Page 104 of The Flame Game

“Gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys scary,” I whined.

“You’re a cindercorn, Bailey,” Yale chided.

“Not mean gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys not scary.”

“Rabid, too,” my husband added with a wicked smirk.

Evil, evil gorgon-incubus doohickey. “You are still the best doohickey, but rabid gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys scary. What if infect humans? Much risk, say no.”

Yale sighed. “However much I hate agreeing with her, it would be very difficult to get them contained without someone getting some sort of infection. Okay. Here’s a plan. We’ll do the sentient test. If they prove sentient, we get them out and contain them and try to help them. If not, they burn.”

“Okay. Rabid gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys tested for sentience. How?”

“Simple. Go to the basement, ask them to line up, and pretend you’re the pied piper. If they’re sentient, we’ll just whip up a barrier in the supply van.”

“Many more than van fit.”

“We’ll worry about it after the test. Get the phone, please,” the professor said.

I stretched my head out of the window, picked up the selfie stick, and set it somewhere safe before going to the steps, aware of the beady eyes staring up at me from the darkness. “Okay, gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys. Come if you want to not die.”

The beady flashing eyes drew closer, and the swarm squeaked at me.

Fuck. “Come if you want to not die in nice neat line, no scary squeaks or eating cindercorn. I rare, so want to not die. Puhlease.”

The beady flashing eyes continued to come closer, and to my horror, they did so in a nice neat line, and they stopped squeaking.

“Queeny?” I wailed.

“What’s wrong?”

“The rabid gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys un-der-stand English.” I stood my ground despite the gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys coming closer, obeying my command to form up in a nice neat line. To test if it was just a freaky coincidence, I unsheathed a claw and tapped a row of ten spots in front of me. “Make lines here. Go safe place, much food. Nice. Bath? Like bath? Food? Good food. And help not be sick?”

For rabid gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys, they possessed a rather phenomenal ability to coordinate themselves as a group, and within ten minutes, I’d created a tiny legion of gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys organized into perfect little rodent columns. As I’d already plunged into the deep end, I lowered my nose to the first gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys.

The one nearest me offered a little rodent kiss.

I led my gorgon-mice-rat doohickey army to the window. “We adopt gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys? We need new house, make basement for them, but a clean tidy basement with nice house for them.”

“Seriously? You went from terrified to wanting to adopt them?”

I reached for the selfie stick and pointed it at my gorgon-mice-rat doohickey army and waited for the phone to click before setting it down. “They smart, speak English. Good little gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys. Probably scared, probably hungry, probably sick.”

Professor Yale sighed. “That demonstration passes the sentience test, Sam. There’s no doubt. She talked to them, she lined them up, and they’re following her. They might not be actually speaking English, but she had zero interaction with them before the test, and they understood what she asked of them. For all we know, they may be transformative victims. The logs stated they’d done some experiments with that.”

“Fuck,” my husband announced.

While unfair play, I stared at my husband and sighed. Longingly. With extra longing thrown in for good measure.

“Wow. She’s giving you the mare stare on steroids, Sam.” Professor Yale chuckled. “You can help be their temporary custodians once they are deemed safe for the general public. The first stop is to somewhere they can be treated for rabies, because my meter is screaming about it from over here, and it’s the bad kind of rabies.”

“Bad kind?”

“Airborne.”

I froze. “It airborne?”

“We have confirmation this strain is airborne. It takes a long time to kill, but its death rate seems to be equal with the standard disease, and it can be spread through the air.”