Parasite

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Chapter 20 AUGUST 2027

The closet connected to a service corridor, which connected in turn to an underground garage that was probably used by janitorial personnel: it was small, dark, and spotless. Tansy led the way with unflagging efficiency, never lowering her guns. I struggled to keep up, and was panting slightly by the time she finally waved me to a stop near the center of the garage.

“We rest here for five, and then we’re on the move,” she said.

I frowned at her. “Isn’t that—”

“The alarm’s been sent up by now,” she said calmly. “Banks will have his men starting to sweep the grounds, and they know how long each escape route takes to use. The sewer route would have finished fifteen seconds ago. They’ll check the tunnels, decide we’re not down there, and pull back. Maybe they’ll leave a man or two behind. No skin off my nose.” Her teeth showed white through the darkness, making it clear just how pleased she’d be to have someone left for her to take her aggressions out on.

“Where are we going to go from there?”

“Away,” she said, vaguely. “Don’t be dumb, okay? I can’t say, ‘Oh, golly gee, Sal, we’re going to Disneyland’ while we’re still on SymboGen property. Who knows what they’ve decided to bug around here? Banks was a paranoid dick before he had anything to be paranoid about. Now…” She shook her head. “He’s got more to be paranoid about than any other man alive. If I were him, this place would be so buggy, it would be a…” She stopped. “It would be something really buggy.”

“Right. Right.” I looked around the garage again, fear gnawing on my ribs like a rat with sharp, sharp teeth. I looked back to Tansy. “Sherman’s a tapeworm?”

“Yeah. I thought we covered that.”

“Sherman was a tapeworm all along?”

“The whole time you’ve known him, yeah. He left the lab like six months before you had your accident. I don’t know who he convinced to hire him here. Chave used to give us reports, before she went and got all eaten by the cousins, and she said he was pretty good at his job. Unhealthily interested in you, but she did what she could to run interference there.”

I glared at her. “You could have told me.”

“Why?” She sounded honestly confused. “He was a nonfactor. We didn’t know he was all about fomenting rebellion against his human creators. Honestly, I figured Banks had him cut up after he got picked up in that outbreak sweep you told us about. And what would we have said? ‘Uh, by the way, you totally don’t believe Tansy and Adam are tapeworms in human suits, but you should know that that dude Sherman you’re so fond of is one, too, so maybe be a little careful around him if he’s not all dead and stuff.’ It wouldn’t have done any good. It would’ve just confused you. I don’t like confusing people.”

“Yeah, well next time, confuse me. I’d rather know what’s going on.”

Tansy gave me a quizzical look. “You sure about that?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Well, then, have I got some news for you.” She started walking again. “The exit’s this way.”

“That’s your news?” I demanded, following her.

“No. But not much else is going to do us any good if we don’t get out of here alive.” She led the way into the dark, and I followed. There was nothing else that I could do, and I had come too far to turn back now. Even if I wanted to, there was a string of locked doors behind me, separating me from everything I’d ever known.

The only way out was to keep moving forward.

The sewers were dark and hot. That was enough to put me at ease, despite the smell around us. I followed Tansy. Her steps were silent as we moved through the sucking slime of human waste. My steps splashed and made horrible slurping noises, like my shoes were trying to bring the entire sewer with them every time I picked up my feet. Tansy glowered at me, her expression barely visible in the gloom, but she didn’t shush me. Even she knew that there would have been no point.

I was starting to think we weren’t going to encounter any of Dr. Banks’s security when we turned a corner and there they were: two men in black uniforms, each with a flashlight and a gun. They never had a chance. Tansy shot the first man before either of them had a chance to react to our sudden appearance, and shot the second while he was still fumbling with the safety on his pistol. They went down hard, and she made her silent way over to kneel between them, studying the holes she’d made in their foreheads.

Then, to my absolute horror, she holstered her right-hand gun and stuck her index finger into the first man’s skull, wiggling it around for a moment. I gaped, my stomach rolling. It got worse when she pulled her finger out and stuck it in her mouth.

When she repeated the process with the second man, I turned away and vomited messily into the muck.

She was back on her feet when I turned to face her again. She was smiling. That didn’t help. “They’re both human, although this guy,” she kicked one man’s foot, “wouldn’t have been for too much longer. Still, explains why they went down so easy. They didn’t hear us coming the way they would’ve if they’d been cousins.”

“What are you—”

“Come on.” She started forward again, dismissing the two corpses like they didn’t matter anymore. To her, I guess they didn’t. The men were dead. They weren’t any fun to play with once they were dead.

I swallowed hard, spat once to get the taste of vomit out of my mouth, and followed after her. The open eyes of the dead men seemed to follow me, and I was more relieved than I could have believed possible when they passed out of sight behind us.

We passed no more security guards. My relief grew. Tansy had acted to keep us from being detained—or worse, since now I’d shown that I was willing to betray Dr. Banks at the request of people I barely knew—but that didn’t mean I wanted her shooting anyone she didn’t strictly have to. She enjoyed it a little too much for me to be comfortable with it.

Finally, we reached a drain feeding illegally out into the salt estuary under the cliffs near the Golden Gate Bridge. Tansy climbed out and started casually up the nearest hiking trail. I scrambled after her, feeling infinitely more conspicuous, even though I wasn’t the one carrying the guns.

A familiar car was parked at the top of the cliff, an even more familiar form standing next to it. Nathan’s hair was blown back by the wind coming off the water, and his hands were tucked deep into the pockets of his jacket. My relief grew so great that it felt like my body would be unable to contain it, like it was going to break loose and float away. I started to step out into the open—

—only to come up short as Tansy’s arm shot out and caught me across the chest, blocking any further progress. “Tansy, what the hell…?”

“Shh,” she said. “Look.” She nodded into the gloom behind Nathan.

I looked, and felt my blood go cold.

A mob of sleepwalkers was assembling in the greenery behind him, moving slowly but inexorably forward. We might reach him before they did. Then again, we might not.

“Trust me,” said Tansy. “Can you do that?”

“I…” I stopped, swallowing. “I can try.”

“Good. Now, when I say ‘run,’ you run. Got it?” I nodded. She smiled. “Good. Run!” Just like that, Tansy’s arm was no longer barring my way, and she was sprinting away, laughing maniacally as she closed on the sleepwalkers. Nathan turned toward the sound of her voice, and could only stare as she ran past him, slid across the hood of his car, and opened fire on the oncoming mob.

It wasn’t a fair fight by any definition of the word. There were more of them than Tansy had bullets, but they weren’t armed, and she had an uncanny knack for headshots, which dropped them like stones where they stood. She plunged into the mob, pausing only long enough to howl, “Get Sal in the car and get out of here!” Then she was gone, covered by the bodies of the sleepwalkers still on their feet. It didn’t seem to matter that the tapeworms motivating the sleepwalkers were her cousins; they clawed and grabbed for her all the same.

Nathan recovered quickly, and had the passenger side door open by the time I reached the car and flung myself inside. He twisted the key in the ignition, shouted, “Seat belt!” and hit the gas before I even had time to close the car door.

We went bouncing and shuddering over the uneven ground of the parking lot. I got my belt clicked home just before our tires dropped down to the street, and we were rolling smoothly into San Francisco, away from Tansy and the sleepwalkers, away from SymboGen… away from everything.

Nathan didn’t try to talk to me until we were halfway across the Bay Bridge. I assumed we were heading for Dr. Cale’s. I didn’t care as much as I thought I was supposed to. Glancing over, he asked, “Did you get it?”

“Yes,” I replied dully. I followed the answer with a question of my own: “Do you think she got out?”

“Tansy?”

I nodded.

“I don’t know.”

I sighed, turning my face back to the window. “Thank you for not lying to me.”

Nathan was quiet after that. We passed from the bridge into the East Bay, and drove in fragile silence all the way to the Caldecott Tunnel. Once we were on the other side, I turned to him and asked, “Are we going to your mother’s lab?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want antiparasitics. I want all the antiparasitics in the world. I want so many antiparasitic drugs my skin turns blue and my nails fall off. Whatever it takes to get this thing out of me.” I slapped my stomach, hard. Something was gnawing at the corner of my thoughts like a rotten tooth. I did my best to shove it aside. No no no I will not think that. “Make it go away, Nathan. I don’t want to be a part of this anymore.”

“Your reaction to antiparasitics would probably make that fatal.”

“I don’t care.”

“Sal…”

“Please.”

Nathan took a shaking breath. Finally he said, “We’ll do a blood test first, and find out just how healthy your implant is, all right? We don’t want to risk giving you an overdose when something less aggressive would have taken care of everything. Okay? I’d rather not kill you, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes,” I said, and closed my eyes, sagging into my seat. “That’s okay. Thank you.”

Nathan didn’t say anything. He just drove on.

Part of me had been hoping, no matter how foolish it was, that we’d pull into the bowling alley parking lot and find Tansy waiting, her ass parked on somebody else’s car as she counted down the minutes to our arrival. Instead, all that greeted us were shadows, and the dead, leafless trees.

Nathan pulled out a key as we walked toward the bowling alley door. I blinked. He glanced my way and said, almost apologetically, “I’ve been here a lot lately.”

“I guessed,” I said. Anything else I might have had to say was lost as he opened the door and I was swarmed by Beverly and Minnie, both wagging their tails in frantic delight. Minnie’s delight seemed based more on Beverly’s than on actually being happy to see me, but that didn’t matter: energetic dogs are their own reward.

By the time I pushed the dogs off, Nathan was already past the threshold. I sighed and straightened, whistling to bring Beverly to heel. Minnie followed her, and both dogs followed me as I made my way inside. I closed the door behind me.

Nathan waited until we were both safely in the bowling alley before turning and pulling me into a tight embrace, burying his face against my shoulder. “Oh my God, I was so worried about you,” he said, words only somewhat blurred by my skin.

I took a shuddering breath, locking my arms around him. Then I took another, and another, and before I knew what was happening, I was crying against him, all the terror and tension of the day leaking out through my eyes. He held me tighter as his own tears dampened my shoulder, and the dogs twined around our ankles, whining anxiously.

Finally, we let each other go. Nathan looked at me gravely. “Never do that again. Please. I don’t think my heart could take it.”

“I’m not planning to,” I promised him.

“Good.” He took my hand, and we walked, together, into Dr. Cale’s lab.

Dr. Cale herself was parked at one of the lab benches, flipping through a file of pictures that I didn’t quite see before she snapped the folder shut. I was glad of that. What little I had seen gave the impression of red, raw muscles, and I didn’t really want to be looking at autopsy photos just at the moment. She turned toward us, relief lighting her face. “You’re both all right,” she said. Then the relief slipped, replaced by puzzlement. “Where’s Tansy?”

“We ran into a mob of sleepwalkers,” I said. “She threw herself at them as a distraction.”

“Oh, that girl. Will she never learn?” Dr. Cale shook her head. “Well, it’s not the first time. I’m sure she’ll be fine. Did you get it?”

I produced the thumb drive from my pocket, holding it solemnly up for her to see. “I have a few questions before I hand it over.”

“Anything.” Dr. Cale spread her hands. “I am an open book.”

“Sherman.”

She grimaced. “Ah.”

Nathan, meanwhile, frowned at me. “Your friend from SymboGen?”

“He was a tapeworm,” I said. “Dr. Cale, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Honestly, Sal, it didn’t seem to matter, and I didn’t want to upset you more than I already had. Everything is going to come out in its own time. It seemed like a bad idea to drop it all on you at once.”

“Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

“A great deal,” said Dr. Cale easily. “But you’re learning more all the time.”

The drums were pounding in my ears. “Why do you get to decide what I should and shouldn’t know?”

“There are a lot of reasons, Sal.”

Nathan took my hand, distracting me before I could say anything that I would regret. “Let’s do those blood draws while it’s still early enough to process them.”

“Blood draws?” asked Dr. Cale.

“Sal wants a course of antiparasitics,” said Nathan. “We’re going to check for implant protein levels in her blood first. Just so we don’t get the dose wrong.”

“Ah,” said Dr. Cale. She looked at me with sympathy. “Well. I’m sure it’ll all be taken care of by morning.”

“It will be,” I said. I touched my stomach again. “This thing isn’t staying in me any longer than I have to let it.”

She was still looking at me silently when Nathan led me away from her, toward the phlebotomy supplies.

The blood draw took five minutes; the analysis for site-specific parasite proteins took a little more than twenty. I hovered behind Nathan the whole time, trying to see what he was doing. Finally, he turned away from the computer, where a series of lines and graphs I couldn’t decode had been holding his attention.

“Well?” I demanded.

“You don’t need antiparasitics,” he said.

I stared at him. “Have you not been listening to me? I said—”

“You don’t need antiparasitics because there’s no sign of a tapeworm, bioengineered or otherwise, in your system. The implant isn’t there, Sal. Maybe it died. That happens, you know.”

He was right: it was rare, but it did happen, and inevitably resulted in a lawsuit against SymboGen when someone figured out that they had been essentially unprotected for however long. “That’s impossible.”

“But it’s true.”

“But… Nathan, that’s impossible.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m allergic to dogs.” I shook my head. “It’s in my medical file. Before I got my first implant, my family couldn’t have pets. My allergies made it impossible. Nathan, Minnie, and Beverly slept on the bed last night. I have to have an implant, or I wouldn’t have been able to breathe. So where did it go? Why isn’t it shedding marker proteins? Nathan, where is my implant?”

A throat was cleared behind us. We both turned to see Dr. Cale sitting there, patiently waiting to be noticed. “Take her to the MRI scanner,” she said quietly.

Nathan and I exchanged a look. It felt like a hand was squeezing my heart. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know…

We went.

It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise to discover that Dr. Cale’s lab was outfitted with a state-of-the-art MRI scanner. I still tried to focus on my amazement, rather than anything else, as Nathan helped me into the machine. It fired to life around me, all clangs and thrumming noises, and I closed my eyes, holding perfectly still.

The noise of the machine blended into the sound of drums, becoming a backbeat that filled the world. Please, I thought. Please, it’s something else. Please, it’s not what I think it is. Please, there’s another answer…

The machine shut off around me, and the automated bed slid back out into the open. I slid back to my feet and walked over to where Nathan was pulling up the first images of my insides.

In my abdomen, where the white mass of the SymboGen implant should have been, there was nothing; just normal organs and the residual scarring from my accident. I was clean. The blood tests had been truthful. I did not have a D. symbogenesis living in my digestive system. Or in my lungs. Or in my spinal cord.

It almost wasn’t a shock when Nathan pulled up the images of my head, where white spools of tapeworm wrapped themselves around the brightly colored spots representing the regions of my brain. The worm was deeply integrated. It had clearly been there for quite some time. And I’d already known, hadn’t I? I’d figured it out when I met Adam and Tansy. I simply hadn’t wanted to remember.

I’d never seen a picture of myself before.

“The protein markers couldn’t cross the blood-brain barrier in a detectable form,” said Nathan quietly. “It’s why we couldn’t detect…” He stopped, obviously unsure how to finish the sentence. I suppose saying “you” would have been a little too on the nose.

“Mom was right,” I whispered. Her daughter—Sally Mitchell—really did die in that accident. I really was a stranger. I was a stranger to the entire human race. “Oh, my God. Nathan. Do you see…?”

“It doesn’t change anything,” he said, a sudden sharp fierceness in his voice. He stood, taking me in his arms, and held me so tightly I was afraid one or both of us might be crushed. In that moment, I wouldn’t have minded. “Do you understand me? It doesn’t change anything.”

I looked over his shoulder to where Dr. Cale sat in her wheelchair, watching us. So much made sense now. So much still had to be made sense of. “No,” I whispered. “It changes everything.”

The broken doors were open.

We had so far left to go.