by Mira Grant
“Wait,” I said. “Have you been in touch with Dr. Cale since we went to her lab? I mean, other than today, when I called about medical treatment for Joyce. I assumed that was where you went when my father couldn’t find you, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Well, sure,” said Tansy. “I’ve had to let him into the lab twice. Three times, almost, except there was an outbreak and he wound up having to work. I tried to tell him there was no point, since those folks were already symptomatic, but you know Nathan.”
Nathan looked sternly at Tansy. “I don’t care whether you and Mom have written them off as failed integrations. They’re people, and they’re sick. I took an oath to heal the sick when I chose to become a doctor.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” said Tansy. She looked at me. “He’s boring. Was he always boring, or did you suck all the interesting right out of him by being all you all the time?”
“What do you mean, ‘being all me’?” I planted my hands on my hips, frowning at her the way that Tasha frowned at recalcitrant animals at the shelter.
It didn’t seem to have any effect. “You know.” She waved her hands in my general direction. “All comfy jeans and slouchy shirts and boring hair and ‘no I don’t want to go out I don’t want to do anything I just want to stay home and talk and maybe watch a movie.’ You’re like the poster child for dull.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel like falling back into old bad habits. I’ve been ‘interesting.’ As far as I can tell, I didn’t like it very much.”
“What?” Tansy looked perplexed. “When the heck were you interesting?”
I didn’t feel like having this fight with her. Even more, I didn’t feel like summoning the ghost of Sally to float around our conversation, judging my every boring thought and action. Because Tansy was right—I might not remember the girl I used to be, but I knew enough about her to know that Sally Mitchell would have taken one look at Sal Mitchell and written me off as too boring to be tolerated. Sally liked action and adventure, fast cars and loud music, and all those other things that I just didn’t have the time for. And me?
I liked not being Sally. “Drop it,” I said shortly. “What did you mean before, when you said you wanted me to go to SymboGen? What can I possibly find out that we don’t already know?”
“Oh!” Tansy beamed, suddenly all business again. “Doctor C prepped this thumb drive for you. If you can just put it in one of their computers, it’ll totally harvest the data we need. Only it has to be inside their firewalls, and it has to be connected to a computer that the network trusts, otherwise it’s a no-go. We’ll get nothing, and then we won’t be able to stop the cousins from trashing the brains of their hosts all willy-nilly and without asking them to dinner first. And let me tell you, a rogue tapeworm chowing down on your cerebellum? Will not respect you in the morning.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “What happens after I get the information? How am I supposed to get it out of SymboGen? From the way you two were talking, they’re not just going to let me walk back out with it. They’re not going to let me walk back out at all.”
“Let us worry about that,” said Tansy, with a dismissive wave of her hand.
The drums were suddenly pounding in my ears again, as loud and undeniable as they had ever been. “No,” I snapped. She hadn’t been expecting that tone from me; she dropped her hand and stared, looking utterly bemused. Even kittens have claws. Someone should probably have told her that before they sent her to talk to me. “I’m not going to let you worry about that. If you want me to walk into danger because you’re hoping it’ll get you something you need, I’m damn well going to worry about it myself. I’m the one whose neck is on the line in this little plan of yours. So don’t tell me not to worry. Tell me what you think is going to happen if I do what you want me to do.”
“Whoa.” Tansy turned to Nathan, pointed to me, and asked, “Where did that come from? I like it!”
“Do you and my mother both have so little faith in my taste in women that you assumed I’d date a pushover?” Nathan smiled, amusement lurking under his obvious unease. “Sal doesn’t wear her aggression on her sleeve the way you do, but she’s quite capable of taking care of herself when the need arises. You’re telling us that the need has arisen. That means she gets to ask you questions that you don’t want to answer.”
“Well?” I said.
Tansy sighed. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Maybe we better sit down.”
Nathan didn’t have any fruit punch, but he did have some lemonade mix in the back of the cereal cupboard, which Tansy allowed was an acceptable substitute, after he allowed her to add a cup of sugar and a disturbing amount of red food coloring. She claimed that she could taste it. I wasn’t going to argue with her.
While Nathan was getting Tansy settled in the small dining area, I went back to the bedroom and let the dogs out. It was, in its own way, a test. If my dog didn’t trust Tansy, I wasn’t going to let her send me to my possible doom. The opinions of a Labrador retriever might seem less than relevant, but Beverly had already saved my life once before. She didn’t like people who were out to hurt me. Hopefully, that dislike would extend to situations where the danger was less immediate.
It wasn’t until the door was open that I remembered Beverly’s reaction to her original owner when he first started getting sick. If she could detect the implants taking over, how was she going to react to Tansy? And what about Minnie—would she respond the same way, once she realized what was going on?
It was too late to stop them from getting to the kitchen: Beverly was already running full-tilt down the hall with Minnie close at her heels, the duo lured by the seductive sounds of company and dishes rattling. Maybe there would be food. Maybe the food would be given to them. I ran after the dogs, hoping that I could somehow hold them both back long enough to stop them from tearing Tansy’s throat out with their teeth if things went badly—
—and stopped when I reached the kitchen just in time to hear Tansy’s ecstatic cry of “Doggies!” It was followed by her sliding out of her chair, dropping to her knees on the hardwood, and throwing her arms around Beverly’s neck. For her part, Beverly bore the embrace with her usual stoic good cheer, only the thumping of her tail against the floor betraying her ongoing interest in treats. Minnie ignored her, choosing to head for Nathan instead, sitting down at his feet and looking adoringly up at him.
“Sal,” said Nathan, sounding surprised. “You let the dogs out.”
“I didn’t want Beverly to get upset and start shredding your pillows,” I said. “Minnie just sort of came along for the ride.”
“Oh, is the black one’s name Beverly? What a good name for a doggy! Are you a good doggy? Yes, you are a good doggy, you are.” Tansy kept hugging Beverly’s neck as she spoke. “Where did she come from?”
“Her owner was taken over by his implant while we were walking in the park,” said Nathan. “Sal works at an animal shelter. She couldn’t just leave Beverly running wild. Somehow, that turned into ‘we have a dog now.’”
I couldn’t help noticing the “we” in his statement, and I approved. “She seems to like you. I was a little worried about that.”
“Oh, animals totally like me. They like Adam, too. It’s only people who are in transition that they don’t like. They can smell the way the body gets all confused, and it freaks them right the fuck out.” Tansy gave Beverly one more squeeze before rising from the floor. “Funny story: when I was first staggering around trying to figure out how my legs worked, I totally got swarmed by bats. Like, little tiny Dracula-style bats. I’m not sure what they thought they were going to do, but wow, were they gonna do it as hard as they could.” She chuckled. “Little idiots.”
“So animals only react negatively to people in the process of getting sick?” I asked, giving Beverly a pat on the head as I walked past her to take a seat at the table. “What about sleepwalkers?”
“They’re still all scrambled. It’s like so
mebody’s running a big blender in the chemicals that live inside the brain. It’s not until that settles down that animals are going to be cool with them again.” Tansy sipped her bloody-looking, over-sugared lemonade before adding casually, “Not that it matters for most people. I mean, they’re never going to get better, so who cares if the dog doesn’t like them anymore, you know? They’ve got bigger problems.”
As fascinating as I found the discussion of animal reactions to the sleepwalkers, it was clear that we were going to get utterly derailed if we didn’t get back on topic soon. “What is the plan for getting me out of SymboGen?” I asked.
Tansy blinked, trying to look guileless. It didn’t work. I raised both eyebrows, and waited until she sighed and said, “Oh, fine. You know, you’re boring even when you’re not being boring. It’s like a gift. So here’s the deal: we have some back doors into SymboGen. If you get in, we can use them to get you out.”
I blinked. “If you have back doors into SymboGen, why do you need me to go in at all? Can’t you just use your back doors for, you know, door purposes? Like, accessing a place through the door?” I paused, grimacing. “Great, now I’m starting to talk like you. What I’m asking is this: If you have a way of getting into SymboGen, what do you need me for? Can’t you do this more safely if I don’t get involved?”
“Sure, if all we want to do is fiddle around on the lab levels and not get anything useful,” said Tansy. “We’ve been in and out of there a hundred times. The genomes aren’t being stored in the general labs, and we don’t have anybody who can access the private levels anymore. Not since our last spy went and got herself all sick. I swear, if the cousins understood English, I’d give them a piece of my mind for eating a piece of hers…”
“You lost a spy to the sleepwalking sickness?” I was scrambling to keep things straight. This was all starting to feel like some big action movie, and I didn’t have a copy of the cast list. Or the script.
“Yeah, but she didn’t have access to anything anyway, so it’s not like it matters.” Tansy waved a hand, dismissing their lost spy as an inconvenience. “Just about the only thing she ever did right was keep an eye on you, and she wasn’t the only route we had to that, so it’s not like—”
“Wait,” I said, cutting her off before she could say “not like it matters” again. If I had to hear her say that one more time, she might wind up wearing her fruit punch. “Are you telling me Chave was working for you?”
“Well, yeah.” Tansy frowned at me. “What, you hadn’t figured that out yet?”
“Sal, I know it’s tempting, but please don’t kill her,” said Nathan. “I don’t want to lose my security deposit on your first night here.”
“How long were you expecting it to take?” I asked.
“It would be nice if we could hold out for at least a week without any major stains or structural damage.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I focused back on Tansy. “How long was Chave working for you?”
“We got her hired.” Tansy ignored my stare as she continued, “We just need you to get in, get into Dr. Banks’s office—or to a computer that’s connected to his computer, it’s not really important which one you use, although you might have better luck if you use his actual personal machine—and plug in the thumb drive. Wait about ten seconds, and then head for the labs. We’ll be able to evacuate you.”
“And if you fail?” I asked, as mildly as I could.
“Try to throw the thumb drive under something before they take you down. We’ll find a way to get it back later.”
I stared at her. So did Nathan. Tansy looked between us, brows furrowing in frustration.
“What, did you think this was some kind of game?” she asked. “That you could open the broken doors, look through, and decide that this wasn’t for you, so sorry, you were just going to go home and have a nice cup of hot cocoa and not think about it? Puh-leeze. This isn’t that kind of picture book, and once you’ve opened the doors, you’re sort of required to step through them. Doctor C warned you when she first made contact. You knew what you were getting into.”
“I wasn’t aware that you and my mother were going to begin treating Sal like she was somehow expendable,” said Nathan stiffly.
“Your mother swallowed a genetically modified organism that hadn’t been cleared for human use because she thought it was important she continue with her work,” said Tansy. Her voice was surprisingly level, all the good cheer and manic instability suddenly gone. It was like she’d flipped a switch, turning off the chipper-but-strange persona she usually projected in favor of something substantially darker. “What in the world would make you look at a woman who was willing to do that and think ‘she won’t send me or my little girlfriend into danger’? This is so much bigger than you are, for all of us.”
“What do you mean, it’s bigger than we are?” I asked, before Nathan could say something we’d regret later. His mouth was pressed into a hard line, and he looked like he was on the verge of punching Tansy—something that would probably get us both killed.
“How do you think people will react when they find out the implants are definitely behind the sleepwalking sickness?” asked Tansy. “They’re not going to be happy. They’re going to start fighting back.”
“Well… what’s the problem with that? Those people had their bodies first. They’re not like the girl who used to own your body. She moved out.”
Tansy smiled bitterly. “Yes, thank you, I’m aware that I was a rental property. But here’s the thing, genius girl: the treatment to remove a motivated implant from its host might work. Might. It also might kill the host, and the implant, and then nobody wins. There has to be a solution that makes the cousins go back to sleep unless the conditions are right. There just has to be.”
She looked, briefly, so lost that I wanted to reach for her, take her hand and tell her that everything was going to be okay. That seemed about as smart as hitting her. “So what good does sending me into SymboGen do?”
“If we have the genome of the new cousins, we can figure out how to talk to them. Tell them that they gotta back off, or nobody’s coming out on the winning side. Slavery sucks. Dying is worse.”
I’d never really thought of the SymboGen implants as being slaves to their hosts. Then again, until very recently, I hadn’t thought of them as thinking creatures, even if they didn’t really start to think on a sapient level until they had plugged themselves into a human brain.
“All right,” I said. I didn’t look at Nathan. If I looked at Nathan, I knew that I would lose my cool. “I’ll do it.”
Tansy clapped her hands and beamed. “Oh,” she said, “won’t this be fun?”
No, I thought. It won’t.
But I didn’t say anything at all.
-
Some people will always be ungrateful. It’s an unfortunate truth of the human race that we see everything as a zero-sum game. For them, if I have happiness, there’s less happiness for you; if I have health, there’s less health for you. When you look at life that way, it’s inevitable that you’ll start looking for the catch in everything. I can’t possibly have pioneered the genetic research that led to the creation of the Intestinal Bodyguard™ because I wanted to help people, or because I wanted to improve the health of the nation. It can’t even be because I understand that a healthier population leads to increased herd immunity, thus benefitting me when my taxes don’t have to pay for pandemic preparedness. No. I have to be doing something sinister. I have to have a hidden agenda.
Some people won’t be happy until they prove that no one means well, no one is trying to serve the greater good, and there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.
—FROM “KING OF THE WORMS,” AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. STEVEN BANKS, CO-FOUNDER OF SYMBOGEN. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ROLLING STONE, FEBRUARY 2027.
Certain lines can’t be uncrossed,
Certain maps will get you lost,
Once you’re past the border, then you’ll have to play the gam
e.
Roll the dice but count the cards,
Break the glass but keep the shards.
The world is out of order. It’s been broken since you came.
The broken doors are hidden in the blood and in the bone.
My darling child, be careful now, and don’t go out alone.
—FROM DON’T GO OUT ALONE, BY SIMONE KIMBERLEY, PUBLISHED 2006 BY LIGHTHOUSE PRESS. CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT.
Chapter 18
AUGUST 2027
Tansy left after we finished making plans, pausing only to press the promised thumb drive into my hand. Nathan didn’t say anything as he walked her to the door. Then he walked back to me, took me by the hands, and led me to the bedroom, to the bed that was ours for the very first time, not just his. This was my home, too.
I just had to hope it would be my home for more than a day before I went and got myself killed.
“Sal…” he began. I stopped his mouth with a kiss, and conversation became unimportant for a while, replaced by the twin goals of removing our clothing as fast as possible and keeping our lips on each other at all times. The drums were back in my ears, but softer now, a signal of excitement and not anger or fear. This was where I belonged. This place, this skin, tonight. Everything else was in the future, and the future would have to wait for a few hours. I was doing this because I enjoyed being alive; because I wanted to stay that way. So it was time for me to celebrate my condition, even if it was only for the moment.
When we were done, both of us sweaty and satiated in the way that only accompanies really good sex after emotional turmoil, Beverly stuck her nose into the room and whined, signaling the need to go out. I groaned, starting to push myself up onto my elbows.
“Don’t worry about it.” Nathan pressed a kiss into the crook of my neck, close enough to the bruise from USAMRIID’s sedatives that it made my skin ache with phantom pain. “You’ve had a long day. I’ll take the dogs out.”
