Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2)

by Grant, Mira

  “Oh,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Adam, can I ask you something sort of personal?”

  Adam sat up a little straighter, going still. “Yes,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. “You can ask me anything.”

  “I…” I stopped. I didn’t know how to frame the question that came next. I didn’t even know how to start. “Did you know I wasn’t human?” seemed too accusatory, and “Have you noticed anything strange about me?” felt almost, well, coy. I finally settled for “Do you like being you?”

  A wide smile spread across Adam’s face, tight-lipped, so that his teeth were concealed. I realized with a start that he’d never shown his teeth when he smiled at me. That was a mammalian gesture, and the part of him—the part of me—that drove those reactions wasn’t mammalian. “I love it,” he said. “I have hands, and feet, and fingers, and eyes, and it’s wonderful, Sal, it’s just wonderful. There’s so much world. I could live a hundred years and never see all of the world that there is to see. Mom gave it to me. You know? Mom made it so I could walk and dance and sing and run bacteriological cultures for her and it’s just wonderful. You know that, right? That life is wonderful.” His smile faded, replaced by a look of grave concern.

  I cocked my head, studying him. “You knew as soon as you met me that I was like you, didn’t you?” I asked. “That’s why you’re trying so hard to convince me that life is wonderful. Because you want me to love it the way you do.”

  “You already do,” he said earnestly. “You wouldn’t have come looking for the broken doors if you didn’t love life. Curiosity is what it looks like when you’re in love with the world.”

  “Did Dr. Cale teach you that?” I asked.

  Adam nodded. “Mom says you know someone is getting tired of living when they stop asking questions.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I know.” He looked down at his hands. “I knew before you came here. Mom told me and Tansy all about you—Tansy so she’d know who she was supposed to be keeping track of, and me because she wanted me to know about both my—” Adam cut himself off midsentence, glancing up almost guiltily.

  I offered him a wan smile. “Both your sisters,” I said. “She wanted you to know about both your sisters.”

  “Yeah.” Adam’s relief was palpable. “She said you’d come find us one day, because you were her daughter, and her daughters were always going to be curious. It’s in the way we’re made.”

  “I guess I have a lot to learn. You’re going to have to teach me, you know. I don’t really know much.”

  Adam abruptly spread his arms and lunged forward, moving so fast that I didn’t have a chance to react before he was hugging me hard, his head resting on my shoulder and his arms locked around my chest. I stiffened until I realized what was going on, and then I relaxed, bit by bit, and even raised my own hands to return the hug as best I could.

  “I’m going to be the best brother, you’ll see,” he said. “I’m going to teach you everything, and we’ll both be here when Tansy comes home, and then she’ll like you, because you’ll be with us, not living all by yourself. We’ve both been so worried about you!”

  The funny thing was, I believed him… and I wanted him to be the best brother. I wanted a family, a family that was mine, not Sally’s castoffs and hand-me-downs. I breathed in and he breathed out, until bit by bit our breathing synchronized, and the pounding of the drums in my ears quieted, becoming nothing but the distant thudding of my heart. Adam let go, sitting back on his haunches. I dropped my hands back to the cot, just looking at him. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it; there were no words.

  “Are you okay?” he asked solemnly.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “This morning, I thought I was a human being, and I thought my friend Sherman was dead, and I thought… I thought a lot of things. Now everything is changing, and it’s changing so fast that I can’t really keep up. So I don’t know if I’m okay.” I paused. “But I think I’m going to be.”

  Adam nodded. “Going to be is almost as good as is,” he said. “I’ll be here. I’ll help as much as I can.”

  I smiled. “See, that right there makes me closer to okay. I’m glad I don’t have to do this alone.”

  “Me, too.” He climbed off the cot, bare feet slapping the tile floor. “I need to go tell Mom you’re awake—she asked me to let her know as soon as you woke up, but I thought it was more important that we talk a little bit first. That was right, wasn’t it?”

  “Right as rain,” I assured him. I peeled back the blanket, finding that I was as barefoot as Adam, although someone had dressed me in my shirt and jeans while I was unconscious. I stuck the fingers of one hand under my waistband, and decided that Nathan had dressed me. I couldn’t see Dr. Cale remembering to tell her interns to put my underwear back on. “Why don’t I come with you?”

  This time Adam’s smile was almost bright enough to light the room.

  There were more technicians around than I had seen on previous visits to Dr. Cale’s lab. They swarmed around the equipment like ants, some of them checking cultures or typing at workstations, while right next to them others broke down shelves and packed glassware with an eerily silent efficiency. Adam led me unflinchingly through their midst, his hand clasped tightly around mine, like he had absolute faith that nothing here could hurt either one of us. A few of the technicians turned as we passed, and while they seemed perfectly comfortable with looking directly at Adam, their eyes skittered off me like I’d been Teflon-coated while I was asleep.

  Seeing my confusion, Adam said, “It’s because Mom finally told them you were my sister, and they’re all getting used to the idea. They knew there was a control subject in the wild, and I think a few people—like Daisy, maybe—sort of suspected that it was you, but suspecting isn’t the same as knowing, you know?”

  Did I ever. “They know I’m really a tapeworm? And who’s Daisy?”

  “She works for Mom, and everybody knows.” Adam nodded, seeming to think that this was perfectly normal. For him, it sort of was. SymboGen had dedicated years of therapy and education to making me into a perfect human being; all Dr. Cale had ever forced Adam to learn was how to be a decent person. Maybe those two things weren’t as closely related as I had always automatically assumed. “They don’t care. Or they won’t care, once they get over the shock of meeting the control subject without realizing it. I think some of them are just a little shaky about it, you know?”

  “It could’ve been them,” I said quietly. “If one of them had had an implant, and been in that car accident…”

  Adam’s head whipped around to stare at me, his eyes wide and somehow affronted, like I had just insulted us both. “It could not!” he said. “Both parts of you had to be strong, and had to be clever in just the right ways, or you could never have become one person. You did it without any help, and that’s more than me or Tansy or even…” He stopped, affronted expression melting into guilt.

  “I know about Sherman,” I said, the taste of his name on my tongue setting my stomach roiling again. I was starting to feel numb all the way down to my toes. Too many revelations at once will do that to a girl, I guess. “I get what you’re saying, Adam. I’m just… I’m like the people here, a little. I’m still shaky, too.”

  “You be as shaky as you want,” he said. “I’ll be here to help you when you’re done.” He smiled at me.

  I smiled back. I couldn’t help it.

  We had walked maybe half the length of the bowling alley while we were talking and had stopped just outside a curtain of sliced plastic, cut lengthwise, like the screen on a butterfly aviary or a grocery store produce department’s storage area. I looked at it and swallowed hard. There was something impersonal and medicinal about those dangly strips of waxy plastic, like nothing I was on this side would really matter once I was on that side.

  “The broken doors are open,” I murmured.

  “That’s my favorite book,” said Adam.

&nbs
p; “Of course it’s your favorite book,” I said. Don’t Go Out Alone had been written by a good friend of Dr. Cale. It had been a key part of Nathan’s childhood. It was only natural that it would be a key part of Adam’s as well. I was starting to be a little jealous. I was the only member of our family who hadn’t grown up with that book.

  Adam let go of my hand. “If you’re still shaky, I think you’ll feel better talking to Mom and Nathan without me. It’ll be easier to pretend that you’re all humans, and not just all people.”

  I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, and that his absence wouldn’t make anything easier at all—that no one ever made anything easier by walking away from it. I couldn’t. When I tried to form the words my lips shaped only silence, and in the end I had to force myself to smile, nod, and say, “I think that might be a good idea. I’ll come find you, though, when we’re done. I think I’m…” I faltered, and then continued, “I think I’m going to need you to teach me a lot of things about the way life is now.”

  “Always,” said Adam. Before I could react, he hugged me, let me go, and trotted off into the lab, moving with a lanky sureness that somehow broadcast how comfortable he was in the shape of his own skin.

  It seemed indecent, almost: he was a worm wearing a boy like a suit. Shouldn’t he have seemed awkward, or shambled like the sleepwalkers, even? Something—anything—to betray the fact that he wasn’t what he seemed to be. I hadn’t felt that way about him before. I considered the emotion for a moment, spinning it around in my head as I tried to find the angle that would tell me where it was coming from. In the end, though, the answer was so simple that I almost missed it:

  Guilt. I hadn’t been guilty when I’d seen Adam before; I hadn’t been allowing myself to understand my own origins, and so I’d assumed I was my body’s original owner. Now I was a stranger in my own skin, and if I couldn’t make myself move awkwardly or look visibly like an intruder—like a thief—I’d think those horrible things at Adam—at my brother.

  “No, I won’t,” I ordered myself sternly, and stepped through the plastic sheeting, into the small, white-walled lab beyond.

  It was maybe eight feet to a side, creating a space that would have been borderline claustrophobic if that sort of thing had bothered me at all. As it was, it struck me as nicely snug, which meant that it probably made most people uncomfortable. Like the majority of the lab spaces in the bowling alley, this one was isolated only in the most technical sense of the word. The walls didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling, and powerful, if quiet fans were occupied in sucking air up from the floor and spitting it over the top of those three-quarter walls, creating a sort of poor man’s negative pressure zone. It wasn’t quite enough to qualify as a “clean room,” and wouldn’t even have necessarily worked as a quarantine zone back at the shelter, but it was clearly enough for Dr. Cale to feel comfortable setting up some serious hardware. An array of computer towers occupied one wall, their constant buzz setting up a low thrumming sound that vibrated through the soles of my bare feet. Nathan and Dr. Cale were both there already, their attention focused on the same monitor.

  “I’m awake,” I announced. They both turned toward me, Nathan with naked relief, Dr. Cale with clinical interest that was so closely akin to the way that Dr. Banks used to look at me that I quailed slightly, shrinking in on myself. “I mean, if it matters. I woke up,” I finished awkwardly.

  “How do you feel?” asked Nathan, starting to take a step toward me.

  Dr. Cale caught his arm, stopping him before he could fully commit to the motion. “I’m sure we’re both very interested in how Sal is feeling, but we need to finish this, Nathan.” She flashed me a quick, strained smile. “I’m glad to see you up and about. Do you need something to drink? You hit your head pretty hard when you fell, and you’d just given blood. Some orange juice would probably do you a lot of good. Go find Adam, he can take you to get some juice.”

  I frowned. “You’re trying to avoid telling me something. You don’t normally try to get me to go away and find juice.”

  “Untrue: I gave you juice the very first time you came here,” Dr. Cale replied. “And it’s not like you’ve spent that much time with me. Maybe all of my personal relationships are heavily dependent on juice consumption.”

  “You gave me juice that was in the room where we were, and there’s a mini fridge in the corner over there, so if you were that dependent on juice for normal social interaction, you’d be telling me to go and get myself a glass, not telling me to go find Adam.” I folded my arms. “I may not be a human being, but I’m not stupid either. What’s going on? Why do you want me to leave?”

  “I told you,” said Nathan, clearly directing his words at Dr. Cale. He was smiling slightly when he turned to face me, although the expression died quickly, replaced by solemnity. Looking at them both, I was struck again by just how much he resembled his mother sometimes. Genetics mattered. “Sal, we’ve been going over the data that you were able to recover from SymboGen. Thank you again for doing that. I didn’t want you to, but I’m coming to understand just how necessary it was.”

  I worried my lower lip between my teeth before asking, “How bad?”

  “I don’t know. We’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s there—it’s only been a few hours.” He shrugged, his arms flopping limply, like they belonged to a doll and not to a man. “How does the end of the human race sound to you?”

  “Oh,” I said, and looked to Dr. Cale. She nodded. That was all it took: one little nod to confirm the end of humanity. “That’s bad,” I said.

  Oh my God, Steven. I always knew that you were a proud man—that your hubris was, in its way, even worse than mine, and I was willing to throw away everything in the pursuit of godhood—but I never thought that you would actually go this far. Or was it you at all? Did you get so caught up in the myth that you forgot to be the man? Was Sherman able to do this all under your nose?

  It doesn’t really matter now. What’s done is done.

  May God have mercy on us all.

  –FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. SHANTI CALE, SEPTEMBER 21, 2027

  Silent house and silent hall,

  Room so big, and you so small,

  Looking in the closet, looking underneath the stair.

  I know just what you hope to find,

  But this is all I left behind:

  I hope that you can listen to a frightened monster’s prayer.

  The broken doors are hidden. You must not wait to be shown.

  My darling ones, 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 2

  SEPTEMBER 2027

  The worms being distributed by SymboGen were definitely Dr. Cale’s work: her fingerprints were all over their baseline genetic code, at least according to Nathan, who understood that kind of thing. It looked like a long list of amino acids and DNA chains to me, all of them scrolling by so fast that I wouldn’t have been able to follow them across the screen even if I hadn’t been dyslexic. Still, I had no reason to doubt him when he said that no one but Dr. Cale could have done the core work.

  “My original specimens had a very limited amount of human DNA at their disposal, and it was specifically DNA coded to the human immune system,” said Dr. Cale. “It lessened immune response, which made it more likely that the body would view the worm as a friendly guest, and not a hostile interloper. It allowed for a better bond. It was intended to make things… I don’t know. Easier. Better. Between that and toxoplasmosis, there was a very good chance that nothing would be rejected.”

  I frowned. “I know all this. Why are you telling me things I already know?”

  “Because she doesn’t want to think about the things that you don’t know yet,” said Nathan. “Dr. Banks has been a busy boy.”

  “We don’t know that it was Steven,” said Dr. Cale sharply. She turned a glare on Nathan. “The lab protoc
ols at SymboGen have been lax ever since he decided that he’d rather play rock star than stay chained to a desk doing science. There have been a lot of opportunities for unethical people to tamper with our work.”

  “And what, Mother? It’s somehow worse if the man who blackmailed you into deserting your family is the one who made the changes to the genome? Is that the piece that finally proves you made the wrong choice? Because I think you of all people should be willing to accept how unethical he is.” Nathan matched her glare for glare before turning his back on her, focusing on me and saying, “The amount of human DNA in the newest generation of worms has more than doubled, and there have been some changes to the toxoplasmosis samples as well, although we haven’t had time to figure out exactly what those changes will mean.”

  “It’s worse if this was him, because he knew better,” said Dr. Cale. “Out of everyone in the world, he knew better.”

  This felt like the sort of circular conversation that could go on for hours. I interrupted, saying, “We already knew there was human DNA in the tapeworms.”

  “Yes, but it was a small enough amount that it should still have been possible to use most common antiparasitics without killing the human host.” Nathan grimaced before continuing, “That’s why you reacted so strongly to the antiparasitics, even though you didn’t die from them. The implants were tailored to break down anthelmintics, to prevent them from being killed by normal medical intervention. If they hadn’t been, the antiparasitics could have…” He trailed off.

  “They could have killed me,” I concluded. “But my body—Sally’s body, I mean, not the actual me—that would have been fine, right?” It was a surprisingly easy sentence to make myself utter. I was adapting. That, or I was still in shock. I hoped for the former, but I’d take either one if it kept me calm and capable of being an active part of my own future.