Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2) (22 page)

I
t 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 Shelter animals became dispirited and withdrawn after six weeks in cages.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 even 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.”

I blinked at him dumbly. He sighed.

“I was designed for a long-haul trucker, according to the records Sherman got from SymboGen. I secrete stimulants and energy boosters. I also decrease acid buildup in soft tissues. They made worms like me for athletes too, although that was illegal. That’s never stopped anybody, you know?”

I didn’t know, but I didn’t think that interrupting him to explain that would be a very good idea. I just nodded.

“Baseline human DNA in the implants is about three percent, or was before Sherman started getting to the lab rats. I was tailored, so I started with five percent, some of it taken directly from my host. It was supposed to keep his immune
system from identifying me as an irritant and taking me over. Instead, it caused total immune collapse. Not fun for either one of us. I don’t really remember much about being him. I know I migrated to his brain during the shutdown, but he didn’t survive the process. We got hospitalized—this was in the early stages of the outbreak, back when there were only one or two of us at a time.” He was switching pronouns with dizzying speed, making it difficult for me to know exactly who “us” meant—him and his trucker, or sleepwalkers in general? “He died.”

I blinked. “Who died?”

“My trucker.” Ronnie shook his head. “He crashed and he died and that should have been the end of me, but SymboGen was collecting all the dead sleepwalkers for analysis, in case they could figure out what was going on. Anything to protect the profit margin, right?”

I sort of suspected it was more about “anything to protect the public health,” but I kept that observation to myself, in part because I didn’t want Ronnie to stop talking, and in part because there was a good chance that I was being overly optimistic again. Dr. Banks had never shown any indication of caring about the health of the world, except when it could put money in his pockets. Keeping the sleepwalkers from eating his entire customer base had probably seemed like a pretty good idea, at least as far as the bank was concerned.

Ronnie took my silence as agreement, because he continued, saying, “Sherman found me in my trucker’s head. I was still alive, and he removed as much of me as he could. I don’t remember any of this—I mean, I didn’t have a brain to plug into at that point, so I wasn’t much of a deep thinker—but I’ve seen my medical records, and I believe things happened the way he explained them. He managed to get me out of the building, and he implanted me in my first stable host. His name was Francisco, and he was a mountain.” A little smile played across Ronnie’s lips. “Six and a half feet of solid muscle—damn. I couldn’t
have asked for a better host, you know? I guess I should have known that it couldn’t last.”

“What happened?”

“Rejection.” Ronnie shrugged. “Same thing we’ve been telling you happens to a lot of us. My host’s body recognized me as an infection, and fought me off. I had to be moved to a new body. That’s where I got the name ‘Ron.’ Another big guy. I liked being Ron. He was strong. Too strong, I guess, since his immune system figured out I was new in the neighborhood and beat me off with a stick. That’s how I wound up in here.” He spread his arms, indicating his thin, immature, biologically female body with a bob of his chin. “And we don’t have bodies to spare, so until this one breaks or we come into a sudden wealth of unwanted humans, this is where I’m staying.”

“But… if we become who we are because we’re tapping into human brains, and they can process more information than we can handle with our little tapeworm brains, how can you remember being anyone before you were who you are right now? How can you be…” I stopped, not sure how I could possibly finish that sentence.

Ronnie finished it for me. “How can I be so sure that I’m supposed to be male? I don’t remember a lot about my first three hosts. No one who’s been through rejection remembers
much
. But there are little bits and pieces. It’s like… it’s like some of the traits of my original hosts got written into me. Sherman says it’s epigenetics at work, and that we’re all going to wind up mosaic individuals, hopping from body to body, bringing just these little pieces of who we’ve been onward with us.”

I blinked at him. Ronnie shrugged.

“Sherman says we’re going to live forever, once we figure out how to keep our hosts from rejecting us. We’ll have to learn a lot of shit new every time, but our core personalities will stay the same.
We’ll
stay the same. Humans have had stories about reincarnation and the afterlife for millennia. We’re finally going
to prove it.” Ronnie stood. “Anyway, that’s how I know I’m a guy, no matter what this stupid body says, and since I want a new host sooner rather than later, it’s time for you to come with me.” He grabbed my arm.

I was bigger than he was, and stronger than he was, but I went without protest.

Sherman was waiting for us in the store that had been converted into his private office, a former photo studio now packed with lab equipment and computer monitors. He was sitting on a wooden stool that had probably come with the studio, peering through a microscope into a Petri dish. He looked up when he heard our footsteps, a wide smile spreading across his face.

“Sal! I’m so delighted that you were able to join me.” He slid down off the stool, stretching as he did. “Ronnie, thank you for passing my invitation along. You can go now; your services are no longer required.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think they would be.” Ronnie let go of my arm. “Later, toots. Try not to piss him off too bad today, okay? I don’t want to have to clean this place up again.”

I blinked. I hadn’t heard anything about needing to clean Sherman’s office. The claim was apparently true, however; Sherman glared at him as he turned and walked away.

“She’s getting ideas above her station,” he said mildly. “I think she likes you. I also think it might be a good idea if I didn’t let you spend any time with her alone for a little while, since you seem bound and determined to play the Disney Princess of this scenario.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Friend to all living things, my sweet Sal; friend to all living things. But what you fail to comprehend is that I don’t
want
you to be a friend to all living things. I want you to be a friend to me and me alone.” Sherman reached out and tweaked a lock of hair that had fallen in my face. “We need to get you a haircut.
Something short and tidy and easy to care for. You’re starting to look a little unkempt, my dear, and we both know how little tolerance I have for that.”