Symbiont

INTERLUDE II: DIPLOTENE

October 2027: Tansy

Still here I’m still here I’m still me I’m still here.

It hurts.

It hurts so bad, and I keep on still being me, I keep on still being here, but I’m starting to think that maybe not being me—maybe not being here—would be better, because absence hurts other people. Absence doesn’t hurt you.

The lights were too bright for my eyes. That was happening more and more, now that Dr. Banks had stopped taking things out of me and started putting things inside me instead. Tears were running down my cheeks, even though I wasn’t crying. I’d learned a lot about what crying felt like since he brought me here, since he strapped me down and started taking whatever he wanted out of me. He was running out of pieces. That’s why he’d decided to introduce some new variables.

“Now, this may hurt a little,” he’d cautioned. “But don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. The pain is temporary, but the knowledge we’re going to get in exchange is forever. You’re going to help me transform the world. Isn’t that wonderful?”

I hadn’t answered him. I hadn’t been able to answer in days, not since he’d sent two of his flunkies into the room to rip out four of my molars, all without the benefit of painkillers or sedation. Knocking me out apparently messed with my reactions in a way that would slow down the all-important research. “You understand,” that was what he had said before and after every procedure. He always had the same smug little smile on his face, like he wasn’t doing anything wrong, but was doing so much right.

It hurt. I hurt. For the first time since I woke up in this body, with its wonderful hands and eyes and legs, I could feel both of my selves independently. The human half of me was numb and distant, filled with pains I didn’t have a name for. The invertebrate half felt like it was on fire, skin scored with a hundred tiny cuts, fluids leaking out into my human brain and making my thoughts even more muddled than usual.

The lights in the room never varied. They were always bright and burning, too white for my eyes. They hadn’t fed me once. All my nutrients came in through a tube, plunged deep into my arm and filling me until my veins felt swollen and tight, like they were becoming worms in their own right. I hoped that they would break out soon, and that they would be able to slither their way to freedom.

It was getting difficult to remember anything before the room. I had a name once—Sandy or Tammy or something like that. I had a family, a mother who was a brilliant scientist and a brother who was smarter than I’d ever be. I thought I remembered going sledding, but that couldn’t have been true, because I didn’t remember snow.

I remembered Sal. I remembered her running away and leaving me behind. I remembered being glad. I clung to that gladness as hard as I could, because I knew that if it ever managed to slip away, I’d only remember how much I hated her. She shouldn’t have left me behind. Not even if I told her to, not even if her survival mattered more than almost anything else, because she was the one who carried the data we’d infiltrated SymboGen to take. She left me, and I wanted to hate her, and I wanted to love her, and that meant remembering how her desertion made me feel.

There was a click from the far side of the room as the door swung open. I kept my eyes closed. Opening them wouldn’t have done me any good. I hadn’t been able to turn my head in what felt like forever.

“How’s my girl today?” asked Dr. Banks, as genial and fatherly as ever. “I see you’re not moving. That’s good. That means the nerve blockers we’ve placed on your spine are doing their job. It’s important that you keep still. I’m sure you understand that by now.”

I kept my eyes closed.

“I know you’re not dead, Tansy. I can see your chest moving, and the monitor tells me that your vital signs are still clear and strong. You’re a fighter. You’ve got a lot of fight left in you before you’ll even be able to consider giving up on us.”

His words filled me with more despair than I would have believed possible. It felt like I’d been his captive for weeks. It could have been days, or even hours. With the constant light and the lack of solid food, I had nothing to measure time by. The sadistic bastard could do whatever he wanted to me, for as long as he wanted to, and it wouldn’t matter. I was never going to get away.

“Kill me,” I whispered.

“I intend to,” said Dr. Banks, with amiable honesty. “After we’ve wrung every drop of useful data out of you, we’re going to take you apart and find the things we missed on the first pass. But you’ve got some time before that, and we’re going to spend it together, learning everything you don’t even know you have in you to teach.”

I didn’t think I had it in me to scream.

I was wrong.