Hallucinations. A sure sign the spores had reached the brain.

"The Green always remembers," Pamela murmurs, her breath fogging in the air. Her voice is soft, almost as if she's addressing a lover, and not you, the dying coworker in her arms. "The forest is long gone, but the Green remembers what once was…"

Pamela cradles your head, fingers gently brushing fevered skin. Around them, the dull grey of the concrete walls blooms green, moss and lichen crawling through the plaster. Nature is reclaiming her losses, the safe-house torn apart by a primordial forest. What once was.

"You have to understand why I’m doing this, right? This infection was meant to be quick and quiet. I’m not a monster, despite what the media says,” she brushes kisses on your skin, a silent plea for forgiveness. “Humanity struggles to invent new fungicides each year, at the cost of the environment. My fungal sisters aren’t so different than you or me, and they’ve learned to adapt, to persevere despite humanity’s selfishness.”

When she set out to end humanity by spreading O. Lamia spores across the States, she’d never anticipated finding any romantic connections. Not after her explosive end with Harley. Then she had met you—seemingly mundane and benign, and her world started to have colour in it again.

It was always meant to be a short fling until her temporary job expired—then she would be back on the road. You were supposed to be the sole exception to the infection, immune to the strain. She had kissed you like it meant nothing; now she cradled you like you were everything.

She no longer resembled Poison Ivy at all.

What once was green skin is now light beige, distinctively human-like. The hemline of her overalls hid the mushroom gills, which stubbornly regrew each morning. She wanted to stay as Pamela to you, to stay as a coworker you spent lunches mocking terrible bosses with, and swabbing stolen kisses between breaks. As your lover. As a simple woman with a passion for horticulture.

To stay as your Pamela Isley.

How far along in the infection were you? Did you have days, or only minutes, left to live before the Green reclaimed you? She'd comfort you in your last moments.

"I was tricked. This strain was meant for mass surveillance, not for eradication," she confesses quietly, tears staining her cheeks. "I'm sorry, your end was always meant to be short. I’m not a monster.”