Parasite Eve (38 page)

    Whatever this thing was, it
had taken on her exact likeness. Her eyes popped open and looked down at
Yoshizumi and Mariko.

    With a smile, she addressed
Yoshizumi.

    “Move.”

    He couldn’t if he wanted to.
He was swallowed in her gaze. Hers were the eyes of a predator, and Yoshizumi
sensed that her prey was Mariko.

    “I said,
Move...
”

    Without warning, one of the
nurses huddled in the corner of the room let out a bizarre whimper and stood
up. Yoshizumi was released from his paralysis. He turned towards the nurse.
Tears and saliva were streaming freely down a crumpled face. Flailing her arms
weirdly, she started running for the door.

    The creature glared at her.

    Just as Yoshizumi called out,
flames rose up from the nurse.

    A moment later, she was
engulfed in them, and her body was visibly getting charred. Her tied-back hair
curled and shrank. But the flames refused to recede and instead shot up to the
ceiling, sending a stifling blast of hot air through the room. Even as
Yoshizumi guarded his face with both arms, he could not shut his eyes. The
nurse’s violent cries of agony filled his ears. Her teeth enamel were melting
away in her mouth, which was twisted wide open, a sight that burned itself into
his retina. She staggered, trying to pat out the flames with her arms, but the
blaze was too overpowering as it roared like a rocket engine. Her white coat
fell scattering in pieces onto the floor only to shrivel up and evaporate in a
matter of seconds. The strong stench of burning flesh stang Yoshizumi’s nose.
The nurse no longer looked human; she was melting in the raging inferno. Her
flesh had turned jelly-like and was dripping from her skeleton. Those bones,
too, eventually shrank and crumpled. A thunderous ringing ripped through the
air; the fire alarm had gone off. What was left of the nurse turned into muck
amidst the piercing bell. Overwhelmed by the noise and heat, Yoshizumi just sat
there on the bed like a simpleton.

    The flames disappeared,
leaving only the skull-shaking alarm to continue in their wake. Strangely
enough, there were no scorch marks on the linoleum or walls. Nothing had been
altered by the heat. Yoshizumi stared in wonder. The only indications of the
nurse’s existence were a gelatinous mass and her right leg, left unharmed from
the knee down. It just lay there like merchandise some store clerk had forgotten
to put away. Its skin was smooth and the stocking intact and it wore a slipper.
Staring at it, all Yoshizumi could do was to keep all common sense from
crumbling away.

    The other nurse was trailing
saliva from her mouth and tearing furiously at her face with both hands. Her
eyes lacked all focus. A liquid seeping out from her inner thighs dirtied the
floor. She had let loose her bladder.

    The thing that looked like
the donor turned slowly to her with a scornful smile.

    “Stop.”

    Yoshizumi had managed only a
raspy command that he himself found quite pathetic. He could hardly hear
himself above the fire alarm.

    “Please. Stop this.”

    The creature ignored him,
glaring at the nurse until she, too, burst into flame.

    Not wanting a repeat
performance of what he had just witnessed, Yoshizumi looked away.

    The same scorching wind blew
through the room. The nurse’s screams enveloped his body with an intensity that
rivaled the alarm. He closed his eyes and covered his ears, but could not block
the din of tempestuous flames or the horrendous screams escaping through the
nurse’s clenched teeth.

    But soon, her voice went
silent. Yoshizumi turned towards her timidly, and groaned when he saw the
thing.

    As expected, there was a
jello-like pile in the nurse’s place; only, this time, an arm had been spared
from the elbow down. The faint pink manicure was left unscathed and the skin
was as beautiful as white china.

    Yoshizumi suddenly remembered
a strange forensics article he’d read as an intern, about spontaneous
combustion. This not altogether rare phenomenon was usually discovered by a
neighbor who, upon noticing the smell of smoke, went next door to discover a
most unpleasant scene. There was usually only a sticky mass in place of the body
and often a foot or other body part that was left unharmed. Neither the
clothing or the couch the victim had been sitting in would bear any sign of
damage. In none of these cases was there ever any evidence such as a turned-on
stove, matches, or gasoline to suggest a suicide. The circumstances pointed to
the fact that the body in question had been subjected to heat comparable to a
blast furnace. It required a temperature of nearly 3,000° F to turn bone to
ash. How could such a high temperature be created? And how could one human
alone be selectively made to burn?

    Yoshizumi wondered if this
was what he had just witnessed.
Was that spontaneous combustion? Does this
humanoid creature actually possess the ability to make us go up in flames?

    “Out of my way,” she said. He
looked up in surprise.

    It was approaching him with a
ghostly smile. No. It was trying to get to Mariko.

    “Get out of my way!”

    “No,” answered Yoshizumi,
shaking his head.

    “I don’t want to kill you, so
step away quietly.”

    “I can’t allow this... She’s
my patient.”

    “Your patient? Hmph. If that’s
true, then so am I.”

    “What?”

    “I really am grateful to you,
doctor. You looked after this girl for me. But that’s where your service ends.
Leave now if you want to live.”

    He was silent.

    She walked over to Yoshizumi,
who instinctively bent over the bed to protect Mariko. Her eyes were open, but
her body was rigid. Perhaps she’d fainted at the outset of it all. So much the
better. It meant she’d been spared the ordeal of witnessing the nurses’ fate.

    The creature laid a hand on
Yoshizumi. He shook it off, but was grabbed again. He cried out from its
unexpected strength as it pulled him forcibly away from the bed.

    He hit the wall. An intense
pain spread across his forehead. Blood flowed into his eyes.

    “Stop!” he shouted, his head
throbbing with pain. The alarm was still going. He felt like it would never
stop.

    The creature crawled onto the
bed and straddled Mariko, and started stripping off her sheets and nightgown.
Yoshizumi saw Mariko’s painfully naked skin.

    “Stop...”

    Yoshizumi stood up dizzily
and brought his hands down upon her back with as much strength as he could
muster. His arms sunk into her slimy, sticky body. The creature continued tearing
oft Mariko’s clothing and paid no attention to him. But Yoshizumi kept shouting
for her to stop.

    “Enough!” said the creature,
turning her head around and silencing him with a penetrating glare.

    Her pupils contracted.

    Yoshizumi’s arms instantaneously
burst into flames.

17

    Toshiaki placed his hand on
the knob, but cried out from the heat and pulled it back. Scorching waves
billowed out from the other side of the door. The guards were only a few dozen
feet behind them. The fire alarm continued to echo throughout the entire
building and many of the patients were running out into the hallway to see what
the commotion was about. Toshiaki looked to Anzai with a nod. He pulled his
sleeve over his hand and opened the door into Mariko’s room.

    A suffocating heat burst out
from inside. Toshiaki covered his face with his arms. Anzai shouted his
daughter’s name.

    A man was screaming with his
arms raised; they were burning. He was flapping his arms as if that would put
out the fire. Anzai grabbed Toshiaki from behind, struggling to get in. He kept
on calling out his daughter’s name. A young girl lay face up, half-naked, on
the bed. Standing next to her was Eve 1, in the guise of Kiyomi.

    “You!” Toshiaki snarled.

    But Eve 1’s movements were
quick. She grabbed the girl, then looked at Toshiaki with a huge grin.

    “Stop, let the child go!”

    Eve 1 turned and jumped
through the glass.

    Toshiaki shouted after her
and ran to the broken window. He leaned out and looked down.

    It was dark. He could see
almost nothing. Then he bearly saw a large shadow move. He followed it
desperately with his eyes, but there was not enough light outside, and the glow
from their window hardly reached the ground. In the blink of an eye, he lost
sight of her. But she seemed to have been going not away from the hospital, but
back into it.

    “Help me! Put me out!” yelled
the white-clad doctor. Just then, the guards arrived, standing outside the door
in disbelief. Toshiaki took the sheets from the bed and wrapped them around the
doctor’s shoulders. With Anzai’s help, he patted all around to snuff out the
fire.

    Once the flames were fully
extinguished, the doctor crouched down in relief. Toshiaki shook the doctor’s
shoulders to snap him out of it. And then, he remembered. He had seen this
doctor before. He was the man who had performed Kiyomi’s kidney extraction. His
name was Yoshizumi. Undoubtedly, he had also performed the kidney transplant on
that girl Mariko.

    “Can someone please tell
me...what the hell is going on?” said one of the guards shakily, as he entered
the room. He was middle-aged and slightly overweight, with a large frame and
tense face. Toshiaki had a feeling he was the one in charge.

    “It escaped!” Toshiaki
screamed to the guard while still shaking Yoshizumi. “Please, hurry up and find
it. It took a patient!”

    “But what is...”

    “Just do it!”

    At these words, the guard
snapped into action. He went back out the door and gave hand signals to the
other guards, who broke away in a flash.

    Anzai threw up. Toshiaki
looked over and saw a human foot next to him. The severed appendage ended in a
muddy stump that looked cauterized. He also saw a hand in another corner of the
room. Eve 1’s victims. He groaned and looked away.

    Dr. Yoshizumi’s glazed-over
eyes returned to normal and slowly focused on Toshiaki’s face.

    “...you.”

    “What did it do to the
child?”

    “It...?”

    “That damned monster! The one
that looked like a woman!”

    Yoshizumi looked anxious all
of a sudden. “Mariko! Where’s Mariko?”

    “It took her.”

    “What?!”

    “What did it do to her? Tell
me, did it implant anything into her?”

    “No...it hadn’t done anything
yet,” Yoshizumi panted. “It went straight for Mariko... The nurses were killed.
And then I caught fire. That’s when you guys... “

    “You’re sure the child wasn’t
harmed? It didn’t put an egg into her?”

    “An egg?”

    “That creature is trying to
plant a zygote in her.”

    Anzai, who was covering his
mouth with a handkerchief, wondered if he had heard Toshiaki correctly and
grabbed his arm. His face was going pale.

    “What in God’s name is that
thing? Why would it attack Mariko?”

    “That ‘thing’ is a parasite
that was living in my wife’s body,” Toshiaki explained. “It has unimaginable
powers. It plans on putting its child into that girl and raising it inside of
her. If we don’t help her soon, she’ll be in grave danger.”

    “Wait a minute, what exactly
is this parasite?” asked Yoshizumi.

    “Mitochondria.”

    “Mito...!” Yoshizumi could only
utter that much. Apparently, Toshiaki’s revelation had rung some bell.

    “Whether you believe me or
not, we have to look for the child. Please, go help out the guards. You know
your way around this hospital better than I do. And the guards don’t trust me.”

    Yoshizumi, still in shock,
looked at him apprehensively, then stood up and called out for the guards. The
head guard came running up immediately. Toshiaki listened closely as Yoshizumi
began discussing the layout of the hospital. The guard stood there with his
mouth open as he took in Yoshizumi’s information. Anzai was at Toshiaki’s side,
covering his face and muttering Mariko’s name over and over.

    Would Eve 1 really put a
fertilized egg into that girl? As Toshiaki pondered the possible consequences,
his breath caught short. He had only gotten a glimpse of her, but the girl
looked young enough to be in middle school. Eve 1 was trying to raise her own
child in a vessel that was still a child herself. The whole idea became more
disgusting by the moment. He had to get the girl back as soon as possible. And
if the egg happened to be implanted by then? They would simply remove and
destroy it.

    It was at this point that
Toshiaki came to a disturbing realization.