the god of this tiny realm. He made you, the virus—everything you know, except us.”

  “Ah, Kandy, baby, you know you’re not supposed to draw the curtain back like that,” Axel said. “What will the neighbours think?”

  “What’s gotten into you?” I asked. There was something different about his tone.

  “Ah, I’m just excited. We’re almost done! You’re going to meet me in person! Everything you’ve worked for was all leading up to this moment!”

  I stared at him for a long moment, trying to find words. Finally, I shook my head. “Let’s just get this over with,” I said. “There’s some people who want to meet you.”