“No. Now please, wait. I’m on the phone.”

Crystal fell silent, watching as the threat mounted and bureaucrats argued over responsibility and risks.

The old woman’s back was collecting most of the extra matter and tearing her dress as she did so. She sat in an expanding pool of the gray oatmeal, and a stop-start stream of the chunky matter was being deposited in her lap, her head bowed forward, her body rocking. Crystal could see past the dry, gray hair and see the rictus grin.

Both had already deposited fluids equal or greater to their own body mass around them.

Some of the capes on the ground had to shift position as vehicles maneuvered to reverse direction, heading away from the scene. Most were trucks, loaded with stuff. Some couldn’t retreat at all, because there were other battle lines that had formed behind them.

Seven people in total were leaking these gray fluids. There was one intersection with three, and the ‘core’ of the Erring Right were preparing to deal with them. Two here. Then one at a number of other junctures.

“No,” Carol said, and it was clear her patience was exhausted. “I don’t want to talk to another assistant. I don’t care if you’re cape liaison. If you can’t make a firm decision, I want to talk to someone who can. Now.”

The settlement here was only partially complete. Salvaged prefab building sections were combined with tent material to form homes, houses, and businesses. When the wind blew, it picked up the petals of the dandelion-like weeds that had been placed everywhere and it made the looser parts of the tents flap, especially where a given bit of tent material had been intended to cover an entrance or partition a interior section and now hung free.

Buildings rippled with that wind, like they were so far from being solid that this patch of civilization was something that could blow away with one good gust of wind. One explosion.

She could see it all playing out from above, her eye half-lidded, her body relaxed, her head primed for that moment she got the signal from Carol and the fight started. Her head was really all she needed to fight.

If the fluids were put together with the original body mass of the man and the old woman, they were each triple the size they’d been, and the fluids showed no signs of stopping. The fluid that had settled for a while was changing in composition. Gray, it dried and it cracked, seams and wrinkles spreading across it.