Bonesaw- Parahuman Plague Contagion

Our plan now was to get in between the point Fortuna completed her plan, and the point everything blew up.  Valkyrie had brought us Riley, Riley had brought the formula.  Now it was a question of getting people to take it.  To fill that space with dreams and death.
...

“Will you do this with us?” I asked her.

“Bad dreamth, and then I die.”

“Complicated dreams,” I told her.  “Not always bad.  We’re polluting the well, so that maybe we pollute what their idea of ‘bad’ is.  Maximizing connections between us, digging into old relationships, capes we’ve known who passed, so we can pollute them as well.  If nothing else about this works, maybe we change things for the next civilization these aliens run into.”

“How many of the dreamth will be bad?  Thome?  A lot?  Perthenth?”

“More than fifty percent,” I told Ratcatcher.  “Beyond that… I imagine it’ll be like any ordinary dreams you have.”
...

“You don’t have to stay, Antares.  Just, uh, give me what you have to give me.”

Crystalclear extended his hand, his face not turned quite my direction.  I looked at it.  It didn’t waver.

“Unless you aren’t comfortable,” he told me.

“I have to be.  I’m the one who pushed for this,” I said.

I reached out and gave his hand a squeeze.

“I can thee it,” Ratcatcher said.  “Tiny movementh of tinier hairth, all over your hand, your fathe.”

Crystalclear nodded.

“Come,” Ratcatcher said.  “You can give a girl a kith on the cheek, or hold her hand if you’re thicken.”

She pushed her mask a bit aside.  There was scar tissue on her cheek and chin.  Her hand reached out, and her pet mouse poked its nose out of the sleeve.

“I should warn you, last in, first out, it means… the further down the chain, the faster it takes effect.”

“I know,” Ratcatcher said.  “I’ll thicken out or do thomthing thupid if I don’t hurry it up.”

Crystalclear took her hand in his, leaned over, and gave her a kiss where the mask had previously covered the side of her face.

“Fucking heavy,” Ratcatcher said.  Her hand tremored as she withdrew it.
...

“Yeah,” I said.  “The first people have passed out.  Started dreaming.  Lookout’s got some data suggesting it’s filtering through okay.”

“I know,” Vista said.  “We had some people come by, they had to be carried.  But we got them where they wanted to go.”

- Ward, Last 20.10