Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2)

by Grant, Mira

  Most California biotech had started in Silicon Valley, eschewing San Francisco’s high rents and prohibitive restrictions on keeping livestock. But money, as they say, talks, and the biotech industry didn’t want to spend forever in the shadow of the computer revolution. Bit by bit the big firms had oozed their way into the seaside communities, setting up shop in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and yes, San Francisco, home of SymboGen, the biggest biotech monster of them all. Dr. Banks had tried to explain the reasoning to me a few times, focusing on the substantial hydroelectric potential of the Pacific Ocean, as well as the availability of marine biomass. He’d dodged my questions about overfishing and conservation, responding to them with one of those warm, paternal smiles that always sent shivers running up and down my spine.

  “Besides, Sally, an ocean view says you’ve got the money to afford it, and that makes investors feel better about opening their wallets for you. The more money we have, the better the care we’ll be able to provide—now, and for the rest of your life. It’s a win-win situation, don’t you think?”

  Those had been his exact words. As I sank down into the darkness behind my eyelids, trying to focus on the drums pounding in my ears, I wondered what he was saying now. Did he still think the ocean view was worth it when it came with geographic isolation and possible captivity in a city that was about to become a living hell?

  I didn’t know, and there was no way for me to ask him.

  The drums were erratic at first—soothing, but irregular, thanks to my lingering upset over Nathan’s driving. They smoothed out as I sank deeper into my own mind, retreating down into the hot warm dark that was the first thing I remembered. My old therapist, Dr. Morrison, used to tell me that the hot warm dark was a representation of the womb, a result of my damaged psyche trying to regress to a time when it experienced absolute safety. He’d been very, very wrong, but he’d been right in a way, too, because he’d been claiming that I was trying to go back to a simpler time, and well…

  I was pretty sure the hot warm dark was my only real memory of my time before I joined with Sally Mitchell’s unused brain. A time when all I needed to do was eat, and occasionally shift positions in her digestive system, aligning my spreading flower of a mouth with another rich source of the nutrients I needed to survive. I wouldn’t have gone back to that state of being for anything—sapience is addictive—but it had been good while it lasted, hadn’t it? All my memories of the hot warm dark told me it had been. It made so much more sense now.

  San Francisco was fading into memory and shadow behind us, surrendered to the sleepwalkers and the grasp of the coming crisis. I didn’t know if we were ever going to go back to our lives; I didn’t know how bad things were going to get. Being inhuman didn’t give me the ability to see what was coming. Too bad. We could have really used a little foresight right about then. We needed to stop Sherman. It was too late to save the sleepwalkers, but maybe Nathan and Dr. Cale could find a way to make the implants stop waking up, or at least stop them from accidentally hurting their hosts. Maybe we could figure out how to make that information public without bringing USAMRIID and SymboGen down on our heads, and maybe we could save the rest of the people, both human and chimera, who still needed saving.

  It was a lot of “maybe,” but I wasn’t done yet. I thought of Tansy. My sister. Maybe she’d managed to fight off the sleepwalkers and hide somewhere, injured but alive. Maybe she’d come home, make a joke about zombie brains, and ask me to go sledding. Maybe…

  “Maybe” was becoming addictive. I was so tired. I breathed in, letting the embrace of the hot warm dark draw me further down, and Nathan drove on, carrying us into the uncertain future.

  INTERLUDE I: SENESCENCE

  Sometimes I wonder if this is how God felt. And then I wonder why He didn’t just let us all burn.

  –DR. RICHARD JABLONSKY

  I can be your friend, or I can be your enemy. Isn’t it better when we’re friends?

  –SHERMAN LEWIS (SUBJECT VIII, ITERATION III)

  September 2027: Tansy

  The last thing I saw before I passed out was a living wall of human bodies being driven by the semi-sapient minds of my opportunistic cousins, tapeworms who shared everything with me except for their specific method of taking over their hosts and oh, right, a basic understanding of hygiene. Some of those things were rank, like they had never met a shower they didn’t want to avoid taking.

  But their teeth were sharp and their hands were strong and if I sound like I’m being flippant, it’s because I’d never encountered anything that terrifying in my short, bloody existence. Dr. C says I deflect things that stress me out, mostly because I don’t want to trigger another of the seizures that I used to get when I was newly integrating with my host. She says it’s natural and normal and that she’ll get me a better host someday, one where the brain hasn’t been pre-damaged and I can fit myself into the neural net without gaps and glitches. I kinda think she’s lying. I kinda think she likes the fact that she has a damaged daughter to send into danger, because it means she can keep Adam home and safe without feeling bad about it, or feeling like she needs to start training him for the field. As long as I’m a broken doll, she can send me through the broken doors all she wants. I don’t mind, though. I’m good at breaking things.

  Sal was gone. She was running away again—that girl was always running away, from her family, from herself, from the truth—only this time I was glad to see her go, because maybe she’d get out. Maybe Nathan was as smart as our mom said he was, and he’d be able to keep Sal safe long enough for her to figure out what she really was. Maybe she’d realize that we were sisters, and then she’d miss me. She’d be sorry that I was gone.

  It was a good thought. I’d always hoped that someday, someone would miss me. I held on to it as the bullets ran out and the fingers dug into my arms and the teeth bit into my flesh, and then it was all too much and I blacked out, toppling back into the nothingness that was always waiting at the edges of my damaged mind.

  Dying hurt less than I expected it to. That was sort of a surprise. But I guess maybe it doesn’t count, because I wasn’t actually dead.

  Not all the way, anyhow.

  I was in some fucking sewer or something when I woke up. Everything was all yuck and slime and this smell like something had died down there. I tried to sit up. The manacles on my wrists drew tight before I could get more than halfway there, and the shock of the sudden resistance had me flat on my back before the screaming pain in my left shoulder and right hip could finish registering. I lay there panting, staring up at a ceiling that I couldn’t even see through the gloom. The pain was bad enough to make me want to scream and claw at the walls.

  Pain is an illusion, because this body is an illusion, I told myself sternly. It’s just a Petri dish that you’re living in, that’s all. You can move out any time you need to, and that means pain is nothing but an inconvenience. Now breathe.

  I breathed.

  The pain began to fade, leaving a little bit at a time, until I felt like a husked-out shell of a girl, empty of sensation where I should have been full. There wasn’t even a tingling to remind me of the limits of my skin. Everything was darkness and numbness and the distant smell of whatever dead thing had become my new roommate. Charming. Maybe whatever it was would give me its phone number, and we could be BFFs.

  When I was positive that the pain had passed, however momentarily, I closed my eyes, trading one darkness for another, and began flexing my toes, one by one, testing to see how many of them would respond to me. To my delight, all ten were present, accounted for, and miraculously unbroken, although when they moved, they did it without resistance: whoever had chained me up had also taken my shoes and socks away. That was less than completely peachy keen, by any objective standard. I scowled into the dark. I liked those shoes. They were big and black and stompy, and I hardly ever tripped over the toes anymore.

  Toes were good: how about fingers? I repeated the slow flex, this time adding as much of a
n extension as I could, just to see whether I had my full range of motion. My left hand responded as expected, although there was a little pulling in my palm that told me there was a split in the skin, even if I couldn’t feel it at the moment. Pain had completely vacated the premises, and that wasn’t a good thing. Pain was useful. It was an illusion, sure, but it was an illusion that kept me from shoving my hand into a whirling garbage disposal, or touching a lit stove burner. I needed pain to remind me that my Petri dish of a physical form had limits, and that failure to observe those limits would have serious consequences.

  My right hand was more of a problem. Three of the fingers wouldn’t move at all, and I couldn’t be sure whether that was because they were broken or because they were missing; not in the dark, not with my body refusing to return vital information about how bad my injuries were. My thumb only moved about half as far as it should have, and the finger that was responding—my pointer finger—didn’t have the range of motion to tell me whether the other fingers were there or not. I could have been missing half my hand and I wouldn’t have known.

  I stared up into the dark, waiting for my eyes to adjust. My eyes did not adjust. I added “maybe I’m blind” to the list of things that were potentially wrong with me.

  Look at it this way, Tansy, I thought, trying for an upbeat internal monologue. If your current body is totes wrecked, Dr. C will have to give you a new one.

  Assuming she could find me. I was chained up in a sewer. The sleepwalkers hadn’t done that: they didn’t have the intelligence, much less the remaining manual dexterity. They’d have ripped me to pieces to fill their bellies, eating me—clothes and all—to satisfy the hunger that drove them. Someone must have intervened; someone who wanted me alive, for whatever reason.

  The more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of someone “wanting me alive.” It smacked of mad science, and I should know, since I’m sort of a mad scientist’s devastatingly beautiful daughter and all—or maybe just her devastating daughter, since I’m pretty good at the destruction thing—and mad science never ended well for the people who woke up in chains. If they were lucky it was the Island of Dr. Moreau and they got to be wacky cat-people with claws and all. If they were unlucky…

  Yeah, I needed to get out of here. “Hello?” My voice was incredibly loud in the sewer, which was neat: it told me that I was in a very enclosed space, probably no more than six feet to a side. I’m not a bat, but I know stuff. “Is there anyone there?”

  Nothing answered me but the distant drip of nasty-smelling water. I scowled at the dark.

  “Hello?” I tried again. “Look, I’m all like, barefoot and lying in yuck, and that’s a serious infection risk, so could you maybe come and get me and take me somewhere clean? Or better, give me back my shoes and let me go? I promise not to murder you even a little.”

  I thought it was a very reasonable offer. Whoever was holding me here either wasn’t listening or didn’t agree, because there was still no answer. I sighed.

  “Right. Well, when you want to talk to me, you obviously know where I’ll be. Just an FYI though, that murder thing gets more likely the longer you keep me here.” I closed my eyes—there seemed to be no real point in keeping them open—and took a deep, slow breath, trying to center myself. Maybe if I could get my body to start listening to me again, I could turn the pain back on. That would be nice. At least then I’d know what I was working with.

  The dark inside my eyes wasn’t like the dark outside my eyes. That dark was absolute and artificial, unrelenting in its blackness. This dark was comfortable. This dark was the color of home, where everything was going to be okay, and where it didn’t matter if I had a damaged host. We were all the same, down in the dark.

  I must have fallen asleep, because when I became aware of my surroundings again, the pain was back, filling my body until I felt like a balloon on the verge of popping. I gritted my teeth and made a small grunting sound, wondering why I’d wanted this back. I mean, pain sort of sucks, right? So why had I been lying in the dark wishing it would show up?

  My fingers were all there. I could feel them now, little sticks of burning agony curled against my palm and almost certainly broken. Oh, right. That was why. It’s hard to do anything useful with your body when you can’t figure out where you left it, and pain was the first step toward doing something useful.

  I opened my eyes, and promptly squeaked and closed them again as the bright white light that had replaced the foul-smelling darkness assaulted my corneas. The smell was gone, too: I realized that belatedly, as I waited for the tears to stop streaming down my cheeks. I hadn’t fallen asleep naturally. I’d either passed out from my injuries or been drugged. I sniffed, trying to filter through the remaining sewer-stink and the smell of dried blood for anything chemical and unfamiliar. It was too hard to tell, but there was a faintly acrid taste in my mouth that made me suspect that I’d been gassed before whoever was holding me here had moved me.

  There was a click from somewhere above and off to my right. I forced myself to remain perfectly still, not even allowing my unbroken hand to ball into the fist that it instinctually wanted to be.

  “You don’t need to play that game with me,” said a calm, reasonable voice filtered through what I assumed was some kind of intercom. “I know you’re awake. The bed you’re lying on notified me as soon as your vital signs started spiking, and I thought I’d come down to have a little chat with you before you started throwing yourself against the walls. And we have so much to talk about, you and I. It’s been far, far too long.”

  I opened my eyes again, more slowly this time, squinting to try and keep them from burning too badly as the light flooded in. I was in what looked like an operating theater, strapped to a narrow bed that sat at the exact middle of the room, preventing me from getting to anything that could have provided me with even an inch of leverage. I still tried. I bucked and writhed against that bed until every bruise I had was singing like Adam in the shower: loudly, discordantly, and without a bit of concern for how I felt about it. Finally I stopped fighting and slumped back into my restraints, panting from the exertion.

  “All done? That’s good. It’ll be better if you’re calm.” There was another click, presumably as the intercom switched off.

  I looked around the room, straining my neck until it ached as I tried to find the door. Finally, I spotted a faint discoloration in the wall to my left. I subsided, eyes narrowed, and waited for something to happen.

  It wasn’t a long wait, which was good, since I’m not very patient. The door opened, swinging inward, and a tall, well-groomed man with sandy hair and a patient expression stepped into the room. He was wearing a pristine white lab coat and shiny black shoes, and I forgot about everything in the middle as soon as I finished seeing it, because it was so blandly corporate that it could have been stolen right off a mannequin at Banana Republic. I stared at him. I honestly didn’t know what to say.

  I’d seen pictures before. We’d never been in the same room. Dr. C had always said it was too dangerous, and also that there was a pretty good chance I’d kill him if I got the opportunity, so it was better not to let me have the opportunity. Dr. C was pretty smart that way.

  “Hello, Tansy,” said Dr. Banks, his smile never wavering. “I’m your father, and it’s time we got to know each other a little bit better.”

  STAGE I: INTERPHASE

  Hasn’t everyone done something that they probably shouldn’t have done, just to see what would happen?

  –DR. STEVEN BANKS

  I’m not sure what I am. I’m not sure why I’m here. But I’m sure of one thing. I don’t want to die.

  –SAL MITCHELL

  Dear Mary;

  My head hurts something awful, and I know from watching the news and reading the Internet that this means I’m probably going to die soon. Maybe not my body, but my mind; the parts of me that matter. The parts of me that love you more than anything.

  That’s why I’m leaving. I love you, h
oney, and if I did anything to hurt you or the kids, I don’t think I could live with myself. Even if it was just my body, I know my soul would be watching.

  I’ll see you when you get to Heaven, baby. I know we’re both of us going to make it there.

  –LETTER LEFT BY MOE RICHARDS OF REDDING, CA, OCTOBER 27, 2027

  According to my mother’s notes on the original D. symbogenesis project, there should be no more than three percent human DNA in any individual worm, with variance for developmental age and individual tailoring (worms intended to secrete specific medications, etc.). The most that should be found in any single worm, even one specifically designed to fit the needs of its host, is three point two percent human DNA.

  Some of the samples we’re finding in the sleepwalker population imply as much as eleven percent human DNA, without any visible change to the morphology of the D. symbogenesis worm.

  What this means, I do not know. I cannot imagine it means anything remotely good.

  –FROM THE NOTES OF DR. NATHAN KIM, OCTOBER 2027

  Chapter 4

  SEPTEMBER 2027