by Grant, Mira
Dad looked abashed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that you haven’t been trained the way Joyce has, and I worry about you.”
I smiled wanly. “It’s okay. Let’s just go inside, and I’ll show you what I can.”
He nodded. “All right. But Sal… we’re going into a live research project. The L4 building is almost entirely dedicated to the sleepwalkers right now. You must follow my instructions at all times. Do you understand?”
“I do,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Dad nodded one more time before turning and leading me out of the parking lot, toward the unmarked but somehow menacing door of the Level 4 lab. I took a deep breath and followed him, with the oddly comforting sound of drums hammering in my ears. Whatever was behind that door, it would be something I didn’t know yet, and every piece of this puzzle counted.
Guards flanked the door. They saluted my father as he approached. He returned the salute almost absentmindedly, and turned to shield the keypad with his body as he entered his security code. The lock disengaged, and he pulled the door open, beckoning me inside.
“Be careful now,” I murmured, and stepped through.
The fact that the scientific community has willingly accepted Steve’s sanitized explanation for the origins of D. symbogenesis strikes me as a form of modern miracle—or perhaps it’s just proof that we inevitably get the saviors we deserve. In an earlier era, Steve would have been a traveling snake oil salesman, offering people cures too good to be true. Today, he peddles a new form of snake oil, one that can be just as dangerous, and just as destructive.
If you believed that D. symbogenesis was the simple, easily controlled organism SymboGen described in their press releases and paperwork, you have been sold a bottle of snake oil. While you may well deserve what that gets you, the truth is, I enabled Steve to become such a great salesman… and while I may not regret the science, I am truly sorry for the lies.
—FROM CAN OF WORMS: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SHANTI CALE, PHD. AS YET UNPUBLISHED.
I don’t think anyone can deny that the SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard™ changed the face of medicine as we know it. Chronic conditions can now be treated on an ongoing basis by the ingestion of a single pill—it’s just that the pill contains the egg of a D. symbogenesis, and the implant will handle all the ongoing medical care. No more worrying about affording your prescriptions, no more missed doses or mix-ups at the pharmacy. Everything is taken care of.
Were we perfect from the word “go”? No. Even if we weren’t only human, that would have been a little much to ask of us, don’t you think? We could only do what anyone is capable of doing: our best. We rose to the challenges we were offered, and we did what we could to meet and match them. I think that when history looks at our accomplishments, the good that we managed to do will outweigh the bad. I hope so, anyway. No one wants to set out to be a hero, and discover after the fact that they’ve been a villain all along.
—FROM “KING OF THE WORMS,” AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. STEVEN BANKS, CO-FOUNDER OF SYMBOGEN. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ROLLING STONE, FEBRUARY 2027.
Chapter 15
AUGUST 2027
After Dad’s dire warnings, the entry hall of the L4 building was almost anticlimactic. I was expecting something out of one of Joyce’s science fiction movies, with unfamiliar equipment and unexplained lasers everywhere. What I got was basically a hallway that could have been leading to any ER in the world. The walls were a hospital-standard shade of eggshell white, with bands of color painted on them to help guide researchers to the right parts of the building, and the floor was an industrial avocado green that looked like it had been chosen to coordinate with generic medical scrubs.
Another uniformed guard sat at the reception desk. Dad motioned for me to stay where I was as he walked over and exchanged a few words with the man in a low voice. The man’s eyes flickered to me and back to Dad again. I tried not to squirm. Finally, my father leaned over the desk and picked up an old-fashioned telephone. A thick cord connected it to a base that looked heavy enough to be used as a melee weapon. He brought the phone to his ear, and was silent for several seconds before he said, “This is Colonel Alfred Mitchell. My daughter, Sally, is with me. Can you confirm the current conditions in the main lab?” There was another pause before he said, “Yes, I’ve cleared her presence through the appropriate channels. I am the appropriate channels. Can you confirm current conditions?”
He sounded annoyed. I stayed where I was. When my father was annoyed, the last place I wanted to be was in his line of fire. He never really yelled at me—that pleasure was generally reserved for Joyce, who didn’t seem to mind; she gave as good as she got, anyway, and that seemed to work for both of them—but he’d look at me sometimes like he wasn’t sure what I was doing, or why I was allowed to be wherever I was, and that was something I wanted to avoid if at all possible.
When he looked at me like that, he was frightening.
Dad made a small, irritated sound. “Well, tell Michael to put things back in their boxes. We’re coming through in five minutes. Sally has something she needs to show me, and that means we need to be inside the lab space.” He slammed the receiver down on its base harder than he needed to as he turned to face me. “The lab is not prepared for civilian visitors. They’ll be ready for us shortly.”
“Do you mean ‘not prepared’ like ‘they need to clean up,’ or ‘not prepared’ like ‘someone dropped a vial and now it’s all melting flesh and screaming’?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. I wasn’t sure I’d ever sleep again if I didn’t know the answer.
That actually made Dad smile. “Neither,” he said. “It’s ‘not prepared’ in the sense of ‘there is confidential material that shouldn’t be seen by civilian eyes out on the counters.’ ”
“Oh.” I paused, frowning. “But… isn’t Joyce a civilian?”
Dad’s smile faded. “Yes,” he said, and the weight of disappointment in that word was as crushing as it was confusing. If Joyce was a civilian, what was the problem with my asking the question?
He turned away before I could ask him, saying something else quiet to the guard at the desk. The guard nodded, handing him a key card and a visitor’s pass. The pass had my picture on it. Dad turned, holding them out to me.
“How did they make it so fast?” I asked, taking the pass and card.
My father ignored my question. “The women’s changing room is over there,” he said, indicating a door at the back of the reception area. It was unmarked. “Go in there and get yourself into some scrubs; affix the pass to the front of them. We’re going into a clean area, and I’d rather you didn’t introduce contamination.”
“Dad—”
“Just get changed, Sal. We’ll talk about all this later.”
I frowned. His mood swings and changes in attitude were starting to worry me. Given Dr. Cale’s description of the components of D. symbogenesis, what were the chances it could be interfering with his brain function? Was my father’s implant beginning to take over? And if it was, was there anything I could possibly do about it?
That line of thought would lead me nowhere good, and it wasn’t like I’d have to wait long to learn the answer: we were about to go into a clean area. Once we were there, I’d show him how the UV light tests worked, and I could use that as an excuse to check him for signs of infection. After that was done… well, we’d see what happened after that. If nothing else, if I knew he was infected before he did, I could run like hell.
I bit my lip. “I’ll be right back,” I said.
“Good,” he replied. “You wouldn’t want to go wandering off in here. There are some very dangerous things in this facility.”
I nodded quickly before I turned to head through the door he had indicated before. Dangerous things. Yes. They were all around me.
The problem was, I was starting to wonder if he might be one of them.
The women’s changing room was lined entirely with pea-green lockers. Some of them
had combination locks on them, keeping their contents secret. The three nearest the door were marked VISITOR. I opened one of those, pulling out the pale blue medical scrubs inside. There were even slippers, and a plastic cap for my hair. Reduce the risk as much as possible. Not to zero—never to zero; the only thing that’s at absolutely zero risk is something dead, or that was never at risk at all—but to as close as science can manage.
I stripped to my bra and underpants before stopping to wonder whether they might have cameras in the room. Modesty was one of the more difficult lessons they’d tried to drill into me, and I was still trying to get the more subtle details down. Were cameras supposed to be one of the things I couldn’t let see me naked, or could I relax around them?
Sherman would know.
That thought sent the cold dread roiling in my stomach once again. I’d almost forgotten about Sherman, and how very personal this infection could be. If Dad was sick…
He wasn’t showing any of the signs of the sleepwalking sickness. He was still calm, and coherent, and aware of his surroundings. He’d driven me to USAMRIID. The sleepwalkers weren’t capable of operating a car. That level of fine motor control was long gone by the time they started rambling. So why couldn’t I shake the feeling that I was missing something?
I dressed quickly, tying my hair into a ponytail before tucking it into the plastic cap. I stuffed my clothes into the locker. I didn’t have a lock. That wasn’t a problem, since the only things that really mattered—my notebook and Nathan’s copy of Don’t Go Out Alone—were still in my bag and safely hidden under the passenger seat in Dad’s car. If someone wanted to wander away with my clothes, I’d be annoyed, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
The pass was a flexible piece of memory plastic with my name and basic description printed on it, along with my picture. It softened when I pressed it against the breast of my scrubs, bonding with the fabric. I didn’t know how they were going to get it off again, and I didn’t care.
Dad was waiting when I emerged from the changing room, and he had changed his own clothes for blue scrubs identical to mine. The feeling that something was wrong just got stronger when I saw the look on his face, a grim mix of determination and unhappiness. I forced a smile before handing back the key card.
“All ready,” I said.
“There’s been another mob of sleepwalkers,” he replied. “This one formed in downtown Walnut Creek. They attacked the outdoor shopping center. Casualties are still being tabulated. It’s spreading—and it’s not staying off the news this time. We’re already getting reports of runs on water and canned goods at the local grocery stores.”
I glanced at the guard at the reception desk, who gave no sign of having heard, before turning back to my father. “I… Dad, why are you telling me this?”
“Because if there is anything, anything, you know about this disease, and you don’t share that information today, I don’t know how I’ll be able to justify letting you leave without arresting you for treason.” He shook his head. Something behind his eyes was hard and unfamiliar. The dread in my stomach wound itself even tighter. “I’ve tried to be patient. I’ve tried to wait for you to come around. I’ve tried, God knows, to understand how difficult this is for you—how hard it’s been for someone with your limited exposure to the world to understand the severity of our current situation. I’ve defended my actions to my superiors several times already. I don’t know how much longer I can do that.”
I stared at him. It was the only thing I could do. What he was saying… “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“If that’s true, then we’re both in a great deal of trouble. Come along.” He turned his back on me again, this time as he walked to the next sealed door and swiped his key card across the lock. The door swung open. He stepped through, and I followed him.
The main room of the USAMRIID L4 lab looked so much like Dr. Cale’s makeshift bowling alley laboratory that I actually caught myself glancing around, hoping to spot a blonde woman in a wheelchair. I might not entirely trust her, but at least if she were here, I wouldn’t be so torn about how much I could or couldn’t tell my father.
Instead of Dr. Cale, I saw military doctors and scientists in scrubs very much like mine, albeit accessorized with lab coats and identification, working at their individual stations and ignoring the two of us completely. The walls were lined with supply shelves and light boxes, continuing the similarity to the bowling alley, but the space not taken up by equipment was filled with cautionary signs. Most of them were too far away for me to even attempt reading, assuming I could convince my eyes to focus. That didn’t matter, since they had handy symbols to make sure I couldn’t miss the meanings. Do not touch, do not ingest, do not remove from the lab. There were so many rules that it was dizzying.
Joyce was working at one of the nearby lab tables. She looked up as the door swung shut behind us, and stopped, a perplexed expression crossing her face. She looked from Dad to me, and back to Dad again. Finally, she put down the scalpel she was holding, carefully peeled off her plastic gloves, and started toward us. She was moving slowly, like she was afraid one or both of us might spook.
“Sal?” she said, when she was close enough that she wouldn’t need to raise her voice. The rest of the lab technicians politely ignored us. “What are you doing here?”
“Your sister is here to demonstrate the SymboGen test for the sleepwalking sickness. Isn’t that right, Sally?”
Dad’s hand clamped onto my shoulder. It felt heavier than it should have. I swallowed hard and said, “That’s right. When I was… when Chave got sick, they tested to see if I had the sleepwalking sickness. I can demonstrate.” I snuck a glance up at my father. He was frowning straight ahead, almost like he was no longer paying attention to Joyce, or to me.
“Oh.” Joyce followed my gaze, and bit her lip. Then she focused back on me, forcing a smile through her obvious dismay. “Well, you’re here now, and that means we can maybe make some progress. What do we need?”
I don’t know, I wanted to cry. I’m not supposed to be the one who knows. That was my father, the Colonel, or my sister, the scientist, or my boyfriend, the doctor. I was the one who wandered through life and was gently corrected when I started to drift off course. I was the one who didn’t remember enough to know when she was wrong. So why were people suddenly looking to me like I was going to have answers? Answers weren’t my job.
But there was no one to provide them for me. I sniffled as softly as I could, hoping no one would notice, and said, “Dad said you had some sick people here. I need to see one of them. And I’m going to need a portable UV wand.”
“And…?” prompted Joyce.
I shook my head. “That’s all. A sick person, and a portable UV wand.”
My father’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “If that’s all you needed, why did you make me bring you here?”
“Ow.” I stepped away from his hand, turning to glare at him. “I told you why back at the house. I need to understand what’s going on. I need to ask questions and get answers, not get more dismissals and half-truths. I need—”
I stopped midsentence. My father’s face was turned toward me, but he wasn’t really looking at me anymore; his eyes were unfocused, and one corner of his mouth was starting to sag downward, like he was in the early stages of a stroke. The sound of drums grew even louder in my ears as I realized just how erratic his behavior had become over the course of the day. He’d gone from normal to overly solicitous to aggressive, all without the normal stimulus I would expect to trigger such shifts in mood.
Unless something I couldn’t see was triggering them. I took a step backward, moving away from him.
“Sal?” Joyce sounded puzzled.
“Dad?”
He didn’t respond. He just kept standing there, like he was going to say something. But he wasn’t. I could tell that just by looking at him.
The worst part of it was that he didn’t look like the sleepwalker w
ho’d been at our back door, or the one outside the car. His eyes were still aware, still struggling to focus.
“Joyce, if this lab has security, this would be a good time to call for them,” I said, not taking my eyes off my father. He wasn’t moving. I honestly didn’t know whether that was a good sign, or a bad one. In dogs, that sort of stillness could be a precursor to an attack.
“What are you talking about, Sal?” She stepped forward, moving toward us.
I didn’t think. I just reacted, moving quickly to get her out of Dad’s reach. I grabbed her arm and jerked her back just as he began to move again, hands grasping at the air where she had been standing only a half second before. Joyce made a small, startled shrieking sound, one that dwindled almost instantly into a cough. Dad grabbed for the air again. I jerked her even harder away from him.
The other technicians were starting to look up from their work, abandoning the pretense that we could have a private family conversation in the middle of a busy government lab. That was good, since the alternative was their politely ignoring us while my father ripped us apart.
“He’s sick!” I shouted, pulling Joyce another step backward. Dad continued to follow us. At least he wasn’t moving very fast yet; he still seemed disoriented, like he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.
Fight it, Dad, I thought. That… thing… that’s taking you over, fight it for as long as you can. Let me get Joyce out of here.
Joyce finally seemed to understand the danger we were in. She stumbled as she got her feet under her, and then she was backpedaling on her own, no longer relying on me to pull her. “Daddy?” she asked.
“He was fine when we got here!” I said. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? He’d already been slipping, and I’d known that something was wrong, I’d known, and I’d ignored the signs, because… because…