Parasite (Parasitology) (48 page)

“Whoa.” Tansy turned to Nathan, pointed to me, and asked, “Where did
that
come from? I like it!”

“Do you and my mother both have so little faith in my taste in women that you assumed I’d date a pushover?” Nathan smiled, amusement lurking under his obvious unease. “Sal doesn’t wear her aggression on her sleeve the way you do, but she’s quite capable of taking care of herself when the need arises. You’re telling us that the need has arisen. That means she gets to ask you questions that you don’t want to answer.”

“Well?” I said.

Tansy sighed. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Maybe we better sit down.”

Nathan didn’t have any fruit punch, but he did have some lemonade mix in the back of the cereal cupboard, which Tansy allowed was an acceptable substitute, after he allowed her to add a cup of sugar and a disturbing amount of red food coloring. She claimed that she could taste it. I wasn’t going to argue with her.

While Nathan was getting Tansy settled in the small dining area, I went back to the bedroom and let the dogs out. It was, in its own way, a test. If my dog didn’t trust Tansy, I wasn’t going to let her send me to my possible doom. The opinions of a Labrador retriever might seem less than relevant, but Beverly had already saved my life once before. She didn’t like people who were out to hurt me. Hopefully, that dislike would extend to situations where the danger was less immediate.

It wasn’t until the door was open that I remembered Beverly’s reaction to her original owner when he first started getting sick. If she could detect the implants taking over, how was she going to react to Tansy? And what about Minnie—would she respond the same way, once she realized what was going on?

It was too late to stop them from getting to the kitchen: Beverly was already running full-tilt down the hall with Minnie close at her heels, the duo lured by the seductive sounds of company and dishes rattling. Maybe there would be food. Maybe the food would be given to
them
. I ran after the dogs, hoping that I could somehow hold them both back long enough to stop them from tearing Tansy’s throat out with their teeth if things went badly—

—and stopped when I reached the kitchen just in time to hear Tansy’s ecstatic cry of “Doggies!” It was followed by her sliding out of her chair, dropping to her knees on the hardwood,
and throwing her arms around Beverly’s neck. For her part, Beverly bore the embrace with her usual stoic good cheer, only the thumping of her tail against the floor betraying her ongoing interest in treats. Minnie ignored her, choosing to head for Nathan instead, sitting down at his feet and looking adoringly up at him.

“Sal,” said Nathan, sounding surprised. “You let the dogs out.”

“I didn’t want Beverly to get upset and start shredding your pillows,” I said. “Minnie just sort of came along for the ride.”

“Oh, is the black one’s name Beverly? What a good name for a doggy! Are you a good doggy? Yes, you are a good doggy, you
are
.” Tansy kept hugging Beverly’s neck as she spoke. “Where did she come from?”

“Her owner was taken over by his implant while we were walking in the park,” said Nathan. “Sal works at an animal shelter. She couldn’t just leave Beverly running wild. Somehow, that turned into ‘we have a dog now.’ ”

I couldn’t help noticing the “we” in his statement, and I approved. “She seems to like you. I was a little worried about that.”

“Oh, animals totally like me. They like Adam, too. It’s only people who are in transition that they don’t like. They can smell the way the body gets all confused, and it freaks them right the fuck out.” Tansy gave Beverly one more squeeze before rising from the floor. “Funny story: when I was first staggering around trying to figure out how my legs worked, I totally got swarmed by bats. Like, little tiny Dracula-style bats. I’m not sure what they thought they were going to do, but wow, were they gonna do it as hard as they could.” She chuckled. “Little idiots.”

“So animals only react negatively to people in the process of getting sick?” I asked, giving Beverly a pat on the head as I walked past her to take a seat at the table. “What about sleepwalkers?”

“They’re still all scrambled. It’s like somebody’s running a big blender in the chemicals that live inside the brain. It’s not until that settles down that animals are going to be cool with them again.” Tansy sipped her bloody-looking, over-sugared lemonade before adding casually, “Not that it matters for most people. I mean, they’re never going to get better, so who cares if the dog doesn’t like them anymore, you know? They’ve got bigger problems.”

As fascinating as I found the discussion of animal reactions to the sleepwalkers, it was clear that we were going to get utterly derailed if we didn’t get back on topic soon. “What is the plan for getting me out of SymboGen?” I asked.

Tansy blinked, trying to look guileless. It didn’t work. I raised both eyebrows, and waited until she sighed and said, “Oh, fine. You know, you’re boring even when you’re not being boring. It’s like a gift. So here’s the deal: we have some back doors into SymboGen. If you get in, we can use them to get you out.”

I blinked. “If you have back doors into SymboGen, why do you need me to go in at all? Can’t you just use your back doors for, you know, door purposes? Like, accessing a place through the door?” I paused, grimacing. “Great, now I’m starting to talk like you. What I’m asking is this: If you have a way of getting into SymboGen, what do you need me for? Can’t you do this more safely if I don’t get involved?”

“Sure, if all we want to do is fiddle around on the lab levels and not get anything useful,” said Tansy. “We’ve been in and out of there a hundred times. The genomes aren’t being
stored
in the general labs, and we don’t have anybody who can access the private levels anymore. Not since our last spy went and got herself all sick. I swear, if the cousins understood English, I’d give them a piece of my mind for eating a piece of hers…”

“You lost a spy to the sleepwalking sickness?” I was scrambling to keep things straight. This was all starting to feel
like some big action movie, and I didn’t have a copy of the cast list. Or the script.

“Yeah, but she didn’t have access to anything anyway, so it’s not like it matters.” Tansy waved a hand, dismissing their lost spy as an inconvenience. “Just about the only thing she ever did right was keep an eye on you, and she wasn’t the only route we had to that, so it’s not like—”

“Wait,” I said, cutting her off before she could say “not like it matters” again. If I had to hear her say that one more time, she might wind up wearing her fruit punch. “Are you telling me
Chave
was working for you?”

“Well, yeah.” Tansy frowned at me. “What, you hadn’t figured that out yet?”

“Sal, I know it’s tempting, but please don’t kill her,” said Nathan. “I don’t want to lose my security deposit on your first night here.”

“How long were you expecting it to take?” I asked.

“It would be nice if we could hold out for at least a week without any major stains or structural damage.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I focused back on Tansy. “How long was Chave working for you?”

“We got her hired.” Tansy ignored my stare as she continued, “We just need you to get in, get into Dr. Banks’s office—or to a computer that’s connected to his computer, it’s not really important which one you use, although you might have better luck if you use his actual personal machine—and plug in the thumb drive. Wait about ten seconds, and then head for the labs. We’ll be able to evacuate you.”

“And if you fail?” I asked, as mildly as I could.

“Try to throw the thumb drive under something before they take you down. We’ll find a way to get it back later.”

I stared at her. So did Nathan. Tansy looked between us, brows furrowing in frustration.

“What, did you think this was some kind of game?” she
asked. “That you could open the broken doors, look through, and decide that this wasn’t for you, so sorry, you were just going to go home and have a nice cup of hot cocoa and not think about it? Puh-leeze. This isn’t that kind of picture book, and once you’ve opened the doors, you’re sort of required to step through them. Doctor C warned you when she first made contact. You knew what you were getting into.”

“I wasn’t aware that you and my mother were going to begin treating Sal like she was somehow expendable,” said Nathan stiffly.

“Your mother swallowed a genetically modified organism that hadn’t been cleared for human use because she thought it was important she continue with her work,” said Tansy. Her voice was surprisingly level, all the good cheer and manic instability suddenly gone. It was like she’d flipped a switch, turning off the chipper-but-strange persona she usually projected in favor of something substantially darker. “What in the world would make you look at a woman who was willing to do that and think ‘she won’t send me or my little girlfriend into danger’? This is so much bigger than you are, for all of us.”

“What do you mean, it’s bigger than we are?” I asked, before Nathan could say something we’d regret later. His mouth was pressed into a hard line, and he looked like he was on the verge of punching Tansy—something that would probably get us both killed.

“How do you think people will react when they find out the implants are definitely behind the sleepwalking sickness?” asked Tansy. “They’re not going to be happy. They’re going to start fighting back.”

“Well… what’s the problem with that? Those people had their bodies first. They’re not like the girl who used to own your body. She moved out.”

Tansy smiled bitterly. “Yes, thank you, I’m aware that I was a rental property. But here’s the thing, genius girl: the treatment
to remove a motivated implant from its host might work.
Might.
It also might kill the host, and the implant, and then nobody wins. There has to be a solution that makes the cousins go back to sleep unless the conditions are right. There just has to be.”

She looked, briefly, so lost that I wanted to reach for her, take her hand and tell her that everything was going to be okay. That seemed about as smart as hitting her. “So what good does sending me into SymboGen do?”

“If we have the genome of the new cousins, we can figure out how to talk to them. Tell them that they gotta back off, or nobody’s coming out on the winning side. Slavery sucks. Dying is worse.”

I’d never really thought of the SymboGen implants as being slaves to their hosts. Then again, until very recently, I hadn’t thought of them as thinking creatures, even if they didn’t really start to think on a sapient level until they had plugged themselves into a human brain.

“All right,” I said. I didn’t look at Nathan. If I looked at Nathan, I knew that I would lose my cool. “I’ll do it.”

Tansy clapped her hands and beamed. “Oh,” she said, “won’t this be
fun
?”

No
, I thought.
It won’t.

But I didn’t say anything at all.

Certain lines can’t be uncrossed,

Certain maps will get you lost,

Once you’re past the border, then you’ll have to play the game.

Roll the dice but count the cards,

Break the glass but keep the shards.

The world is out of order. It’s been broken since you came.

T
ansy left after we finished making plans, pausing only to press the promised thumb drive into my hand. Nathan didn’t say anything as he walked her to the door. Then he walked back to me, took me by the hands, and led me to the bedroom, to the bed that was
ours
for the very first time, not just his. This was my home, too.

I just had to hope it would be my home for more than a day before I went and got myself killed.

“Sal…” he began. I stopped his mouth with a kiss, and conversation became unimportant for a while, replaced by the twin goals of removing our clothing as fast as possible and keeping our lips on each other at all times. The drums were back in my ears, but softer now, a signal of excitement and not anger or fear. This was where I belonged. This place, this skin, tonight. Everything else was in the future, and the future would have to
wait for a few hours. I was doing this because I enjoyed being alive; because I wanted to stay that way. So it was time for me to celebrate my condition, even if it was only for the moment.

When we were done, both of us sweaty and satiated in the way that only accompanies really good sex after emotional turmoil, Beverly stuck her nose into the room and whined, signaling the need to go out. I groaned, starting to push myself up onto my elbows.

“Don’t worry about it.” Nathan pressed a kiss into the crook of my neck, close enough to the bruise from USAMRIID’s sedatives that it made my skin ache with phantom pain. “You’ve had a long day. I’ll take the dogs out.”