Chapter 3: The Turn

"Professor Dong never turns his phone off." Maeve's voice sounded hollow, rainwater dripping from her lashes. "Now that I think about it...I haven't seen him in the lab all week."

"We'll figure it out later." She squared her shoulders, marching back into the steakhouse.

Lin Feng pushed his medium-rare steak around the plate—its pink juices now uncomfortably reminiscent of the dissolving railing—before settling on stabbing a potato. The storm raged on.

"You're riding with me," Maeve declared, tossing him her keys. "Go grab bubble tea first—coconut watermelon, less ice, half sugar. And don't get the order wrong."

Before he could protest, she vanished into the downpour, Doc Martens splashing through crimson-tinged puddles toward campus parking. Twenty minutes later, her beat-up hatchback skidded to the curb, windshield wipers slapping furiously at the blood-hued rain.

Maeve's bubblegum-pink Mini Electric was peak practicality for country commutes—or so she'd explained when Lin Feng first questioned her color choice. At 180cm, he now sat with knees practically hugging the dashboard, watching rain cascade over the cartoonish round headlights.

"After dropping you off, I'm gonna live in the lab!" She white-knuckled the steering wheel, leaning so far forward her nose almost touched the windshield. "Total protocol breach? Maybe. But you're getting real-time debriefs!"

"Debriefs?" Lin Feng winced at the military jargon. "Won't your PI have me arrested?"

"Relax, it's grad student research—not nuclear codes!" The car lurched around a corner, her death grip on the wheel belying the casual dismissal.

"Good enough." Lin Feng stared at the rain-lashed windshield before abruptly asking, "Does the city know it's slime mold?"

"They...should?" Maeve's grip tightened on the wheel. "Hell, even I figured it out."

"Then why the mold cover-up?" He turned sharply, searching her face.

The question hung suspended—until a cacophony of horns shattered the moment. Maeve slammed the brakes, lurching forward until her seatbelt snapped taut.

"Learn to drive, asshole!" someone roared outside.

"Sorry! So sorry!" Maeve leaned out her window, only to freeze. The apology wasn't for her. Ahead, a sea of brake lights stretched toward the Northspire Haven Bridge—the once-sturdy landmark now swallowed by a throbbing crimson mass that pulsed in time with the storm.

Traffic snarls on Northspire Haven Bridge were routine, especially in downpours like this.

"Must be a fender bender." Lin Feng stepped out, scanning the chaos—until a metallic scream tore through the storm. The ground trembled, subtle but undeniable.

"Jesus wept—the bridge's moving!" yelled the same road-rager from earlier.

Lin Feng whipped around. The bridge's surface now undulated like storm-whipped waves, cars pinballing across its buckled spine. Two sedans hung suspended mid-air before gravity reclaimed them in a screeching plunge.

Maeve stumbled out, clamping both hands over her mouth. When she finally spoke, it came as a strangled whisper: "Lin Feng..."

Then the first steel cable snapped—a whipcrack splitting the downpour. The bridge twisted into a grotesque double helix, entire lanes corkscrewing into the river below. A minivan cartwheeled past them, its headlights illuminating the water's surface now glinting with an unnatural crimson sheen.

Screams erupted in waves:
"God no—there's hundreds on that bridge!"
"Call 911! Now!"
"911? That's a mass grave in the making!"

The bridge's disintegration accelerated with nightmarish speed. Central cables snapped in rapid succession—twang—twang—twang—each metallic death rattle preceding another section of concrete breaking free. Five colossal slabs sheared diagonally into the Jade-Sand River, their impacts launching frothing white geysers that momentarily eclipsed the bridge's original height.

Not a single vehicle survived the collapse. Sedans, buses, a school van—all vanished beneath the churning waters now swirling with telltale crimson tendrils.

But the true horror emerged as the remaining cables recoiled. Released from tension, they whipped through the storm with supersonic fury. One sliced a pickup truck cleanly in half; another eviscerated a fleeing crowd, reducing bodies to crimson mist before embedding itself in a storefront.

"Move! Now!" Maeve dragged Lin Feng backward as the street became a macabre obstacle course. Abandoned cars blocked retreat routes, their panicked owners clambering over hoods and roofs. A severed cable sizzled past them, cleaving through a traffic light that crashed down in a shower of sparks.

A primary support cable snapped overhead with a thunderous crack, lashing down inches from Lin Feng. The loudmouth driver who'd been cursing moments earlier was cleaved diagonally—his severed torso embedding into a sedan's roof with sickening finality.

Warm blood splattered across Lin Feng's face, rivulets tracing his jawline. But as he numbly turned toward the quivering cable, the horror deepened—only faint streaks of crimson were blood. The rest was slime mold, its plasmodium (the slime mold’s gelatinous core) pulsing through steel fibers like parasitic veins.

"Lin Feng, move!" Maeve yanked his arm hard enough to bruise.

He stood rooted, voice eerily calm beneath the cacophony. "Too late for running."

True to his words, the bridge's skeletal remains lay scattered—severed cables coiled like dead serpents on the banks, while the main steel framework jutted from the Jade-Sand River like broken ribs piercing tea-colored waves.

At the bridge's surviving abutment, a grotesque chandelier of blood-red slime mold hung suspended. Its plasmodium (the slime mold’s gelatinous core) oozed in viscous strands into the current below, each dripping filament defying biological logic. The entire mass pulsed as one entity—a single organism the size of a sperm whale.

Maeve burrowed into Lin Feng's chest, muffling choked sobs against his damp shirt. Nightfall merged with the unrelenting rain as emergency vehicles converged—their flashing red/blue lights slicing through the gloom, amplifying the chaos they sought to contain.

When the traffic officer reached Maeve's Mini, her knuckles whitened on the wheel. The window rolled down to reveal two shell-shocked faces—one tear-streaked, the other hollow-eyed.

"Road's clear for U-turns," the officer barked, her crisp salute at odds with the apocalyptic tableau behind them.

Lin Feng’s eyes narrowed in recognition. “Officer Cheng…”

“Lin Feng? You’re still kicking around, huh?” Quinn Cheng’s face lit up with familiarity before her smile faltered. “How’ve you been holding up?”

As she spoke, she shifted her stance—subtly obscuring the mangled corpse sprawled behind her patrol car.

A bitter smile tugged at Lin Feng’s lips. Officer Quinn Cheng—the traffic police captain who’d handled his parents’ fatal crash. At thirty-six, she was a rarity in the male-dominated force, her meticulous care evident in the months of post-accident check-ins that blurred professional duty with something resembling maternal guilt.

Perhaps her kindness stemmed from unspoken guilt—powerless to bring the drunk driver to justice, yet persistent in checking on the orphan left behind. Lin Feng harbored no resentment, only gratitude.

Rain plastered her police cap to salt-and-pepper hair, streams cascading down the weathered grooves of her face. Strands clung to her neck where the uniform collar chafed raw.

"Take this." Lin Feng thrust an umbrella through the window.

"Can't. Still on duty." Quinn stepped back, signaling them forward with a wave that sent droplets flying. "Drive safe."

As Maeve pulled away, Lin Feng craned out the window. "How will they handle this...catastrophe?"

"Handle it?" Her gaze drifted to the bridge's skeletal remains. "God knows."

In that moment, her eyes mirrored the storm—all duty-bound resolve drowned in a sea of uncertainty.

Another officer approached, his gaze lingering on Lin Feng before darting to the bisected remains behind Quinn's patrol car. "Captain, the... uh... situation here..."

"Call the morgue team, Xiao Wu." Quinn's voice carried over the rain. "And tell them to bring a box truck."

The Mini's wipers slapped rhythmically as Maeve executed a tight U-turn. A honk pierced the gloom before the electric motor whined to life, its bubblegum-pink frame slicing through curtains of rain.

Twenty minutes of heavy silence passed before Maeve gripped the wheel tighter. "Detour'll drain the battery. Lab or campus?"

"Lab." Lin Feng's breath fogged the window as crimson emergency lights receded behind them—their pulsing glow now competing with the bioluminescent sheen creeping up roadside puddles.

The drive back blurred reality's edges. Under the oppressive gloom, the new district's buildings seemed to age decades, their sleek facades crumbling into the same decay that plagued the old town.

Maeve plugged her Mini into the campus charging port, the electronic beep unnaturally loud in the empty garage. The research complex loomed ahead—a concrete monolith bleeding rust from its ventilation shafts.

Weekend nights rendered the building a ghost ship. No undergrads cramming in study rooms, no postdocs muttering over coffee-stained journals. Just flickering fluorescents in the mycology lab's third-floor window.

"Oh crap—left the lights on again!" Maeve broke into a jog, lab coat flapping behind her like panicked wings. "Dong'll have my head if he checks the energy logs!"

She threw on PPE in the antechamber, the automated hand sanitizer hissing reproachfully. Student fungicide labs didn't require full containment protocols—not that it mattered tonight.

Lin Feng was still wrestling with disposable booties when Maeve's gasp sliced through the sterile air. He stumbled toward her, shoes half-on, and froze.

The lab's containment chamber—empty for weeks—now pulsed with an alien bioluminescence. The slime mold samples they'd collected earlier writhed across every surface, their crimson tendrils etching fractal patterns into the tempered glass like sentient acid.

The lab—classroom-sized and now half-consumed—resembled a crime scene where crimson velvet growth smothered equipment in fungal suffocation.

"It had sealed lids..." Maeve's whisper trembled as she edged closer. The petri dishes lay shattered, their plasmodium (the slime mold’s gelatinous core) erupting outward in dendritic explosions that mimicked bloodshot veins across a corpse's eye.

Only the overhead fluorescent remained lit, its cold glow nourishing the densest colony. Bioluminescent tendrils pulsed beneath the light, their rhythm syncing with the storm's distant thunder—as if the very building had developed a heartbeat.