“What do you mean, it’s bigger than we are?” I asked, before Nathan could say something we’d regret later. His mouth was pressed into a hard line, and he looked like he was on the verge of punching Tansy—something that would probably get us both killed.
“How do you think people will react when they find out the implants are definitely behind the sleepwalking sickness?” asked Tansy. “They’re not going to be happy. They’re going to start fighting back.”
“Well… what’s the problem with that? Those people had their bodies first. They’re not like the girl who used to own your body. She moved out.”
Tansy smiled bitterly. “Yes, thank you, I’m aware that I was a rental property. But here’s the thing, genius girl: the treatment to remove a motivated implant from its host might work. Might. It also might kill the host, and the implant, and then nobody wins. There has to be a solution that makes the cousins go back to sleep unless the conditions are right. There just has to be.”
She looked, briefly, so lost that I wanted to reach for her, take her hand and tell her that everything was going to be okay. That seemed about as smart as hitting her. “So what good does sending me into SymboGen do?”
“If we have the genome of the new cousins, we can figure out how to talk to them. Tell them that they gotta back off, or nobody’s coming out on the winning side. Slavery sucks. Dying is worse.”
I’d never really thought of the SymboGen implants as being slaves to their hosts. Then again, until very recently, I hadn’t thought of them as thinking creatures, even if they didn’t really start to think on a sapient level until they had plugged themselves into a human brain.
“All right,” I said. I didn’t look at Nathan. If I looked at Nathan, I knew that I would lose my cool. “I’ll do it.”
Tansy clapped her hands and beamed. “Oh,” she said, “won’t this be fun?”
No, I thought. It won’t.
But I didn’t say anything at all.
Some people will always be ungrateful. It’s an unfortunate truth of the human race that we see everything as a zero-sum game. For them, if I have happiness, there’s less happiness for you; if I have health, there’s less health for you. When you look at life that way, it’s inevitable that you’ll start looking for the catch in everything. I can’t possibly have pioneered the genetic research that led to the creation of the Intestinal Bodyguard™ because I wanted to help people, or because I wanted to improve the health of the nation. It can’t even be because I understand that a healthier population leads to increased herd immunity, thus benefitting me when my taxes don’t have to pay for pandemic preparedness. No. I have to be doing something sinister. I have to have a hidden agenda.
Some people won’t be happy until they prove that no one means well, no one is trying to serve the greater good, and there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.
—FROM “KING OF THE WORMS,” AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. STEVEN BANKS, CO-FOUNDER OF SYMBOGEN. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ROLLING STONE, FEBRUARY 2027.
Certain lines can’t be uncrossed,
Certain maps will get you lost,
Once you’re past the border, then you’ll have to play the game.
Roll the dice but count the cards,
Break the glass but keep the shards.
The world is out of order. It’s been broken since you came.
The broken doors are hidden in the blood and in the bone.
My darling child, 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 18
SEPTEMBER 2027
Tansy left after we finished making plans, pausing only to press the promised thumb drive into my hand. Nathan didn’t say anything as he walked her to the door. Then he walked back to me, took me by the hands, and led me to the bedroom, to the bed that was ours for the very first time, not just his. This was my home, too.
I just had to hope it would be my home for more than a day before I went and got myself killed.
“Sal…” he began. I stopped his mouth with a kiss, and conversation became unimportant for a while, replaced by the twin goals of removing our clothing as fast as possible and keeping our lips on each other at all times. The drums were back in my ears, but softer now, a signal of excitement and not anger or fear. This was where I belonged. This place, this skin, tonight. Everything else was in the future, and the future would have to wait for a few hours. I was doing this because I enjoyed being alive; because I wanted to stay that way. So it was time for me to celebrate my condition, even if it was only for the moment.
When we were done, both of us sweaty and satiated in the way that only accompanies really good sex after emotional turmoil, Beverly stuck her nose into the room and whined, signaling the need to go out. I groaned, starting to push myself up onto my elbows.
“Don’t worry about it.” Nathan pressed a kiss into the crook of my neck, close enough to the bruise from USAMRIID’s sedatives that it made my skin ache with phantom pain. “You’ve had a long day. I’ll take the dogs out.”
He was out of the bed before I could do more than mumble sleepy protests. I watched as he pulled on his pants and grabbed the leashes from the top of the dresser, whistling for Beverly and Minnie to come to him. Then he and the dogs were gone, and I drifted off to sleep by the warm light coming from the terrarium of carnivorous plants.
I didn’t wake up when they came back in. I didn’t wake up until morning.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” said Nathan. We were parked on the street near the SymboGen complex, which loomed larger than ever now that I was thinking of myself as a spy and not as a semi-willing visitor. “We can find another way.”
“How many people will die while we’re looking for another way?” I asked.
He looked away.
“Tansy says there’s a back door. I don’t like trusting her, but we have to trust someone, and I’m okay with it being your mother. Trusting your mother means trusting Tansy. It’s a tautology.”
“You mean it’s a syllogism,” said Nathan, smiling a little.
I blinked at him. “I do?”
“A tautology is a closed loop. ‘The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.’ A syllogism is a set of presuppositions. ‘Tansy is not trustworthy, I trust Dr. Cale, Dr. Cale trusts Tansy, therefore, I trust Tansy.”
I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “What would I do without you?”
“Speak a version of English that no one had ever heard before, probably.” Nathan smiled briefly before sobering. “Sal…”
“Someone has to, Nathan. My sister is sick. My sister.” No one from my family had gotten in contact with me over the night. I was trying to make myself see that as a good thing. “Everyone who’s getting attacked by the implants is someone’s sister, or brother, or parent. If there’s something we can do, we have to do it. Anything else would be… it would be inhuman.”
Nathan sighed. “I love you,” he said. “Please try not to get hurt.”
“I’ll be fine,” I lied. “I’ll contact Tansy as soon as I’ve got the information your mother needs, and they’ll extract me.” After that… we were less clear on what would happen after that. We knew SymboGen couldn’t arrest me if they couldn’t prove something had been done, but they could potentially make my life difficult.
Or they could just decide that they were never going to let me leave.
“Okay,” said Nathan.
There was nothing left for us to say after that, and the longer I lingered, the harder it was going to be for me to get out of the car. I leaned over and kissed him again, this time on the lips, lingering just long enough to be sure he understood how much I loved him. Then I grabbed my backpack from the footwell, slipped it on, and got out of the car, beginning to walk slowly toward SymboGen.
It was time to go inside.
There were guards at the edge of the p
arking lot, watching the cars as they came and went. They greeted me with nothing more than a quick glance and a curt nod, apparently unable to see me as any kind of a threat. I was an empty-handed woman, one that they’d seen before, and ID wasn’t required until I got to the actual building. I ducked my head and hurried on, glad of my relative anonymity. I didn’t want to deal with answering questions until I had to.
The brave front I’d been putting on for Nathan aside, I was terrified. My stomach was a roiling knot of pain, and the sound of drums was low and constant in my ears, like something out of an old King Kong movie. They pounded in time with my footsteps, accompanying me all the way to the sliding glass doors into the lobby.
As always, a rush of chilled air and bland, overprocessed music rushed out to greet me when the doors swept open. The twin feelings of coming home and wanting to run away again swept over me at the same time. I’d barely taken two steps into the lobby when a pair of security guards appeared as if by magic, moving toward me with a tight economy of purpose that was all it took for them to be terrifying. I stopped where I was, trying to ignore the panic building in my gut as I raised my chin and waited for them to come to me. I had every right to be here. I was a patient of SymboGen’s. I was Dr. Banks’s pet project.
“Can we help you?” asked the first guard, once they were close enough that they wouldn’t need to do anything uncouth, like shouting.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead, but I didn’t know where else to go,” I said, trying to make my eyes believably wide and glossy. To my surprise, tears actually started to form as I continued, “I can’t go home. I just can’t. Can—can you tell Dr. Banks that Sally Mitchell is here to see him?” Now that the tears had started, they simply refused to stop. The past few days had been even more traumatic than I realized.
The guards exchanged a glance, looking as disturbed by my tears as I was. “Do you have ID?” asked the second.
Nodding, I dug my ID card out of the front pocket of my backpack and held it out to them. My hand was shaking. I didn’t try to stop it. It would only help with the image I was trying to project… and I didn’t want to know how I would react if it turned out I was unable to make the shaking stop.
The guard took my card, turning it over in his fingers like he wanted to be certain that it was legitimate. It must have passed whatever unknown test he was putting it through, because he looked to his partner and said, “Wait here with her,” before turning and walking toward the reception counter.
The remaining security guard offered me an earnest smile and said, “It’s all right, Miss Mitchell. We’re just going to call up to Dr. Banks and see if he’s free to see you.” I looked at him blankly, and he continued, “We’ve met before. You probably don’t remember me, but I was in the cafeteria the last time you came to visit us. So I know this is just a formality.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t really been looking at the faces of the guards who came to save me that day in the cafeteria. Too much of my focus had been on Chave and her hopeless battle against the parasite that was in the process of consuming her thinking mind. Still, he looked so hopeful that I found I couldn’t tell him that. “Thank you. I really appreciate what you did that day. I’m sorry. I’m just… really shaken.”
Now concern washed his smile away. “What happened?”
I could either try to make myself an ally inside SymboGen, or I could avoid the need to tell my carefully crafted sob story twice. I decided to aim for something in the middle as I said, “I went to see where my father works, and there was… someone got sick. Again.” I sniffled. “I’m so tired of seeing people get sick all around me.”
“I’m sorry,” said the guard.
“Me, too.”
“Miss Mitchell?” We both turned to see the first guard returning. He held out my ID card. I took it, tucking it into my backpack as he said, “We’ve been instructed to stay here with you. Dr. Banks will be right down. Can we get you anything? A glass of water? A chair?”
“No, thank you,” I said, and wiped my nose with the side of my hand. “I just want to see Dr. Banks. Thank you for your help.”
“It’s our job, ma’am.”
The return of the first guard had popped the thin bubble of rapport the second guard and I had been starting to craft between us. We stood in awkward silence until a door opened in the bank of elevators and Dr. Banks came striding out, looking in all directions before his eyes settled on us. “Sally!” he called, and started toward us.
Dr. Banks didn’t look quite as perfect as he had on every other visit, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what had changed. His hair was just a bit less flawlessly combed; his skin was just slightly less ideal. He looked tired, and it carried all the way into his clothing, which was rumpled around the edges, like he’d been sleeping in it.
“Sally,” he said again, once he was close enough that he didn’t need to shout. “How are you? I’ve been so worried…” He didn’t say anything about the bugs in my house, or the fact that they’d stopped working shortly after they were installed. I decided not to say anything either. My father was the local head of USAMRIID; if the bugs didn’t work, Dr. Banks would blame it on Dad, unless I gave him good reason to do otherwise.
“It’s been a hard few days,” I said. I forced myself to think about the scene at the lab, the intern bleeding out her life through the hole in her throat, and was rewarded with fresh tears. The first one slipped free and ran down my cheek as I said, “Joyce is sick.”
“Joyce—you mean your sister, don’t you?” I nodded mutely. Dr. Banks’s face dissolved into a mask of sympathy that might have seemed sincere, if I hadn’t spent so much time with him, observing his reactions through dozens of private interviews. He was surprised to hear that Joyce was sick. But he wasn’t sorry. “Sally, that’s terrible. How are your parents handling the news?”
This was where things were going to get dicey. I glanced toward the two security guards who were still standing patiently by, trying to project reluctance. “I don’t know if I really want to talk about that here in the lobby.”
Dr. Banks was rarely slow on the uptake. He nodded immediately, stepping close and putting his arm around my shoulders. I managed not to recoil away from him. “That’s easily enough fixed, Sally. Thank you, gentlemen, for making sure Miss Mitchell got to me as quickly as possible. You may go about your duties now.”
“Thank you, Dr. Banks,” said the first guard. The second guard didn’t say anything, just offered me a little wave before turning and following his partner back to their posts against the wall.
Dr. Banks tightened his hold on me as he turned back toward the elevators, pulling me unavoidably along. I swallowed and let myself be led, ducking my chin a little so that he would think I was overwhelmed with relief at finally being somewhere safe. In actuality, all I wanted to do was turn and run back outside, to where real safety could be found. And if I did that, hundreds of people would die.
Once we were in the elevator, Dr. Banks let me go, and said, “It’s very good to see you again. I’ve been worried about you. The last time you were here… that didn’t go very well.”
I stared at him. I couldn’t help it. “People died,” I said, unable to keep the shock out of my tone.
“Yes, and you could have been seriously hurt, I know. I am so, so sorry, Sally. This was supposed to be a place where you could always be safe, and instead, it nearly got you killed. I assure you, that won’t happen again. We’ve stepped up security, and we’ve initiated preemptive scanning of all employees on a twice-weekly basis, just to be safe.” He must have mistaken my slowly dawning anger for amazement, because he smiled, adding, “All measures are justified if they allow us to guarantee the safety of our guests.”
“You have a test that’s good enough to catch early infections, and you haven’t been sharing it with the local hospitals.” I didn’t realize that would be my answer until it was already out, hanging in the air between us like a shameful secret. There was
no point in trying to take it back, and so I pressed on, demanding, “Why?”
The elevator dinged as it reached its destination. Dr. Banks stepped out, motioning for me to follow. “There are a lot of things to be considered in a situation like this one, Sally. Some of them are admittedly less noble than others.”
“How many of them justify letting people get sick because you’re not sharing the test?” I walked next to him as he led the way down the hall to his office.
“None,” he said, opening the office door. “But how many of them justify giving people a few more days of peace before they become ill? Don’t mistake an early detection system for treatment, Sally. We may have the one, but we’re a long way from the other.”
“So why did you develop a test in the first place?” I looked around as I stepped into the office. His computer was where it always was, displayed prominently on his desk. If he would just leave me alone for a few minutes, I would be able to plug in the thumb drive and accomplish what I’d come here to do. The real trick was going to be getting Dr. Banks to leave me alone.
He sighed as he closed the door and walked around to take a seat at that selfsame desk. “You’re smarter than that question, Sally. We developed a test because the sleepwalking sickness is parasitic in nature. You know that. You’ve known that since you went back to the hospital with your boyfriend.”
I stared at him as I sat down in one of the chairs across from his desk. I knew SymboGen had been watching me. I still somehow didn’t expect him to be quite so open about admitting it. “But…”