It started slowly, insidiously. It was a little like hair. Growing in the cracks and crevices underground, away from the sunlight. You saw it on the tube - platforms, tunnels - but a glance and then it’s gone, you ignore it. It was fine, so fine that it moved with the barest of breezes. Sometimes when you couldn’t detect a breeze. It was cleaned away, but would soon come back. Within a couple of days at first, then a day, then it grew back in a few hours. People started to notice then. Well, the people that cleaned started to notice. The billions of commuters and tourists didn’t notice, it looked like hair, it was mixed with hair, there was nothing to notice.
Soon it grew back in minutes, then seconds. You could watch it grow, it made me shiver to watch. This is when the media picked it up. Front page news of the new super fungus that was taking over the city. Talk shows and panelists. Pop-scientists talking about strains of super fungus resistant to chemcial and pesticide. It wasn’t resistant, it died, it just remembered and became resistant next time.
The media started to forget about it when it didn’t do anything else. It just stayed put - underground - growing where it had always grown. Small bundles of the finest strands of fungus that learned to become resistant to chemicals and toxins. Acid always worked though. I think that’s what pissed it off.
The news picked it up again when the fungus began to release spores. Not regular spores. Spores that looked like they knew what they were doing, where they were going. Spores that would chase you, hunt you down. The first two weeks was the worst. Screaming and running, people barricading themselves, uselessly, in their homes or offices. The only place to really hide was under water. But not everyone had a submarine or underwater house.