by Grant, Mira
It was time to go inside.
There were guards at the edge of the parking 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…”
“Please listen to me very carefully, because it’s important to me that you understand: the sleepwalking sickness is the result of a different parasitic infection.”
“What?”
“It’s my fault. I pioneered the idea that parasites were our friends, that they could somehow be tamed and turned from enemies into allies, and I caused this. People stopped being as careful as they needed to be.” Dr. Banks raked a hand through his hair, mussing the normally perfect strands still further. “It’s funny, in a horrible way. We were trying to prove the hygiene hypothesis was something that could be beaten. What we didn’t anticipate was people turning ‘nothing in nature can hurt you’ into a gospel.”
I was still staring. The words I needed to question him just weren’t there.
Apparently, Dr. Banks had been waiting for a willing audience, because he kept on going. “Off-brand parasites have become an increasing problem recently. They’re all black market, of course—I’m not too proud to admit that we’ve greased the wheels at the FDA to keep any competitors to the implant from seeing the light of day—but they’re still out there. People are messing with the genome of anything they think might turn a profit. And because there’s a sucker born every minute, those profits can be substantial.”
“Chave didn’t pick up any off-brand parasites.”
“No, she didn’t. She was a company woman, through and through, and I miss her more than you can possibly know. You saw her when you deigned to visit us—oh, don’t look so shocked, Sally. I know you hate coming here. It’s why I was so surprised to see you today—but I saw her every day. She managed my schedule. She knew everything about me, and she didn’t judge me for any of it. Now, if you really think I have a treatment, can you think of any possible reason that I would have refused to share it with Chave?” He shook his head. “I’m not a monster, Sally. This might be easier if I were. This might be easier on everyone.”
“So the sleepwalking sickness is parasitic, but it’s not a SymboGen parasite?”
“Now you’re catching on. We think that whoever created the parasite that causes it wanted to make something small—something that wouldn’t catch the attention of the implants. They’re very territorial, you know, and they won’t tolerate the presence of a competing parasite. So these unknown engineers started with a protozoa parasite, and worked their way up from there. The trouble is, protozoa can be transmitted in water. And most modern filtration systems haven’t been constructed to filter out parasites. It would be a waste of money.”
The chain of transmission he was proposing made sense. People ingest illegal, black market parasites for some reason—and let’s face it, there are always people willing to do things that seem stupid if they think they’re going to get something out of it—and then those parasites find their way into shower drains and sinks as their new host’s body adjusts to their presence. Once they got into the water, the parasites would be able to sail right into the body of another host, with no one the wiser. I wasn’t sure how big protozoa were, but they’d have to be pretty small if they were designed not to attract the attention of the implants.
“Wouldn’t the protozoa be territorial?” I asked.
“Not in the same way,” he said, sounding more confident now, like I’d finally ventured onto territory he knew how to manage. “Tapeworms are generally solitary, because they have to be; very few hosts can support two healthy adult tapeworms without dying. Even so, in nature, it’s not unusual for people to have multiple tapeworms, because they’re hermaphrodites, and sometimes their babies just don’t go looking for places of their own.”
The fact that he was making jokes, even terrible ones, made me want to claw his eyes out. I forced myself to remain still. “So these protozoa, they’d come in groups? And that way, if some of them got out of the body, there would still be protozoa in their original hosts?”
“Yes, exactly. We believe that what’s happening—the most reasonable chain of transmission—is fools looking for a magic bullet ingesting the generation one, or G1, protozoa. Once their infection is established, they start shedding excess parasites into the water supply, where they reproduce, creating generation two, or G2, protozoa. From there, the G2 protozoa make their way into faucets and showers, and gradually spread the infection.” Dr. Banks shook his head. “What’s truly tragic about this is that it seems likely that the people who started this whole mess are the only ones not getting sick. Having a pre-established G1 colony is likely to protect them from the encroaching G2 colony, and it seems likely that only the G2 protozoa are actually causing their hosts to succumb to the sleepwalking sickness.”
“Oh.” My head was starting to spin from all the scientific jargon he was spouting. I desperately wished that Nathan was there. He’d have been able to tell me how much of this was real and how much was carefully created spin doctoring, using possibilities and potentials to craft a story that sounded almost plausible. “So how much of this do you know? I mean, you keep saying ‘we think’ and ‘we guess,’ but you haven’t said very much ‘we know.’ How much have you proven?”
“Enough,” said Dr. Banks, with sudden vagueness. “I’m so sorry that you’ve been walking around thinking that our test meant we had a treatment. Until we know for sure what’s attacking these people, we can’t put forth a viable course of antiparasitics, and we don’t want to risk a mass panic.”
“Why not? Are you afraid that it would hurt your stock prices?”
“No, Sally, we’re afraid that it would hurt everyone who trusts our brand enough to have one of our implants. The SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard was created to mitigate the worst effects of the hygiene hypothesis. It allowed us to undo, in a single step, literally decades of excessive sterilization and reduced microbial diversity. Since then, the implants have become responsible for everything from maintaining insulin levels in diabetics to controlling issues with human brain chemistry and secreting natural birth control. They represent millions of dollars saved in pharmacological costs annually. That doesn’t even take into account the savings they naturally cause in the areas of preventative medicine and allergy control. They’ve changed the face of medicine.”
“And?” I asked.
“And if you take all that away, even assuming that every single host was able to survive the course of antibiotics necessary to flush both the i
mplant and the unknown protozoa from their system, what infrastructure is going to be there to step up and take care of all these people’s medical needs? Who is going to be standing by with the pills no one is in the habit of taking anymore, the shots no one wants to give themselves? What happens to the women who live in regions where birth control is unfairly restricted, but have been getting around that by buying their implants out of state? Suddenly they’re back in the bad old position of needing to find a way to convince their doctors they’re not immoral whores just because they want to be allowed to control their own reproduction. Take away the implants, and the medical system of this country crumbles.” There was a strange new light in Dr. Banks’s eyes. He sounded appropriately solemn as he was speaking, but something about his expression was almost… proud. “That’s just America. D. symbogenesis is a global phenomenon. What do you say to the people who are finally able to control their own medical destinies? How do you convince them to throw away their miracle because they might, potentially, come into contact with another type of parasite someday, and it could hurt them?”
“Oh.” I bit my lip, worrying it between my teeth before asking, “But how does that excuse not sharing the test with the authorities? I mean, you could tell them everything, just the way you told me, and then show them how to check for the bad parasites, and they’d be able to… I don’t know, quarantine people when they started getting sick. Maybe then, no one would get hurt just because they got too close to someone who was already going to die.” I thought of Devi, who’d only wanted to be sure that her wife was okay. Would putting Katherine under quarantine as soon as she tested positive have made any difference? Probably not. But we would never know, would we?
“We could also trigger a panic, leading to millions of people overdosing on antiparasitics as they become convinced that D. symbogenesis is somehow connected to the outbreaks. We’re already starting to see resource hoarding in some areas where the sleepwalkers have been especially active.” Dr. Banks shook his head. “We set out to become the first name in parasites. Well, we achieved it. Now we have to be careful, or the sins of an entire biological genus will be heaped upon our heads.”