Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2)

by Grant, Mira

  And he wouldn’t have been watching for that sort of trickery: not on his mother’s part, and not with my life potentially on the line. My eyes narrowed as my attention swung back to Dr. Cale. “Was the operation necessary?”

  “Yes,” she said, with what was clearly meant to be absolute sincerity. It was really too bad she’d spent so much time lying to me. I didn’t know what she sounded like when she told the truth. “The weakness in the arteries feeding your brain was real, as was the need to address it before one of them ruptured. We needed access to a functioning surgical theater. All that was completely true. As for the rest… I saw an opportunity, and I took it, for the greater good. You can’t blame me for that.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll find that I can blame you for a lot,” I said, taking my hands away from the bandages on my skull and folding my arms across my chest. “What did you learn from taking me apart without my permission?”

  Dr. Cale sighed. “It’s going to be like this now, is it?”

  “Not forever,” I said. It pained me to admit it. This was enough of a violation that it should have been a deal breaker: it should have left me in the position of never letting myself trust her again. But I knew that she’d done what she’d done because she was trying to save us all. The fact that she hadn’t stopped to ask me for permission made me furious. But it wasn’t worth the end of the world. “We’re going to need some ground rules before I trust you again. But I still want to know what you learned.”

  “I learned that Sally’s father was not exactly forthcoming about his medical history, probably because epilepsy is frowned upon when you’re working in Level 4 biosafety labs.” Dr. Cale’s expression was grim, but there was elation in her eyes, like she had finally cracked a complicated puzzle that had been bothering her for quite some time. “That’s why he paid to have top-grade implants tailored by SymboGen, instead of getting them through USAMRIID’s medical plan, which would have made more sense—and saved him quite a bit of money, I might add. But he couldn’t do that. Not if he was going to get the specific modifications he needed for himself and his eldest daughter. That also explains the holes in the records. He would have paid to have all his files expunged.”

  I blinked. “Da—Colonel Mitchell isn’t epileptic, and neither am I,” I said. “The seizure Sally had right before her accident was the only one she’d ever had.”

  “No, the seizure Sally had right before her accident was the only one she’d ever had on camera,” said Dr. Cale. “Colonel Mitchell couldn’t bury that one, since it was in the news, but it got mostly overlooked in the face of everything else that was unusual about your case. Sally was our canary in the coal mine, and you were our bellwether. You told us what was coming just by showing up. What’s more, you told us where we should be looking for more like you.”

  I frowned. Nathan frowned. Adam, however, wasn’t so easily distracted by irrelevant points of science. “You took out part of Sal without her permission?” he asked, frowning deeply.

  I glanced at him, surprised. He’d been quiet for long enough that I’d almost managed to forget that he was there.

  Dr. Cale nodded, expression solemnly regretful. If there had been a competition for looking most sorry about something you weren’t actually sorry about, she would have won instantly. “I did, but sweetheart, I didn’t want to open up her skull twice, and we had to act quickly. There wasn’t time for a discussion.”

  “Would you take part of me out without my permission?”

  “No, of course not. But darling—”

  “She couldn’t risk me saying no,” I said, in that cold, alien voice. “It would have ruined her plans, since then she couldn’t have used Nathan to help her work the samples. He would never have allowed her to do what she did, if he’d known.”

  “That’s right,” said Nathan. “I wouldn’t.”

  Dr. Cale turned to frown at both of us. “I told you, I needed—”

  “No means no, Dr. Cale,” I said.

  “Sal’s my sister,” said Adam fiercely. “You should be as good to her as you are to me, and that wasn’t very good to her at all. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “You shouldn’t have done it, and I’m never going to trust you like that again. But you learned what you needed to know?”

  “Some of what I needed to know,” said Dr. Cale.

  “Then I guess that makes it all better,” I said, putting a sarcastic twist on the last two words that actually made her mouth purse in something I didn’t recognize, but that I hoped was shame. I put a hand against my forehead, wishing I had some way to quiet the drums that were pounding in my ears. “I have a headache, and I miss my dogs. Can I go to wherever it is they are now, please? I just need to see them, and then you can tell me whatever else it is you’ve learned by taking pieces out of my head.”

  “Come on, Sal,” said Nathan, slipping his hand back into mine. It fit perfectly. “This way.”

  “Adam, I’ll come see you soon, okay?” I said. My brother nodded, still looking troubled by what his mother had done to me. Good. It was better if she didn’t start thinking this sort of thing was okay.

  “It’s good to have you back, Sal,” said Dr. Cale.

  “It’s good to be home,” I said, and let Nathan lead me away.

  Nathan led me back to the elevator, this time pressing the button for the top floor. I leaned against him, feeling my entire body start to tremble. The events of the morning had been too much for me, especially after spending weeks in the mostly low-stimulus environment of Sherman’s mall. By the time the elevator stopped I was shaking so hard that I could barely walk. Nathan put his arm around me, holding me up as I half stumbled out of the elevator and into the hall.

  “Do you need me to carry you?” he asked.

  I thought about the question seriously before I nodded and said, without a trace of shame, “Yes, please.” The idea of taking another step made the drums pound even harder, a sure sign that I was stressed beyond my breaking point.

  Nathan bent and scooped me into his arms. I’d lost weight and he’d gained muscle, our respective paths through the apocalypse leaving their marks on our bodies: he couldn’t have carried me like this before we were separated. “This used to be the research and development floor,” he said, carrying me past door after door. Each of them was painted in a different, clashing candy color. “I don’t know why they put the labs here on the top floor. It may have been a ventilation issue, or maybe they just wanted the place to burn from the top down if there was ever an accident.”

  I couldn’t help it: I laughed a little at the image of some architect seriously explaining that they’d put the fire hazards all in one place for insurance reasons.

  Nathan smiled. “The labs are small enough that we’ve been converting them into living quarters. Most people are double-bunking it, but I was able to convince Mom that I should have a lab to myself until you came home, rather than having a temporary roommate. I didn’t want there to be any delay when you got back.”

  “Thank you,” I said, leaning up to kiss his cheek.

  “Don’t thank me yet; it’s another bachelor apartment for you to judge me by,” he cautioned, stopping in front of a violently magenta door. It was unlocked. I blinked, and he stopped with his hand still on the doorknob, explaining: “We keep all rooms unlocked when they’re unoccupied, to make it easier for the staff to find shelter in the event of a sleepwalker outbreak inside the facility.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. I could hear snuffling noises around the base of the door, and the familiar sound of blunt claws clacking against the floor. “Are the dogs in there?”

  “Yes.” Nathan lowered me back to my feet. “You may want to brace yourself.”

  Grinning, I did exactly that, dropping to one knee in the hall and spreading my arms. Nathan chuckled and opened the door.

  There is nothing truer in this world than the love of a good dog. Beverly and Minnie surged out of the room, both wag
ging their tails so hard that their entire rear ends were vibrating, and commenced to the essential business of licking every exposed inch of my skin. I laughed and folded my arms around them, letting them butt their heads against my middle and buffet me with their tails. Beverly shoved her cold, wet nose into my ear. I bit back a shriek.

  “They missed you,” said Nathan, standing back and folding his arms as he watched this edifying scene. “Beverly’s been looking for you all over the building. Minnie just sulked a lot.”

  “Who’s my little diva?” I asked Minnie, rubbing her jowls. She rewarded me with a cascade of drool and more tail-wagging. “Aw, that’s my girl. You don’t care that I’m a tapeworm, do you? You just want pettings and love and food and all that good stuff. It doesn’t change anything when I tell you I’m not human. You just want me to be here with you.”

  With wagging tails and wiggling bodies the dogs agreed that yes, yes, I was quite right, they didn’t mind anything I wanted to do, as long as I would keep on loving them and being their person.

  I glanced up. Nathan was frowning now, his joviality gone. “Sal…”

  “I know you don’t care either.” I climbed slowly back to my feet. The muscles in my calves felt like they were on the verge of giving up completely. “It’s just that sometimes I feel like my life would have been a lot easier if SymboGen had been a veterinary medicine company.”

  “You’d rather have been a dog?” asked Nathan.

  I stepped into the welcoming circle of his arms, the dogs still circling my feet with tails wagging, and said, “They aren’t as complicated as people. I think I would probably have made a pretty good dog, if the option had been on the table.”

  “I think you make a pretty amazing woman,” said Nathan. He embraced me briefly before letting go and tugging me into the room. “Welcome home.”

  The dogs followed closely at my heels, making it easy for him to close the door behind us while I considered our new living space. It was obvious that this room had started life as a working lab: the room’s origins were visible in the industrial shelves bolted to the walls and the perfunctorily efficient kitchen that took up one wall completely, laid out in a straight line that would never have caught on with private homeowners. Everything else about it, however, was entirely new, and had clearly been designed to be entirely ours.

  The room was divided roughly into thirds. Nathan’s side was taken up by bookshelves and a desk that looked like it had been scavenged from the nearest Ikea. His laptop was set up and running, displaying a slide show of pictures. Most were of the two of us, although there were a few of the dogs, and some of his friends from the hospital. A picture of Devi—Minnie’s original owner—flashed by. I winced. The rest of the desk was taken up by sheaves of paper, and by stacks of scientific equipment that I couldn’t identify or name. It all looked very important.

  My side of the room was mostly empty shelves, although my throat tightened a little when I saw that my few belongings had been unpacked and placed carefully wherever they seemed to best fit. There was a small pyramid of dog food cans, and a basket full of squeaky toys and rawhide chews.

  “I’m amazed Beverly hasn’t knocked that over yet,” I said faintly.

  “Oh, she has,” said Nathan. “I just keep picking it up again. She’s mostly stopped making trouble for the sake of making trouble. She missed you a lot, Sal. We all did.”

  There was a broken note in his voice that made me pause in my study of the room to twist around and look at him. He met my eyes unflinchingly. I’d never seen such a depth of pain in his dark brown eyes, not even right after Devi died. “I missed you too,” I said. “But I’m home now, and we’re never letting that happen again.”

  “Good,” said Nathan.

  I turned back to my study of the room, finally allowing myself to focus on the part that had interested me the most. In the portion of the room that was clearly intended for us to share, a garden was blooming. It wasn’t food or herbs or medicinal plants—although looking at Nathan’s cunning hydroponic systems, I had to wonder if we were growing them somewhere in the building, if part of Captain Candy’s had been converted into a working farm now that necessity was demanding it—but it was something better, and much more important, all contained in a raised bed with high Plexiglas walls to keep the dogs from going digging. I guessed that those walls would come up to my waist, making it easy to bend and get to the plants when I needed to.

  Carnivorous flowers and sticky-leaved stalks twined in a riotous explosion of hungry color, reaching toward the grow lights and misters that were keeping their environment at the optimal levels of heat and moisture. I gasped a little, tears forming in my eyes. “It’s beautiful,” I sighed. Nathan and I had really started bonding as a couple over our mutual love of carnivorous plants. They were chimera too, in a way: they grew like plants and they ate like animals. The sundews in front of me might be some of the last ones blooming in captivity. It was a sobering, heartbreaking thought.

  “We had to make several supply runs into San Francisco,” said Nathan, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Putting together a lab this size—we’re three times larger than the bowling alley now, so we would have been forced to move even if not for the quarantine, just because we couldn’t fit in the available space anymore—meant gathering equipment from anyplace we could. I made a few extracurricular stops while we were there.”

  “You could have been killed,” I said automatically, still staring at the impossible garden.

  “I know.” Nathan took his hand off my shoulder and stepped past me, walking toward the vast wooden edifice that was our bed. I stayed where I was, unsure of what to do next, until he looked over his shoulder, smiled a little, and said, “Come over here. Please.”

  I bit my lip and nodded before walking across the room and sitting down on the edge of the mattress. The frame looked like it had been stolen from the same Ikea as the desk, and had drawers built into its base, providing more storage space. Beverly leapt up in a single easy bound, curling up next to me and dropping her head onto my knee like her skull had suddenly become the heaviest thing in the world. Minnie climbed up, using a set of steps fashioned from an old milk crate. She stretched out at my back, providing a warm, furry bolster.

  “I thought you were dead,” said Nathan, without any more prevarication or pausing. “We lost you in that parking lot, and we knew that USAMRIID had you. Mom has some contacts in the military—not enough to break the quarantine, and don’t think that they wouldn’t betray her in a second if they thought they could take her—and she contacted them within the hour, saying that one of her lab technicians had been taken. They got back to her a week later, reporting that someone of your description had been there, but had been abducted by a person or persons unknown. Then they started asking her some fairly pointed questions, since whoever took you had killed a bunch of their men in the process.”

  “That was Ronnie,” I said. “He’s one of Sherman’s chimera. He has impulse control problems.”

  Nathan blinked slowly. “Impulse control problems don’t usually come with a body count.”

  “From Ronnie, they do. He’s frustrated and angry, and I don’t think he likes humans very much.” We’d never really talked about it. I hadn’t wanted to upset him, not when I was trying so hard to get him to like me. Seeing Nathan’s frown deepen, I added, “What he did was wrong, but he’s the one who got me out of Sherman’s compound thingy, so I’m not really inclined to throw stones, you know? I owe him.”

  To my great relief, Nathan nodded. “I owe him, too. He gave you back to me. But at the time, the news that you’d been kidnapped by people who didn’t care who they hurt… it was terrifying, Sal. We all knew that you were dead, or dissected, or worse. I kept Mom looking for you. I couldn’t stop. Stopping would have meant admitting defeat, and if that happened…” He took a deep, shaky breath. “I thought about killing myself. I decided not to, simply because I knew that I had work to do, and I knew that my death would d
o nothing to clear my family name. But I didn’t have anything left to live for.”

  I bit my lip again. The world had ended while I’d been sitting in my nicely gilded cage. There was just one factor unaccounted for… “Your father?” I asked.

  Nathan shook his head. “He stopped answering calls shortly after the primary outbreak started. He lived in Orange County, in a very densely populated area, and all the CDC and USAMRIID maps we’ve been able to purloin have shown high sleepwalker activity in that area. If he’s alive, it’s a miracle, and I’m not holding out much hope for miracles just now.”

  “I’m so sorry.” The words weren’t enough. Words never were. They were all I had to offer him.

  “He was a good man, and he had a good life. I think he’d be happy to know I found Mom again, and that we’re at least trying to be a family. I know he’d be happy to hear that I found you again, that we somehow went through this horrible thing and wound up in the same place.” Nathan reached out and cupped my cheek with one hand. “He liked you a lot, you know. He used to ask me when you’d be his daughter.”

  “I already said I’d marry you,” I said, blinking back tears.

  “Fishy’s ordained,” said Nathan. “I think it would be a Jedi wedding—”

  I couldn’t help myself. I broke out in giggles at the very idea.

  Nathan smiled. “This is where we live now. This is where we’re going to find a way to save the world. Do you need anything?”

  “Sleep,” I admitted. “Ronnie knocked me out before he moved me to the house where you found me, but that wasn’t real sleep, and I had…” The teenage sleepwalker, all life gone from her eyes, reaching for me out of the pure, desperate need to survive. “… I had a hard day. I just want to sleep.”