"If you experience extreme stress while carrying a certain virus, it attempts to reconfigure your biology. In about four out of ten cases, it works."

She... Looks pretty deeply disturbed by this.

It's like Darwinists messing with humans, but nobody's even driving.

"Oh."

"Hmm?"

"And nobody's controlling the change- Darwinist experiments are scary already and they're on purpose and always ready to kill anything that doesn't work right."

She puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Shhsh, it's not as bad as all that."

"Sixty percent chance of dying is not not bad!"

"We've managed to figure out how to improve the odds. And you almost certainly aren't carrying the virus."

"I- This- Gaaah."

She continues being vaguely comforting.

"...There have been about ten impossible things in the last hour. I think I'm giving up on reacting, now. What kind of things to reduce the chance?"

"Well, we can trigger Manifestation without the risk of death."

"Meaning, do the powers thing without maybe dying? Much better."

"Yes. So far we haven't anyone die on us that way."

"I am really, really in favor of not dying."

"I doubt you've been infected."

"How do you tell?"

"You've only been here for what? And hour?"

"Yes."

"It's not quite that contagious."

She mutters something resentful and wordless, and then, "Viruses. What about later though? You said you maybe can't send me back."

"We'll see. I wish I could give you more definite answers."

"Well I guess of all the places I could have been disappeared to this probably isn't the worst."

"I'm sure neither of us hail from the best of all possible worlds."

"Yeah well a virus that kills you or gives random maybe-not-good people big power has got to be a really destructive thing. Whoever made it is stupid or evil - was it made?"

"We think it was created. Hardly something that would evolve naturally."