A low vibration shook the cafeteria tiles, vibrating through Rovik's heels as the reinforced double doors buckled. Dark, glistening limbs, thick as an ox's horn, shoved through the widening seams and writhed against the cold steel jamb. Their tapered tips tasted the ozone, searching for Tashri's spent catalyst. Tashri pressed her shoulder blades flat against the cinder blocks, teeth set against a whimper. Vancor swayed on his heels, hair disheveled, muttering, “Structural integrity… compromised.” Rovik, however, was not looking at the encroaching horror. His gaze, sharp and analytical, swept across the sterile, utilitarian room, cataloging every object. His Qi, still a flickering ember, was too weak for the complex formations required to repel such a potent parasitic entity. But he was not without resources. His eyes fixed on a rolling stainless-steel cart near the dish pit, laden with a blood pressure cuff, an IV stand, and a boxy machine fitted with hard plastic paddles. Its purpose was mundane medicine, yet the stored voltage hummed with unmistakable lethal utility. He pushed himself away from Tashri, ignoring her alarmed protest. “Vancor!” His voice, though quiet, was a whip crack in the cacophony of groaning metal and slithering tendrils. The doctor blinked, his gaze slack. “My pulse,” Rovik rasped, seizing his own sternum with deliberate clumsiness. “It arrests. The rhythm breaks. Apply your lightning paddles.” Vancor’s eyes dragged toward Rovik’s ribs. The patient was clammy and pale. “Arrest?” he mumbled, grasping at protocol like a drowning man. He clicked his belt radio, but only dead static hissed from the speaker. He glanced toward the cart. “You aren't hooked up. The monitoring leads aren't attached—” “No time!” Rovik barked, his eyes blazing with an intensity that cut through Vancor’s confusion. “The discharge!” Rovik snarled, stepping into the doctor's line of sight. “It resets the conduction. My pathways have seized!” He gestured toward the glossy black coils slithering across the linoleum. “The entity induces acute arrhythmia!” The black roots split the metal seams wider, their oily hides catching the amber strobe of the exit signs. One whipped sideways, snapping a laminate table leg like dry pine. Jolted by the splintering wood, Vancor lunged for the cart, wrenching the heavy handles from their charging cradles. “Clear!” he shouted into the empty corner. He slammed the conductive plates directly against Rovik’s skin, charging dials whining as he depressed the triggers. Three hundred and sixty joules slammed through Rovik's ribcage. It lacked the refined cadence of celestial tribulation lightning, crashing through him instead as coarse, unbridled current. His torso arced off the floor, teeth snapping shut on the copper taste of his own tongue. Darkness fringed his vision for a single heartbeat, then the grid's voltage tore across his stagnant meridians, kick-starting blocked channels into a vicious blaze. The hair on his forearms stiffened, blue sparks crawling under his fingernails. [Ascension Reward: Transient Lightning Infusion. Duration: 180 seconds.] With a guttural shout, Rovik tore the plastic handles from the doctor's numb fingers and hurled them aside. Vancor tumbled back against a tray rack, muttering, “What was the impedance setting…?” Rovik ignored him, seizing an ashwood mop shaft propped beside an open service basin. The plain timber drank the discharge spilling from his palms, smoking slightly under the friction. He pivoted toward the breach. When a thick, tar-slick coil lashed toward his throat, he drove the timber down. Wood met flesh with a dry crack; white-hot sparks showered the tile, searing black flesh into foul-smelling grease. “Observe, Doctor!” Rovik barked, turning on his heel to bat aside a second appendage. “This parasite exhibits classic megalomania. It inflates its ego beyond its structural capacity, yet crumbles when boundaries are enforced!” He brought the wood down in a cleaving arc, snapping the black limb against the floor. The severed stump writhed, weeping foul ichor, before boiling away into greasy soot. Vancor peered through his smudged spectacles, agape. “A projection of somatic delusion! An environmental conversion disorder! Hand me the haloperidol spray!” He yanked an aerosol canister from his lab coat, depressing the nozzle toward the doorway. A fine white mist drifted harmlessly across the creeping shadows. “Move!” Tashri grabbed Vancor by the lapel, hauling him back before a trailing spike could spear his thigh. “The west wing! Vandemar’s private suite!” Rovik drove the ash shaft forward like a spear, warding the doorway with swift, sizzling thrusts until the bulk of the mass shrank from the heat. They bolted into the corridor. Fluorescent tubes buzzed and blinked out in sequence overhead, plunging the hall into rhythmic darkness. Filaments of black slime squeezed through HVAC vents and gaped under patient room doors, dripping tar onto the scuffed floorboards. Rovik broke into an unhurried, predatory stride, parrying creeping growths with short, brutal jabs. Tashri drew a slender, silver-chased blade from her left boot shaft, its fuller glowing faint azure as she severed the thinner feelers clinging to the baseboards. Behind them, Vancor tripped over a dropped chart clipboard, still waving his aerosol can and wheezing about communal folie à deux. They navigated the east corridor, where vinyl chairs lay smashed against water fountains and walls were slicked with cold condensation. The air carried the reek of damp earth and burnt wire. At the end of the hall stood the heavy oak door guarding Vandemar's suite. “Keycard required,” Vancor panted, fumbling at his lanyard with trembling fingers. Tashri shoved him aside and jammed her rune-etched blade straight into the reader's card slot. A dull blue spark shorted the circuit; the electronic latch clicked open. She slammed the door back on its hinges, exposing the dim, paneled sickroom. But they weren’t alone. Three figures, cloaked in the deep, muted colors of the Tarnstead night, stood over Vandemar’s bed. Their faces were obscured by deep hoods, but the glint of steel in their gloved hands was unmistakable. Pale Sigil operatives, their curved daggers poised above the unconscious billionaire's chest.

Folie à Deux