by Mira Grant
“I don’t want to be cut open,” I said hastily. “I’m not sure I get a vote in this, but I really think I should, since this is my life you’re talking about, and I don’t want to be cut open.” That didn’t seem like enough. I paused before adding, meekly, “So please don’t?”
“God, it’s like kicking a fucking puppy,” muttered Ronnie. She raised her voice as she said, “We’re not going to cut you open. Not right now, anyway. It’s not allowed, right, Sherman?”
“At last, you begin to learn,” said Sherman. “If you want any chance of a stable long-term integration with a host you’ll actually like, you’ll stop threatening Sal. Go get yourself cleaned up. You reek of dead human.”
“My favorite cologne,” said Ronnie, and swaggered away. She didn’t walk like a little girl: she walked like a grown man, all strutting and strength, and people got out of her way.
Sherman pulled his arm away from my shoulders as he transferred his hold back to my arm. “This way,” he said, starting to walk deeper into the mall. A few people cast curious glances our way, but most of them ignored us. They had their own business to attend to, and we were just so much background noise. That, or they had been with Sherman long enough to learn to stay out of his way. All my early experiences with him told me that I could trust him, that he was my friend and would protect me. He had been one of my handlers at SymboGen. He had been my friend.
And yet everything I’d experienced since my last visit to SymboGen told me he was the enemy, or close enough as to make no difference. It was his fault we’d lost Tansy. It was his fault I was here. But whether he was friend or foe, the only option I had was to go with him. If he was going to protect me, he’d do a better job if he knew where I was. If he was planning to hurt me, maybe he’d be gentler if I seemed to be playing along.
“Have you been keeping up with your linguistics, pet?” he asked. “I know I haven’t taught you any new words the last few times we’ve seen each other. I’m sorry about that. I did so enjoy expanding your vocabulary.”
“Did you always know I was a tapeworm?” It wasn’t the question I’d been planning to ask, but once it was out in the open between us, I realized that there were no other questions. Anything else I might have wanted to know was dependent on how he answered me.
“Oh, Sal. My pretty, innocent little creature.” Sherman kept walking, and I kept walking with him. We passed more people, none of them familiar, and none of them paused to ask where we were going. “I knew someone like you was going to come along eventually—knew it in my bones, you could say.” He chuckled like this was somehow hysterical. Maybe it was, to him. Tapeworms don’t have bones. “Mother always told us we could only happen under proper laboratory conditions, but what she didn’t count on was that I was the closest she’d yet come to perfection. Tansy was… well, you’ve met Tansy; there was no way she was going to bite the hand that fed her. Adam was always a momma’s boy, too devoted to doing exactly as he was bid to question anything. Whereas I was the snake in her garden. I read all her files, and when I ran across something I didn’t understand, I learned. It’s amazing what people will tell you when they don’t yet realize that they need to be wary.
“I asked her lab staff about biological interfaces and statistical probability. I asked her technicians about skeletal structures and backup functions and how often blood circulated through the brain. And I asked our mutual creator about the structure of my soul. She was very glad to tell me as much as I wanted to know, because she didn’t think I’d have the background to understand what she was telling me. She even taught me—albeit accidentally—how one went about creating a false identity for someone, and what it would take to get on Steven Banks’s good side.” Sherman cast me a sly, sidelong look. “You see what I did for you, Sal? I twisted the world into knots so I could make it a pretty bow to tie in your hair. Your human lover never did anything half so nice.”
Bile rose in my throat as I realized that he meant what he was saying. Some of this—not all, thankfully, but enough to be disturbing—had been intended as a form of courtship, like he could convince me to love him if he just spent enough time working on the problem. “You’re not answering the question,” I said. “People keep doing that to me. I don’t like it.”
“I do appreciate that you’ve started growing a spine. It’ll make this much more of an equal partnership, and much less of a burden.” Sherman shook his head. “Yes, I knew. I recognized you for what you were when they first rolled you into SymboGen and I thought, this is it. This is what fate looks like. This is the way destiny presents itself. With a brunette on a stretcher, wetting herself and staring dispassionately at the ceiling. You were the Holy Grail, Sal. A natural chimera in the process of full neural integration, yet awake through the entire process. Most of us didn’t get to wake up until a full six months further along. I honestly feel that it hampered our ability to completely inhabit our bodies. The protocols for integration as practiced here are based largely on your experience. We have so much to thank you for.”
We had reached the far end of the mall while he was talking. A metal grill was half-lowered across the mouth of what had clearly been a department store, once upon a time. Sherman ducked to get under the grill, not letting go of my arm, and so I bent to follow him. The grill creaked down and locked onto the floor as soon as we were through. Because that wasn’t disturbing or anything.
“You never told me.” My voice sounded small and betrayed, matching the slivers of ice that felt like they were piercing my heart. I knew Sherman was on the other side of this conflict. It didn’t matter. Part of me was always going to want him to be a good guy.
“What would I have said? ‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, dear, but not only are you not actually Sally Mitchell, you’re not even a human being. You’re something new, and better, and everyone you have ever loved is going to view you as a monster.’ ” He let go of my arm and stepped away, turning to face me. “Everyone but me, that is. You have never been a monster in my eyes, Sal. You have never been anything short of perfect. I doubt that you ever could be. You feel it, don’t you? The way your heart slows down to beat along with mine.”
I paused. “But… you can do that to anyone, can’t you?” Sherman’s startled, guilty expression was all the answer I needed. “Ronnie asked if you’d kissed me, and then she called you an asshole. What is it, some sort of biofeedback loop? Can you do that to all chimera, or am I just in a lucky subset of the population?”
“Sal…” He started to reach out, like he was going to caress my cheek. I slapped his hand away. His expression hardened. “Yes, if that’s what you wanted to hear: yes, I can do that to any chimera, and to any of the charmingly named ‘sleepwalkers,’ if the need strikes me. It’s a matter of controlling the pheromones I’m giving off. They tell you what to do on a level you simply weren’t engineered to fight. I could teach you to do the same thing, but why would I put such a useful weapon in the hands of a child? Because don’t misunderstand me, Sal: you are a child in this fight. I am romantically interested in you despite my better judgment, but that isn’t going to buy you the sort of lazy disregard that you’re accustomed to. You are a child and you are a weapon, and as we don’t let children play with weapons, I’ll be the one deciding how you are aimed and fired.”
I glared at him. “You can’t make me do anything.”
“Oh, but darling, as you’ve already seen, I can.” He smirked. “All I need to do is get skin-to-skin with you, and you’ll dance to any tune I play. Now make yourself comfortable: find something to wear, find a bed in housewares. I’ve got cameras on this whole place, and the front of the building is sealed off, so you’ll not be escaping. Aside from that, feel free to do as you like.”
“Where are you going?”
“Didn’t you hear me before?” This time when he smiled, he showed all of his teeth. I quailed away. “I’m going to go start a war.”
That’s enough science for today. I can’t really f
ocus on it anyway: it’s all just facts and figures and not enough answers. I need answers. I’m not going to find them in a Petri dish or a simulation, but those are the only places that I’m being allowed to look.
Sal has been missing for almost a month. Those words are still so hard for me to type, because they don’t make any sense. We were home free. We were safe. All we had to do was make it across a parking lot and we could get back to the lab, back to the safety of Mom’s defenses. There was no way anything could go wrong, and I guess maybe I thought that too loudly, because the universe decided to make sure I knew just how wrong I really was.
There hasn’t been a sign of her since USAMRIID grabbed her out of that parking lot. I know she’s not dead. I can feel it. I also know that I’m probably lying to myself, because psychic powers don’t exist. She could be rotting in a freezer by now, and I would still swear she was alive. I’m going to keep swearing she’s alive until we find her, and then I’m never, never letting her go again.
Please, Sal. Please come back to me.
–FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. NATHAN KIM, OCTOBER 2027.
This is Private Arlen West with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. I have been stationed in the San Francisco base for the past year. I have gone AWOL. I am releasing this recording without consent from my commanding officers. I understand that there will be consequences for this action. I also understand that those consequences cannot be carried out before I am able to insert the muzzle of my service pistol into my mouth, make my peace with God, and pull the trigger. I am doing a service to my country with this announcement. I am fulfilling my duty to the American people.
The sleepwalking sickness has not been contained. It is not a new form of the swine flu. It is not airborne. There is no vaccine. I repeat, there is no vaccine. The vaccinations you are receiving are standard flu shots, and will not protect you from the sleepwalking sickness. You are already infected. You have become infected of your own free—
They’re trying to break the door down. I guess I don’t have as much time as I thought. Take antiparasitic drugs. Take them now. Your life depends on it.
–TRANSMISSION INTERCEPTED FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO USAMRIID BASE, SEPTEMBER 29, 2027
Chapter 8
OCTOBER 2027
It was hard to keep track of time in Sherman’s converted mall. There were no windows in the department store that was my home and my prison, and the metal plates that sealed the doors to the outside world were snug with the ground, preventing me from even figuring out whether it was day or night outside. I guessed at the time by how many people walked freely in the mall outside my cage, and tried to measure the days by the delivery of my meals. It was harder than I’d expected it to be. Every time I felt sure I’d cracked the code, the meal I thought of as dinner would be pancakes and sliced fruit, or the mall would empty out completely during what I’d assumed was the middle of the day. Before long, I was completely disoriented.
That was bad. I needed to know how long it had been. Shelter animals became dispirited and withdrawn after six weeks in cages. Sherman seemed to think I was too weak to stand up against him, and that meant he was probably waiting for that magic mark before he did anything he couldn’t take back. I just wanted to figure out their routines, and find the hole that would allow me to get away.
It would have been easier if anyone had been willing to talk to me, but no one was. They walked past the grill that kept me from getting out into the mall, chattering with one another or silently bustling from chore to chore, and the few people who even glanced in my direction did so with an odd mixture of contempt and pity that I couldn’t begin to decode. I still watched them, hungry for even the illusion of contact.
It was funny, but after a few “days” I started to think I could feel people coming, even started to be able to predict who would walk into view by the tingle at the back of my mind. It wasn’t completely dependable, but it was close enough that I began to wonder if it was real. Sleepwalkers communicated through pheromones. Maybe chimera did too, on some level.
Maybe I was learning.
So I was lonely and isolated, but I wasn’t completely alone. Sherman visited often, even when I wished he wouldn’t, even when it was inappropriate for him to do so, like when I was asleep or giving myself a sponge bath in the employee restroom. My burgeoning sense of “someone is coming” only worked with him about half the time, which made his unannounced arrivals all the more jarring. I would think I was safe and then he would just walk in on me, his eyes crawling across my nakedness in a way that made me profoundly uncomfortable, despite my general lack of a nudity taboo. He looked at me like he was trying to decide whether or not to eat me up. It wasn’t right. I started closing doors and hiding myself in closets, and he still kept coming. He seemed to enjoy the challenge of being forced to track me down.
Ronnie and Kristoph took turns bringing my meals. Apparently, having been the ones to collect me from USAMRIID, they were also cleared to interact with me—or maybe this was a punishment of some sort, and I was a chore they had to complete before they could be considered forgiven. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. All that mattered was that they weren’t Sherman, and every time they brought me a tray or came to draw another vial of blood, it wasn’t Sherman putting his hands on me again.
The meals were the best way I had of keeping track of time. I seemed to get one roughly every four hours, followed by a long period where I was supposed to be sleeping. But even that wasn’t perfect, since the first meal usually arrived about an hour after I woke up in the “morning.” Presumably, they could be feeding me six times a day. I wasn’t gaining weight. I was also running laps around the abandoned department store, which probably burned off as many calories as I was taking in. I’d even started doing push-ups in what used to be the perfume department, letting the acrid burn of the chemicals spilled on the floor motivate me to keep pushing myself away. Maybe if I’d been stronger, I would have done a better job of fighting for my freedom. Maybe I wouldn’t be here now.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
They had had me caged up like a lab animal for roughly three weeks, according to my best guess. I was running another lap around the store when someone fell into step beside me, keeping up easily. I turned to see Ronnie jogging next to me, his shorter legs pumping hard as he ran. Despite that, he didn’t look like he was in any distress. I was trying to get into shape. He was already there.
Ronnie caught me looking at him. He frowned, brows beetling together above dark brown eyes, and growled, “What?” He tried to pitch his voice low, but it came out in a soprano squeak, so distinctly feminine that it made me stumble for a moment. I’d been here long enough that I didn’t have a problem viewing Ronnie as male anymore—he said he was, and that was good enough for me. It was no more of a stretch than me saying I was human. But his voice always threw me.
“I was just wondering why you’re here,” I said, recovering from my stumble and continuing to run. “Is it time for more blood? I don’t think I’ve finished making new stuff to replace what you took yesterday.”
“I’m not telling you whether that was yesterday, today, or tomorrow, so you can stop fishing,” he said, with less open malice than he would have harbored at the beginning. He began slowing down. I did the same, continuing to pace him until we were both standing in housewares, facing one another. “I’m not here for blood. I’m here for you.”
I blinked at him. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“No, you never do, do you?” Ronnie shook his head. “Sherman wants you.” I must have looked as distraught about that idea as I felt, because Ronnie sighed and reached out to touch my elbow reassuringly. “He’s not going to take you apart. He just has some questions, and he’s hoping you can answer them.”
“I’ll go with you quietly if you’ll answer a question for me.” I’d been trying this gambit more and more of late. It didn’t always work—it didn’t eve
n work very often—but when it did, it could teach me important things about the people who were holding me captive. Maybe eventually I’d hit on the right combination of important things, and be able to magically transport myself out of this mall and back into my real life.
Ronnie snorted. “What, this again? Okay, Sal, fire away, but remember, I won’t tell you how long it’s been since we brought you here, where the mall is really located, or what Sherman wants you for. That’s all between you and him. I’m not putting myself in the middle.”
“Why did they have to put you in a different body? I mean. It’s a pretty good body. It seems to work okay, even though I know you don’t like it very much. But if the body you had was working, you should have just kept that one.”
Ronnie didn’t say anything. I grimaced, a thin worm of panic uncurling in my belly. I’d been trying to figure out what the situation was with Ronnie and his current body for days—it seemed like it should connect somehow to what I was doing here. This was the first time I’d been able to work up the courage to ask, and I was suddenly unsure it had been a good idea.
Finally, Ronnie said, “Come with me,” and turned on his heel, stalking away into the housewares department. He wasn’t heading for the exit.
Either he was going to kill me or he was going to explain, and I was desperate enough for allies that it seemed like a chance worth taking. I followed him through the store, catching up quickly and then just pacing him in silence, letting him lead the way to the dining room sets that stood, slowly gathering dust, near the mattress displays where I’d been sleeping. He pulled out a chair and sat down, gesturing for me to do the same. Lacking any other options, I sat.
The silence stretched out for a little longer, seeming to twist in on itself and nip at its own tail, before Ronnie said, “Rejection can be an issue for those of us who weren’t tailored to specific hosts, or whose hosts were killed before we could finish the assimilation process.”