The room reeked of stale coffee and disinfectant, a combination as unpleasant as the atmosphere within. The space might have been an executive office that had been hastily converted into a meeting room. A mismatched collection of chairs surrounded a scratched oak table, its surface marred by deep gouges as though someone had taken their frustration out on it with a scalpel.

  My Emissary stepped inside, boots clinking faintly on the floor and surveyed the room. My gaze lingered briefly on each of the five figures seated around the table.

  Dr. Emily Carmichael had entered before me and now took her seat. She was the first to break the silence, adjusting her wire-rimmed glasses with the precision of a surgeon. Her blue eyes burned with cold disdain, but her posture remained perfectly composed.

  “So,” she said, her voice cutting the tension like a scalpel, “you’ve turned our weapons project into a complete joke.”

  “That wasn’t really a goal of mine, more of a consequence of you turning it against me,” I replied. I folded my arms and leaned casually against the wall. There was a chair for me, but I didn’t use it. “I’ve heard who you guys are, but why don’t we get the introductions out of the way?”

  Next to Carmichael, a man shifted in his chair, his wiry frame half-hidden under an oversized lab coat. His nervous fidgeting distracted from the simmering anger in his hazel eyes. He ran a hand through his thinning hair and muttered, “Sam. Sam Wexler. I don’t see why we’re even wasting time on this… conversation.”

  “Doctor Liwei Huang,” the woman next to him said. She sat stiffly, her arms crossed over her chest. Her sharp, delicate features were marred only by a furrowed brow and the faintest curl of her lips into a sneer. She didn’t bother looking at me, instead staring at a notepad before her with forced indifference. The pen in her hand trembled slightly.

  “Wasting time is an understatement,” the next man interjected, his voice dripping with contempt. “Felix Archer,” he introduced himself.

  His greying hair was slicked back meticulously, and his steel-grey eyes glared at me as if I were an insect he would crush. He adjusted his pristine lab coat and leaned forward, his fingers drumming a calculated rhythm on the table. “I’d much prefer we skip the pleasantries and move on to resolving this… nuisance.”

  The final chuckled, a low, sardonic sound that drew all eyes to him. He lounged in his chair with deliberate ease, one ankle resting on the opposite knee. His sharp, angular face was framed by dark stubble, and his amber eyes gleamed with something between amusement and malevolence. “Ah, Felix,” he said smoothly, his voice like oiled silk, “but where’s the fun in that? Our guest went through so much trouble to get here; it’s only polite we hear her out before trying to stab her in the back. My name is Raul Vargas; a pleasure to meet you.”

  It didn’t seem like there was any kind of trap, so while they were talking my real body hit the elevator button again.

  I gave the bickering scientists a moment to settle down. “Kandis Hammond,” I said. “I don’t suppose any of you know what the real game is, here?”

  They looked at me, puzzled. I thought that would be the case. Maybe I’d been a little spoiled by the obvious objectives of the WWII level, but I was getting a little frustrated with this level.

  What were we supposed to do? It couldn’t be as simple as just killing all the zombies. None of the previous levels would allow that. I’d guessed that we were supposed to get the survivors to this lab, but all that had gotten us was attacked. Now I was in front of the ones in charge and they claimed to be saving civilisation?

  “So. They tell me you didn’t develop the virus, but you don’t seem to be developing a cure.”

  “That is correct,” Emily said, icy disdain still flowing through her words. “That was not part of our original brief, and to be frank we still view the prospect as unlikely.”

  She looked at me over her glasses. “We have been intensely studying this virus for some time. Your claim of a cure, well… it has to be investigated, true. But no one at this table thinks it will pan out.”

  My real body got into the lift, along with just about everybody else. Only Borys and Sarotheil were left behind. No one wanted to be in close quarters with the demon, and we needed someone to watch over him.

  Back in the meeting room, my Emissary still had questions. “So what are you doing, if not looking for a cure?”

  “We are attempting to modify the virus’s behaviour,” Emily told me. “The goal is to turn it into a symbiont that does not kill its host.”

  I stared at her. “Why?”

  “If you knew anything about virology you’d understand when you saw what this virus can do,” Emily said. Her voice softened a little as she warmed to her subject. “It is simply unprecedented in its versatility and adaptability.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “It's a virus, though,” I said. “Doesn’t it need to kill its host cells to reproduce?”

  “Individual cells, yes, but not all of them. Some cells are sacrificed for reproduction, but as you’ve seen, the virus integrates with the remaining ones, restoring a life-like state to the organism as a whole.”

  Organism instead of person. Well, that was on brand for a mad scientist. She wasn’t done lecturing me, though.

  “If we can change the way the virus behaves, we can limit the damage to the host, while retaining the beneficial effects of integration! We can keep the host alive while gaining all the strength, speed and immunity to disease that the virus provides!”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. It wasn’t some wonder virus doing this, it was the dungeon’s magical transformation. Still, I needed to play along with the plot.

  “You’re talking about making super-soldiers,” I said.

  “The cyber-zombies are a bioweapon prototype that we used to get funding,” Dr Vargus cut in smoothly. “But if we can neutralise the lethality aspect, we think we can make the virus more widely available.”

  We got out of the lift and sent it down for another load.

  “What’s goin’ on in there?” Travis asked.

  “They’re talking about their corporate plans,” I said. “They want to fix the bit where it kills people and turn everyone into super soldiers.”

  Travis spat. I couldn’t help but stare at the greenish glob stuck to the shiny metal wall. We’d made a bit of a mess downstairs, but everything up here was so clean.

  “Didn’t get the first part right, couldn’t be bothered. Released it anyway. Assholes.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” I said lightly. Maintaining two conversations at once was a challenge, and I was glad that I wasn’t trying to control either of them. Travis was Travis, it didn’t matter what he said or did, and my Emissary was just letting the scientists talk, hoping to trigger whatever event was necessary to progress. Speaking of which:

  “You want to make everyone a living zombie?” I asked.

  “We’re a long way from that,” Emily said. “We’ve had enough successes to think it might be possible, but that’s years away, still.”

  She hesitated. “With the original version out in the wild, a symbiotic version might be the only protection available.”

  “Let’s talk about how it got out in the wild,” I said, grimly.

  “It wasn’t us,” Doctor Archer said quickly, losing a little of his composure. “I admit it looks bad, but it certainly wasn’t a deliberate release. We lost half our support staff and our Director to the initial outbreak.”

  “That doesn’t rule out accidental—which you’d be just as much at fault for.”

  He drew himself up. “I’m responsible for security and containment procedures here,” he said while glaring at me. “I assure you that every precaution was taken. No containment failures were detected!”

  “I see. Well, we have the cure now, and you can’t do anything about us, so let me tell you how it’s going to be,” I said. I couldn’t use Skills through the Emissary, so I couldn’t stun them into compliance, but my words were shocking enough that I might have seemed to.

  “We’re going to clear out every trace of the virus from this facility,” I said. “Every sample, every test case you’ve got cooking. And, of course, the cyber-zombies. They’ll be destroyed or cured.”

  This was, not to put too fine a point on it, a lie. While we could do it, it would take days if not weeks for Felicia to generate all the mana for it. None of us had the time or inclination to hang around that long.

  All I was doing was filling in time for everyone to come in. The lift had come up and everyone was now in the corridor. Whoever was monitoring the camera hadn’t seen fit to inform the Emergency Committee.

  “How!” Emily protested. “How can you have a cure for the virus? It adapts to everything we’ve thrown at it!”

  “Magic,” I said. “That’s how we do all the things you’ve seen. That’s the reason you can’t stop us.”

  “No. You can’t do this.”

  Liwei stood abruptly, her notepad clattering to the table as her carefully maintained composure cracked. Her sharp features twisted into a fervent, almost ecstatic expression as she turned to face the others.

  “You don’t understand,” she began, her voice rising, trembling with intensity. “None of you understand! The virus isn’t a tool or a weapon to be controlled by our petty little hands. It’s a revelation! A divine force, perfect in its simplicity, flawless in its design!”

  We were all in the corridor, just about ready to bust in. I held up a hand. “Hold up. I think we got a bite.”

  Back in the meeting room, Liwei was gesturing wildly, her movements jerky, almost manic. “Look at what it’s done! It takes the chaos of life and remakes it, piece by piece, cell by cell, into something unified. Something greater. It’s not just biology—it’s transcendence! The virus is a god in its infancy, and we—” she jabbed her finger at the group, then at herself—“we are the midwives of its birth!”

  Her voice dropped, but the intensity only deepened, the reverence in her tone chilling. “Don’t you see? The world, with all its filth, its failures, its endless striving for nothing—it needs this. We all do. To be stripped of our illusions, of our weakness, and rebuilt into something… pure. Unquestioning. Unified. Isn’t that what we’ve been searching for all along?”

  She took a step forward, her eyes gleaming with a wild light, locking onto Kandis. “And you. You come here with your magic and your brute force, thinking you can destroy what you don’t understand? You think you can stop it?” Her lips curled into a sneer. “You’re nothing but a distraction, a gnat buzzing around the face of destiny.”

  Her voice rose again, echoing in the room. “The virus isn’t a plague—it’s a blessing! It deserves to spread, to consume, to transform! It will take every single one of us, tear us apart, and rebuild us into something that matters! And when it does, when we’re all finally part of it, we’ll know peace. We’ll know purpose. We’ll know God.”

  She paused, chest heaving, her eyes blazing with conviction. Then, with a final, bitter laugh, she added, “And you’re all too small-minded to see it. At least right now. Soon you’ll understand. We’ll all understand.”

  She pulled out her phone, I guess it was. Not much call for one of those on this level, but she was using it for an app. With a final sneer, she pressed down on the big red button.

  Smoke started billowing into the room. The other scientists started screaming, but all I could feel was relief.

  Finally, the bad guy had shown up.