Pathologic: Day Six, by the end of which the Haruspicus will find out how important a role mythic beings can play in our lives

(or, in which hope takes a beating)

The morning of the sixth day has come.

Infected in the past 24 hours: 165 people
Died in the past 24 hours: 110 people
Gone missing: 23 people
Number of dead at the moment: 660 people
Number of infected: 311 people

Less than seven days remain. A governmental emissary will arrive tomorrow.

---

The Bachelor has bad news for me. Possibly because it came from a butcher instead of from the twyrine bride, the heart that I brought him yesterday failed to produce a vaccine for the Sand Plague. Evidently, the low-level immunity possessed by the steppe natives is more low-level than it is immunity—their blood produces effective antibodies but in such low quantities that eventually the Sand Plague will overwhelm the immune system anyway. Once again, the Bachelor's experiment fails.

We are running out of time. The town is descending into anarchy as the Sand Plague, unchecked by any sort of cure, continues to extend its tendrils throughout the town. Bodies litter the streets as bandits and arsonists clash violently with guard patrols. Every now and then an infected person slips through the quarantine because the guards are too busy fighting off looters. Impatient with the Bachelor's and my fruitless search for a vaccine, regular townsfolk have decided to take matters into their own hands. At a loss to explain the mind-boggling scale of this calamity, they're looking for a scapegoat to blame for the epidemic's onset. It's a good old-fashioned witch hunt, and the witch they've settled on is the mysterious Devotress.

Artemiy Burakh is many things, but a sympathetic listener he is not.

The Devotress hasn't done much to dispel the dark rumors surrounding her presence in town. Children say that they have witnessed her killing a man merely by placing her palms on his eyes and holding them there until he stops struggling. Others whisper that her hands can "turn people's souls inside out," healing or killing them at her whim. The stories of the "bone cannibal" have resurfaced and seem to point to her. The Devotress's response is to say that she is actually two people—the sweet-natured "Klara," and a doppelganger who frightens children and speaks only in sarcastic riddles—which doesn't exactly allay the townsfolk's fears.

Here's the thing though: I believe her. Something fishy indeed seems to be going on; I meet her in two locations over the course of the day, and there's no way she could have been traveling between them without me knowing. The doppelganger is holed up in the graveyard with poor little Laska and informs me that the Apiary (or the first level of it, anyway) is now open to exploration, though she gleefully hints that I may not like what I find: "Absolute hell. You'll see." Meanwhile, Klara is hiding at Anna Angel's house and seems abjectly terrified by her predicament. She says she doesn't even know what she's doing in town. She has no memory of how she got here and feels trapped by the chaos and odd phenomena swirling around her. The Rat Prophet has been appearing to her too, scaring her with ominous pronouncements that she can't understand. If I can get some solid answers out of the Prophet, she says, at least then she can face the angry mob with some certainty about who she really is.

Having been the victim of misguided, rumor-fed hatred myself, I feel for her and agree to help, even though the hatch to the Rat Prophet's underground chamber is still in the middle of a plague zone. Infected areas have only gotten more harrowing; in addition to the increased numbers of contagious victims milling about in the streets, plague clouds are even more prevalent. There's even a new kind of mist accompanying this next stage of the epidemic: brown and fetid, it actually chases me around until either it catches me or I reach a safe haven indoors. It's almost as if the Sand Plague is developing agency.

This seems like a crazy thought until I meet with the Rat Prophet. (It's amazing how open-minded one becomes when one encounters things like a tuxedo-wearing person with a rat's head and a subterranean lair.) According to him, this mess has never been a wholly natural occurrence; if I don't believe him, perhaps I should ask my good friend the Devotress. After all, she's the personification of the Sand Plague itself.

I immediately call him a liar, which he shrugs off with a "believe what you want" attitude. Honestly, I'm not sure what to think. I certainly have no reason to trust him. Then again, unlike the town's conniving nobles, he has no reason to lie. If he is telling the truth, then the townspeople are right to fear the Devotress. As I climb back out of the hatch, I wonder what I will tell Klara. In the meantime, though, she'll have to wait. The Bachelor has another idea.

It's a long shot, he admits, but it's one of the only options left. The experiment with the blood of the steppe people failed, but there are other natives of the steppe: the cattle. The animals have been bearing up quite well throughout this ordeal—none of them have died of the Plague or even contracted it. Maybe the cure will come from them.

The only problem is that almost no cattle remain in the area. Most have already been slaughtered to provide food for the town as it languishes under quarantine. The only people who might have an idea where to find more cows serve in the Order of Bulls and live in the Apiary and the Abattoir. Up to now those areas have been closed to us. However, the imminent arrival of the State Inquisitor has led Fat Vlad to hastily lift his dubious lockdown of the Apiary, and as the trusted heir of Burakh I can now get in and speak with the Order. In fact, one of my Adherents, known as the "Mother Keeper," is a leader in the Order. She can tell me where to find a bull.

The battered door to the first section of the Apiary. Looks like even the guard isn't too happy to be standing in such close proximity.

The Devotress wasn't lying when she said that the interior of the Apiary is hell. Debris and furniture wall off some hallways; other rooms have boards nailed across the doorways. Through the gaps I can see Worms and butchers curled on the floor, silently suffering through their infection. Screams keep echoing from the depths of the building, and they are not screams of pain—they're screams of madness.

My Adherent is waiting for me up four or five flights of stairs. Since all of my Adherents are children, I'm not expecting an adult. But I also was not expecting to see a five-year-old flanked by three bodyguards:

Meet one of the cult's prominent figures, a girl who has not yet learned how to read.

"Mother Keeper" does know of a bull I can use, but she wants me to do a favor for her first. She and her followers want to return to their shrine deep in the bowels of the Apiary, but that part of the building is crawling with the infected. If I really want to test that bull's blood, I have to bring her 50 doses of immunity boosters in the next nine hours. No pills, no bull.

To put that number in perspective, I've accumulated less than 20 of those pills over the past six days. Thankfully, I haven't been popping too many of them thanks to my innate resistance as a steppe native, but I'm still staring at only 13 doses in my inventory when I exit the Apiary. The pharmacies around town stock them, but only in small quantities. Children on the street sometimes have them for trade, but with the infected areas swelling in size, there aren't many children around either. Briefly, I entertain the idea of killing and robbing some guards, who carry large quantities of medicine on them at all times. I quickly quash those thoughts. The crime I committed on Day Two is still a raw spot in my memory. If I'm going to get those pills, I'm going to have to run all over town, check every single shop, and hope.

It takes a sizable chunk out of my funds, but I meet the deadline with only half an hour to spare. "Mother Keeper" blithely tells me to meet the Worms at a hill south of town. They will bring the bull. I will bring whatever optimism I have left that all this scrambling around was worth it.

After exchanging curt greetings with the Worms, I inject the bull with a sample of the Plague, then take a blood sample back to the Bachelor. I wait with bated breath while he examines the sample under his microscope.

Once again, the experiment fails.

The bull's immune system is the exact opposite of what we found with the steppe people. When infected, the bull's body is able to slow the Plague's growth to a crawl. However, without any way to fight off the small amount that remains, the bull will die, same as any other creature.

I had figured that I would be angry, or at least annoyed, that all my energy and sacrifice was for nothing as usual. The most I can muster after hearing the bad news is resignation. I don't think I was honestly expecting good news in the first place. The only option left is to find the blood of some bull-human hybrid that can both retard the Plague's reproduction and kill whatever's left, and, as the Bachelor helpfully points out, no such animal exists. There is no final cure. We're done.

Before going to bed, I troop over to Anna Angel's house to see Klara again. Expectantly, she asks me what the Rat Prophet said. I reply that he said she is not responsible for the epidemic, that she is here to help people. By now I've decided that the Prophet was right, but I lie for two reasons. First, I just don't have the heart to tell Klara that, knowingly or not, she has the blood of the entire town on her hands. Second, I'm afraid of what she might do if she resigns herself to being an angel of death. She can be on our side for the time being. We're going to need all the help we can get.

Pathologic: Day Five, which will give the Haruspicus a chance to seize the evasive Sand Plague

(or, in which things get Lynchian)

The fifth day has come.

Infected in the past 24 hours: 100 people
Died in the past 24 hours: 79 people
Gone missing: 22 people
Number of dead at the moment: 395 people
Number of infected: 107 people

You will not be able to defeat this enemy. Less than eight days remain.

---

So the first thing I do when I discover that I've been thrown into jail is get angry. More than a few swear words bounce off the walls of my apartment while I come to terms with what just happened. It seems unfair, but in the back of my mind I can't help thinking that this is what I deserve for getting too confident. It really, really hurts to lose those weapons and miss out on a quest reward from Notkin, but there's nothing to be done about it now. I have to find a way out of this new mess.

After the initial shock has passed, I notice that this is no run-of-the-mill prison like the one in the Town Hall. The Sand Plague is here, too. The two men standing guard are fine, presumably pumped full of immunity boosters, but the bodies dotting the stone floor—some of them living, some not—tell me that I can't take my time escaping. As if on cue, a plague cloud wafts through the bars of my cell and fills my lungs. My infection meter takes a jump.

Get out.

I get a couple more lungfuls of disease before I see that one of the corpses is close enough to my cell to be searched. I grab the dead man's revolver, gun down my guards, and start to head for the exit when the cries of the afflicted pull me up short. I turn back and, fumbling with bottles of morphine, give two of the men a peaceful death. I am uneasy about the ethics of euthanasia in this game, but having killed two guards, I desperately need the reputation boost that comes with a mercy killing. I rationalize it by telling myself that I couldn't leave them to die slowly in that plague-infested basement. It is better this way. Right?

The air outside the building is not much clearer than it was indoors. I'm in the factory district, which apparently is the latest breeding ground for the Sand Plague. My vision blurs and I actually stagger to one side as my fever climbs. Sadly, my antibiotic pills are useless to me now; in my weakened state the side effects would be just as deadly as the disease. I am in the late stages of infection, with my blood slowly beginning to hemorrhage from my body. With horror, I watch my health bar shrink, bit by bit.

I'm dying.

I have only one chance. My laboratory is just to the south of the factories, close enough for me to reach it before I succumb to the Plague. I have twyre there, along with brewing recipes left by my father. Vaguely, I remember reading somewhere in my journal that twyrine brews can be combined with infected organs to create an antibiotic mixture. It won't eradicate the disease, but it will hold it at bay, and the health penalties are lower than with conventional medicine. I burst into my lab and stagger over to a storage chest containing my herbs and recipes. I snatch a potent-looking one, cook it up, and mix it with an infected kidney left over from my adventures in Day Three. The result is "dead porridge," a foul-looking pale paste. Well, it's better than death, anyway.

By now it's late: almost 4:00 in the afternoon. With my infection back under control, it's time to turn my mind back to battling the epidemic, which means paying the Bachelor a visit. He's learned of my discovery about the steppe people having a low-level resistance to the Plague, and he wants me to get one of their hearts for him to experiment on. Once again, I am nonplussed at doing his dirty work, all the more so because of my connections to the steppe people. The Bachelor counters my protests by pointing out the necessity of doing this if we're ever going to produce a vaccine. What's one life measured against the entire town? With that he sends me over to Ospina to find out the location of a guinea pig, since (he says) he is too repulsed by Ospina's strangeness to make the trip himself.

OSPINA QUOTE OF THE DAY: "But why is nobody being buried? No creeping of carts, no sound of shovels in the cemetery? "

The antipathy is mutual. Ospina does not hide her anger that I am doing the Bachelor's bidding, saying that he is a "bastard" who "will bury us all." Nevertheless, she recognizes the need for a test subject, though she cloaks it in mystical trappings, as is her wont. A "twyrine bride" (the "stripper" from Duke's Day Five) has been brought forward by the Worms as a willing sacrifice to appease whatever natural force is causing the epidemic. As a Haruspicus, I have the divine right to cut out her heart.

When I arrive at the appointed spot out in the marshes, however, the young woman seems anything but willing. She's been brought there by three butchers (one of whom I met on Day Three), and she pleads with me not to kill her. The butchers are unmoved. The earth demands a sacrifice, they tell me, and, as the heir of Burakh, only I can perform the rite and take the first step in stopping the Sand Plague. They watch me grimly in the firelight, waiting.

I hesitate, then refuse.¹ The steppe people may be my people, but I am not going to take part in the barbaric sacrifice of an innocent just because they tell me to. Enraged, the trio attacks me while the woman flees into the darkness. I shoot them all before they can harm me and bend over their bodies, pulling on my gloves. These guys are natives of the steppe, too. Theoretically at least, they should have the same natural immunity as the twyrine bride. I hope their hearts will do.

As I slog through the marshes on my way back to the Bachelor's pad (heh), I receive a note from Fat Vlad's son, "Young Vlad," concerning the well that he has been digging to provide the town with untainted water. His laborers are refusing to work, claiming to see and hear frightening things in the underground caverns beneath the town. They won't say what, though, so Young Vlad turns to me to investigate the matter. I'm not particularly keen to poke around down there, but I do need the handsome sum he's offering in order to buy food for tomorrow. So down I go.

Immediately I can tell that something's not right. The earth surrounding me doesn't look like normal dirt; it's dark red and slick, as if saturated with blood. I'm apparently alone, yet despite the absence of other people there are lit torches installed at regular intervals. The soundtrack has changed, and it sounds muffled somehow. The throbbing music and smooth, circular tunnel walls give me the impression that I'm walking around inside some gigantic circulatory system.

I have a bad feeling about this.

For some reason Young Vlad doesn't throw down a rope, so once I'm underground I'm stuck there and have to find another way out. I set off through the tunnels, turning this way and that, and before long I am hopelessly lost. The network of caverns is surprisingly extensive, with numerous branching paths, dead ends, and loops, and my town map gives no indication of which way I should go. On top of that, I start to hear a deep voice chanting in an unintelligible language, dully echoing through the strange caverns. Combined with the music, the resemblance to the sound of a beating heart is even more pronounced. Spooky.

I'm just beginning to worry about how I will get out of here when the tunnel ahead suddenly opens up into a large chamber with a domed ceiling at least twenty feet over my head. In one corner is a small platform. A lone figure waits for me there.

What the HELL

This is the Rat Prophet, the pure embodiment of the rats' nature and power (!). The chanting I was hearing earlier? That was the Rat Prophet, mimicking the voice of my father (!!!). He knows a lot about my father and the Sand Plague, but everything he says is gibberish—I can't make head or tail of anything he says. Eventually the Prophet falls ominously silent, and, head spinning, I stumble to the other side of the chamber. There, a hatch opens upward, and I waste no time getting out.

I surface behind the theater, which also has become an epicenter for the Plague. As long as I'm here I figure I may as well check out today's play, but when I enter the theater I find that the director is already busy playing to a packed house:

Knock 'em dead

Back at Young Vlad's place, I hesitantly ask about the Rat Prophet, fearing that I am losing my mind. Young Vlad seems concerned, but he assures me that it was not completely a hallucination. Other citizens have reported seeing the Prophet as well. He seems to bestow his presence and dark knowledge on those who are attuned to the town and the earth on which it rests. Beyond that, Young Vlad knows nothing.

I feel like I'm getting in way over my head. With difficulty, I can at least cope with real-world problems, such as finding a cure or stopping looters. But there is apparently a cosmic, spiritual dimension to this as well, and I feel ill-equipped for it. Between my brush with death today and my weird entanglement with the Cult of Bulls, I worry that I may be cracking under the pressure.

¹ This is apparently a departure from what happens in the Bachelor's scenario. I'm not sure what long-term consequences there will be for this.