James came out of the last dream screaming and writhing, clutching at skin that had blistered from the heat but was now somehow normal.

One last door stood before him, and, hand shaking, he tried the handle.

He was once again assaulted by memories, a soundless sightless barrage of emotions and vague recollections - his life before the incident; his life after. Everything up until now, until the earthquake and fog and darkness.

To this, its inevitable conclusion. He was infected.

---

When what was left of James managed to drag itself from the sea of conciousness, dragging himself to the shore of existence, something was different - wrong.

His body was gone.

He convulsed, his thoughts tumultuous and panicked, and the vines around him responded in kind, thrashing and wrapping around themselves tightly until he had inadvertently created a perversion of what once was - what he'd once had. After a time, he managed to stand, and could after a fashion see around him, though he was afraid to ask how. If he could find himself, maybe, it would be ok, he could escape -

But the face he stumbled across as he tried to move forward was not his own.

Vines encapsuled most of the tall, broad man's form, but he felt he recognized it - from glimpses, half remembered. The man who had tried to rescue him from the fog. He wasn't certain how he knew, but he did, and he couldn't turn away now.

As he reached in with his own pseudo limbs the vines parted, and he cradled the figure in his embrace. He was much taller now than he was in life, and that was just as well, because the old James could not have accomplished this task as easily. He looked around for an escape, and found only -

stairs.

They moved away, downward and out. The further they got from the core, the more he felt himself unravel, strong and tightly woven limbs shriveling to mere wisps. Somehow, he found the strength to continue. He was too far from the source now, yet he had no choice - he could not turn back.

And there, finally, when there was almost nothing left - a door. There were shapes outside, refreshingly unsullied and safe, and as he lay his burden down he reached out to them with the bared threads of his being.

He would be ok. This one thing, he would not screw up.

James flew back up the stairs, more ethereal than real, drawing together the fragmented pieces of who he once was, where the others also were. Kammy, Caroline, Hitsu, Austin, Dahlia, Cecil and the others -

This was their home now. He felt his essence brush against theirs, and was strangely at peace.

Waiting for the end.