I had forgotten that today was Thursday. Milli worked at the hospital Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but she came to the firm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Our cases often required autopsies and such, and we saved a lot of time by having a mesothelioma specialist right in the building.

Right now she was examining a restrained and heavily sedated Frank Breadstick, though I could hardly believe it was him. She was letting me watch.

"Jack," she said, "I have no idea what happened to him. Are you sure he had never mentioned having even a trace of mesothelioma before?"

"I'm sure," I said for the third time. "We talked about this kind of stuff, and I'm telling you, he was perfectly healthy yesterday."

Milli frowned. "Well, today he has by far the worst case of mesothelioma I've ever seen."

"What do you mean the worst case?" I asked. "He's alive, isn't he?"

"Yeah," Milli said, "but his condition has progressed far beyond what should have killed him. Fluid accumulation in the pleural space, swelling, cachexia, severe ascites, bowel obstruction, blood clotting abnormalities, anemia, fever, hemoptysis, pnemothorax, migrating thrombophlebitis, disseminated intravascular coagulation, jaundice, low blood sugar, pleural effusion, pulmonary emboli, the list goes on and on. And it's metastasized everywhere. He's more tumor than man now."

My God, Frank, what happened to you?

"But for some reason," Milli continued, "this hasn't killed him. On the contrary, it's somehow given him superhuman strength. And what's up with the glowing eyes? I don't know how this is even physiologically possible. They'd be so beautiful if they didn't scare the hell out of me."

Suddenly, an awful thought came to me. "He's not contagious, is he?"

Milli put down her instruments and looked at me. "No," she said, "I don't think so. But whatever caused this, that may be contagious. And that's why we're in trouble. It took a small army of security guards to bring down one infected person. If there's an outbreak, we're going to have a very serious problem, very soon."



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