his paw and went to the linen closet to get a small towel. He came back into the family room and moved slowly toward the bed. His head swam, and he staggered the rest of the way to the bed, falling down into it after he reached it. The fever overwhelmed him, and he breathed with great effort, blood leaking from his eyes and mouth onto the towel, which he was using to keep the blood off the cushions. He began panting hard and slow, with rasping breaths, desperate to alleviate some of the heat. The part of his back behind his shoulders and the ribs that connected to it throbbed with pain, and he gasped, feeling like he could sense his blood pulsing through every capillary. His insides felt as if they were squirming, and he groaned and writhed at the horrible feeling. “Jenna…” he whispered. “Jenna…help…help me…oh, help me, please…help…Jenna…ah…aaagh!…”

Balto awoke after a night full of tumultuous sleep. He opened one eye slowly, looking around the room. “What happened?” he thought as he raised his head. “Was that all just a bad dream?” No, the towel lay on the bed, bloodstained. “Guess not.” Dream or real, as he got out of bed, he felt rather alert, definitely not as tired as he would have expected, although he was absolutely starving for some reason. Then, suddenly, things were not so normal. Something strange happened to his vision, and he squinted. The world had become mostly shifting shades of black and purple, with faint blue shadows hovering in places where there was more light. It was so dark he could hardly see anything, even though the morning light was shining strong through the windows. Something caught his eye: small, rough-edged patches of glowing red on random surfaces. He walked toward one, located on a wall. He looked closer at it. “What is…” he began, but suddenly, he saw the patch up very, very close somehow. He saw small creatures, tiny specks wiggling around… “Rhinovirus, common cold,” he said out loud, having recognized the creatures. “Wait,” he said, “how did I know that?” He thought for a moment, confused, then reached out and touched them with his paw. Some of the viruses stuck to it, coming off of the wall. He looked at them for a moment, fascinated, before realizing with a start that he didn’t want viruses on him. Almost immediately after thinking this, a strange flame erupted on his paw. He tried to shake it off, but then realized that it produced no heat, thus did not burn him. It did, however, burn the viruses; when he looked at his paw after the flame vanished after a few seconds, there was no more red. His vision suddenly returned to normal, but kept shifting back to the strange darkness slightly, although he began to figure out how to actively control it. Becoming more and more perplexed, he walked by a mirror. He froze. His jaw dropped. He walked slowly toward the mirror, hardly believing what he saw. “Holy cow…” Out of his back, at the spot where he had felt the pain the night before, two four-foot long, bright yellow, tentacle-like appendages had grown. They both had heads on the end, with mouths full of semi-transparent teeth between 2 and 3 inches long, and amazingly thin. They had eyes, narrow, red eyes, and long, skinny red tongues. They made growls and other somewhat quiet noises that would have been shrieks had they been louder. Balto was horrified and awed at the same time. “So…I guess these are the tools,” he said. Remembering that he had somehow recognized the common cold from out of the blue, an ability that he assumed came from the tools, he decided to see if he also knew what Ebola looked like. He did; the worm-shaped hemorrhagic fever filoviruses looked exactly like the tools, although since they were growing straight out of his back, they lacked the characteristic twisted base. He didn’t get much of a chance to look at them, because soon after he touched the towel, it burst into flames as well, returning to normal once the blood was burnt away. Balto soon found that he was actually in control of these new “arms”; he could move them, make them bite or produce noises, and although he couldn’t see through their eyes, he could tell whatever they saw intuitively. As he continued to examine the tools, he remembered what had happened at the canyon. He looked at the arms, and nodded at the mirror. “Let’s see what Sorrow thinks of this!” he said. The arms uttered a high-pitched roar, and Balto went to the door, intending to make for the canyon, but he saw something on the doorstep when he began to go out. It was an envelope of crusty paper, with no address, simply his name.  He reached out with one of the arms and picked up the envelope with its mouth, then went inside the house. Opening the envelope, he found it only contained a small slip of paper, on which was written a message:

Mister Balto,

After your departure in the canyon, I doubt you are really that interested in the pretty red object I now possess, but if you are, you ought to come to the location shown on the map I have drawn on the back of this letter. Perhaps you are confused about why I am doing this to you. If you are, I shall reveal what I am doing when and if you follow the map.

Regards,

Sorrow

P.S.: If you keep me waiting for too long, I might send your precious wife back to you, but you might not enjoy her as much with her body half-rotten. As a hollow-headed human would say, “ta ta”.

Balto didn’t know what Sorrow meant. “Departure in the canyon?” Did Sorrow think he had left…? Then, he remembered; he and Jenna had run into Star on the way there. He had just gone through…Sorrow must have seen his tracks. “Thank you, Star,” Balto thought, and ran out the door to follow the map.

In an old fishing warehouse, Sorrow stood with his arms spread wide, using pipes as handles to hold himself up; he was using his legs very little. His eyes were closed, and he breathed tranquilly, but he was mostly conscious. Behind him, Jenna hung suspended between four poles, chains and metal bars binding her, trying to keep herself from staring at his hideous, deformed body. Although she was afraid, she did a good job of keeping it in. “Um, Sorrow?” she said, her voice quavering. There was no response. She swallowed hard and spoke louder. “Sorrow?” He exhaled with slightly more volume, and turned his head slowly around to face her. “Yes?” “What are you doing?” “I am regenerating. Leprosy destroys my body while I go about my business everyday, but I then harness its power to rebuild myself. All of the other leprosy advance forms are dead; I am the only one among them who could keep the disease from eating me alive.” He turned his head forward again. “Is there anything else?” “I, um…I have to go outside.” Sorrow chuckled. “An interesting problem that does not plague viruses. Very well.” He let go of the poles and seemed to nearly buckle to his knees, but did not do so completely. He straightened his legs. Jenna watched as he grabbed the fingers of his paralyzed hand and pulled them into their extended position. Sickening cracks and crackles came from the hand when he did this, and Jenna cringed. Sorrow growled, but Jenna didn’t know if it was with pain, relief, or both. After he finished straightening his fingers, she was surprised to see that he could actually move them. He saw her looking at his hand and explained. “If I regenerate enough, even the deformities caused by leprosy are partially reversed.” He walked toward her, seeming quite energetic, and took the chains off of each pole, lowering Jenna to the floor. He knelt down and unwound the chains from her body, but still kept a small amount wrapped around her ribs, the end in his hand. “Now then,” he said, “I must, of course, escort you. Wouldn’t want you running off so soon.” Jenna nodded, but as Sorrow began to stand, a creature walked into the room. It had a bizarre body that looked like two spiral-shaped creatures wound around each other. The head looked the same way, but the arms and legs were more ordinary. On the end of each arm, there was a two-foot slightly curved blade, and a pair of awkward-looking spiraling fingers. The whole thing was a red color, with copper eyes. “Sorrow,” it said, “may I speak with you?” “Of course,” Sorrow replied. “By the way, Jenna, this is a strep throat advance form.” Jenna smiled wryly. “Lovely. A pleasure,” she said sarcastically. Sorrow and the advance form laughed, and Sorrow spoke. “What is it?” “I wished to discuss the positioning of our guards.” Sorrow put down the chain and faced the advance form. “Do you feel they are inadequate?” “Not inadequate, per se, rather…” The rattling chain distracted them both, and they turned to see what was happening. Jenna had slipped out of the now-loose chain and was sprinting down a hall for a door. “Catch her,” Sorrow said calmly. The strep throat advance form yelled with bloodlust and charged down the hall.

Jenna went through the door at the end of the hall, and it swung shut behind her. The light in the room was low, and there were several pillars around, but nothing else…except an open door at the other end. Jenna was smart, though; she knew she couldn’t make it before the advance form entered, so she hid behind one of the pillars to the right side of the room.

In a moment, the advance form burst through the door Jenna had entered from. It looked around, but didn’t see her. “Why hide?” it said, with a scratching voice that almost made Jenna’s throat sore just hearing it. “Come out. I won’t hurt you.” It laughed menacingly.

Jenna looked around, knowing she had little time to decide what to do. The advance form ceased speaking, and instead began using its predatory skill. It smelled the air several times, divining Jenna’s location by her scent. Hearing it sniffing, Jenna then heard its footsteps approaching the pillar she was hiding behind. She stifled her rapid breathing and tried to think.

The advance form began speaking as it neared the pillar. “If you do not come out on the count of