Jillian vs Parasite Planet

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

  Jillian watched as it lifted into the sky and drifted off northward. Then it was gone, and she was back to being bored. She shivered. Then went over to snag the water pouch and drank again.

  “Hey,” the SABRINA dog said. “Easy there.”

  “Huh?”

  SABRINA gestured. The water pouch was noticeably emptier than before.

  Jillian put it down and shivered again, harder this time. Her hands were shaking. She rearranged the scarf around her neck and put her hands in her pockets before she realized she wasn’t cold. If anything, she was too warm. No, she was cold after all. She took the scarf off, put it back on. She paced a little more, antsy, and finally plopped down next to SABRINA.

  SABRINA made her a fluffy pillow of her own. It was extremely comfy. She burrowed her face into it.

  Time skipped. She lifted her head.

  Two days, four hours, eighteen minutes, eighteen seconds.

  “But I didn’t fall asleep,” she whispered to the countdown clock. At least she didn’t think she had. Her mind felt hazy, sluggish, unreliable. She checked her forehead for fever. If anything it felt cool, clammy. Her breathing was uneven, ragged and heavy, like she’d just run up three flights of stairs. She blinked, and it felt like the slowest blink in the world, like her eyelids had slowed down, or the rest of her had sped up.

  Wait, she told herself. Just wait. Pass the time and wait. It will all be over soon.

  “So,” she said, teeth chattering. “Tell me about those four hundred card tricks.”

  “Four hundred and thirteen,” SABRINA said, beaming. Suddenly it was an octopus again, using at least four arms to elaborately shuffle a deck of cards that had appeared from nowhere. SABRINA was no specific color now, just flashing through an endless chain of multicolored patterns.

  “That’s to distract me, isn’t it,” Jillian said, pointing at a place on the octopus where a chessboard pattern met a pattern like ancient television static met a pattern like a flowered surfer shirt. Her voice sounded like someone else was speaking with it, like she was hearing it come back to her from far away. “From whatever’s going on with the cards.”

  “If I explain the trick,” SABRINA said in a voice like syrup, “it wouldn’t be much of a trick, now would it?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Jillian replied, sweating under her goose bumps. “I can’t even look at it, it’s making me so dizzy.”

  “Outstanding!” SABRINA fanned cards at her from five different directions at once. “That’s how you know it’s working. Now pick a card. Any card.”

  Jillian shut her eyes and held out a hand. Her arm felt so heavy, so weak. Like there were rocks tied to her wrist. “Just give me one. I’m not looking.”

  “That’s not how it works! You have to pick one. If you don’t pick, then I could just hand you the one I want you to have, and you wouldn’t be impressed. You picking the card is pretty much the entirety of the point. What do they even teach you humans in school?”

  “Okay, okay,” Jillian said, opening her eyes. Cards swam in her vision. Red and black, shapes and numbers. She plucked the queen of spades off an octopus sucker and looked quickly away. “Can I get you to cut it out, though, with the optical illusion stuff? It’s making me want to hurl.”

  Muttering at the very bottom of its register, SABRINA blanched gray. “Happy?”

  “Thrilled.” Her stomach churned. She swallowed. “Actually, no. I don’t feel so good. I think I looked at that too long. It’s giving me a headache.”

  “Well, aren’t we just a veritable cornucopia of complaints today?”

  “Can you not? Right now? Like, for five minutes, can you just not.”

  Exactly three seconds of silence. Then it was the cuddly six-legged dog again. It curled up beside her, shining gigantic puppy eyes upon her like searchlights. “What’s wrong? Can I help? I am very good at helping.”

  “No. I don’t know. Sorry I yelled at you. I know Dr. Vasquez said you’re just teasing me. It’s—I just feel like I’m catching the flu or something. Can you get space flu? Is that a thing?”

  “I don’t know. But you very well could have been incubating a virus since before we got here. You humans are just giant sloshing bags of germs, you know. Germs and water. And complaints. And unquantifiable notions. And shoddy workmanship. And spite. And—”

  “I don’t know.” Jillian’s vision was swimming. She shut her eyes. “Maybe.”

  “Well, don’t you fret. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I am not qualified to offer medical care, but I do have an extensive database of symptoms. I can cross-reference yours if you list them.”

  “Thought you weren’t”—Jillian shivered hard—“a medbot.”

  “I happen to contain multitudes,” SABRINA said loftily. “And I have watched over six thousand hours of hospital dramas on TV.”

  Jillian thought for a second. “Okay, so. I’m hot and cold. I can’t decide which. Both at the same time, I guess. I feel sick to my stomach, and I’m really dizzy. And this headache is getting really”—pain spiked between her eyes, and she winced—“really super bad. Can you pass me the water?”

  “You just drank half the container of water,” SABRINA reminded her. “You probably have a fever. Dehydration is a symptom of that. I can check.” It poked Jillian on one temple, hmmed a little, shook its pointy-eared head. “Nope.”

  “But I’m thirsty.”

  “Okay. I’ll give you a little. You can’t really be that thirsty. And remember, if you drink it all, then we have to go back to the waterfall for more. Or else I could grab some from Dr. Vasquez’s while I’m getting your worms, but it would slow me down, and—hey!”

  Jillian blinked at SABRINA. She felt like she’d fallen asleep again. But she was wide awake. “Huh?”

  SABRINA plucked the water pouch out of her hands and dangled it upside down. A few drops pattered out onto the boulder. Jillian stared at them.

  “Hmm,” SABRINA said. “I stand corrected. You were definitely thirsty. Let me check you again for that fever.”

  Jillian drew up her knees and rested her cheek on them, then wrapped her arms around her head. “I’ll be fine. I’m fine. I just need some quiet.”

  “Yeah,” SABRINA conceded, “I get that a lot.” It retreated to the opposite side of the boulder where it clung deliberately to the very edge, tail swishing back and forth like a cat’s. It grew eyebrows just to raise them at her quizzically: There, is that better?

  Jillian shut her eyes and tried counting backward from a thousand. Sometimes that helped to put her to sleep.

  But she wasn’t tired. She felt like she’d never been tired before in her life, would never be tired again. Her brain sparked and fizzed like a live wire. She was outrageously, impossibly thirsty. And she’d forgotten how to count backward. She kept losing track of where she was. Before she’d reached nine hundred, she was lost and had to start again.

  After three tries, she opened her eyes. Dizziness made the world yawn open before her, slowly spinning like the rotating eye of a storm.

  She struggled to focus on the countdown clock. One day, nineteen hours, five minutes, fifty-nine seconds.

  Time had skipped forward without her again. But she’d been awake. She must have been. Hadn’t she just tried, and failed, to fall asleep?

  Jillian crawled over to the water pouch and tried to open it, but couldn’t remember how. After a moment she realized she was trying to gnaw through the side.

  “SABRINA?” she croaked, or tried to. She wasn’t sure if any sound came out.

  Nevertheless, SABRINA was there. It said nothing, only took the water container from her, opened it, and handed it back, watching her very, very closely.

  Jillian took the water pouch, went to raise it to her mouth—and stopped. She wasn’t thirsty at all, she realized. She just wanted to look at the water. It was fascinati
ng. It was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. She couldn’t stop staring into the opening. Down into the water. She was shivering with need.

  But she wasn’t thirsty. She wasn’t thirsty at all.

  Jillian’s blood ran cold.

  “SABRINA?” she said in the tiniest voice possible. Like if SABRINA couldn’t hear her, it couldn’t answer, and Jillian would never have to know. “You checked me, didn’t you? For bites?”

  “Yes,” SABRINA said. “I told you that. Oh, human memories.” It shook its head fondly. “So endearingly defective. So prone to error. So—oh.” It looked at Jillian, then at the water pouch. “Ohhh. I get it! You think you’re—”

  But Jillian wasn’t waiting around for SABRINA to reach its conclusions on its own. She was already shucking off her podsuit, then the jumpsuits, digging around under the bandages, looking for those telltale circular burns. She couldn’t find any.

  Then, slowly, hesitantly, already knowing what she’d find, she dug her fingers gently into her hair, probing her scalp for pain.

  There was none. At least, none she could feel over the tremendous pounding in her head. It felt like something was drilling, one slow-motion millimeter at a time, into her brain. Even over the painkillers SABRINA had given her, which had dulled all her other aches and pains considerably.

  Then her fingers hit it, and her whole body froze like a deer in the headlights of a car. There, where the back of her neck met her skull. A smooth patch, the size of a quarter, where the hair had burned away and the skin was raw and oozing. Only now that she poked it did she notice the pain.

  Her terrified gaze met SABRINA’s. “Bring the rest of yourself back,” she hissed. “Now.”

  “I’m on my way back,” SABRINA said. “I left Dr. Vasquez’s place eighty-one minutes ago. Estimated time of arrival: one hour, forty-five minutes, thirty seconds.”

  “I don’t know if I have that long,” Jillian said. “Listen to me very carefully. Whatever I say after this, whatever I do, whatever I tell you to do, I need you to—ahhh!”

  It felt like her head was exploding. Like her brain was fireworks and her skull was as fragile as an eggshell and something was hatching out of it, and there was nothing she could do to stop whatever was happening, and everything was pain. It built in her like a scream, grew and blossomed until the pain was bigger than her, was a monster that flew out of her and dragged her along behind into the darkness and—

  —stopped. Everything was quiet. So, so quiet. Like her mind was a huge, dark room and something paced the floor of it, something that was not her, and she huddled in a corner, unable to speak or move or—

  Time skipped.

  She was crawling down off the boulder.

  No, she thought. She tried to say it. She had forgotten how to speak. She had mostly forgotten how to think. Her brain was screaming one word, over and over, deafeningly loud. Water. Water. Water.

  She was climbing—flopping—down the side of the boulder, rock to rock. Her arms had gone boneless, rubbery. Her legs weren’t listening to her. She’d forgotten how to climb. How to protect herself in falls. Her body was not hers to drive, not now, not anymore. She face-planted, tasted blood.

  SABRINA, she thought. Help me.

  SABRINA was already there. Wrapping around her. Hauling her back to the top of the boulder. But Jillian, with the force of her need behind her, was too strong. She tore away, was grabbed and anchored, broke free, was grabbed again. Some muffled part of her mind remembered seeing this somewhere before.

  Water, her brain shrieked at her in a voice like fingernails down a chalkboard.

  No, she told it. She forced the word into her mouth and shouted it aloud. “No!”

  But her body, and the thing that was in the pilot’s seat of it, had other plans. She ripped free of SABRINA, spun loosely, and plummeted headfirst down the side of the boulder toward the crater like she was made of metal and the swamp was the strongest magnet in the universe.

  SABRINA caught her, her face an inch from the ground. Dragged her back. “I didn’t give you enough credit,” it said. “You are a lot stronger than you look.”

  Water, Jillian’s brain howled. WATER.

  She fought her way through the dark room that her mind had become. Pulled herself out of that emptiness, hand over hand. Grabbed SABRINA with both fists. She could barely remember how to speak. She reached down into the depths and pulled words out, one by one, and spat them out as fast as she could, before she forgot what they meant. “Do. Not. Let. Me. Drown.”

  SABRINA might have answered, but Jillian didn’t hear it. She was back in the dark room, and all she could hear, all she could think, all she knew, was water.

  She wrenched free of SABRINA, tried to stand. Toppled forward a few steps, momentum carrying her down the ridge—and fell. SABRINA had looped around her ankle. Now it sat on her, enveloping her, tying her wrists and ankles together, then her ankles to her wrists. She thrashed forward on her stomach one foot, then another, before SABRINA tackled her and held on. The swamp glittered in the distance, clotted and greenish in the sunlight. Water, her brain screamed, and she was driven forward, shredding the podsuit on the rocky ground.

  SABRINA wrestled her over onto her back. Pushed something into her mouth. Something small and roundish. Then another.

  She should know what those things were. She knew she should. She couldn’t come up with words to match the objects to. SABRINA held her mouth and nose shut until she swallowed.

  “Those will help you sleep,” SABRINA said directly into her face. “Just like with your parents. While they kick in, try to stop fighting me, okay? It’s getting really, really old.”

  I’m trying, Jillian tried to say, but she failed at that too. She threw herself over sideways and started inching toward the swamp. She felt her face strike rock, but the pain was dulled, distant, like everything. The dark room was her world now.

  SABRINA said something else. Jillian heard the words but didn’t understand them. Her brain roared water, and her muscles obeyed. How long would it take for the pills to kick in and put her to sleep? Too long. Much too long. The swamp loomed closer and closer in her vision as she struggled toward it, fighting SABRINA, fighting herself, at the mercy of the thing driving her. It wouldn’t stop. She knew that. It wouldn’t let her go until she was dead. If the rest of SABRINA didn’t get back within the next few minutes, it would be too late.

  But SABRINA wouldn’t get back that soon. It couldn’t. It was too far away. It would take much, much longer than that to arrive. When it got here, it would find Jillian with her head in the water like the alien deer way back by the falls, parasites climbing out of her nose. Then, if Dr. Vasquez had been right, once rid of the parasite, the host—Jillian—would be fine. Unharmed. Except that in order for the parasite to be gone, Jillian would have to drown. That was the life cycle. Those were the rules.

  In the far deep bottom of Jillian’s murky thoughts, something glinted.

  if the parasite can be extracted or persuaded to leave through other means

  Dr. Vasquez had said that. Why was that important? Jillian didn’t know. She could barely comprehend the words anymore. Water, her mind screamed. Water was the only word she knew.

  No. Water was the only word it knew. The parasite. Not Jillian. She was still there, she could feel herself still there, buried deep, like her mind had been packed with mud, and thoughts could not get through.

  Think, she told herself. You have to think. There is an answer here. But it’s up to you to find it.

  Extracted or persuaded to leave through other means.

  Persuaded to leave through other means.

  She had a brief mental flash of SABRINA fanning cards at her. Blaring patterns in her face to confuse her eyes and mind.

  Trick, she thought. You have to trick it.

  She was at the edge of the swamp now, th
e water close enough to touch. Then she was in it, splashing face-first. She had seconds at most.

  The thought of it—of what she knew she had to do—froze her solid with fear. Her whole body screamed its panic alarms, all of them at once. But she had no choice. This was the only way.

  “SABRINA,” she said. It was such an effort to move her mouth, make words. But she had to. This was her only chance. “Breathing—tube. Not nose. Just—mouth. Then let go.”

  Did SABRINA understand her? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything. Only that the water was there, right there, and the noise of the thing in her brain was deafening. Louder than the waterfall. Louder than anything.

  She felt something press against the lower half of her face. It was either SABRINA or something unspeakable from the swamp. And then her whole face was underwater. In the swamp. Where the parasite had driven her to die. She hadn’t even had time to take a deep breath first. She was, suddenly, just there.

  Please be SABRINA, she thought. Please be a breathing tube. And then she forced herself to breathe through her mouth.

  Air. SABRINA had made her the breathing tube. Jillian funneled all her concentration, all her focus, all her will into breathing through her mouth, only through her mouth, over and over. She stayed there like that, face in the swamp, and felt the parasite wriggle free of her brain, down through her nose and out. She felt it leave. Then another, and another.

  When the last one left, her mind went blank. Nothing was left in there to shout her to her death. The silence somehow seemed louder than the sound.

  Jillian struggled upright. It was impossible with her wrists and ankles tied up. “SABRINA,” she tried to say into the mouthpiece of the breathing tube, “it’s okay, it’s me, it’s over.”

  She had no idea how she must sound. But SABRINA figured it out. The restraints vanished, and SABRINA dragged her out of the swamp. That was much easier now that Jillian wasn’t fighting it. She lay limp on the shore of the water with her face in the air and just breathed.

  “Hey,” SABRINA said. It was crouching on Jillian’s chest, flicking bits of disgusting swamp nonsense off her face and shoulders. “I just got the best idea.”