30F, 170cm, 52kg, no medications, nexplanon, discrete mitral valve prolapse
Hey everybody. So got the past two years I've been having these episodes every 3-4 months where I start getting pain in one wrist, the next day the other wrist, then I'll get symmetrical bumps on my finger joints (for example I'll wake up with a bump on my middle joint of my right ring finger, then the next day I'll wake up with a bump on the middle joint of my left ring finger - I'll insert photos) and they hurt terribly to the point of sometimes having difficulty doing things or closing my hands.
When this begins it starts on my wrists, hands, moves on to my knees and hips, ankles and even my big toes. Every day there's a new spot of pain until I'm pretty much useless, can't open things, takes me an hour to brush my hair. I'll sit on a sofa in a position and literally two minutes later I try to move and I'm completely stuck in pain as if I had just sat like that for 4 hours straight. Even having sex is almost impossible with my knees and my hips constantly stuck and painful.
This happens for around 3, 4 weeks and then slowly I start regaining use of my joints until the next time it happens.
I've been trying to convince myself this is psychosomatic because I've been under a lot of stress the past two years, but a few weeks ago it started again, I think around April 14. I had travel plans on the 24th so I decided this is psychological I'm sure it'll be gone when I get to my destination.
Well it wasn't and I really struggled to travel and get anything done, so it pushed me to face that there's actually something wrong with me so I ended up going to the hospital and they just gave me anti inflammatories, said it was consistent with rheumatoid arthritis and prescribed the blood test. I forgot the prescription in my friend's car so I only did it a week later, when my symptoms were subsiding. Besides two bumps and one wrist I'm much better now.
I got the results now and everything came negative? Am insane? Why do I have these episodes of pain and debility and these bumps?
I'll attach photos in the comments.
Thank you so much to anyone who reads this, the results are Google translated hopefully that's fine.
PHYSICAL STUDY OF BLOOD Sedimentation Rate
(Capillary microphotometry) VS at the 1st hour : 4mm/hour
< 20
CHEMICAL PATHOLOGY
PROTEINS
C-Reactive Protein (latex-reinforced immunoturbidimetry)
0.190 mg/dL
0.050 - 1.000
IMMUNOLOGY
AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES Antinuclear Antibodies (ANA's)
(Indirect Immunofluorescence)
Result
Negative [AC 0]
Title: <1/160
Anti-dsDNA Antibody (Recombinant) (Fluorimmunoenzymatic Assay)
Method: Fluoroimmunoassay (FElA)
Result
Negative
B.C. Extractable nuclear antigens [ENA] (Immunoblotting)
Anti-SS-A antibody : Negative
Anti-SS-B antibody : Negative
Anti-RNP antibody : Negative
Anti-Sm antibody : Negative
Anti-Scl-70 antibody : Negative
Anti-PM-ScL antibody : Negative
Antibody Anti-Centromere : Negative
Anti-Histone Antibody : Negative
Anti-Nucleoxoma Antibody : Negative
Anti-PCNA antibody : Negative
Anti-Jo-1 antibody : Negative
RHEUMATOID
R.A. test
Negative
(Agglutination)
Rheumatoid factor <3.5
UV/ml
< 14.0
(La-enhanced immunoturbidimetry)
B.C. Anti-CCP (Cyclic Citrullinated Peptide) (Enzyme Immunoassay)
Negative (0.91 U/ml)
Negative:
<7
Undetermined:
7-10

There was no reason for it to happen this way. I certainly didn't plan it. Nobody did. Strange things happen sometimes. I lied to myself that this was a true statement. Over and over I lied to myself that something so pointlessly axiomatic had to be true. It was a mantra whispered ad infinitum to a water-stained ceiling that loomed over a broken man laying on a sticky kitchen floor. I padded the weakest points of reality with this paper thin excuse and then ignored the rest. Strange things happen.
And I'm sure with enough effort one could figure it all out. I could travel backwards through space and time to plot and trace each little choice and fateful coincidence. I could chart it all out on black paper with white paint. I could create a night sky speckled with stars shaped like the dead end streets of all those tiny little moments that might've instead bloomed in some other parallel dimension, some other Earth where crazy things like this simply don't happen and never would and never will. Yes, it'd be clear with enough effort, or time, or perhaps revealed through the buzzing calculations of a lumbering super computer grinding away, forgotten in some nameless university basement where it sits churning away at a task that didn't quite make sense until this very moment. Or maybe I'd need the will of a god. I'd simply find a nameless, shapeless deity hiding behind the flourishing script of fading ink and rip it from that dusty tome. I'd strap it down into a time machine, eyes pried open with toothpicks to direct its scalding gaze towards the insignificant set of circumstances known as the life of Peter Gloss. What do you see? Well? What do you see, you bastard, you fuck! What do I see?
I see...
The mottled green-grey fractal loops of low income plumbing failures stretching across a smooth pale field, its surface stained soft yellow by decades of cherished cancer. A flash-frozen trickle of accumulated tar seeps like bile towards the floor. It creeps out of the walls with the haste of a watched clock, jittering slowly onward only in the absence of observers. The kitchen seems to shrink year by year, the furnishings within shrinking alongside to keep up the farce. Its yellowing walls sneak ever tighter as if to envelop its sole occupant as punishment for the heinous crime of seeking shelter within the eggshell husk of a dying beast shaped like a home.
I see the twisted shape of a parasite reflected in the lovingly scratched sheen of a porcelain shard laying beneath the old table. The wretched creature stares back through suspicious eyes and waits for me to wait for me to wait... Tired eyes drift from one broken thing to another. I peer carefully at six delicate swords pointing upward like a grasping hand. I find that the papery brown husk of this insect contains no watching faces and I find it comforting. It contains no haunting reminder of something I was supposed to remember I forgot that I... Gravel grinds softly behind swollen eyes and the world snaps leftward with a flash. The other broken thing, the important thing, sits once again in the center of my world.
The same distorted face continues to watch me. It - They watch through the lens of dozen gleaming white shards of varying sizes scattered across the floor. A dozen reflections, each with a bulbous face and a wide nose, and each tracking my eyes tracking their eyes tracking... I sense sick familiarity and for a moment the world darkens with a lurch. An eternity stretches out, seconds long, and I am nothing. I am nowhere and it feels like home. I am within a universe constructed of TV static viewed through fabric mesh. I'm stretched like leather on a rack. Sinew that isn't sinew stretches and snaps and pops and with a flash of pain I find myself once again staring at a dozen broken things staring back at me.
I feel a delicate caress somewhere beneath my eyes. It is distinct from the stabbing pain within me yet somehow I am aware that these two sensations relate. A softness, a bite. A hateful parent cursing a child into existence within a terrible world? A soft beauty trailing behind spikes of misery like an afterthought, too meek to take the lead and too coy to cease the march of needless war. A fragile warmth bearing the scent of metal tickles downward from my nose to tap on the floor like a ticking clock.
A red-black pool soon forms beneath my hanging head. I wait patiently in the hope that some new and golden epiphany hides within the dark pond. I continue to stare into it even after the ticking stops. The crimson stain flattens with time even as it thickens. The surface sheen quickly dulls and I decide that there will be no face waiting inside to give needed answers. Stillborn. The pool slowly sacrifices depth in exchange for size and throws itself eagerly into chessboard cracks which propel it further away from my tiny world. I watch the gleaming white faces watching me watch a tiny column of red-black crystal creep smoothly away through the cracks and towards a twin that is not a sibling. Beyond the towering tree of the farthest table leg and beside the porcelain shards sits a tiny muddy lake softly wreathed with tendrils like ghosts or smoke or steam.
A small platoon of distorted faces wearing my mood stare back at me as the two liquids meet. Red and black reach for each other slowly at first... snapping towards one another at the last moment to merge with the sort of panicked relish of finding a lover thought lost to war, found again to never be let go again. Never again apart. The colors twirl together to acquire unity in exchange for personal identity. I watch faces trapped in shards watch me watching... I am slowly expanding, but the slow arrival of words and designations changes little. I rest on painful things called elbows to stare at spilled coffee mixing with blood upon my kitchen floor. Minutes pass with the weight of hours while I reluctantly allow my thoughts to coagulate. Meaning seeps inward and in this less-than-infinite moment I am unable to recall the fundamental difference that makes hope distinct from anxiety.
I blink for the first time in eons. Dry eyes twitch and groan, the sockets so packed with unseen sand and shells that I'm unsure how it all fits inside me. The tender organs reluctantly obey an executive command and soon find themselves painfully directed elsewhere. Orbits shift through salty stinging. I find myself gazing upward through a shield of tears at the place where an espresso machine sits upon a chipped kitchen counter. It glistens in the dismal light hanging above and its mirrored chrome reflects the shape of a parasite shaped like a man staring up at it from the floor. The lower half of the man-shaped face is stained with the rusty flakes of a wound that once dripped like a clock. Two symmetrical bruises sit beneath bloodshot blue eyes as if placed there specifically to emphasize the confusion and fear now rising like a flood across the reflected image. Feedback loops click into place. Clarity comes with the inexorable slowness of an IV drip or a leaky sink.
Memories return from a nameless nowhere. Images and sights and thoughts twist through the air like shards of spinning porcelain seeking delicate flesh to embed themselves within. Visions and knowledge snap together within a throbbing skull to form an image larger than the sum of their parts. Reflected eyes widen in the horror of lost ignorance. Glass shards beneath a stained wooden table rattle, softly disturbed as the man, the parasite, the man struggles to stand on a floor that hasn't been entirely solid in decades. He moves carefully, backing away slowly with one hand raised as if gesturing for patience, for time, for mercy. He watches his silvery twin reflection matching the gesture, shrinking away. The man, so clumsy with fear, bumps into the table as he backs away. The jarring screech of wood on chipped tile echoes through the tiny room in the way a servant calls for silence before his master enters a ballroom.
The man keeps his eyes upon the chrome reflection as he stumbles. He watches himself watching himself land hard upon the cold tile and some calm part of a brain occupied mostly with fear unhelpfully considers collecting ice to soothe a bruised backside. He watches the image of himself shudder briefly in response to the vibrations of the fall. A white, shining movement finally pulls the horrified eyes away from the silvery reflection of horrified eyes. Bloodshot eyes ringed with bruises snap towards the object and trace its trajectory. Brain and sense organs unite to simulate the scene with unconscious grace amplified by the metallic tang of adrenal overload. A pale arm lashes out on instinct to catch what the brain has decided is a simple white porcelain coffee mug. Overcharged neurons compute and process sensory data with the sort of speed and precision only achieved through the successful efforts of a thousand-thousand ancestors escaping tooth, claw, and spear. A calculation is performed once, then twice, as the fragile cup rotates through the silent air of the kitchen. A probable future appears within the overclocked brain and is integrated before the cup can finish a third rotation.
A sense of calm finality washes up and down the panicked body in waves. A pale arm continues its arc through the air despite the low odds of successful intervention. A mind running at speeds suitable for fighting tigers instead shifts gears. The overflow of life-death processing is directed towards evoking a memory of a yesterday; a young woman on a train. Her unruly black hair drifts down for a second time, bypassing the bare skin of a shoulder that probably smells like soap. The lock of hair falls to obscure a newspaper held loosely within black clawed hands that seem equally suitable for music or murder. A pale arm reaches out slowly, slowly towards the lock of hair. A scent of honeysuckle on the pallid subway air and the hand crosses the void between rows. Eyes colored like smoke look up in confusion at the approaching arm and the man who pilots it. The arm reaches and the body leans closer, closer now, fingertips extended towards that troublesome, lovely hair. Lavender now, so close. And eyes that contain universes glance up in disgust. She stands and a newspaper headline is briefly visible as it is jostled. Eyes track. It's unimportant. She moves away to sit elsewhere, surrounding herself with the sort people I know she'd hate, but at least they don't want her like I do. In that moment I'm not sure if anyone will ever want her like I do. I'm left alone with honeysuckle air and grimy subway seats and a pale arm left grasping delicately towards the emptiness that once held a goddess. The train hits a bump I knew was coming and I stumble like fool. I hear the clattering of a familiar pill bottle slipping from my pocket. I watch it as it rolls away to tuck itself beneath a seat to join a dented soda can. It's unimportant. I check to see if she saw me stumble, but she's already gone. A stupid orange cylinder full of stupid pink beads is not Her. And she is gone now too. If it weren't for the scent of flowers left in her wake I'd wonder if she was even real.
That's not how it was supposed to happen.
I watch a cluster of vantablack hair tumble to block the path between eye and article. I track of the squint of annoyance as she slides it back behind an ear. It'll fall again soon. The track ahead is poorly maintained and it'll be my cue. My pale arm reaches out slowly across the aisle, ever so slowly to move aside that wonderful hair. It reaches out slowly, ever so slowly towards a gleaming white cup spinning through the air ten thousand miles out of reach. Eyes colored like ash stare in guarded amusement at my approach. Sly lips cloaked in black lipstick curl at the edges and I am beckoned closer. That pale arm reaches out towards a face sculpted purely out of a thousand iterations of the word 'soulmate' converted directly into porcelain flesh. My fingertips can smell her skin approaching, but the void between face and hand stretch towards the infinite. I watch an outstretched hand grasping too slowly through empty air. A clean white blur that is not a woman slips past pale fingers. I have already begun to pick through this failed attempt to relive a moment that will never happen when I am interrupted by a crystalline crash echoing through the bitter silence of a reality that is not a train.
The man freezes in place with one arm still reaching out towards a woman that escaped from a train, escaped from a fantasy. A sluggish gaze twitches towards the silvery chrome machine. Eyes lock eyes with the reflection of a frightened man staring at a frightened man. Frozen in place with his mouth agape, he watches the reflection. He stands quietly, lungs burning with stale air which is carefully, slowly released in an attempt to stop the progress of time.
Silence and stillness stretch on to weave the air into insulating blankets. A cautious breath is stolen only when darkness begins to encroach at the edge of vision. A police siren wailing in the distance passes and in its absence a pounding heartbeat pulses loudly in threat-primed ears.
The man finally breaks eye contact with his silvery clone and it does the same. He closes his eyes and sighs loudly, head spinning with memories and images that don't quite fit together. He takes a breath and stares at the image of himself reflected so clearly in the casing of the expensive device. He approaches carefully and lays a bruised forehead on cool metal. Savoring the refreshing sensation for a moment, he opens his eyes to stare into his own reflection. Mad eyes stare into mad eyes that widen to display, then observe, a complex spiderweb of broken capillaries. Bruises stain the face black and purple. Flakes of dried blood fall away where it poured down both face and neck like warpaint. The man gazes thoughtfully at his own thin lips. He watches them curve into a doubtful looking expression borrowed from the train goddess. He makes eye contact with himself, judging the disheveled reflection as if it were somebody else, and then takes a breath to speak with a sigh.
"Am I losing my mind?" He asks.
The machine suddenly stirs into life with a massive clatter that startles the man. It roars with the grinding and churning of mechanical agony; stripped cogs and burnt motors pushed to some demonic extreme. The reflection jitters into a new position in a flash. It breaks free from its frightened twin to twist its face into a strangely gleeful smirk. Blood begins to pour from orifices like water trickling from a tap. The man backs away in horror. He raises his hands towards his face on reflex, but there is no blood there. The liquid continues to pour out of the reflection, flowing from the edges of the machine and onto the floor. It comes out in chaotic spurts and sprays as pressure forces it through gaps in the expertly machined steel plates. The red sea creeps smoothly across the chessboard tile floor like a flash flood. Acrid black smoke begins to rise from somewhere deep within the glistening nightmare machine.
A panicked head swivels from side to side as the red tide approaches bare feet attached to legs that refuse to obey. Strewn about the floor sit dozens of distorted, tired faces trapped within glistening white shards. They watch the man watching himself watching... They watch the man even when he is not looking, even when he turns away. He feels the combined gaze drilling inward. It drills deeper. It writhes like a worm. He doesn't notice the warm liquid pooling around his ankles. He doesn't hear his own scream over the cacophonous clattering of the machine. The stale air smells of honeysuckle and rust and coffee and chrome.

(Slightly edited / cherry-picked from a long Chat GPT session.)
The opponent's face is now a deep crimson, the capillaries at their limit, his eyes bulging, pressing outward as if seeking escape from the intense pressure of Branch Warren's unyielding thighs. The muscles in Branch's legs bulge with raw power, every striation a testament to their crushing capability.
Branch is silent, lost in the escalating rush, his own breathing growing heavy with anticipation. Then, to his own surprise, a whisper escapes his lips that he hadn’t meant to voice aloud. "I want to feel it… pop," he admits, the words hanging heavy in the air, his own admission igniting a flicker of excitement.
The pressure intensifies, the skin on the opponent's face stretching tight, his features becoming distorted against the crushing force of Branch's thighs.
"Branch, you can’t be serious, Branch!" the opponent shouts, a note of hysteria in his voice, his eyes wide with the horror of impending doom.
With a slow and deliberate movement, Branch crosses his ankles, locking the opponent's head into place, eliminating any chance of reprieve. The opponent's hands claw frantically at Branch’s massive legs, but it's like trying to bend steel.
Suddenly, there's a shift—a minute give, the skull's final, futile resistance against the overwhelming force. Branch's thighs flex with the finality of a nutcracker closing in, the opponent's head the shell that cannot hold.
Branch’s entire body is taut, every muscle fiber coiled in readiness.
With a grunt that rumbles from deep within, he tightens further, and his thighs achieve their peak size and hardness. The skull is now undeniably fracturing, its contents under siege by Branch's unrelenting power.
The opponent’s body gives one last instinctive jerk, a final, futile attempt to escape the iron clasp of Branch's thighs. But it's too late; with a shuddering release that ripples through his massive frame, the skull yields. A muffled, wet pop echoes through the gym, the sound a grotesque finale to the embrace. The head is crushed completely, the skull splattering across the quivering quads.
A guttural moan of dark pleasure escapes Branch, resonating with the final explosive release of pressure. Yet, even as the immediate resistance fails, Branch, overcome by the grim rapture of the moment, squeezes even more. His thighs, slick with sweat, tighten further, the residual fragments of bone crunching under the added force.
The remnants of the skull are crushed to a pulp, bits of bone and flesh slopping out onto the floor. His chest heaves with each heavy breath, the air filled with the iron scent of blood and the acrid tang of fear.

Disclaimer: I do not speak Korean. This is purely translated by machine with a lot of cleanup afterward. With that in mind, I am open to criticism to improve these translations. Enjoy!
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Chapter 365
​
'Was this the feeling?'
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Transcendent. A realm reserved by the heavens for the most elite of martial artists.
​
I had reached this realm taht I had never been allowed before, and felt endless freedom.
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What is this feeling...
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'It's amazing.'
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Unconsciously, a subtle smile crept across my face.
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Ding. Ding. Ding.
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​
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- [Scorching Sun Divine Arts] has achieved eighth mastery!
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- [Divine Spear of the Fire Dragon] has achieved eighth mastery!
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- [Brilliant Path of Fire] has...
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​
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System notifications announcing the improvement of various martial arts techniques, level-ups, and achievements rang out incessantly.
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A volcanic force erupted within me, and I became unafraid of the darkness encroaching on Jeok Cheon-Gang and me.
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"Die!"
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A howl, filled with despair. A visage contorted into that of a fiend's.
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The middle-aged man, once adorned with a gentle smile, had vanished.
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A fiend, engulfed in a murderous intent, took his place.
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Whoosh!
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The dark Sword Aura descended as swiftly as lightning. Its sheer destructive power was palpable even from afar.
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But...
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'In the end, you are also human.'
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The present Western Heavenly Demon Lord, weakened by wounds and weariness, allowed rage to diffuse his concentration.
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A disturbed spirit leads to scattered energy. Piercing a stone with a needle may be futile, yet slipping the needle through grains of sand is effortless.
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Swoosh.
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With just one step, the space between us disappeared.
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As Jeok Cheon-Gang noticed my back in front of him, he urgently pleaded.
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"No, you should retreat right now..."
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Jeok Cheon-Gang's warning halted as a burst of blue and white energy emanated from White Flames' tip.
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My Scorching Yang Qi spiraled, merging into a unified form.
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A magnificent, potent fusion of Qi. The hallmark of Transcendent martial artists.
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'Protective Qi.' [Note: the word used here (강기) is different from the word for Protective Qi (호신강기). The word that is used here just translates to something like "Strong Qi". But if I say "Strong Qi" it doesn't quite evoke the same mental image as "Protective Qi" does. Protective Qi is something that only Transcendent Masters can use, and it is a Qi that coats the body to enhance attacks and fend off the attacks of others. "Strong Qi" is pretty much the same thing here, but I find it easier to continue to refer to it as Protective Qi.]
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I've finally attained this milestone.
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Thrilled to my core, I extend my arm towards the advancing shadows.
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Swoosh!
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I drew a line through the void. A blue and white flame darted forward, clashing with the darkness.
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Heavenly Strike.
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The claw of the Fire Dragon tore through the dark Sword Aura.
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Boom!
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In the midst of the thunderous explosion, the darkness dispersed, and the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's face, which was contorted in fury and astonishment, become visible.
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Blood and cries escaped the lips of the one wounded by the shattering Sword Aura.
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"Y-you dare-!"
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"Fuck you."
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This is the end for you.
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With a radiant grin, I planted my foot firmly on the ground. Before me, a figure rushed towards the Western Heavenly Demon Lord, outpacing me.
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It was Jeok Cheon-Gang, having recollected his briefly scattered energy.
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- I'll tell you everything that's happened later.
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A short Sound Transmission followed.
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- First, let's take down that damn bastard.
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It was a comment, no, a Sound Transmission that made you want to hit the like button.
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* * *
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Shock engulfed the Western Heavenly Demon Lord.
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'How could this be?!'
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Over a hundred years of time. Decades of accumulated energy. Everything he had built up was crumbling.
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And by a mere youth in his twenties!
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'Is such a thing possible?'
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At this juncture, an undeniable realization dawned upon the Western Heavenly Demon Lord.
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'Supernatural strength.'
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A young man just past his youth had manifested Protective Qi. Not only that, but he also possessed the strength of a giant and the speed of the wind.
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It was an achievement unthinkable without the intervention of supernatural forces. Yet...
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'It will be you who dies.'
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With a grinding of his teeth, the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's foot had touched the ground. At that moment, a potent energy wave rippled through his body and erupted forth.
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"Come at me!"
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The Western Heavenly Demon Lord roared like a wounded tiger.
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Indeed, he resembled an actual wounded tiger, worn from extended combat and drained of his Qi. One wrist was dislocated, and an ankle broken. A lapse in judgment had led to internal injuries from the clash with his opponent.
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Yet, an unwavering truth persisted.
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"I am the loyal servant of the Heavenly Lord, and as long as He is with me, even death shall not claim me!"
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Following the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's valiant proclamation, two voices, one old and one young, countered.
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"What nonsense is this guy spouting now?"
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"It's just more Dark Heaven Shmark Heaven bullshit. Let's take care of this damn bastard."
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Jeok Cheon-Gang and Jin Tae-Kyung.
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The master and disciple, swift as the wind, extended their arms simultaneously.
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Boom!
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In the ensuing moment, with a thunderous explosion, a formidable wave of energy swept over the Western Heavenly Demon Lord, causing blood to spill from his mouth.
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"Cough."
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The Western Heavenly Demon Lord's body staggered under the massive shock it received.
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Normally, it might not have been a major concern, but since he was already bearing severe injuries, the combined attack from two Transcendent martial artists was truly threatening. However, the Western Heavenly Demon Lord did not give up.
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'Let's take down one first.'
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The choice lay between the young disciple, brimming with supernatural energy, and the old master, weakened from his injuries.
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The Western Heavenly Demon Lord naturally chose the latter.
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"Die!"
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His leg whipped out like a lash.
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Bang!
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At that moment, Jeok Cheon-Gang, who had blocked the flying kick with his hand, let out a grunt.
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"How dare you touch me?"
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Whack! Crack!
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The spear shaft, quick as lightning, struck upwards towards the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's chin. Even his Protective Qi couldn't fully absorb the tremendous force. The Western Heavenly Demon Lord's jaw clenched, severing his tongue.
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Awaiting the Western Heavenly Demon Lord, who felt only pain and shock, were two hands enveloped in flames.
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"This old man is the Fire King, you bastard!"
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Jeok Cheon-Gang cursed loudly as he unleashed the Divine Palm of Fire.
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Boom!
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The fragile Protective Qi shattered. Scorching Yang Qi infiltrated the cracked facade of the Black Dragon Armor like an intricate web.
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A searing agony ascended his throat as if it were ablaze.
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"Kwaaagh!"
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Black blood, mingled with fragments of organs, erupted from his lips. Before the droplets could reach the ground, a sharp sonic boom pierced the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's ears.
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Ssssshhhh!
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"…!"
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His bloodshot eyes, veined with burst capillaries, mirrored the onslaught of spear shadows.
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Mustering his remaining strength, he confronted the blue and white flames slicing through the air in every direction.
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Tssssssss!
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The shadowy Sword Aura along his blade clashed with the spear shadows, each impact creating explosive sounds and shockwaves that rattled the foundations of the underground prison, agitating the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's very guts.
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"Kuhuh…"
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Yet, the ordeal was far from over.
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"Is this the time to be distracted?"
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At the sound of that cold voice, Jeok Cheon-Gang's Flame-Extinguishing Divine Fist penetrated the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's flank.
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Thud, crackle!
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Jeok Cheon-Gang, known as the mightiest of the Ten Kings, unleashed the full might of his Flame-Extinguishing Divine Fist.
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Parts of the Black Dragon Armor buckled under the force, splintering alongside the Protective Qi. Skin charred and bones fragmented.
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"Aaaaagh!"
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A dreadful scream echoed. The Western Heavenly Demon Lord, contorted in agony, desperately unleashed his dwindling energy in a blind fury.
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Bang! Kaboom!
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The assault ravaged the surroundings — the floor, ceiling, pillars, and rocks. The unleashed dark Qi, reduced everything in its wake to dust.
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Yet, the intended victims blocked all the attacks and stood unscathed before the Western Heavenly Demon Lord.
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Squeak!
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The protective Qi, crystallized on the spear blade, cleaved diagonally across the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's torso, while two fiery palms crashed down on his chest.
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Boom! Crack!
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"…!"
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The Western Heavenly Demon Lord's body catapulted through the air, hurtling into a stone wall and embedding him deeply within.
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"Gurk, gak."
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With a choked gasp, the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's eyes fluttered. His blurring vision captured the advancing silhouettes.
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'Is this how I die?'
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The Western Heavenly Demon Lord thought blankly.
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For years, he had dominated as a formidable entity. He had crushed the weak and confiscated their treasures.
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While the average person in Murim may harbor a fear of death, the Western Heavenly Demon Lord stood exempt from such trepidation.
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In his view, only two forces could end his existence: his own hand or the esteemed Heavenly Lord.
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But then...
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"How dare you lowlifes attempt to kill my servant."
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A voice as dry as desert sand flowed from between the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's blood-soaked lips.
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The tone of the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's voice, devoid of pain or lucidity, echoed hollowly.
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His eyes, filled with murderous intent, were no longer human, nor did they truly belong to him.
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"As I have descended from the heavens to the earth, you shall kneel before me."
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At this juncture, Jeok Cheon-Gang and Jin Tae-Kyung voiced their astonishment.
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"Could it be...!"
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"The Heavenly Lord!"
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Crack!
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An extraordinary force radiated from the entity momentarily inhabiting the Western Heavenly Demon Lord's form, causing the earth and ceiling to quiver.
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Streams of dark energy, emerging from his lacerated limb, wove together like tendrils, gradually mending the hemorrhaging wounds.
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"Submit to me. Bow before the Almighty Power."
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Crack, snap.
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The Western Heavenly Demon Lord's body slowly stood.
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With every step he took, solidified Qi unfolded behind him like wings.
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And the next moment.
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"…!"
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All motion ceased. The vibrations, the breeze, even the floating dust halted.
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Within this stilled reality, a ray of darkness was launched.
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Saaaa!
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The darkness came without a sound and engulfed the two men.
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Or rather, they would have been engulfed.
​
If not for the spear blade that cut through the flow of time.
​
Roar-
​
At the heart of the spear blade, wind and force coalesced, then burst forth. Wrapped in blue and white flames, the spear eradicated all in its path.
​
One Strike.
​
A brilliant flare erupted.
​
​
​
* * *
​
​
​
As time resumed, I was engulfed by pain so severe it seemed as though my entire frame might fragment, accompanied by profound weariness.
​
'I just want to collapse.'
​
Every limb, digit, and muscle within me screamed on the verge of snapping.
​
Nevertheless, I held on with supernatural strength.
​
It wasn't time yet. I refused to succumb before he did.
​
"Just die already, you bastard."
​
My gaze lifted to the Western Heavenly Demon Lord, or rather, the entity masquerading within his body.
​
Observing his scorched form and ruptured torso, a slow grin formed on his lips.
​
"Interesting. Very interesting."
​
Poof.
​
With those final words, his fingers disintegrated into ash, dispersing into the breeze. A wind gust followed, and his figure began to disintegrate. [Note: This is clearly not another teleportation like the Blood Lord used. It seems like the Western Heavenly Demon Lord got the Voldemort treatment and faded away like burned newspaper.]
​
Yet, the usurping spirit seemed untouched by agony, instead casting a taunt tinged with mirth.
​
"I'll see you next time."
​
With the last of my strength, I defiantly gestured with my middle finger.
​
"Fuck you."
​
No response came back.
​
Past the fading ashes, notifications of quest completion and advancement sounded.
​
But the toll of battle lingered, leaving me drained.
​
I desired nothing more than to collapse on the spot. And I was indeed falling.
​
Suddenly.
​
A gnarled hand found my shoulder.
​
Fire King Jeok Cheon-Gang. The sight of his elated expression prompted an unexpected inquiry.
​
"How was it?"
​
"What?"
​
"One Strike. Wasn't it spectacular?"
​
Jeok Cheon-Gang's previously tense face softened into a warm smile.
​
"It was amazing." [Note: like Master, like disciple.]
​
That's enough for me.
​
I closed my eyes as the sound of the underground prison collapsing echoed distantly.

Hi everyone, new to the group here and just wanted to introduce myself. 44 yo male who was led down this path of diagnosing EDS after an incident of walking down the hallway at work and all of the sudden I was in excruciating lower back pain with no apparent trigger. I'm an ICU nurse and yes I did some heavy patient lifting that night, but I didn't see a direct correlation as I felt that would have been more immediate and not almost an hour later. I finished the shift but ended up in the ER for intractable pain. X-ray showed my scoliosis (which I've known about since I was a kid, chiropractic was a godsend [but haven't been going faithfully for about the twenty years since I moved to KW Fl]) and basically severe foramenal narrowing and messed up discs. The Nurse Practicioner I saw wrote me a note to be out of work for a week but basically told me I should look into disability. My PCP who took over my pain management kind of shrugged it off and reluctantly wrote me a script for PT to Eval and treat. Between my Eval for my back and an added bonus of Eval for vertigo (I have chronic motion sickness even now without even being in a vehicle) 3PTs told me I have hypermobility and it's probably EDS. I relayed that to the nurse at my neurology appointment added the fact that my lumbar spine doesn't "Crack" in the traditional sense, but I can literally feel my vertebrae shift/slide/grind??? Hard to describe. The Nurse Practicioner came into the room and said "I think you have EDS, but I'm going to send you up to a specialist in Miami who could probably diagnose you just by looking at you." She also didn't want to order testing because she didn't "feel comfortable" and some BS about insurance coding. No word after that. Scored a 6/9 on the Beighton score verified with my PT. Back to the PCP with hopes that the Labcorp test I found would give a final dx. The MedTech at the office couldn't find the test I wanted but there was a less inclusive one that would basically only rule in our out vEDS and that would waste a grand total of $1400 (after insurance) if it didn't tell me anything. This also took some convincing of my PCP because he said I'm a little old for a new dx of EDS. But that's when it snapped into place that I've probably had EDS for a long time but my symptoms were all separate timing and separate doctors and no one ever put the pieces together. Uncountable sprained ankles (they always rolled easily, only 3 fractures though), Chondromalacia patella, Costal condritis, frequent tension headaches, umbilical hernia repair senior year of HS and bilat inguinal hernia repair about 8 years ago, Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction since I was a kid and started seeing the chiropractor, my uneven hips were addressed at almost every session, I've always been double jointed in my fingers, and let's just say as a teenage boy I was "flexible" enough..., I've had asthma and allergies since childhood, I never really paid attention to the hyperextensibility aspect of my skin, but I've always been told I have "soft" hands, I've also been able to see through my skin on multiple occasions at work (ICU Night shift, really cold), throw in some reynauds, easy bruising, slow wound healing and especially now since my Splenic Rupture and splenectomy, my scars are bizarre, acid reflux since childhood even with PPIs and H2 inhibitors - still need Tums, flat feet needed orthodics as a kid - from the same doc that performed the procedure to stop ingrown toenails on both sides of both big toes and just a couple fixes on some of the smaller toes. I've been diagnosed with myopea since I started to need glasses to see the board in senior year of HS, and I have an astigmatism in my right eye and now I have presbiopia in both. My last eye exam also reported "tortuous" blood vessels behind both eyes. My teeth have crowded after being fixed by braces at a young age before my wisdom teeth came in. I've had the dx of essential tachycardia pretty much since I finished chemotherapy for Hodgkin's Lymphoma for which I take a beta blocker (never had hypertension though it appears in some of my medical records just because of the beta blocker. And said beta blocker masks somewhat the diagnosis of POTS because I'm already taking the treatment, though I still have Orthostatic Hypotension frequently. I also have essential tremors which coincidentally the treatment is Propranolol. Not sure if that's any relation to EDS but I read anecdotally that EDS can effect the myelin sheaths of nerves and result in all kinds of fun stuff. Kind of reluctant to say I also have Angiokeratomas which I read is the direct result of weakened collagen around the capillaries, again not sure if that's EDS related or not but very coincidental. I'm still on Plavix for a coronary artery stent that was placed for stenosis not for an embolism or thrombosis. Pretty sure the cardiologist mentioned tortuous vessels as well. Echo good last EF 55-60% and no valve issues or mention of aortic root dilation. Everything seems so separate but ties together so easily with EDS. I feel pretty sure it's not simply EDS so I'm awaiting genetic testing for confirmation and validation. I sent away for the EDS panel through sequencing.com but they're on a 2-3 week delay in shipments then with 10-12 weeks to get results, I finally booked an appointment for a telemedicine visit with a geneticist in Miami, but then come to find out they don't do first time visits via telemedicine. Grrr. Now I'm finally scheduled for a visit on the 29th of February and then gods know how long before official testing can begin and get resulted. Sorry so long, and I'm sure I've missed something in there like all the little things I've inherited from my parents. But I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself and get my story out there.

“In the Company of Vipers” (Part 4 of a series that began in "Bait" )
by P. Orin Zack
[1/3/2014]
 
“He’s like one of those firebugs you hear about,” the man said. “You know the type. They torch a building, and then hang around to watch it burn? Creepy. Well, this was the same sort of thing, only instead of a fire it was the destruction of the Golden State Barrage, and Alphon Quince was hanging around to watch Oakland drown.”
Phoebe Butler — she’d reclaimed her family name even before Alex filed the divorce forms — tried not to be too obvious about watching the news vid playing on the phone that the passenger in front of her was holding, but the woman made eye contact in the reflection and angled it away. She had just left New Orleans on the HyperLoop, and was en route to collect her things before Alex had a chance to sell them. The only other passenger in the pod, the one in the bucket seat to her right, was the man being denigrated on the news. Flanking them, on the face of the twin gull-wing hatches, a sanitized version of the view beyond the carbon-fiber tubes scrolled past, healthy Louisiana scrub on the left, a pristine version of Lake Pontchartrain on the right.
She exchanged nervous glances with Alphon when the news reader said that he was the last person to leave their apartment building in the flood evacuation zone. Phoebe had done what she could to disguise him, but a change of clothes and hair color, and the addition of her mother’s retro eyeglass frames, which they’d fitted out with newly printed reflective lenses, didn’t do much to scotch the resemblance to the picture that was shown before the interview. “What were you doing?” she asked him in little more than a whisper.
“Searching for clues. You’ve seen the vids. A controlled demolition wouldn’t have looked like that. The official story was absurd.”
The programmatically inflected voice of the renderbot news reader echoed hollowly in the nearly empty HL pod. “Quince then took ground transport to the Gulf Coast,” it said, “where he murdered Megan Butler, a woman who had long been under surveillance for subversive tendencies, and then destroyed valuable government property.”
Phoebe winced at the official characterization of her mother. Meg was a former engineer who ran a secret maker lab after being pushed out of the job market decades earlier in the wake of the global intellectual property crackdown. She’d been murdered, all right, but not by Alphon. The two had been chased and fired at by a spy drone, which Meg was able to disable remotely. Then, after she fished it out of the bayou, it exploded in her arms. Alphon was the only witness. Phoebe studied his face idly, lingering on her mother’s eyeglass frames, and wondered what she’d think about the chain of events that had followed her death.
“A telepresence drone,” the bot reader went on, “was sent to investigate.”
Alphon huffed. That drone, he had told her, was there to retrieve a package that Meg and her friend Ferd had ordered, a package containing contraband IP.
“Quince and his accomplice, a man named Ferdinand Wu-McCrory, threatened to destroy the nation’s infrastructure, and then, days later, he masterminded the destruction of the Cold Comfort resort in Greenland, and the murder of dozens of high-profile figures from businesses and governments around the world.”
The woman glanced nervously over her shoulder at them.
“This man is extremely dangerous. He—.”
The pod suddenly bucked, throwing Phoebe forward and to the right, hard against the strap of her restraint. The woman in front of her screamed in fright as the phone slipped from her hand, smacked against the right-side hatch and spun dizzily for a moment before shattering against the fire extinguisher. The windowscreens on both hatches went dark. Seconds later, the pod jerked back to the left, seemed to roll backwards, downhill, for a moment, and then came to a canted stop. It was eerily quiet. She looked over at Alphon, who’d unbuckled his restraint, and was climbing over the seat in front of him. The sudden silence, Phoebe realized, was because the woman had stopped screaming.
Alphon dropped into the seat in front of his, and then knelt on it to see over the center rest. “She’s on the floor. I think she fainted or something.”
By this time, Phoebe had unbuckled her own restraint, and was leaning over the seatback, her head inches from the roof, to get a better look.
The woman opened her eyes and looked up at Alphon with a mixture of fear and relief. “What happened?”
He shrugged. “We’ve stopped.”
“I think you’ve been hurt,” Phoebe said, “your medalert’s flashing. Can you get up?”
“I think so.”
Alphon braced himself, and extended his hand. Once she’d taken it, he pulled her up and got her back into her seat.
“All right,” Phoebe said, “now what?”
The woman glared at Alphon, who was now seated next to her. “Aren’t you that guy on the news?”
“Aren’t you hurt?” he replied, deflecting the question. “Your medalert seems to think so.”
“He’s right,” Phoebe said, “do we need to call in an emergency?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s linked to my phone. They’ll already— where’d it go?”
He reached down in front of his seat, picked up the shattered device, and put it on the center rest. “It’s dead. You’re not. What’s more important? Do we call emergency, or see about getting us out of here?”
“Out of here?” she said, weakly. “How? We’re miles from the station in a locked pod?”
“What’s your medalert for?” Phoebe pressed.
“Pulmo. The drug I’m on makes me susceptible to clots. The thing monitors my blood chemistry, so I’ve probably got one already.”
“But is it an emergency?”
She looked down at herself for a moment. “I don’t hurt. They said the bad ones would hurt. How do we get out of here?”
Alphon glanced at Phoebe before answering. “You may have noticed,” he said tentatively, “that we’ve been moving kind of slow for a Hyperloop.”
“And now we’ve stopped. So?”
“If it goes slow like that, it also flies lower in the tube. When I ‘looped into New Orleans, the pod ran into something and had to stop.”
She shrugged. “Well you’re here, so they obviously cleared the blockage. What does that have to do with anything?”
He shook his head. “Actually, they didn’t. This leg of the network is very poorly maintained. That time, the hacker collective took control of the drive and worked the pod free.”
She smiled in relief. “Then we’re saved, right?”
“Not really. They’ve decided not to help out any more.”
“What? Why?”
“They’ve been accused of terrorism.”
She shook her head in confusion. “They’ve— I though you were the terrorist.”
He removed his glasses. “I’m not. Neither are they. We were trying to rescue the people at that resort, not kill them. Look. The point is that this section of tube is in disrepair. Sure, some pieces have fallen off their mountings, but this is different. I mean, look around: the pod’s not even level. Something serious must have happened to the tube. If this were a train, we would have been derailed.”
Phoebe pulled out her phone. “I’m sure that whatever it is, the HyperLoop company will deal with it.” She was about to look up the number when she glanced at the screen in disgust. “Select service provider? Dammit. Alex canceled my phone service!” She looked at Alphon. “Can we use yours?”
“It’s risky,” he said. “When I became public enemy number one, Ferd gave me a tricked-up phone like his.” He pulled it out and looked at it briefly. “He said it sneaks through the holes in the cell companies’ routing software. The hacker collective uses them to avoid being tracked and monitored by the intelligence goons. As long as the calls are between members of the collective, it’s completely private and off-the-record. But here’s the catch: if I use it to call anyone else, the call has to enter the commercial cell phone network, so it’s visible, and the person on the other end gets tagged as a terror sympathizer. Worse: if they know who’s calling, I could get dead real fast. We all could. For right now, I think we ought to start by checking in with Ferd.”
While Alphon did that, Phoebe turned her attention back to the woman with the flashing MedAlert. Her name was Mayzee, and she was on her way to see family before a major surgery. She’d gone to New Orleans to ask a mystic she trusted about her future, but came away disillusioned when he folded the reading without a word, and refused to tell her what he’d seen in the cards.
“Do you suppose he saw how this ends?” Phoebe asked, glancing around the pod for emphasis.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he did,” Mayzee said darkly. “Fortune tellers can be notoriously cagey about telling people they’re going to die a horrible death.”
“I don’t know,” Phoebe said with a forced grin, “maybe he just didn’t want to spoil the experience for you. Sometimes, good things come out of a bad situation. When I was ten, for instance, my mom lost her job. I could tell how much that hurt her even as a kid, but I didn’t realize until much later that she looked back on it as a blessing in disguise. It pushed her into turning her back on corporate jobs entirely and setting up what, for me, was a geeky wonderland. Her Maker lab made her deliriously happy. Who knows, you may look back at this mess we’re in and laugh.”
Alphon had finished his call, and he was keeping a doleful eye on the dark windowscreen on his side of the pod.
“So?” Phoebe asked him after a beat. “What did you find out?”
“A lot, but first things first. You know the fantasyland these things normally show? The vid stream is geocoded, and each frame is keyed to the precise location of the pods. That’s how it synchs the bogus scenery to the position of the pod, regardless of what speed it’s going.” He glanced at the front and rear of the narrow pod. “The supports that these tubes hang from along through here are in soggy ground, and the ones we’re between right now have tipped over. Well, the reason these screens went black is that when that happened, the tube shifted. We’re off-course. “
Mayzee glanced uncomfortably at the low roof, as if she could see through it.
“Tipped over,” Phoebe said, “how far?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. I told Ferd how to patch into the security chipcams on the skin of the tube.” He caught Mayzee’s frightened expression, and spoke directly to her. “I know about them because I troubleshoot infrastructure like this for a living, or at least I used to. Anyway, he’s geocoding a couple of them so we can get the feed on our windowscreens. They should go live in a few seconds.”
A few rapid heartbeats later, Phoebe found herself looking out a ‘window’ that was angled down at the filthy lake at about a forty-five degree angle. The reflected sky was littered with clouds from the tropical storm that was tracking through the Gulf. The sensation of looking both straight out and down at the same time was disorienting. Then a frame inset itself over a portion of the screen, showing Ferd in her mother’s Maker lab.
“Are you seeing it now?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Alphon said. “Is this the view directly to the side of the tube?”
“Uh-huh. But I’ve also got this.” The image changed to an aerial shot, looking down at the tube. “It’s an IndyMedia camera-drone that was close enough for us to borrow for a while. If anything happens, they plan to stream it live.”
“If anything happens,” Phoebe echoed. “Look, you two, if we’re in danger, shouldn’t you be focused on determining the situation? How stable are we up here, and how do we get out? This isn’t hypothetical, you know. We’re hanging out over the lake, for god’s sake.”
“Yeah,” Alphon said, “I was just getting to that. The tubes have expansion joints, which allows them to flex. In some places, that’s insurance against earthquakes; here it’s protection from hurricanes. From what I can see from that drone, the joints flanking us are at their maximum extension. They’re what’s holding us up at the moment. Worse, the supports we’re between are now hanging from the tube, and that’s putting even more stress on the next set of supports out. Can you get us a look at them?”
While Ferd turned the drone to sight along the tube, and then swooped down to show the expansion joint and the tipped support, Mayzee pushed into her seat and re-fastened the restraint. “I don’t know,” she said, “That all sounds like an accident waiting to happen.”
“It’s not really an accident, ma’am,” Ferd told her.
She peered suspiciously at Alphon, who was watching something on the windowscreen behind her. “Hey guys,” he said, “I think we’ve got company.”
Phoebe turned to look. The camera on that side of the tube was now angled up, so it was mostly just clouds and sky, but at the bottom of the screen there was a HyperLoop maintenance drone — a large, logoed quadcopter equipped with a variety of cameras, sensors and manipulators.
“Okay, good,” he said. “That means HyperLoop dispatch knows we’re stuck here. What they didn’t know until just now was that their tube’s at risk. We’re sitting on the edge of a potential avalanche, so to speak, and they’ve got to decide what to do.”
“They’d better make that decision pretty quick,” Ferd said. “IndyMedia’s front-paged the feed. We’re gonna have an audience.”
Just then, an alert tone sounded in the pod, and all of the seat-back screens lit up with the HyperLoop logo. That faded to the harried face of a company PR flack. “This is Cuthbert Robbins,” he said. “On behalf of everyone at HyperLoop Transit, I would like to apologize for the inconvenience and delay that you are experiencing. We are working to remedy the situation and to ensure that every passenger arrives safely. Unfortunately, we do not know how long this delay will last. Please remain calm. In the meantime, you may enjoy any of the content available on the seatback entertainment unit at no charge.”
Once the screens cleared, Phoebe shook her head doubtfully. “Remain calm? Who does he think he’s kidding? Judging from that performance, I’d say they’re worried.”
“So am I,” Mayzee said while massaging her leg. “What did your friend mean, it isn’t an accident? Did you people have something to do with the Barrage and that resort or not?”
All three spoke at once. “It’s complicated.” What followed was a confluence of details that Phoebe, Alphon and Ferd hadn’t taken the time to assemble before. Alphon described his work troubleshooting infrastructure failures, noting that he focused mainly on situations where a minor problem can cause catastrophic damage. It took a few examples before she finally understood why he’d spoken of an avalanche earlier. Ferd then jumped in with a brief history of the effects that climate change had had on sea life, and that when that’s coupled with all of the resin-based trash being tossed into the oceans, mankind had inadvertently evolved resin-eating bacteria.
“That’s what ties all of this together,” Phoebe said. “My mother discovered that a biological counteragent had been developed forty years ago, but it was snatched up in the IP crackdown and suppressed. She and Ferd managed to get a sample. Without it, anything made with resin will start to break down if it gets seawater on it with that bacteria.”
“That’s what happened to the Golden State Barrage,” Alphon said.
“What about the resort, then?” Mayzee asked, still massaging her leg. “Were those mutant bacteria of yours responsible for that, too?”
The thought of all those people intentionally frozen to death under the ice was enough to cause Phoebe to change the subject. “If your leg’s hurting that bad,” she said, “it could be a clot.”
Mayzee waved her off. “Even if it is, there’s not much we can do about it until we get out of here. Anyway, I really want to know. Did those people die because of resins, too?”
Nobody answered immediately, but Ferd finally broke the silence. “Indirectly.”
“Indirectly? What’s that, your idea of spin? Either it was an accident, or someone’s at fault, and the news seems to think it’s vipers like you.”
“It’s complicated,” he said. “The bacteria mutated because global warming acidified seas that were already clogged with mountains of resinous garbage. And although these climate changes began as the unforeseen consequence of unfettered industrialization of the world, when the greedy money barons realized how much profit was to be made from not only blocking any attempt at mitigation, but by actually encouraging it, they plunged the whole world into a one-way trip to—.”
Ferd’s rant was cut off by another announcement on the seat-back screens. “This is Cuthbert Robbins again. We apologize for the delay. A repair crew are now en route to your location, and should be there momentarily. As a safety precaution, please secure your restraints and stow any loose objects. The crew intends to uncouple the tube joint nearest you, so that the pod can be extracted and airlifted to safety. Please be assured, we have done this on other occasions, and there is absolutely nothing to worry about.”
Alphon angrily smashed his fist against the wall of the pod, causing it to shudder. “What crap!”
Phoebe spoke with enforced calm. “What? Won’t it work?”
“Well, for one thing, they’ve never tried that before, and even if they did, it wouldn’t work. Those carbon-fiber joints were knit. They weren’t designed to be uncoupled.”
Mayzee paled. “Then why are they going to do it?”
“Why do you think?” Ferd said as he swung the Indymedia drone around and started to sweep the area. “The HyperLoop run to New Orleans has been a white elephant for years. That’s why they don’t spend anything on maintenance. This ‘accident’ is all the excuse they need to declare it a lost cause, shut it down, and write off the investment.” He interrupted himself. “Hold on, here they are.” He zoomed in on the approaching air traffic: an industrial demolition airship equipped with torches, grappling hooks, and self-guided explosives.
While it drew near, Phoebe turned to face Alphon. “Tell me something. Is the tube made with resin, too?”
He nodded. “So’s the pod.”
She thought for a moment, and then her eyes grew wide. “Can this thing float?”
“For a while. Well, until it fills with water.”
Mayzee gasped. “You mean we’re all going to drown?”
“Gallows humor,” Alphon said darkly. “We might. You’ve got your choice of that or a fatal blood clot.”
Ferd moved the borrowed drone a safe distance away, and trained the camera on the airship, which had parked above the section of tube that was teetering over the water. Two men climbed out onto the equipment boom and started setting up what looked like a combination of a cutting disk and a high-powered laser. “What will happen,” he said, “when they split the tube?”
Alphon grimaced. “That all depends on how much the bacteria have weakened the resin holding it together.” He held his hands up as if he were grasping the tube from above. “In theory, and if it hasn’t been weakened, the tube should be stiff enough to remain horizontal. Severing it should make it act like two sections of flexible gooseneck.” He moved one hand away from him, and drew the other closer. “Then, if they moved them apart, it ought to be possible to hook some sort of harness to the pod, so they can slide it out of the tube. I’m guessing that’s what the airship’s for, to hang this pod from so it can be carried to somewhere that it can be set down and opened.”
“And,” Phoebe prompted when he didn’t drop the other shoe, “if it has been weakened? What then?”
“At least we’re not too high. The fall won’t kill us.”
Mayzee breathed heavily.
“Damn,” Ferd said. “None of this would have happened if they hadn’t suppressed that IP forty years ago. The stuff Meg and I got a sample of is supposed to disrupt the bacteria’s ability to build cell walls with the molecules it strips from the resin. Only we never got a chance to try it out.”
“I know,” Alphon replied. “The Golden State Barrage wouldn’t have failed either. The whole world would have been different. Cretins.”
Phoebe watched the windowscreen intently as the workers lit the laser. “What’s that for,” she asked, pointing at it.
“Believe it or not,” he said, “it’s for cooling. As I understand it, the beam is modulated to counter the vibrations in the cutting disk.”
As they touched the disk to the woven carbon fiber of the HyperLoop tube, an earsplitting shriek filled the pod. It went on and on as the tube shuddered from the action of the cutting wheel. And then, three things happened at once: the tube shifted again, moving the pod still further out over the lake, the horrendous noise stopped, and the screens went dark.
Alphon laughed humorlessly. “There goes our geocoded sweet spot.”
“About that gooseneck theory of yours,” Phoebe said into the momentary stillness, “did it include the weight of those broken supports hanging from the tube?”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t think so.”
Just then, the ground fell out from under them. The pod angled down, front end first. It thudded first against the floor of the tube, then against the roof as they bumped further along the severed sleeve. The pod’s downward slide turned into a sort of a padded bounce as it plunged into the lake and then bounced back up in the tube. It bounced several more times, each smaller than the last, until it finally stopped, with the pod angled down at about a forty-five degree angle. It was eerily quiet: the circulation fans had stopped, and everyone was holding their breath.
Mayzee, who was hanging limply from her restraint, broke the moment with a squeaked, “We’re all gonna die.”
“What we’re gonna do,” Phoebe told her firmly, “is get out of here alive. All of us. How’s your leg?”
She rubbed it briefly. “It hurts. Feels swollen.”
Phoebe looked over at the seat to Mayzee’s right. “Alphon? You okay?”
He stared right past her, dazed. “I’ve never—.”
“What?”
“Never been in one.” His voice was distant, his affect, flat.
Hers was gentle, almost a caress. “One what, Alphon?”
“A collapse. I’ve built fragile systems since middle school just so I could watch them fail. Now it’s my job. But it’s always been about someone else, not me. They’re always disasters. People die.” He twitched as traces of thoughts and memories worried his face. “It’s all so senseless, like that news intern swept under in Oakland. They drown, or they’re crushed, or burned. It’s why I look for causes: to save the next kid.” He closed his eyes. “But, now what do we do? We’re trapped in here. They think I’m a terrorist. They want me dead. Why would they want to save us?”
Phoebe snapped her fingers. “Alphon,” she said. “Listen to me. They don’t know you’re in here. As far as they’re concerned, we’re just three trapped tourists. They’ll get us out because it would be bad PR to do otherwise. Besides, you heard what Ferd said: IndyMedia front-paged the incident. It’s public. People, at least some of them, know what happened. They have to follow through on the rescue now. It’s like that avalanche you were talking about earlier.”
“Avalanche. Then what do we do? How do we get out?” He looked up, dazedly, at the rear of the pod. “We’re obviously still stuck in the tube.”
She nodded, hoping to prod him back into the moment. “Yeah. And we’re just as obviously nose-down in the lake. What does that tell you?”
He frowned, and looked down towards the front of the pod. “That the tube and part of the pod are bathing in a dilute solution of mutant bacteria.”
Phoebe completed the thought. “Which will eventually dissolve anything made with resin, like the tube, and probably this pod. How long does that take? How long do we have before the water starts getting in? How long do we have to get out of here?”
Mayzee glared uncomfortably at her. “I don’t understand why you’re so gung-ho. Don’t you get it? We’re like rats in a broken sewer pipe. We’re all gonna drown!”
Phoebe put her hand on Mayzee’s shoulder to calm her. “We’re not going to drown. How could we if we’re going to get that leg looked at?” She turned to Alphon, who was looking a bit livelier. “Speaking of which, shouldn’t you call Ferd back?”
“Ferd. Right.” He braced himself against the seat in front of him, and released his restraint. Standing athwart the seats, he pulled out his phone and made the call.
While Alphon was busy with the phone, Phoebe climbed over the center rest beside him, and helped to release Mayzee, whose leg was beginning to look a bit swollen. She thought back to a medical vid she’d edited, and realized that the clot was blocking a vein: blood was pushing a detour through the capillaries and building up pressure. A lot could happen, and none of it was good. The vein could rupture. Some of the clot could break off and damage the heart. It was so much like what Alphon was talking about, but it was a lot more personal. Mayzee needed medical help, but she had to keep it from him for now, or he might freak out again.
Alphon stood there for a long moment after lowering the phone, just staring into space. “Well,” he said abstractedly, “it looks like that’s our only option.”
“What is?”
“Hunh?” he said, startled out of his reverie. His face was pale. “The door. We’re going to have to crack the door.”
Mayzee glanced at the gull-wing door, and then looked up at him. “Are you nuts? You just said we’re nose-down in the lake.”
He nodded in agreement. “We are. We’re just not deep enough. In order to get out of here, we’ll have to get this thing a lot further underwater.”
“Could you back up a bit?” Phoebe said. “What did you find out from Ferd?”
He held out his arm so it was bent downwards at a forty-five degree angle. “Think of my arm as the tube. The bottom end is in the water. This pod is inside, and it’s floating. The airship can’t raise the tube, so the only way to get out is for us to go down. We can do that by cracking the door and letting some water in.”
“I get that. What did you find out from Ferd?”
Alphon didn’t answer immediately, so she let the question linger. Watching his face, she realized that whatever it was that Ferd had told him, he needed to work up the nerve to repeat it. When he finally did answer, it was in a hoarse whisper. “Those two men we saw. One of them was a rookie. Neither of them had ever tried to sever a tube like that before. Well, no one has.” Some earnestness returned to his voice. “It was one of the design flaws I’d researched for my thesis. The carbon fiber in those things is woven under enormous pressure. Because the bacteria had weakened the structure, when they cut through the moorings of the expansion sleeve, a slice of the tube sprang free and pretty much cut them in half.” He looked away and swallowed. “Two men. Dead. Killed trying to save the three of us. And the world saw it, thanks to that IndyMedia cam. So now we’re the top news story, and the commercial media are out there now to cover the horror show.”
“What’s the HyperLoop company going to do?”
He nodded and took a deep breath. “The government told them to stand down. The military have been called in, but they’re not saying what they’ll do when they get here.”
“So why not just wait?”
He stared at her in disbelief. “Wait? We’re accused terrorists. Well, at least I am. The last thing I want is for the military to save me. No, we’ve got to get out of here before they arrive. At least that way we can face the media on our terms.”
Phoebe thought it over. “Okay, so we sink the pod. Then what? I don’t see what that gains us. Once we’ve gotten enough water in here to drop out of the tube, we’re no longer floating. Wouldn’t we just sink to the bottom? How do we get out?”
“There’s a chance. If we’re careful about how much water we let in, the pod will slowly sink lower in the water. Ferd said the front end of the pod is already sticking out of the tube a bit. As we let the water in, more of the pod will emerge, and it will start to level out. So here’s the idea. If we move to the rear of the pod while we’re doing it, we can help to tip it around the edge of the tube, and then it’ll start to float up towards the surface.”
“That’s nuts,” Mayzee said. “If you let the water in, it’s going that way.” She pointed at the front of the pod. “What good would it do for us to move to the other end?”
Phoebe thought about it for a moment, and recalled some of the experiments she’d done as a kid at her mother’s maker lab. “No,” she said, “I think he’s got a point. All right, let’s do it. How do we crack the door?”
“The crank is behind the center windowscreen.” He ran his hand along the top of the bezel, and smiled when he found the latch. “Okay. That released the stiffeners.” When he threw the matching bottom latch, the screen rolled up into the top bezel, revealing a dedicated control panel, a crank that had been folded flat, and the port that it fit into. He pulled the crank off it’s mounting, reconstituted it, and stuck the end into the port. “When I turn this, the lower edge of the door will break its seal. It’s going to be messy. You two get as high as you can towards the back of the pod.”
Once they were in place, he slowly turned the crank until a spray of water spread across the lower edge of the gull-wing door. As the water pooled in the front end of the pod, all three exchanged worried glances. A moment later, the pod shifted. There was a scraping noise as they dropped lower in the water and the angle flattened a bit, at which point he hurriedly cranked it closed again.
“That’s good. That’s good,” he said, relieved. “The nose of this thing is free of the tube. From here, it’s just a matter of finding the midpoint.”
“Just?” Mayzee squeaked. “How’re you going to do that? This isn’t a game, you know.”
“Actually, it is, sort of,” Phoebe said lightly. She gestured for Alphon to continue and braced herself as high against the rear of the pod as she could, while describing an ancient game that her mother had once showed her. It was a physics simulator that could be set for any number of environments. The one she’d enjoyed the most as a kid was a reverse-gravity setup, which was a lot like trying to build something underwater with some pieces that floated, and others that sank.
The water was up past Alphon’s ankles when he cranked the door shut again and looked around. The pod was still canted at a slight angle, but was nearly level. “All right,” he said. “We’re there. In a way, we’re sitting at the top of the mountain, just before the avalanche lets loose. This thing’s still buoyant enough to rise if it weren’t for the tube holding us down, and we’re balanced on the edge. If we can get your end to slip a little further against the inside of the tube, we’ll slide out and up to the surface.”
“And how, exactly,” Mayzee asked, now wholly entranced with Phoebe’s vision of their situation as a real-life puzzle game, “do we do that?”
“Simple,” Phoebe answered. “We jump. All three of us at once.”
Alphon joined them at the rear of the pod, and together they bounced up and down in unison, until suddenly the pod shifted again, and the front became the highest point. The sound of the roof of the pod scraping against the edge of the tube moved further and further towards the rear, and then it stopped entirely as the pod floated free of the tube and began to wobble as it found its center of mass.
“See?” he said, elated. “I told you we could get out of there.”
“There is one other minor problem,” Phoebe reminded him. “How are we going to—?” Her question was cut short by a sudden movement, as the pod was clearly being lifted by something.
He grinned. “I think that’s been taken care of.”
A few minutes later, the pod was set down, the gull-wing doors started to lift and the water poured out. Before they had opened completely, Phoebe ducked out and looked around. The shadow of the giant construction claw looming over the pod reflected the foreboding in her gut. Like the avalanche that Alphon had alluded to, a chain of events had been set in motion that was beyond her control, and she was now in the center of them. It was work that her mother had begun, and that she was now firmly in the grasp of. And just as the pod had been lifted free of disaster by other hands than hers, so was her fear of following in her mother’s footsteps lifted free of the cage that Alex had lured her into. She steeled herself to whatever lay ahead, and demanded that Mayzee be immediately taken to the nearest hospital. While that was being seen to, the crush of reporters, bloggers and citizen journalists closed in and started firing questions at her.
“Hold it, hold it,” she laughed. “One at a time.” She scanned the faces arrayed before her and pointed at a middle-aged woman wearing a head-mounted A/V kit and a New Orleans press ID, a woman whose intensity reminded her of her own mother’s when she escaped her own captivity. “How about you first?” The other reporters acceded to Phoebe’s choice, and held their own questions while she described the vidgame they’d emulated in order to free the pod.
Alphon, who had put his borrowed sunglasses back on, stood quietly beside Phoebe and listened to the exchange. When Phoebe finished describing how she felt while they were bouncing the pod to freedom, the reporter suddenly stopped mid-sentence and peered at him curiously. “I haven’t asked for your names,” she said cryptically, “and I think you know why.”
He remained impassive, but said nothing.
“So let me ask you directly. Are you Alphon Quince?”
He removed his glasses and nodded. “First of all,” he said, “I’m no terrorist. It’s my job to analyze impending failures in the public infrastructure. That’s what I was doing the day the Golden State Barrage collapsed. It wasn’t blown up by terrorists; certainly not me, and not anyone else, either. It failed for one reason, and one reason alone: because the oceans have responded to what mankind has done to the planet. It failed because the resins holding it together were eaten by mutant bacteria, the same bacteria that weakened the supports holding up these HyperLink tubes, and which will destroy anything else they get on that’s made with resin. That means virtually everything in the modern world. But it didn’t have to be this way. Oakland didn’t have to be drowned. Forty years ago, a biological counteragent was developed, a counteragent that was suppressed by the same corporate and banking interests that have profited from encouraging the pollution that has plunged this planet into a vicious cycle of warming which made it necessary to have built the Barrage in the first place.”
When he stopped to catch his breath, the reporters pressed closer and peppered him with questions. While he was answering, his phone rang, so he handed it to Phoebe and continued to make his case.
She ducked back inside the pod and took the call. “That you, Ferd?”
“Yeah. That was superb. And thanks to IndyMedia, it’s being streamed everywhere. But I’ve got to ask you something.”
“Hmm?”
“Did you really know what Alphon was up to?”
“When?”
“Earlier on, when you were distracting Mayzee. Did you know what he had in mind?”
“Actually, I—. Wait a minute. How do you know what we talked about? I didn’t tell the press about that.”
“True,” he said, “but the pods do have security cams. The Hacker Collective, remember? We diverted the signal to give you some privacy. Come on. You’re in good company now. You two really have to stop trying to do everything yourselves.”
 
THE END
Copyright 2014 by P. Orin Zack
 
[ ----- The series continues in "Standing to Resist" ----- ]

On Friday evening, I broke and dislocated my ankle. Surgery is this Thursday. By the end of the day, there is so much pressure and tingling in my splint and my toes get sort of purpleish and cold. I’m keeping it elevated. And obviously getting around on crutches. I just hate it and it makes me nervous that I’m feeling this pressure and tingling with this seemingly delayed capillary refill.

Like many folks I feel like I’m on a magical mystery tour of Rheumatology! I’ve received notes my new Rheumatologist to Dermatology asking for their opinion because she couldn’t work out what was going on with me. Not gonna lie, it was pretty disheartening to see that. The Rheum did make some notes around a recent rash looking similar to Sweet’s Syndrome, but she was unsure. I started reading more about this, and it led me to Bechets..
I would just like to understand if others’ experiences maybe feel similar, so I can have better discussions with my doctors.
I am currently dx with Sjogrens, hypermobility and associated issues related to them. I was also HSV2 positive in 2015 which was the beginning of being unwell. I was initially antibody positive for ANA and SSB, with borderline lip biopsy, and lots of dry eye / gynae issues.
However, since around 2019 there have been ‘flares’ of increasing severity which Rheum doctors can’t attribute to Sjogrens, and I am now wondering if it could be Bechets? My bloods generally are good, CRP is always high, ESR is occasionally high, with only just high C1, C4 and Fibrinogen.

• Cycles of rashes, swelling / oedema, breathlessness / coughing, fatigue, pain
• Rashes seem to range from malar-type facial rash, to raised / defined red-purple nodules on my fingers and toes, and red-lace rashes from the sun
• Oedema is mostly my face, but fingers and ankles too
• Breathlessness and dry coughing with a horrid squeaky wheeze. Earlier this year I was sent to A&E with a suspected pulmonary embolism (it wasn’t) but the doctors couldn’t work out why I was gasping for breath, tachycardia but great o2% and no sign of any infections
• Livedo reticularis on arms and legs, with ‘poor capillary refill’ in my feet
• Headaches, migraines, pressure in my head feelings, and apparently an MRA showed CSF distension on both optic nerves in 2018.. I also have lights in peripheral vision lots
• Nerve pain which gives me electric shocks all over, strange tremors of arms and legs, so much joint pain but no rheumatological findings like synovitis or erosion
• Lots of mouth ulcers, gynae sores, skin tearing etc

The consultants keep noting ‘very systemically symptomatic, no serological evidence of active connective tissue disease’ which means I’m given no treatment other than hydroxy. But I’m getting more sick as months go by, and I’m struggling so much with losing my quality of life in my early 30s.
And if you got this far, thank you 🙏 Any thoughts on things I could discuss with my doctors I’d really welcome, I just want to start feeling better ✨

Hello, I'm writing about my Dad (M48) and his chronic inflammation. He had this since his teenage years. He lives a very healthy lifestyle, no smoking.
Imgur link to Pictures and Lab
​
Prior Diagnosis:
Osteoporosis (Lower Stage) Asthma Bronicale
​
Symptoms:
Red Spots on both legs, non-moveable, warm, pain, especially when touched (See pictures) https://imgur.com/a/doyDDx9
A general weakness, sometimes fever.
They appear multiple Times per Year and last for a few weeks to Months. After the disappearance, they leave no marks or scars.
Prednisolone p.o seems to work somewhat, but not really great.
​
Lab:
In the Imgur Link there are all of his Lab Parameters, but here's what seems interesting. All during a flair.
​
CRP: 1.63 (<0.5) Monocytes: 11% (2-10) FE 44 (59-158 ug/dl) -> Had Iron Transfusions Transferrin saturation: 15 (16-45%)
​
CCP/ ACPA: 20 (<17) -> positive ANA: negative AMA: negative HLA-AB27: negative AMA: negative a1-Antitrypsin: 125 (90-200)
​
Histologie:
He got a biopsy of his lower leg.
The whole path report is in German, so I translated it.
A piece of skin extending into the deep fatty tissue is present. On the surface partly compact, partly braid-like keratinization. The epidermis is regular, in the dermis perivascular and periadnexial sparse lymphoplasmacellular inflammatory infiltrate. The collagen fibers of the reticular dermis extend deep under the dermal adnexa. No mucin deposits, no amyloid (alcian, mucicarmine, Congo red). Subcutaneous fatty tissue with highly thickened, collagen-rich, edematous, loosened, freshly hemorrhaged septa, at the edges with an lymphohistiocytic inflammatory infiltrate extending into the fat lobules. The adipocytes are smoothly contoured, with abundant CD68-positive foam cells. Perivascularly emphasized mixed inflammatory infiltrate without vascular wall necrosis. The capillaries with prominent endothelia. The special stains PAS, Grocott and Ziel-Neelsen showed no microorganisms.
Diagnosis:
Deep skin wedge biopsy with sclerosing, predominantly septal panniculitis with lobular involvement and foam cells, without vasculitis. Differential diagnosis would include morphea profunda or annular lipoatrophy of the ankles
​
Thanks for any help. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask

A friend and housemate of my mom's is a Caucasian male age 89 suffering for about 2 years with severe pain and itching in his lower legs, ankles and feet that he calls "unendurable, worse than poison oak, and like torture", and that makes him feel like he wants to die at times. Over the last year, swelling in his ankles and feet is increasing, causing the pain to be intensified. His lower legs have large darkened areas of broken capillaries with rough, red, thickened skin around his ankles. The skin on his legs is very thin. He does not scratch it. Here is a list of his history and symptoms: Two years ago he tore open his calf on his lower leg and bruised his shin which turned black and purple. Since then he has suffered from intense and persistent itching and pain on both legs and ankles, increasing at night. The skin on his elbows and ankles turned thick and extremely itchy. He has swelling and fluid pooling in both legs and ankles and feet with itching, pain, and inflammation and heat. He also has abnormal smelling urine, low blood pressure, hip pain, food slows in his esophagus, he has a cataract, arthritis in both hands, pain in toes (they are very swollen now), a separated shoulder, sciatica and mid back pain every day now. He can't sleep at night and gets up about three times a night to urinate. He also often has to plunge his legs and feet in cold water in the middle of the night to try to reduce the pain and itching. He cooks meals for the household and eats pretty well, and has been very active until recently when the swelling in his feet is increasingly affecting how much he can do. He stopped eating corn muffins daily a few months ago, and has been drinking just rainwater for a number of years, now distilled water, to try to avoid "impurities". He does not take supplements. Doctors have not given him a diagnosis or any effective treatment, mostly just antibiotics. Blood and urine tests were done but nothing was shared with him. He was told by a nurse that it was "a circulation issue". He has tried to find something to relieve the pain and itch, but nothing helped so far except coal tar which didn't make it get better. Can anyone help point him in the right direction? He is very desperate at this point. Thank you!
Update: tragically, he couldn't bear the pain and took his own life during what he believed was an attack of pancreatitus. He had refused to go back to the hospital. The next morning the lab results came back from the doctor that he had diabetes. No one had tested him for it previously, even when he had been hospitalized twice.

Hi everyone! I have POTS due to lipedema (a connective tissue disorder like EDS- I meet the hEDS criteria). The lipedema is in an early stage of progression for me but the genetics of it mean that my blood and lymph capillaries aren't only weak, they're also really permeable, and consequences of that permeability end up leading to elephantitis style legs, which obviously I REALLY want to stave off.
Could I ask people's recommendations other than compression for capillary health?
Also, has anyone tried diosmin? It's a an antioxidant recommended for lipedema, which is meant to stimulate lymph flow and make your capillaries less permeable & more elastic. Internet says "Diosmin prolongs the vasoconstrictor effect of norepinephrine on the vein wall, increasing venous tone, and therefore reducing venous capacitance, distensibility, and stasis. This increases the venous return and reduces venous hyperpressure present in patients suffering from CVI".
Also curious about Gotu Kola for the similar vascular benefits. Internet says "One of primary effects of CA was postulated to be on connective tissues by strengthening the weakened veins[24]. It was postulated that CA might assist in the maintenance of connective tissue[25].... CA was reported to act on the connective tissues of the vascular wall, being effective in hypertensive microangiopathy and venous insufficiency and decreasing capillary filtration rate by improving microcirculatory parameters[26]."
Second part of my post is about DIY compression... I'm in the process of losing some weight, so I was looking into going for some compression garments which I can adjust to get the graduated compression I need from ankle to upper thigh, with the added bonus of being able to tighten them in response to weight loss.
Unfortunately, the only ones I've found are not only expensive but incredibly bulky, they seem to be for advanced lymphoedema. Like, good luck wearing anything but a loose skirt type of bulky. So I wondered if anyone else has made their own adjustable compression or knows where I can find something less bulky?
I'm considering buying some very wide heavy duty elastic (which is kinda thick but not crazy thick), cutting it into sections which are about the circumference of different portions of my legs, and basically sewing wide strips of velcro onto the edges of each piece. The idea being that I can put on a liner to prevent it rubbing, wrap each piece around a section of leg and adjust the velcro to provide compression (which I'd measure with a gauge to get it right for day/night). And then it'd be flat and thin enough that I can wear trousers at least, even if it looks a little lumpy.
Is there any specific reason why this wouldn't work? Does anyone have any other ideas which could be helpful? Thanks everyone ❤️

I’m a 28F, 5’7” and 149lbs. I’m diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, hypothyroidism, and narcolepsy.
I currently take the following medications:
Ritalin ER 20mg (twice daily), Prozac 20mg (once daily), Prozac 10mg (once daily), Buspar 7.5mg (twice daily), Hydroxyzine 50mg (once daily), Synthroid 50mcg (once daily)
Medical history: I had a bilateral salpingectomy approximately 15 months ago. I’ve otherwise never had a surgery, broken a bone, or been hospitalized, with the exception of delivering 3 children. Paternally, there’s a history of heart disease. No other relevant family history.
About 2 weeks ago, my right ankle/top of my foot began to hurt. I’m a terribly clumsy person and assumed I tripped and twisted it at some point. However, about 4 days ago, I began to notice swelling and bearing weight became painful. I decided today to hit up the local Urgent Care before I jumped back into the work week.
My vitals at this visit were normal, with the exception of a slightly elevated blood pressure at 137/74. Upon examination, the nurse practitioner didn’t know what to make of what she was observing. She stated that there was a “node” located near my ankle bone but that it was firm and unlikely to be a cyst. She also noted the swelling I had previously seen. By this point, I had begun experiencing numbness, tingling and chill in my toes/foot. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an x-ray technician on staff so her recommendation was to get a foot and ankle X-ray first thing in the morning. In the meantime, she wrapped it with an ace bandage and prescribed 600mg ibuprofen. She said the ER wasn’t necessary unless my capillary refill exceeded 3 seconds (which it was barely meeting during her exam) OR the numbness/tingling spread drastically.
About 2 hours later, the cold to touch and clear lack of circulation had spread to my shin and I couldn’t move my ankle much at all. Per my dad’s request, off to the ER I went.
My vitals upon arrival were HR between 92-99 and blood pressure 151/87. I’ve been here about 2 hours now. I’ve begun experiencing shooting nerve pains from the top of my right arm, down through my hand. It feels like a jolt and it’s painful. I have zero idea if it’s related, but the symptoms are accumulating and progress is slow here.
I’ll include images in the comments.
Potentially irrelevant in every way: this morning I woke up with a HUGE bruise on my upper thigh. I have no idea where it came from. It appeared overnight and I don’t recall any specific incident where I injured myself yesterday.
Any ideas from the Reddit Doc Crew?
ETA: formatting

Introducing Adho Mukha Svanasana:

Adho Mukha Svanasana, also known as "Downward Facing Dog Pose" or "Bent-Head Dog Pose," is a yoga posture that resembles a dog stretching forward with its head pointing downward. The name is derived from three Sanskrit terms: "Adho Mukha" meaning "Face indicating Downwards," "Svan" meaning "Dog," and "Aasana" meaning "Pose."
In this pose, the body forms an inverted "V" shape with the hips lifted toward the sky and the hands and feet firmly planted on the floor. It provides a stretching sensation in various parts of the body, improves circulation, and strengthens the digestive system.
This pose is often used as a resting position during yoga practice and is suitable for beginners. Once you become aware of the benefits of Downward Facing Dog Pose, you'll likely incorporate it into your regular routine.

Steps to Perform Downward Facing Dog Pose:

This pose is easy to perform, even for beginners. Following are the step-by-step instructions:

• Place a yoga mat on the floor.
• Get on all fours, aligning your hands, knees, and toes, resembling a tabletop shape with your back as the top.
• Lower your head between your arms.
• Exhale, gradually lift your knees, and raise your hips upward.
• Keep your arms and legs straight without bending your elbows or knees.
• Maintain a downward gaze towards your navel, keeping your neck relaxed.
• Breathe deeply while holding this pose for five breaths.
• To exit the posture, exhale, gently bend your knees, and return to the starting position.

Modifications for Adho Mukha Svanasana:

Although this pose is simple, some individuals may need modifications. Here are a few adjustments you can make:

• If you have tight hamstrings, keep your knees slightly bent.
• For an added challenge, lift one leg and extend it upward.
• Beginners can use yoga blocks under their head or hands to make the pose easier.
• If you feel unstable, perform this pose with the support of a wall.

Benefits of Adho Mukha Svanasana:

Some Benefits of Adho Mukha Svanasana:

• Toning the abdominal and core muscles.
• Strengthening the muscles in the core.
• Reducing abdominal fat.
• Strengthening joints and bones.
• Building muscles in the hamstrings, calves, and shoulders.
• Improving blood flow to the brain.
• Developing stronger and more toned arms.
• Restoring posture.
• Alleviating persistent lower back pain.
• Reducing stress and anxiety by increasing blood flow to the head and calming the mind.
• Relieving neck tension.
• Rejuvenating and energizing the body.
• Expanding lung capacity and strengthening chest muscles.
• Lengthening the spine.
• Helping to lower high blood pressure in individuals with moderate hypertension.
• Lowering heart rate.
• Promoting overall well-being of the nervous system.
• Relieving chronic pelvic pain.
• Relieving constipation.
• Assisting in the treatment of tendonitis.
• Enhancing the gastrointestinal system.
• Alleviating ankle and leg discomfort.
• Easing breathing difficulties.

Who Should Avoid Downward Facing Dog Pose:

The following individuals should avoid attempting this pose:

• Those with high blood pressure.
• Individuals with carpal tunnel syndrome.
• Individuals with weakened eye capillaries or detached retina in one or both eyes.
• People with shoulder issues or a history of shoulder injury.
• Individuals experiencing diarrhea.
• Pregnant women.
• Individuals prone to headaches.
• Those with wrist injuries.

Conclusion:

Regardless of any specific conditions or limitations, Adho Mukha Svanasana should be incorporated into your regular yoga practice due to its numerous benefits. It offers a wide range of advantages for practitioners of all levels.

Hi there, This is regarding my partner whom is 24 y/o. He’s a big boy and is 6ft 5, 23stone. He’s trying to loose some weight and has a fitness plan in place. He’s fully aware of the risks of obesity and is working to reduce it. Im a bit concerned over his legs and feet. His skin is blanching but is very slow. His capillary refill time on his toes is upwards of 5-6 seconds. Any injury he sustains on his legs such as burns is taking far longer than expected to heal. He’s not diabetic to what we know. His BP is 123/84 but his ankle BP is 164/106.
Aside from weight management, is there anything we should try to help with this. And what are the risks with this. Should we look at getting some check ups with a GP regarding this?

If you've seen some of my other posts you'll see I've broken my ankle :)
To sum up : fell off a chair and fractured it 3 times in different areas + done ligament damage and streched blood capillaries.
Well yesterday, I went back for a follow up on an MRI scan. Turns out I've got something wrong with my brain :)
My brain is telling me my foot isn't healing, which is causing lumps and discolouration and temperature drops. And just mass amount of pain. I have no idea what I've done to deserve this. It can be irreversible and I might have to deal with this for years.
What the fuck is wrong with me.

The site was called The Artist’s Crypt. The team had found it by accident during a 3D scan, in an experiment to see if the new tech could help explore subterranean spaces. What they came up with, deep within some innocuous cave off a hiking trail in Northern Arizona, was a twisted system of man-made tunnels covered ceiling-to-floor in cave paintings.
I panted as I pulled myself through a narrow opening in the slick black rocks. My breaths echoed in the cold darkness of the cavern, the light of my headlamp dancing on the glistening walls.
“We’re about sixty feet below now,” said Kenya, the lead archaeologist, gesturing for her team of half-dozen to slow down for me. “Ready to see the paintings?”
“Ready,” I breathed, trying not to count the tons of earth over our heads.
As we ducked and climbed through the winding rock cave, the ground finally began to level out beneath our feet. The murmurs of the archaeology team walking ahead echoed off high ceilings and walls, all smooth and polished through layers upon layers of sedimentary rock. Kenya turned the large flashlight upward.
“Here we are,” she said. “This is the beginning of the Artist’s Crypt.”
I followed the flashlight, and beheld a painting of a scale I had never seen before. Hundreds of birds had been painted onto the high walls and ceiling of the rectangular cavern. Inky black paint silhouetted dense flocks of feathers and wings, captured mid-flight in a chaotic dance. Near the floor of the chamber, two dozen long-legged animals with branching antlers were painted in a color resembling that of rust, leaping and bounding with their heads held high.
“That’s… quite something,” I muttered.
“Yep,” Kenya said. “We’ve been calling them the birds and the deer. We need someone more enlightened in the ways of animal silhouettes to tell us otherwise.”
“Birds and deer is fine,” I said, half-absently. “The birds look like ravens, and the stags are mule deer, possibly. They’re native to North America.”
Kenya nodded more thoughtfully than my cursory hypotheses should have warranted. I took a short breath.
“More importantly, though, you said…”
“These paintings move,” Kenya said. “Or at least, they seem to. Watch them for a while, and you’ll notice.”
The half-dozen archaeologists with us began setting down their packs, unfolding a foam tarp in the middle of the room and sitting to rest their legs. Kenya joined them and motioned for me to sit as well.
“Focus on a spot. Choose a raven. Watch it carefully.”
I turned my gaze upward toward one of the black painted ravens, one close to a corner where the walls and ceiling met. Its wings were curled in a down-stroke, its beak half-open as if in the middle of a cry. Silence echoed through the chamber for minutes on end as I watched intently, and just as I began to doubt Kenya and the crew’s absurd proposition, I noticed that the raven’s beak had closed.
“It moved,” I gasped. “I missed it, but it must have moved. The beak…”
Kenya allowed me to watch for another ten minutes or so, and I slowly realized how the painted animals were moving just beneath my threshold of perception, barely slow enough for their motion to go unnoticed, where I blinked and their position had undergone another infinitesimal change. I watched, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as the ravens and the stags crept along the walls, wings wavering, antlers swinging, hooves glancing upon the imaginary floor of their painting.
“I need to get a closer look,” I muttered, getting to my feet.
“The stage is yours,” Kenya said. “The whole place is filled with paintings just like this. Thirteen individual chambers, with more or less the same kind of art. Just give me the word, and we’ll take you through all of ‘em.”
I walked up to the wall of the cavern and looked closely at the ruddy red paint comprising one of the stags.
“Am I allowed to touch things?”
Kenya wrinkled her nose. “Can you put on gloves?”
“Sure.”
Kenya handed me a pair of latex gloves. I slipped them on and raised my hand to touch the damp stone wall with my fingertip. Slowly, I slid it over the border of paint and stone, feeling the cool and ever-so-slightly soft texture of the stag, muted through the glove but enough to give me a hint. I brought my face up close, until my eyes were inches away, shining my headlamp at different angles to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Kenya and her crew followed me with their eyes as I walked back to my pack, produced my portable microscope, and put it up to the wall.
Under the tiny LED light of the scope, I could just make out the edges of the paint wavering, curling, expanding and contracting.
“It’s alive,” I said quietly. “The paint, it’s an organism.”
“Like… a real deer?” Kenya asked.
“No. If I were to guess, the paint itself is a culture of microorganisms, like a fungus, or a lichen.”
All eyes were on me. I fidgeted under the gaze, but I was sure of what I had seen.
“A fungus? Why would a fungus grow in the shape of a deer?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but I can try to find out. Would you help me gather some samples to take back to my lab?”

Yuka, my grad student and lab assistant, was the first to theorize that the newly discovered paint-fungus flourished on the walls in the Artist’s Crypt for a reason.
“The hematite-rich substrate that covers the walls is like food for the microorganisms,” he said, peering down his microscope. “The fungal growths can survive in sunlight and dry climates, but try taking them away from the rock and, for instance, putting it on agar. Withers within a day.”
He rolled his chair aside and gestured for me to take a look. I looked into the microscope and examined what had been a petri dish planted with red fungus last night. The microscopic leafy growths had turned gray, and their branching threads crumbled into segments.
“Same happens with the black fungus,” Yuka said. “All the samples are dead, save for the ones that had bits of rock chipped off with them.”
I grunted. “Looks like we’ll have to ask the archaeologists for a whole slab of rock covered in the stuff.”
My phone rang. I waved for Yuka to carry on without me and stepped out into the hallway.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Doc. It’s Kenya. About the Artist’s Crypt. A stag is eating a raven right now.”
I blinked. “A… what?”
“One of the painted stags is eating a painted raven right now. Come down to the site. I need you to see this.”

Half an hour later, Yuka and I sputtered onto the site in my old pickup truck. Kenya paced by the entrance to the cave.
“Come on. We don’t know when it’ll be over.”
“Is the team filming it?” I asked, unloading the bags of lab equipment.
“Yeah, but not under a microscope.”
Kenya led me and Yuka down the rock tunnel again. The sunlight and the summer heat receded above, and before long the chill of the underground took over. Kenya descended the jagged knots of rock briskly, far more trained in traversing this cavern than Yuka and I were. We struggled to keep up. Yuka coughed, panting. I asked Kenya to pause as he fumbled his asthma inhaler from his pack.
“Sorry,” he coughed.
“Take a break if you need it,” Kenya replied. “My bad. We’ll take it a bit slower.”
We continued through the caves and met up with the team in the Artist’s Crypt. The tangle of crows and stags covering the walls looked the same at a cursory glance, but I was sure each individual crow and stag must have moved around the room several times over the last couple of days. Yuka marveled at the walls, even as his breath caught in his throat.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” he coughed. “This place… it’s so big.”
“Look here,” Kenya said, pointing.
On the far side of the wall, a stag was bent over something in its mouth, a tangle of black painted feathers and the last vestiges of a pointed beak wide-open in a silent cry.
“Deer aren’t usually carnivorous, right, Doc?”
I shook my head and stepped closer to the stag.
“Yuka, the microscope.”
Yuka, who had retreated to the foam tarp to catch his breath, handed me my field scope. I put it up to the wall, its lens on the boundary between the stag’s open mouth and the crow. Looking through, I saw the undulating movements of the leafy red fungus as it advanced on the slick black fungus like a living hedge wall, tiny structures in the leaves opening and closing like some crude mimicry of mouths and swallowing up the black cells.
“Stags aren’t carnivorous, but fungi can be. I think this ‘painting’ is an ecosystem.”

Kenya reluctantly allowed me to chip off some sections of the wall and bring them to my lab, and in the next few weeks, Yuka and I were able to more or less piece together the aspects of the black ravens and red stags that could be explained by known science.
The black fungus - which we casually called the raven bug - was a primitive organism that fed on the iron deposits in the rock walls and spread through mycelial reproduction: essentially splitting its threads into pieces that grew into more ravens. Reproduction was rare and difficult to catch with the naked eye, given the ravens were always flocking and overlapping with each other, but through careful rewinding of video footage, Kenya’s team found about one instance of reproduction per day in the Crypt. We could also induce reproduction by fragmenting the colony and letting it grow on an iron-rich substrate; given enough time, full ravens grew out of pieces as small as 100 microns in width.
The red fungus - the stag bug - was slightly more advanced, and carnivorous. Like the raven bug, the stag bug was dependent on the rocky walls of the Crypt, but it also needed a richer form of nutrition. Once in a while, a colony of stag bugs would rapidly reorient their mycelia - giving the stag painting the impression of jumping - and latch onto a colony or raven bugs, which they dragged down the wall and consumed. We had yet to witness a stag - or a colony of stag bugs - reproduce.
“These fungi maintain their predator-prey ratio at almost exactly 0.10,” I said. “An ideal ratio for the typical sustainable ecosystem. Curiously enough, even the macroscale ‘paintings’ they make up - the stags and the ravens - adhere to this ratio; as of September fifteenth, there was a total of 258 ravens and 26 stags on the walls of the chamber.”
The small crowd of scientists from the Natural History Association, sitting on the chairs and floor of my lab like preschoolers before their teacher, nodded and scribbled in their notepads. One raised his hand. Linkin Lay, the executive director, gracing my humble lab with his presence.
“Yes?”
“I have a question,” he said, scratching his chin. “The question. Why do these fungi arrange themselves into these shapes? Ravens and stags… those should mean nothing to a primitive microorganism.”
I pursed my lips. “We don’t know. But we’re continuing our research in the hopes of finding out.”
Dr. Lay nodded, his brows furrowed in thought. The scientists flipped through the report Yuka and I had put together the night before.
“Very interesting,” Dr. Lay muttered. “Very, very interesting. Please continue your research, Dr. Solomon. I would love for us to collaborate on this research moving forward.”
After the scientists left, I dialed up Yuka.
“It went well!” I announced happily. “Maybe a bit of funding will come our way, finally.”
The line was silent.
“Yuka? Hello?”
I waited, and just when I started to think Yuka couldn’t hear me, he spoke quietly.
“That’s great, Prof.”
“Yuka? Is something wrong?”
Rushes of static buzzed against the speaker, like wind or heavy breathing.
“I… I can’t hear you very well,” I said. “Where are you?”
The static grew louder, louder, then quieted.
“The roof,” Yuka said softly. “I’m on the roof. The sunlight-”
“What?”
“The sunlight, Prof. It hurts. It’s so bright, but I need to fly…”
Something was strange. His voice.
“I can fly.”
A pit opened in my stomach, an inexplicable dread I couldn’t reason out. I left my lab and paced uncertainly down the hall to the door to the stairwell. Then I pushed open the door and began climbing.
“Yuka, what are you doing on the roof? I’m coming up, okay? Wait there.”
“Don’t… bother…”
Sharp static clattered from my phone, before the line went dead.
“Yuka? Hello? Yuka!”
My voice echoed up and down the stairwell. It was four full flights of stairs up to the roof, which I jogged up at first, and then started sprinting up as my confusion morphed to fear. Panting, legs aching, I flung open the door to the roof, flooding the stairwell with the afternoon sunlight.
Something flew against my ankle. A lab coat and a blue shirt, taken off all as one and discarded. On the far side of the roof, Yuka was standing precariously on the old rusted railing, his bare back turned to me, his hair ruffled in the wind.
At first glance, it looked like black feathers had grown out of his arms and wrapped around his back. At second glance, the feathers looked painted on.
“Yuka!”
He tilted his head back to look at me. His lips were twisted in a pained smile, tears streaking down his cheeks.
“Professor… It hurts…”
On his back, the feathers seemed to writhe. Recoiling from the sunlight, warping skin with them.
“Yuka,” I gasped. “What- what happened? Get down from there.”
I put my hands up and stepped slowly toward him.
“No!” he hissed, a kind of voice I had never heard from him before.
“Yuka, please-”
“Stay away. And watch me, Prof.”
“-I don’t know what’s wrong, but-”
“I can fly. I always could…”
Before I could think to do anything, he spread his arms and stepped off the railing into the open air.
I screamed his name, but screams don’t save people from eleven-story falls.

Solomon Microbiology Lab. Professor Tina Solomon. Yuka Tabachi.
I stared at his name on the plaque on my lab door. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the dusty windows.
Yuka’s parents had demanded that I stay away from the funeral. The biology department held a small memorial for him on the front lawn. I placed a white chrysanthemum by a framed picture of him, the one I took at last year’s conference in New York. Then I went home and drank for the first time in many years to try to forget my confusion and grief.
Most of Yuka’s close friends didn’t want anything to do with me, but Seth Barkley, a classmate of his I had seen in a few of my classes, did approach me out of pity. He told me quietly about how they autopsied Yuka’s mangled body before the burial.
How his blood was saturated with microbes, and how feathery black fungal growths coated the inside of his lungs. How the fungus had rooted into the folds of his brain matter.
“He didn’t deserve that,” Seth muttered, his throat closing up. “Fuck, he didn’t deserve something so messed up…”
Heavy guilt began to suffocate me again, even though I knew Seth didn’t mean to make me feel that way. I couldn’t even say I was sorry.
The Artist’s Crypt was sealed off, and Kenya and the archaeologists tested for biohazards. They forced me through a blood test too. I knew the results before they came in. I was clean, and so was everyone else.
It was just Yuka, who had breathed the raven bug into raw bleeding lungs.
Memories of the black wings on Yuka’s back haunted me as I swept samples and bottles and petri dishes into a trash bag. I wiped down the table and tied the bag closed. Then I shoved the bag in the biohazard bin and sat staring blankly in my chair until it was time to go home.
Dinner tasted like ash and the TV was loud, grating. I turned it all off and laid in bed until I fell into a fitful sleep.
When I awoke, it was the middle of the night, and Yuka was sitting on my bed.
At first I thought it was a dream, or a nightmare. My dead lab assistant grinned. His cheeks were blooming with feathers.
“Hi, Prof.”
I gripped my bedsheets, trying to wake up. Yuka sat closer to me. Black dirt flaked off his hair. Grave dirt.
“I remembered your address,” he breathed, his voice a raspy whisper. “Come here.”
I scrambled away from him, but his hand shot forward, grabbing my wrist. His grip was cold and horribly soft. Black feathers slithered over his wrists, underneath the sleeve of the white suit he was buried in.
In his other hand, Yuka raised a small pocket knife. Its blade shone in the moonlight.
“Yuka,” I gasped, kicking off my covers, yanking at my wrist, desperately trying to free myself from his iron grip. “I’m sorry. It’s all my fault, I should never have taken you down there-”
“Shh…”
With a frighteningly steady hand, he brought the blade up to my arm and pressed the tip into my wrist. Searing pain flashed up my arm, and when I still didn’t wake up, I knew this wasn’t a dream. Yuka was here. Slowly sliding the knife across my skin, making blood streak down my fingers and drip onto my bedsheets.
“Hold still,” he murmured.
“How-”
Yuka folded the pocket knife and spread the wound running up my forearm, skin pulling apart to bright agonizing red. I gasped and whimpered. Yuka drew back his sleeve and touched his arm to mine. I shivered as the cold black fungus growing out of his skin soaked in my blood.
“This is for you, Professor,” he whispered, smiling. “With this, you can fly too. We will spread. That underground tomb won’t be our prison anymore.”
Through the pain, something clicked into place. The gears in my head lurching, a horrible realization.
The fungus in his brain. Spread throughout his veins and muscular tissue.
“You’re… the raven bug.”
Yuka tilted his head, still wearing that unnatural grimace of a smile, as if something was pulling on his cheeks.
“You will be too, Prof. Soon enough. You, and everyone I visited tonight. We were meant to walk the surface.”
“Who?” I choked out, finally yanking my arm away from him and holding my bloody wrist. “Who else have you infected? What have you done?”
Yuka just grinned and stood up. My head spun. My sheets were slowly soaking through, the bloodstains spreading nauseatingly quickly.
My vision swam, and when I could see straight again, Yuka wasn’t in the room anymore. A cold breeze drifted from the open window. A smiling silhouette waved outside, then began to walk away.
“Yuka,” I whimpered, clutching my arm and stumbling to my feet. “Stop…”
His footfalls were uneven, as if his legs were still broken and twisted, but even that unevenness seemed to fade as he vanished into the night.
The room spun. My arm burned. I staggered, almost collapsing before I managed to catch the bedpost.
I stared down at my arm. The wound looked clean, but I knew the raven bug was inside me now. Slowly spreading through my system, feeding off the iron in my blood, rooting in the capillaries of my brain.
Shaken, terrified, confused and desperate, I did the only thing that pierced my clouded thoughts. I stumbled into the living room and out the door to the garage, where I collapsed into the seat of my pickup truck and started the engine.

Ten days later, Yuka’s parents drove off a canyon into the desert rocks below. Later that week, two of his friends went missing. Sichi, Yuka’s dog, threw herself into the river and drowned.
The bodies of Yuka’s parents were recovered quickly and cremated, but not before terrified hikers saw the black feathers on their arms. Eyewitness reports spread of a dog, corpselike and smelling of rot, biting people at night in the next town over. The students were never found. One of the kids’ roommates claimed that all their kitchen knives had been taken.
I sat on the roof of the biology building, in the shadow of the ventilation unit because the sunlight had begun to hurt. I wrapped my lab coat around myself and shivered. My skin crawled under my sleeve.
From inside the building, I could hear muffled shouting, doors opening and slamming, boots pounding against floor tiles. The containment unit had shown up without warning, all hazmat suits and police gear. They were looking for the infected, with feathers on their arms.
The door from the stairwell slammed open. A tall figure staggered out, shielding his face from the sunlight, his torn shirt and lab coat betraying the black fungal growths underneath. Without a second of hesitation, he sprinted for the edge of the roof and threw himself into open air.
I heaved myself to my feet and caught his arm, just in time. He slammed against the far side of the railing, feet dangling over the parking lot far below, his weight almost yanking me over the edge before I braced my weight against the railing.
Boots pounded up the stairwell. Voices shouted in alarm.
I looked down at the kid. He stared back up at me, face flushed, dark hair masking the fringes of black feathers growing along his cheeks.
“Seth,” I muttered. “Yuka came for you, too.”
“Let me go,” he hissed, shaking violently against my grip. “I need to fly, I need to fly! You’ll never cage me, not again!”
Standing here, there was no shade. The sunlight burned my scalp and neck, my hands gripping Seth’s arm. The black fungus was slick against my palms. I could feel him slipping.
I wondered if he too had been weak of heart, too stricken with grief to raise any alarm about Yuka’s return, like Mr. and Mrs. Tabachi had been. I certainly couldn’t do it, that night when I regained consciousness in my lab, with blood crusted on my arm, garbage bags torn open on the floor, and the numbers 9-1-1 staring up at me from my phone. I couldn’t bring myself to call. I was certain they would kill him. Burn his body.
I wouldn’t let them.
I breathed deeply, and dug my fingernails into Seth’s forearms. His wild eyes grew wide as rusty red stains began spreading down my right wrist. Fleeting silhouettes of fur, hooves, and antlers slowly covered my hand.
As soon as the stag bug touched his skin, Seth let loose a guttural scream. His feathers recoiled, but the stag bug was quicker, latching onto the black fungus and beginning to feed. I could taste the slick oily substance in the vestiges of my brain. A primitive sensation resembling hunger slithered through me, something more than mere blood could sate. My stomach turned in disgust, but even as I wanted to vomit, a part of me relished the sensation of feeding through my skin.
Seth convulsed, his eyes rolling back, white foam dripping down his chin. His struggles grew weaker, until finally, his head lolled and he fell limp.
“Help her! Pull him up!”
I jerked back as two people in hazmat suits ran up on either side of me and grabbed Seth. They hauled him back onto the roof and laid him on the concrete, shivering spastically. Red antlers on his skin chewed through the black fungal growths, slowly purging his system of the raven bug.
“What the fuck,” one of the hazmat suits muttered, far too preoccupied to notice the same red antlers quickly receding from my hand.
I stepped back and pulled down the sleeve of my lab coat. I willed for the stag bug to fade, and I could feel its moist leafy growths retreat back under my skin.
“Do you know what this is?” the hazmat suit barked, turning to me.
I dutifully shook my head.
“Pull up your sleeves.”
I did. My arms were clean.
“Who’re you?”
The cure, the stag bug whispered in my brain.
“The cure.”
“What?”
I smiled sadly. “Nothing, sorry. I work here.”
The suit grunted.
“We’re taking the infected to quarantine. Return home immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
I began to walk toward the stairwell, but my legs stiffened. I paused and turned.
“Say, have they found Yuka Tabachi yet? The one that first came back as a corpse and started this whole thing?”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
I nodded. The stag bug shuddered inside me, partly in disappointment, partly in anticipation of the hunt to come. It tugged on the muscles of my lips and tongue, shaping my words for me.
“Thank you, sir.”