by Grant, Mira
I had to stop screaming before I could breathe in. That felt like one of the hardest things I had ever done. Raising my head was even harder. The drums were pounding in my ears again, louder than they’d ever been before. “The car,” I whispered, staring at Nathan’s pale, drawn face.
“I know, Sal, and I am so sorry. Please believe me, I didn’t think, and I’m sorry. Are you okay? Are you going to be okay if I start driving again?”
No. No, I won’t be okay; let’s leave the car here and walk wherever it is we need to go. We can walk forever if we have to. Just don’t start the car. Numbly, I bit my lip and nodded. I didn’t want to stay here forever, and I knew that we couldn’t walk home. But oh, I wanted to.
“Okay. Good. I am so sorry.” Nathan hesitated before saying, “I hate to ask you this, Sal, but is it all right if we don’t go straight back to your house? I think I need to stop at the hospital.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand as I forced myself to sit up. “Okay,” I said, in a small voice.
Nathan started the car and pulled away from the side of the road. We drove on.
The industrial gray San Francisco City Hospital wasn’t built to look imposing or inviting: it was built to house a hospital. It was simultaneously less comforting and more welcoming than SymboGen. Nathan parked in his assigned space beneath the building, gesturing for me to come as he got out of the car and walked briskly toward the employee entrance. I followed. As I did, I realized that I felt oddly unclothed without my shoulder bag, like I was forgetting something essential.
If SymboGen didn’t return my things, I could always replace them and send Dr. Banks the bill. Dwelling on that bitter thought kept me from thinking too hard about where we were going as Nathan led me through the maze of corridors and hallways inside the hospital.
Once we were inside the service elevator bound for the fifth floor, Nathan turned to me and said, “I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but I need to know whether SymboGen has information that they’re not sharing with the rest of us.”
“By ‘doing this,’ you really mean taking me with you, don’t you?”
“I do,” Nathan admitted. The elevator stopped, and he led me to a changing room. “You’re already in scrubs; that’s good. Put on a lab coat and we should be fine.”
I frowned at him. “You’re really serious. You’re not supposed to be doing this.”
“No, I’m not, but I want you with me; you’re the one who saw what Dr. Lo did.” He opened a locker and passed me a lab coat. “Don’t worry. You won’t get in any trouble if we’re caught.”
“I’m not the one I’m worried about here, Nathan.”
He waved off my concern, a grim expression on his face. I usually only saw him looking that serious when someone had died. “I have a clean record, and this problem has been bothering everyone. The worst I’m going to get is a slap on the wrist.”
Somehow, I doubted that his punishment would be quite as light as that, but there was no sense in arguing with him; we’d been dating long enough for me to know when his mind was made up. I shrugged on the lab coat he’d handed me, rolling up the sleeves to keep them from engulfing my hands completely. Nathan smiled.
“You know, there’s nothing in the world hotter than a cute girl in a lab coat,” he said.
I blinked. “With that attitude, I would have expected you to be dating my sister.”
“What can I say? I like what I like. Now come on. We have some protocols to break.”
Nathan led me down the hall, pausing only once, when he ducked into a supply room and emerged with a wand that looked like a more primitive cousin of the one Dr. Lo had used to examine me. He tucked it under his arm, and we started walking again.
At the end of the hall was a large door marked INFECTIOUS MATERIALS: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. There was a large biohazard symbol beneath the sign, in case people didn’t get the point. Nathan ignored it as he pushed the door open and kept walking. I trusted Nathan. I followed him.
The hallway on the other side looked just like every other hall in the hospital… except that there were no people here. The usual mix of doctors, nurses, and orderlies was gone, replaced by the hum of the fluorescent lights, which seemed extremely loud without all the sounds of humanity to muffle them.
“Here,” Nathan said. He turned, walking into a small room, where a heavy green curtain shielded the occupant from view. He pushed the curtain aside, revealing Beverly’s owner. I gasped. I couldn’t stop myself.
Machines surrounded the sleeping man, connected to him by a variety of tubes and wires. A clear plastic tube snaked out from under the covers; they’d catheterized him at some point, probably when they realized that he wasn’t going to wake up enough to take care of his bodily needs. I recognized most of those tubes and wires from my own stay in the hospital after my accident. I’d been wired up just like that when I first woke up. But this man was behind warning signs, in a room all by himself. They didn’t expect him to wake up, ever.
Nathan walked grimly toward the sleeping man’s bedside. “He’s been asleep for the past twenty-four hours,” he said. “He was still moving up until then, but now he seems to have gone into the next stage of the disease, whatever that means. There’s no response to stimuli of any type. His family wants to disconnect life support; the hospital is paying all medical costs from this point on, for the sake of being allowed to keep working with him.”
“But… why?” I asked. “If his family’s ready to let him go…” I felt like a hypocrite even as the words left my mouth. My family had been ready to let go. If I hadn’t regained consciousness when I did, I would have died.
Nathan glanced back toward me, grimacing a little as he saw my discomfort. “This isn’t like what happened with you, Sal. You had an accident. We knew what caused your coma, and no matter how much research we did, we were never going to find a cure for car crashes. This is different. This is something infectious, and we need to find a way to stop the spread.”
A new discomfort curled in my stomach. “Should we be wearing masks or something if we’re going to be in here?”
“No. Whatever causes this isn’t airborne. We’ve run every test we could think of, and there’s nothing.” Nathan bent forward, folding back the blanket that covered Beverly’s owner. “It’s baffling our best people. It’s baffling me.”
“Why are you involved? Shouldn’t this be an infectious disease case?”
“I’m involved because everyone in the hospital is involved. No one gets to sit out an epidemic.” Nathan produced a pair of blue plastic gloves from his lab coat pocket, pulling them on over his hands. I was relieved to realize that he wouldn’t be touching the sleeping man’s skin. “How far above your skin did she hold the light?”
“About an inch and a half,” I said. “She was especially careful with the undersides of my arms and the insides of my thighs.”
“All right,” said Nathan. He clicked on the wand. It buzzed slightly, lighting up with the same purplish glow as Dr. Lo’s wand. Then he lifted the man’s left arm. It came without resistance, utterly limp, and remained limp as Nathan ran the wand along it. Like Dr. Lo, he checked the outside first, and then switched to examining the inside of the man’s arm, where it would have been closest to his body.
Just between the elbow and armpit, Nathan stopped. “Sal,” he said, a sick fascination in his voice. “Come and have a look at this.”
I didn’t want to have a look at anything. I went anyway. It’s always better to understand than it is to be left sitting in the dark; it’s always better to have answers, even when those answers lead to fresh questions.
This answer definitely led to fresh questions. The light from Nathan’s wand made most of the skin beneath it glow a pale purple, unremarkable because it was so consistent. But at the middle of the light, in the center of the man’s arm, was a system of what looked almost like roots that glowed a bright, painful white instead of matching the purple around them. I stared.
The roots moved.
It was just a twitch, barely movement at all, but it was enough to startle us both. I let out a small shriek, dancing backward, away from the man in the bed. Nathan dropped his arm, taking a long, somewhat more dignified step away from him.
“What is that?” I demanded.
“It’s a parasitic infection—I don’t know what type. Whatever it is, it fluoresces under ultraviolet light,” said Nathan. He sounded astonished and sickened at the same time, like he’d been suspicious, but had never wanted to have his suspicions confirmed. “These people don’t have a disease. They have a parasite, and it’s taking them over.” He turned to look at me, eyes wide. “Why is SymboGen hiding this?”
“I have a better question,” I said. “What happens when they find out we know?”
Naturally, there were concerns about the Intestinal Bodyguard™ when we started human trials. Shanti was worried about the worms. She was always very maternally inclined toward them, and she wasn’t sure they’d been tested enough to be placed in human hosts. Richard, he was on the other extreme. He was worried about our human volunteers, and whether the Intestinal Bodyguard™ might somehow damage their immune systems permanently when it was only trying to help. I was the moderating influence on both of them. That was my job most of the time when we were together. Shanti built castles in the air, Richard talked about how they were going to collapse, and I built foundations underneath them.
We didn’t need to worry, as it turned out. Human and implant fit together like they’d been designed for one another. In a very real way, they had been.
—FROM “KING OF THE WORMS,” AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. STEVEN BANKS, CO-FOUNDER OF SYMBOGEN. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ROLLING STONE, FEBRUARY 2027.
You know what’s funny? In the official literature, Steve tries to claim that D. symbogenesis was my idea, and that I somehow managed to sell everyone else on the idea that this was a line of research worth pursuing. If you check the actual publications, however, you’ll see that my timeline matches up a little better with reality: I was brought into the project six years into the development cycle. I had to work fast and dirty to make up the ground that had already been frittered away on dead ends and useless research channels.
I made D. symbogenesis. I have no qualms about admitting that. It is my baby. But I’m not the one responsible for cutting out most of the potential quality-control time. That award is reserved solely for Dr. Steven Banks. I’ll take the credit—and the blame—for what I actually did. I won’t take the rest of it, and he can’t make me.
—FROM CAN OF WORMS: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SHANTI CALE, PHD. AS YET UNPUBLISHED.
Chapter 9
AUGUST 2027
Someone knocked on my bedroom door, coaxing me out of an uneasy sleep. I opened my eyes but didn’t lift my head from my pillow. Maybe if I stayed where I was, they’d go away and leave me alone.
The knocking continued. Beverly lifted her own head and turned toward the door, ears cocked at an inquisitive angle. Then she turned and looked at me, the question clear in her puzzled brown eyes. Why was I, the one with the thumbs, not getting up and answering the door? Was something wrong with the world?
Yes. Something was wrong with the world. SymboGen was withholding information about what was becoming a national health crisis, at least according to Nathan. He’d produced reports from hospitals around the country the night before, stacking them up in front of me like silent accusations. I’d picked up the first one, flipping it open to the list of cases. Twenty-seven affected so far in Cleveland, Ohio, and the surrounding cities. “Why hasn’t this been on the news?” I’d asked.
And that was when Nathan had said the most damning thing of all: “I’m starting to think it’s because SymboGen doesn’t want it to be.” Each outbreak was reported on the local news—that was unavoidable—triggering a brief flurry of concern, but after that, it just vanished, falling into whatever pit waited for buried news cycles. Miracle diets and pop starlets ruled the headlines, and a few dozen sleepwalkers in a few dozen American cities barely registered as worthy of attention.
But it wasn’t just a few dozen, according to the reports Nathan had. There were a few hundred cases, once you looked at the whole country, and they weren’t limited to American soil. We knew of definite cases in Canada, the United Kingdom, and South America, and there were rumors of more cases elsewhere in the world. If this was as widespread as Nathan suspected, worldwide infections were probably somewhere in the vicinity of ten thousand, and climbing—which just made the lack of major media coverage more alarming. Someone, somewhere, was spending a lot to bury this.
SymboGen obviously didn’t have a treatment protocol—that was clear from the way they’d eliminated Chave—but they knew more than anyone else did. So why hadn’t they shared their information with the rest of the medical community? Why were they choosing to shut out all the other researchers and scientific establishments in the world? There were a lot of potential motivations for that sort of thing. None of them were altruistic.
After what Nathan and I had seen at SymboGen and the hospital, neither of us was in the mood for company. He’d dropped me off at home, barely beating Dad and Beverly to the driveway. I’d kissed him goodbye, whistled for my dog, and gone straight to bed. That was—I lifted my head enough to check the clock. That was either three or fifteen hours ago, depending on whether it was nine o’clock in the morning or nine o’clock at night.
The knocking wasn’t stopping. I finally forced myself to roll out of the bed, raking my hair out of my eyes with my fingers as I walked to the door. I wrenched it open, and demanded, “What is it?”
Joyce blinked. “Whoa. Dad said you’d gone to bed as soon as you got home, but I expected you to be wearing your pajamas. Why are you wearing scrubs?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. The hallway was brightly lit, but that didn’t tell me anything; there were no windows. “What time is it?”
“Don’t you have a clock, sleepyhead? It’s nine in the morning. You’ve slept the clock all the way around.”
“Oh.” I stood there, blinking dumbly at my sister, as I realized one of the things her statement meant: I’d slept for more than twelve hours. That guaranteed deep REM. So why didn’t I remember any of my dreams? Last night should have been a perfect candidate for a trip into the hot warm dark.
Even as I thought that, another realization hit me: I resented the absence of the dreams. The hot warm dark was always safe, always constant, always there for me, even if it represented something I didn’t understand. I woke up from those dreams confused but at peace, like I was only fully myself in those moments when the drums still echoed in my ears. So why had the hot warm dark deserted me when I needed it most?
“Sal? You okay?”
“Huh?” I wrenched myself back into the conversation, shaking my head to clear it. “I’m sorry. I just woke up. Did you need something?”
“You mean apart from wanting to be sure you weren’t dead? SymboGen just delivered a great big package for you. It’s labeled ‘time-sensitive’ and ‘perishable’ and ‘this end up,’ and I thought it would be a good idea to get you up so you could go and deal with it.”
I eyed her. “You just want to know what’s inside.”
My sister beamed unrepentantly. “That is correct. Besides, you know it’s not healthy for you to be in bed for too long. There’s a whole big world out there just waiting to be explored.”
“You can cut the New Age nature spiel. I’m not buying it, and we both know you never sound like a physical therapy motivational tape unless Mom’s been priming you,” I said without rancor. Mom could be pretty persuasive when she wanted to be, and Joyce probably hadn’t taken much persuading—not with a mystery package waiting to be opened.
“Come on, Sal. Come open your big box.”
“What if I don’t want to?” I shot back. Beverly chose that moment to shove past my ankles and go trotting off down the hall, her tail waving languidly be
hind her as she made a beeline for the door to the backyard.
Joyce pointed after Beverly, beaming angelically. “It won’t matter, because you need to clean up after your dog.”
I groaned. “Fine. I’ll be out as soon as I have some real clothes on.”
“Just remember that you keep your clothes in your dresser, and don’t go looking for them in your bed,” said Joyce sweetly.
I took great pleasure in closing the door in her face.
It only took me a few minutes to get dressed. Brushing my hair took longer. I might not remember any of my dreams, but I’d clearly been tossing and turning in the night, and my hair was a matted mass of tangles and knots that gave way with an audible ripping sound. I cringed and kept brushing until I felt vaguely presentable. Then I went out to join my family.
All three of them were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting. That was unusual all by itself. Mom would normally have left for her volunteer work by now, and Dad and Joyce usually made their way over to the lab before eight. The box from SymboGen was in the center of the table, covered with even more warning labels than Joyce had reported. I stopped in the hallway door, blinking at them.
“Is today a holiday that I forgot about?” I asked. “Because if it is, I’m going back to bed.”
“Good morning to you, too, sweetie,” said Mom.
“I called the lab and told them that Joyce and I would be in a little late this morning,” said my father. “We were concerned about you after last night, and I wanted a chance to talk to you before we left.”
“Besides, mystery box,” said Joyce. She was her usual blithe self. Mom and Dad… weren’t. They were both smiling, trying to look normal, but there was a grim undertone to their expressions that spoke of things they weren’t quite willing to say. I found myself wondering what secrets they were keeping from me, and pushed the thought aside. If I was going to start thinking like that, I might as well turn myself over to SymboGen right now. At least there I would know who I could trust—no one—and who was lying to me—everyone.