Rook

exclamations.
    “Thank God, you’ve come!—They started two nights ago without warning!—I mean,
I
certainly never gave the order—and then the growth manifested!”
    He stayed squatted in front of an extremely fat woman, staring fixedly into her eyes.
    “I came over yesterday morning to check on the congregation and see what progress they’d made—well, they’ve bloody well made some progress! The invocation was building in volume—I mean the neighbors were going to hear it eventually, and the light would show up when the sun set. I had to call in sick to the office, and since then I’ve been trying to quell them here. I would have called you directly, but I put my phone down on a table after I called work, and it got overgrown. And then I couldn’t leave, and the whole situation went critical. Once the Checquy showed up, I decided my only option was to let the congregation run through its self-defense routines. I knew you’d be called in after the second team was consumed. Jesus Christ! Do you realize those were
my
people I had to liquidate? My people!”
    Myfanwy shot Shantay a horrified look and received an incredulous stare in return.
    Could this man actually be the head of the Checquy outpost in Bath?
she wondered. She gingerly reached out with her mind, finding the pattern of the man’s senses.
And if so, why is he doing this? It can’t be a Checquy action, or he wouldn’t have liquefied the teams. But if it isn’t, then why is he talking to us like we know exactly what’s going on?
    “At least I could prevent them from killing the third team—Barghests, right?” He didn’t pause for an answer. “I don’t understand it! They weren’t supposed to be starting this yet, and unless we do something, it’ll only spread. They’re barely responding to any of the instruction phrases we were given. I could only get my message intothe chanting by shooting one of the congregants and briefly grafting myself into the system. We’ll have to get someone in to clean me out. I’ve still got some of that gunk in me.
    “Anyway, I knew you’d hear the message. Thank God you shouted up—my vision is so poor through this thing’s sensory organs that I was ready to have you cocooned.” Myfanwy shuddered at the implications, then wondered where the Barghest strike team was being kept. The man was still talking.
    “… no idea how to stop them. I’m running though all the emergency codes and nothing is working. Do you know some backdoor hack to shutting it all down?” He turned around, looking for an answer, and froze when he saw them. “You’re not Gestalt!” he exclaimed in a tone of complete shock.
    Ah,
thought Myfanwy.
Suddenly it all makes a bit more sense.
    T hey stared at each other for a moment, and then Myfanwy briskly cut him off from the world.
After all,
she thought,
I have no idea what this guy is capable of. For all I know, he can make my spleen eat itself. Better not give him the chance.
    “Don’t worry, Shantay, I’ve got him,” she said.
    “Are you sure?” asked the tall woman cautiously. She moved forward and relaxed a little when she saw the guy in the suit was frozen in a crouch, breathing rapidly, his eyes glazed and his features fixed in a look of total confusion. Now that Myfanwy had the chance to look the guy over, he seemed vaguely familiar.
Probably one of those hundreds of personnel files I read.
    Shantay waved a hand in front of his eyes and noted that his gaze didn’t shift. She leaned forward carefully and flicked his ear. Nothing. “That’s very impressive,” she said. “How did you do that?”
    “I figured it out just now,” said Myfanwy, who was looking around dubiously at the chanters. They were still droning along.
    “So, am I insane, or is this guy one of your people?” asked Shantay.
    “I think his name is Goblet,” conceded Myfanwy.
    Suddenly the man pulled himself out of his trance and smashed Shantay with an uppercut. The American Bishop was sent reeling back and fell over one of the cultists. The fungus-enshrouded figure kept chanting, undisturbed. “How the hell did you do that?” Myfanwy asked him.
    Goblet stood and bared his teeth at her, and a coating of spines erupted all over his body. Myfanwy gave a little squeak as his hair lengthened itself and hardened into a mass of spikes. Bony quills pierced his clothes. His once-distinguished suit was now a perforated mass of wool.
    Shantay had rolled to her feet and was rubbing her jaw.