Symbiont Read online

  My frown deepened. I looked over my shoulder to Nathan, who seemed as lost as I felt. That was something, anyway: I wasn’t the only one who had no idea what was going on. I turned and peered through the broad leaves of the plants, watching the sleepwalkers pouring into the lobby. That was when I finally realized what Fang was trying to show us.

  The sleepwalkers weren’t smart. They could be destructive if they were frustrated or wanted to get somewhere, and they were definitely dangerous at close range, but they weren’t smart. Something in the interface between worm and human was too broken to allow them to be anything approaching smart. They would have come after us if they’d known that we existed—we were too close to ignore, and too defenseless to pass up—but they hunted primarily by sight, and the plants were blocking us from view. My pheromones would still have been an issue under normal circumstances. With this many people in a confined space, some of them with implants of their own that were starting to emit confused pheromone trails, the jumble of scents and instructions must have been throwing the sleepwalkers off. The plants were just one more layer, buying us a little time to let the crowd pass us by.

  Fang crouched down, watching them through the space between the leaves. He was perfectly still in that moment, like he could have been a sleepwalker himself. Very softly, he said, “As soon as there’s a break, we’re going to run. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. If you’re afraid you’ve lost the rest of the group, keep going. Daisy is straight ahead of us in the parking lot, in the fifth row of cars. She nicked the keys for a red Corolla. If you don’t see her, keep running and test the doors of the cars you pass. See if you can find something that isn’t locked and shut yourself inside. We will come back for you.”

  The moans of the sleepwalkers almost obscured his speech, but the gist of it got through, enough to make my stomach clench. I looked over my shoulder at Nathan. He looked even unhappier than I felt, and I realized that a lot of our relationship—not always, maybe, but ever since I’d first called his mother and said I was willing to go through the broken doors—was based on him protecting me. He couldn’t protect me now, and it was making him uncomfortable. The thought of him needing to protect me made me uncomfortable, but in a different way. I didn’t want to be coddled and kept like a specimen in a jar. I’d already had that life. I wanted something bigger and less confined.

  And this wasn’t the time to think about that. I turned back to the row of ornamental plants, watching as the last stragglers of the sleepwalker mob shambled into the hospital lobby. The screams were starting to taper off. I was willing to bet it wasn’t because the screamers had decided that the sleepwalkers weren’t all that big of a deal.

  “Now,” hissed Fang, and shoved through the plants, knocking two of them over and creating a channel for me and Nathan to pass through. True to his word, Fang didn’t look back, and so neither did I. I just ran.

  The sleepwalkers weren’t that focused. I could see them turning as I ran past, their blank faces betraying no curiosity or confusion. Only their failure to grab and hold us gave their bewilderment away. They couldn’t react quickly to changes in their environment, and we could: that was our big advantage over them. We could run away and they didn’t know how to follow. They just knew that something was happening, and that they wanted to devour it, because they wanted to devour everything.

  Nathan pulled up even with me, trying to grab for my hand. I shook my head and kept my hands close to my body, focusing on the act of running. I understood what he was offering, and I appreciated it more than I could have possibly said, but I couldn’t let him pull me along. If we were both taken because he slowed enough to help me, what good would that do?

  Ahead of us, Fang began to slow. We caught up to him, and I finally glanced back, seeing the sleepwalkers that had made the decision to turn as they shambled after us. There weren’t many of them yet, but there would be soon. My pheromones would see to that.

  So there was danger coming from behind. I turned back to the front, and gasped. I couldn’t stop myself.

  The red Corolla was there, exactly as Fang had described it, and Daisy was inside. Whatever mechanism she had used to open the doors—stolen keys or jimmied locks—didn’t matter nearly as much as the small horde of sleepwalkers surrounding her. They clawed at the windows and slapped the glass, and if they were anything like every other sleepwalker in the world, they’d break through soon. She was trapped. They’d devour her, and then they’d go looking for something else to eat. Something else like us.

  Fang muttered something in a language I didn’t understand. That didn’t matter. There aren’t any real language barriers when it comes to profanity. He looked at Daisy in the little red car like she represented the end of the world, and I realized what I had to do. I didn’t want to do it. Nathan wasn’t going to like it. I didn’t see any other choice.

  It only took me a few seconds to shed my lab coat. The sweater that had given me so much trouble going on was just as much trouble coming off: it snagged on my ponytail, forcing me to dance in place in order to get it off. That was what finally caught Nathan’s attention. He turned, eyes widening behind his glasses as he saw what I was doing.

  “Sal?” He sounded bemused. That was all right. Me stripping in a hospital parking lot was pretty weird. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m exposing as much skin as I can,” I said, finally yanking the sweater all the way off. I dropped it on the ground. It was never going to find its way back to its original owner, and I felt bad about that, but it was for the greater good. “Pheromones come through skin, right? So exposing more skin should mean more pheromones.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Fang?”

  “Yes?” Fang looked at me, his expression of resigned despair lightening a little as he took in my bare arms and the sweaty V of exposed skin above my hospital gown. I think he realized what I was going to do. He’d been with Dr. Cale for a long time. He had to have dealt with situations like this, or at least in the same family.

  “Make sure he runs.” The sentence came out calmer than I expected. I leaned up, kissing Nathan on the cheek before he could react, and then I bolted toward the car, waving my arms in the air and shouting. “Hey! Hey, sleepwalkers, hey! Hey, it’s your cousin! Sal! I’m right here and I think I’m better than you and what are you going to do about it, huh?”

  My exact words probably didn’t matter, since the sleepwalkers were too far gone to understand what I was saying, but they understood that someone was yelling nearby, and as they turned and their nostrils started to flare, they understood that the someone smelled subtly appealing. They understood that they wanted me, more than anything else in the world, they wanted me. That wanting might have been the first thing they really understood since they’d eaten their way into the brains of their human hosts, and once they’d come to understand it, they couldn’t deny it. It was too powerful. One by one, the sleepwalkers that had been surrounding the car pulled away, deserting their captive prize in favor of shambling after me.

  They didn’t run, thankfully; they weren’t coordinated enough for that yet, and they might never be. But they shambled with remarkable speed, and many of them were taller than me, which meant that for some of them, each of their unsteady steps was the equivalent of two of mine. So I kept running, and they kept following, their numbers growing as more sleepwalkers shambled over from the direction of the hospital, or from the back of the parking lot.

  I heard Nathan shout something behind me—a prayer, a plea, it didn’t matter, because there was a horde between me and him, and I had to keep going. If I stopped, they’d catch me, and they’d rend me limb from limb in their eagerness to have me. I was the perfect meal, the ultimate prize, and the only consolation I had was that they’d probably hurt each other getting to me.

  I’m sorry, I thought, as I ran. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but you wouldn’t even have been here if it weren’t for me. You should never have left the lab. I’ve been putting you in dang
er over and over again, and that means I have to get you out of it at least once. I have to be the one who saves you. That seemed so important, and it was enough to keep me moving. He’d be sad if he lost me. He’d still be able to help his mother save the world.

  An engine roared to life in the parking lot behind me. Tires squealed against pavement, and hope rose in my throat like bile, burning everything it touched. Fang and Nathan had managed to reach the car. They were in the car, they were safe, and they were going to get out of here. They were going to back to the lab, and everything was going to be all right.

  Then I realized that the screeching tires were getting closer, and the burning feeling of hope intensified, becoming even more painful than my increasingly strained breath. They were coming to get me. They were in the car, and they were on their way, and all I had to do was keep it together long enough for them to somehow open a door and pull me in. I’d probably have a panic attack after a stunt like that, but under the circumstances, that was okay. I was going to be okay. We were all going to be okay. We were—

  Lights came on directly ahead, blinding me. I squeaked and kept running, all too aware of what would happen if I stopped while the sleepwalkers were this close on my tail. I was still running when the dart slammed into my chest, its feathered end sticking out like some sort of carnival game—pin the sedative on the chimera.

  I kept running. I ran for as long as I could, and then the black spots on the edges of my vision were back, and my knees gave out under my weight, dumping me to the pavement. I clawed for consciousness, tired of letting it go, but my fingers found no purchase, and my last thought as I toppled down into the dark was that I had come to the hospital to make this stop happening.

  This isn’t fair, I thought, and the world went black, and there was nothing.

  I was down in the dark, in the hot warm dark where nothing hurt and nothing could touch me and nothing mattered but existing. I recognized the dream for the memory that it was now, and I let myself drift, wondering only abstractly how I could remember something that had happened before I had a mind to remember with.

  You always had a mind, I scolded myself. You didn’t think like a human, but you thought. Beverly thinks. Minnie thinks. Everything with a brain can think. You just had smaller thoughts.

  Small thoughts, hot thoughts, hot warm thoughts of redness and blackness and peace. It was strange to me, here in this place, that any of us would have chosen to leave it voluntarily. Being a human was hard. It was sharp and cold and filled with choices that had no good outcomes, just varying shades and shapes of badness. No matter what you chose, you were choosing wrong for someone. Better to stay down in the dark, where there were no choices and no challenges, just food and warmth and the contentment of simplicity.

  But there was no Nathan either, was there? No love, no kisses, no anger born from the hard edges of two people rubbing against each other. There were no chances to change down there in the dark. There were no chances to grow. I’d enjoyed those parts of being human, and a lot of the parts that came with having a body. If I stayed down here in the dark, I wouldn’t get to enjoy those things anymore.

  You’ll have to go back, then, I thought sadly, and I didn’t know whether I was talking to myself or to something outside myself, and it didn’t really matter, because I was right either way.

  I opened my eyes.

  “We’ve got movement!” shouted a voice I didn’t recognize. A woman in wire-framed glasses leaned over me, producing a small flashlight from the pocket of her lab coat and shining it into my eyes. I whimpered and screwed them shut again. Her voice followed a moment later, now announcing jubilantly, “Movement and pupil dilation! I think she’s okay.”

  I cracked my left eye cautiously open. The woman was still there, but she was facing away from me, giving me a good look at her profile. She was pale-skinned, with hair that was either bleached or the palest blonde I had ever seen, and her lab coat…

  Her lab coat had the USAMRIID logo on the sleeve. My mouth went dry and my stomach went tight, the drums suddenly pounding in my ears as I realized where the lights and tranquilizer dart had come from. I tried to sit up, and discovered that I couldn’t. As with the gurney from before, I was strapped to the surface that I was on top of. I opened both my eyes, making another attempt. Still nothing, and this time the motion attracted the woman’s attention. She turned to face me, plastering a smile so patently fake that it was almost painful across her face.

  “Hello, Sally,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “My name is Dr. Crystal Huff. I was with the team that extracted you from the hospital. You may feel a little disoriented. That’s perfectly normal, and does not indicate infection. You have been checked thoroughly, and I am glad to be able to tell you that you’re not sick. Do you understand me, Sally? Nod if you understand me.” She stopped, smiling brightly down at me. It was like she was trying to make herself understood by a small child who didn’t understand English, and if my hands hadn’t been strapped down, I would probably have hit her.

  My mouth was too dry to let me form words. I swallowed hard, trying to convince my salivary glands to do their job. Finally, after several seconds of silence and swallowing, I managed to croak, “Why am I strapped to this table?” How do you know who I am? I had still been wearing the ID bracelet with the fake name Dr. Cale used to get me into the hospital.

  “It’s not a table, it’s a cot, but apart from that, I am very pleased by the recovery it took for you to recognize that you were strapped down,” said Dr. Huff, sounding pleased. “You’re strapped down for your own safety. We had to move you while you were unconscious, and we didn’t want you waking up with any injuries, now, did we? It took a lot of work for us to find you. We don’t want you getting hurt.”

  I stared at her. Finally, when I was sure that I wouldn’t yell, I tried again. “Why am I strapped to this cot? I’m awake now. You know I’m awake now. Shouldn’t you be letting me up? I want to get up.”

  Dr. Huff’s artificial smile dropped away. “Sally, I’m sorry, but you don’t seem to fully understand the situation. Now maybe that’s my fault—maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough when you first woke up—but we didn’t expect you to regain consciousness quite this quickly. Everyone reacts differently to the sedatives we’re using. You should have been out for at least another thirty minutes. So I’m very sorry that I was not prepared for you to start questioning me.”

  “You’re not ready to start answering me either, I guess, because you’re not,” I said, giving another experimental tug against the straps. “Can you let me up? You just said that I wasn’t sick. I want to get up.” It was a funny twist of the infection: a sleepwalker would show parasitic “tendrils” throughout their bodies, lines drawn and held by the toxoplasmosis DNA that had been used to help the implants integrate with the human body. A chimera—like Adam, like me—wouldn’t show any of those traces. Our implants had relocated completely to our brains, abandoning the parts of themselves that would normally have been used to latch on to the body. A recent chimera might have shown up on an infection sweep, but not one that had been given the time to finish integration.

  They could test and test, and they’d find the violent ones, the ones who were incapable of concealing themselves, and the ones who were too deep in comas to pose a threat. But they’d never find the ones like me without doing MRIs and lumbar punctures. They’d never find the ones who’d learned how to make themselves look human.

  “No, I can’t,” said Dr. Huff. “You’re being relocated to a secure facility, and I’m afraid that patients can’t be allowed to move freely around the transport.”

  I blinked at her. I hadn’t realized we were moving, and no matter how much I tried to focus, I couldn’t detect any motion.

  She must have seen my confusion, because she said, “We’re waiting for the trucks to arrive. It will be easier to keep the afflicted and the unafflicted separate if everyone remains in their assigned place.”

  “Wha
t?” I didn’t know which part of that upset me the most. I strained against the straps that held me down again. “No, no, you can’t put me with people who’ve started going sleepwalker. I don’t even want to be in a carrier with them. You don’t understand how easy it is for them to escape. You don’t understand—”

  “We have taken every precaution,” she said crisply. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other patients to attend to.” She straightened up, her expression going blank and cold, and stalked out of my field of vision.

  Sleepwalkers had cold, dead eyes, but they weren’t thinking creatures: they hurt you because they didn’t know how to do anything else, not because they harbored any malice or desire to harm the people around them. Dr. Huff… her eyes were the eyes of a sapient being, and when she hurt me—and I had every confidence that it was a “when,” not an “if,” given the circumstances that I had found myself in—it would be the full understanding of what she was doing. Dr. Banks had eyes like that. Dr. Banks never hurt me when he wasn’t trying to.

  I relaxed as much as I could, trying to find signs of slack in the straps. There didn’t seem to be any: they were drawn as tight as they could possibly have been without hurting me, and even breathing all the way out and holding my breath did nothing to let me move. I could squirm down a few inches, and that was all. I was trapped.

  The drums were starting to pound in my ears, a sure sign that I was panicking. I couldn’t tell whether they were louder than they should have been, and that just made them pound faster. Was it safe for me to experience this much excitement right after surgery? Was I going to have an aneurism on this cot and die never knowing what had happened to my friends?