Chimera Read online

  I turned to the soldier, eyes narrowed, and asked, “Would you have done any differently? If you hadn’t been enlisted when this all went to hell, would you be sitting quietly in your assigned room, not touching anything, not getting worried or upset or depressed or anything, because the people in charge told you not to? Because that doesn’t seem human to me. I thought the whole point of this was showing that humanity can win. Breaking things is human. It’s stupid and dangerous and irresponsible, but it’s human.” I had learned that early, from the doctors around me, and from Joyce’s tales of Sally, who had been a champion breaker of things.

  Maybe that was going to prove to be the real difference between humanity and their tapeworm children. We didn’t feel the deep-seated need to break the world just so that it would remember our existence.

  The soldier I had challenged looked at me uncomfortably for a moment before he looked away, going back to watching the houses and storefronts around us. Lieutenant Robinson didn’t say anything. Either he thought the man had deserved my anger, or he just didn’t feel like getting involved. It didn’t really matter.

  “We’re getting close to where Carrie said he was going,” I said. I was going to keep talking, but I couldn’t. The wind had shifted, and when I breathed in, parts of my brain that had nothing to do with Sally Mitchell, and everything to do with the tapeworm that was my true body, activated. Sleepwalker present, they said, interpreting the pheromone signals on the wind with ease. Sleepwalker waking.

  I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, nearly tripping over my own feet in the process. I hadn’t been able to read the pheromones put off by my sleepwalker cousins nearly that clearly the last time I had tried, but I’d been getting there, hadn’t I? Maybe exposure followed by isolation had always been the answer. Maybe that was all I’d needed to really figure out what I could do.

  The patrol kept going for another few feet, unaware of the danger I was suddenly detecting. They stopped when they realized I wasn’t moving, all five of them turning back to look at me with varying expressions of confusion or annoyance.

  “Well?” asked Lieutenant Robinson.

  I couldn’t tell him. There was no possible way for me to explain what I was detecting in the air, because it wasn’t a human trait I was manifesting, and they didn’t know I was a chimera. If I told them, if I unmasked myself, I was going to find myself with a bullet between the eyes before the Lieutenant could think through the implications of shooting the Colonel’s daughter and order his men to stand down. That was human nature rearing its ugly head again: Break what you can’t control; destroy what you can’t understand.

  I still loved humanity, but the more time I spent as their prisoner, the more I began to understand why Sherman had decided they had to be overthrown. And that terrified me, because as much as I feared becoming Sally in earnest—becoming a human girl with a medical problem, and not a chimera at all—I feared becoming a monster even more.

  “We should go this way,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t hear the strain in my voice. I wanted to tell them to turn around and run, to keep them from getting too close to the sleepwalker who was putting this pheromone tag into the air. The sleepwalker was more my species than the human soldiers, after all, and it deserved time to come completely into itself. But if it was a sleepwalker and not a chimera—if it was mindless and damaged and acting only on instinct, I couldn’t let it go undiscovered inside a compound filled with trapped and frightened people.

  Walking the line between the species I was and the species I was pretending to be wasn’t getting any easier with practice. If anything, it was just getting more complicated.

  “What makes you say that?” asked Lieutenant Robinson. There was a faint warning note in his voice. He didn’t like me taking control of his men, and while I couldn’t blame him for that, I couldn’t take the time to soothe his ego, either. Not with the pheromone tags getting stronger.

  They were increasing so fast that it felt like the sleepwalker was coming closer to us, but even as I thought that, I knew that it was wrong. The sleepwalker wasn’t moving. The tags were remaining at the same level, they were just becoming more. More plentiful, more consistent, more steadily drifting in my direction. I took a step back, beckoning for the others to follow me. “Because I think Carrie said the convenience store he was going to was in this direction,” I said. There were enough convenience stores in the area that I knew there would be one in whatever direction we went. “That’s all.”

  My voice broke on the last word as things fell into place, and horror overwhelmed my ability to remain calm—just for a moment, but that was long enough that I was sure the Lieutenant would see the dismay and agony in my expression. The pheromone tags weren’t getting stronger because the sleepwalker was moving toward us.

  They were getting stronger because the sleepwalker was in the process of taking over its human host.

  “If you say so,” said the Lieutenant, frowning as he looked at my face. “You heard the lady, men; we’re following Miss Mitchell. Now, lead the way.”

  I nodded tightly, not quite trusting myself to speak anymore, before I turned and started moving upwind.

  It was easier now that I had a trail to follow, and also harder, because I knew what I was going to find at the end: I knew I was bringing a team of armed men to execute someone who was in the process of becoming my cousin. And I knew I didn’t have a choice.

  The smell was strong enough to make the drums start hammering in my ears like a beacon, or a warning—I was walking into familiar danger, and I knew there wasn’t any other way, even as I knew that whatever waited up ahead was going to break my heart. Then we turned the corner, moving into the narrow alley between two buildings, and I realized that I hadn’t known anything. I had been as ignorant as the men who followed me, and I was going to pay for my blind assumptions.

  Paul was huddled against the wall, his arms wrapped around his stomach like he was trying to hold his insides in place, shaking uncontrollably. The tremors seemed to start at the core of his body and radiate outward, sending his legs jittering and knocking his head against the wall.

  “Is he having a seizure?” asked one of the soldiers.

  “Paul!” I said, and ran forward, dropping to my knees next to my housemate—next to my friend, although that friendship was a strained and stunted thing, kept small and fragile by the circumstances under which we had come to know one another. Maybe it could have been more, in a different world, in a different time.

  But in a different world, in a different time, I would never have existed at all.

  Paul’s eyes flicked toward me, his mouth working soundlessly as he struggled against the tremors that were still rocking his body. It wasn’t the mindless grasping of the sleepwalkers, not yet: Paul was still in there, fighting for control. I couldn’t have said how I knew, just that it was the truth… and that he was going to lose. He had already lost, and all he could do now was struggle against the inevitable.

  “I’m here, Paul, I’m here,” I said, putting my hands on his arm. The drums in my ears pounded even louder, and for the first time, I wished that whatever genetic quirk had allowed me to become the person I was now had come with Sherman’s gifts, and not my own. I was the only chimera I knew of who could access the hot warm dark at will, sinking down into the peace and safety of my original home. Sherman could use a host’s original biology against it, soothing and smoothing out the body’s systems until the chimera or sleepwalker fell into a trance, letting him tell them what to do. It didn’t always work on sleepwalkers—most of them were too damaged—but Paul wasn’t that far gone yet. It might have worked on him, and then he wouldn’t have needed to be aware of what was going to happen next.

  “S-Sally?” Even getting my name out seemed like an impossible effort. Paul’s eyes flicked from me to the patrol, jittering as badly as the rest of his body, before he focused back in on me. “W-what’s happening to me? Why can’t I move?”

  “Sir, we have a
situation in the N-sector. Civilian down, apparent epileptic seizure. How do you want us to proceed?” Lieutenant Robinson didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. His words, and the faint hiss of his radio as he called in the emergency, were more than loud enough to get the point across.

  I twisted to look back at him, and said, “This is my friend. This is the friend I was looking for. He’s sick. This isn’t a situation, he’s just sick.” The lies came out smooth and easy, like I’d been intending to tell them all along. Paul was sick, all right, but his sickness was going to become a situation very soon. The original personality would die, subsumed by the parasite now working its way into his brain, and we would be left with a hungry, unthinking predator that knew only that it needed to feed. Some sleepwalkers were more capable of planning and strategy than others—some of them might even have a chance at recovering some higher brain functions, if they managed to stay alive long enough—but none of that mattered when compared with the danger Paul would soon present.

  And this was wrong, this was all wrong. He shouldn’t have been able to speak by the time he reached this stage. Something was different. Maybe he was going to be a chimera. I knew how unlikely that was, and I knew that he was going to die. None of the odds were on his side. Nothing about this situation was on his side.

  My loyalties were too divided, and I couldn’t change that. But I could shield him for now. I could keep them from shooting him while he would still be able to see the muzzle of the gun swinging toward him. If I was careful, I might even be able to do it without giving myself away.

  I wasn’t sure I knew how to be careful.

  “Not s-s-s-sick,” stammered Paul, looking increasingly frustrated as the sibilance of “sick” tried to escape him. He made an effort to sit up. The shaking got worse, and he slumped against the wall, twitching and trembling. “Don’t know what’s w-w-wrong with me.”

  Lieutenant Robinson’s radio squawked. I couldn’t make out the words buried in the static. I was too far away, and too focused on holding on to Paul, who felt like he was going to shake himself into pieces. But I heard Lieutenant Robinson’s reply.

  “As I said, sir, he appears to be having a seizure. Slurred speech, tremors, inability to stand or move. One of his housemates is here: Colonel Mitchell’s daughter.”

  The radio squawked again. There was an ominous pause, during which I heard the click of safeties being released.

  “Miss Mitchell, please move away from your housemate.” Lieutenant Robinson’s voice was suddenly flat, devoid of all inflection or emotion. I twisted to look at him again. It wasn’t a surprise to see that all the guns were pointed toward me—or more accurately, toward Paul, who was continuing to shake and jitter.

  I shifted positions, trying to put more of my body between them and Paul without being obvious about what I was doing. The pheromone tags were continuing to get stronger. It would all be over soon. “Why? He’s sick. Why are you pointing guns at him when he’s just sick? Guns don’t make sick people better!” I didn’t have to work to add the panicked whine to my voice. It came entirely on its own.

  “He’s sick, yes,” said Lieutenant Robinson. “We cannot offer medical assistance with you between us and him. Please move away from your housemate.”

  “That doesn’t look like medical assistance,” I said, pulling one hand away from Paul in order to indicate the guns. “That looks like you’re going to shoot him.”

  “We’re going to do everything we can to help.”

  Paul moaned.

  Lieutenant Robinson stiffened, his posture changing to something more closed and military. “Move away from the target! That is an order!”

  I didn’t comment on how Paul had just gone from being my housemate to being “the target.” I didn’t need to. I just turned back to him, and watched the last of the clarity slip out of his eyes, replaced by incomprehension and hunger. So much hunger. In the span of a second, Paul went from a man who didn’t know what was happening to him but was willing to fight against it to an appetite big enough to eat the world. His jaw dropped, tension going out of it. He moaned again.

  “Paul?” I whispered.

  He lunged for me.

  I scrambled backward as quickly as I could, nearly tumbling over myself as I moved out of range of his teeth. Some sleepwalkers experienced a period of disorientation or even unconsciousness when they took over their human hosts, hence the name, which had been coined following the earliest outbreaks. Others had a more violent response, and went straight to trying to do what they did best: eating. Paul was apparently one of the lucky ones.

  A hand grabbed my arm, yanking me farther back, and then the sound of gunfire consumed the world. Paul didn’t have a chance. He didn’t seem to notice, though: He just kept advancing, even as the bullets struck his body, reaching for me with hands that could never hold enough to feel full.

  When the damage became too much for him, he fell, and he didn’t move again. The smell of gunpowder and blood filled the alley, wiping away the pheromones that had betrayed Paul’s position in the first place. I twisted to find Lieutenant Robinson holding my arm. He didn’t let go.

  “That’s two you owe me,” he said. “Your father wants to see you now.”

  Under the circumstances, there was nothing I could do but nod meekly and let him take me.

  We have a problem, and I don’t know what we’re going to do to solve it.

  I’ve moved my technicians and interns to bottled water for now: I have teams scouring every big box store and grocery outlet in a twenty-mile radius for more. It’s not going to last forever, and we don’t have a purification system set up for the tap water. The tap water! We let ourselves become too trusting as a species, and this is what that sort of thing gets you. It gets you tapeworms in your drinking glass, and a battleground inside your body.

  Even Adam has to avoid the faucet. I’m still trying to culture these eggs, and I don’t know whether they’d attempt to take him over. His integration with his host is solid, but that doesn’t mean he’s prepared for that sort of internal war.

  Thank God we caught this before we lost anyone. As it stands, we’ve burned through a lot of antiparasitics, some of which had to be administered more aggressively than I like, and people are scared. People have a reason to be.

  Of all the things I thought to be afraid of, I never thought to be frightened of the water.

  —FROM THE NOTES OF DR. SHANTI CALE, DECEMBER 2027

  Mom is terrified. She tries to hide it, but she’s not good at concealing her emotions: She never has been. Maybe that’s why she’s always worked so hard not to have them. Her fear is spreading to the rest of the staff. She’s going to start losing control of them soon, and that can’t be allowed to happen. We need them. We need their work to continue. And honestly, they’re safer here than they would be anywhere else.

  We’re still looking for Sal. There have been a few unsubstantiated reports that she’s been taken to the Pleasanton exclusion zone, but that place is a roach motel—the uninfected check in, and they don’t check out. If we still had Tansy up and functional, we could mount a rescue organization and get her back in a heartbeat. As it stands, we have no tactical leader, and Tansy…

  Tansy is complicated. But her heart is still beating. There’s still hope.

  Hope is all we have left.

  —FROM THE NOTES OF DR. NATHAN KIM, DECEMBER 2027

  Chapter 4

  DECEMBER 2027

  The room was small and gray, with a large mirror on one wall that was probably a window for the people standing on the other side. The table in the middle of the room came with two chairs, both bolted to the floor. I was seated in the chair that faced the mirror, giving me an unwanted view of my hollow cheeks and greasy hair. I looked like I’d just run through ten miles of hell and had another thousand miles to go.

  I felt like I’d just run through ten miles of hell. The trip from Pleasanton to Oakland had been spent huddled in a corner of the truck, prayin
g that the men who’d brought me here wouldn’t start hitting me again. There had been sirens outside when we were close to the quarantine fence, but after that? Silence. The absolute, unbroken silence of a wounded, uncomprehending world.

  I might have been all right if I’d been allowed to stay with Lieutenant Robinson and his squad, but they had been called away as soon as we reached the main building, and their replacements had been neither friendly nor gentle with me. Why should they have been gentle with me? I was a killer in their eyes, after all. The bruises they’d left on my arms were already starting to blossom, and would continue to grow for days. My only solace was that we’d been in public the whole time. They hadn’t been able to do anything worse than grip me too tightly as they dragged me through the halls and threw me into the waiting chair.

  I held myself as close to perfectly still as I could manage, keeping my eyes on the mirror that wasn’t a mirror. In an odd way, this little room, with its lack of decoration or ornamentation, was a relief. There was nothing here that could hurt me, although I was sure there was something that could hurt me on the other side of that “mirror.” Everything was contained and clearly defined, and I felt like I could breathe for the first time in weeks.

  Maybe best of all, I wasn’t back at the little house we’d been assigned, trying to tell Carrie why Paul wasn’t coming back. She wouldn’t understand. I didn’t understand. Paul had been checked out as clean before he was allowed to enter the quarantine zone—all the civilians had. The only reason I hadn’t been checked was Colonel Mitchell, and he wouldn’t have pulled those strings for anybody else. So how had Paul, who should have been safe, wound up with a SymboGen implant burrowing its way into his brain?