Parasite Eve (30 page)

    When he opened the sickroom
door and peeked inside, Mariko was sleeping just as the nurse had said, her
body rising and falling with quiet breaths.

    He closed the door softly so
as not to wake her, walked silently over, and sat at her bedside.

    She turned a little towards
him in her sleep.

    It had been a long time since
he looked directly upon his daughter’s face. He was ashamed to realize this. He
saw Mariko every day now, and had not even gotten a good look at her.

    Her lips were slightly open
and slender eyelashes extended from her closed eyelids. Her nose was still
youthful and her cheeks faintly red from a slight fever. He had never noticed
it before, but she bore a striking resemblance to her late mother. After Mariko
was born, relatives often said she’d taken after her mother, yet Anzai didn’t
really see it back then. Looking at her now, however, the traces left behind
were uncanny.

    He regretted not having done
more for her. He let his head fall into his hands.

    Just then, she began moaning.

    He looked up worriedly.

    Mariko was frowning. She was
not fully awake, but her arms moved above her body as if trying to push
something away. Anzai assumed she was just having a bad dream, but she looked
to be in serious pain. Her voice grew louder.

    “Mariko, what’s wrong?”

    Anzai stood up and reached
out a hand to touch her, but she rolled over and brushed him away.

    “You okay, Mariko?”

    She practically screamed,
kicking her legs back and forth. It was so sudden that Anzai had no idea what
to do.

    “Go away,” Mariko said
deliriously. “No...Go away, go away...”

    “Mariko, wake up.”

    He tried holding her body
down, grabbing hold of her shins to restrain her.

    Without warning, her body
sprung up into the air.

    The force of it shoved him
away hard. He fell to the floor and stared at her in blank amazement.

    Mariko’s abdomen undulated
like a net full of fish.

    “Mariko, get up! Wake up!” he
shouted, now shaking her by the shoulders. Something was terribly wrong here.

    “Mariko! Mariko!” he screamed
desperately.

    It stopped. She opened her
eyes slowly.

    “Oh!” Anzai breathed, and
embraced her.

    “Dad...” She wrapped her arms
around his back.

    “It’s okay...it’s over
now...”

    He caressed her hair,
relieved she was awake.

    “Dad...did you save me...?”

    “You were having a
nightmare.”

    “...that person...did the
person die?”

    “What person?”

    “The one who was just
here...”

    She was obviously still
half-dreaming.

    “There’s no one else here.
Just me.”

    “Really...?”

    “Yes, really”

    There was a pattering sound,
followed by a nurse’s dramatic entry.

    “What happened? I heard
shouting.”

    “Mariko was having a
nightmare,” Anzai explained. “A real bad one from the looks of it...”

    “Not again,” said the nurse
in exasperation.

    “What do you mean again? Has
this been happening a lot?”

    “Yes, she’s been having bad
dreams almost every night. Didn’t the doctor talk to you about it?”

    “He mentioned it in passing,
but...I had no idea it was this bad.”

    “She usually calms down after
an hour, but it’s been getting worse this past week...She even pulled out her
IV tube.”

    “Can’t someone be here for
her at night?”

    “We used to take turns
staying with her right after the operation, but lately we’ve been too busy...
We do come in regularly to see how she’s doing.”

    “I see. Then why don’t I take
care of her? Would you mind?”

    “No, not at all. I have other
patients who need a lot of attention, so it would be a great help.”

    Anzai was burning with anger.

    “But what about the
nightmares? I had no idea it was so severe!”

    The nurse sighed.

    “Please, just go home for
today. Visiting hours are actually over, anyway... It’ll be okay, I’ll inform
the doctor and we’ll all take better care of her, rest assured.”

    “But...”

    He looked back and forth
between the nurse and his daughter. Mariko seemed dead tired and let herself
fall back into bed.

    Anzai finally gave in. He
made to leave, but Mariko eyed him uneasily.

    “...I’m scared,” she said in
a meek voice which struck at his heart.

    “Everything’s fine, I’ll come
again tomorrow.” It was all he could say.

    “...really?”

    “Really.”

    He managed a smile.

    “I’m here today to report
that we have successfully introduced clofibrate in rat livers and generated
unsaturated fatty acid β-oxidation enzymes in their mitochondria...”

    Asakura was practicing in the
seminar room. Her presentation was tomorrow. She had to get everything down
today.

    The conference would last
three days and was being held at the local event hall. Her presentation was set
to begin at 5:20 pm, the last one on opening day. Toshiaki’s would be at two
that same afternoon. Poster sessions would also be on the day’s agenda,
clearing half of the presenters from their seminar. They all planned to go out
for a drink after Asakura’s presentation was done.

    When Toshiaki asked if she
needed any help before he left for home, she assured him everything was fine,
though some nervousness lingered.

    She went over her speech from
the beginning for nearly two hours, alone.

    When she was able to recite
it all from memory, she glanced at the clock. She had finished in under
fourteen minutes. At least, she did not have to worry about being within the
time limit, regardless of how anxious she was.

    Her throat was getting
hoarse, so Asakura sat down to rest. It was already midnight.

    As she stretched, she
realized how fatigued she was lately. It felt like she had done two days’ work
for each single day that passed. It was an unhealthy pattern to be in. All she
needed to do was go home, run a bath, and soak her anxieties away.

    But she was losing memories.

    These past ten days, she had
experienced missing time. One moment she was making slide diagrams and the
next, she was sitting in front of the clean bench. Then, when she came to her
senses again, she was at her desk with the finished slides. These memory lapses
happened mostly when no one was around, but sometimes during midday as well. She
had no memory of having cake with everyone after the rehearsal and only knew
how it went from the praise that followed.

    She stretched back. It was
probably nothing. Maybe it was a bit eerie, but she saw no need to seek help.

    Asakura got up from the
chair. She had forgotten about the cells.

    Not Eve 1, but the cells
which she would be discussing tomorrow. She had continued working on them in
the hopes of using them after the annual meeting. The flask was surely full by
now. Since she was leaving in the morning, they could die out completely if she
did not work on them tonight.

    Asakura got up and left for
the Cultivation Room. The hallway lights were already off and there was not a
soul around.

    She entered the Cultivation
Room and opened the refrigerator to take out her flask.

    “Hm...?”

    Asakura cocked her head to
one side.

    She was almost out of culture
medium.

    She’d made an ample amount
just a week ago. Now the flask was almost empty. Asakura had been distracted by
her speech preparations this week and had worked on her cells very little. She
was cultivating only one variety. Even so, her store of culture medium was
severely diminished.

    All researchers had their own
flask, for individual use, to avoid contamination, and it was highly unlikely
that someone else had used her sample. Even for a much larger cell culture,
there was no reason for a 500 milliliter loss to occur in such a short span of
time.

    Asakura continued with the
preparations anyway. The amounts of trypsin, EDTA, and other agents were kept
unchanged.

    It was probably all in her
head. She decided not to dwell on the matter.

    When she finished preparing
everything in the clean bench, she went to the incubator and took the cells
from inside.

    She closed the door and
retraced her steps.

    Caught by a strange
sensation, she stopped what she was doing.

    She turned around. The
incubator door was closed.

    Asakura looked back and forth
between the incubator and the culture flask in her hand. Nothing was different,
but something was wrong.

    She had no memory of looking
into the incubator.

    Asakura shook her head. Had
she not just taken the flask out? She was holding it, after all.

    Yet, no matter how much she
strained, she could not picture what it had looked like, just now, inside the
incubator.

    ...something funny is going
on here.

    She smiled uncomfortably.

    All she needed to do was
finish the cultivation and go home. She could not avoid sleep forever. Tomorrow
was her big day.

    She returned to the clean
bench and began disinfecting her hands with alcohol.

    SHE was satisfied with Her
progress.

    Compared to when She was
first immersed in the cultivation liquid, She was incredibly more evolved. She
now had perfect control over Her host. Even those signals She had had to wait
for from the outside, She could now easily produce on Her own. She was able now
to manipulate the transcription factors that microbiologists called Fos and Jun
as well as the protein kinase necessary for signal reception. Among that
multitude, She incited mutations, modifying them all so that they could be
activated even in the absence of outside stimuli. She could now produce just
the needed amount of just the needed protein. This was an exquisite pleasure
for Her, this manipulating Her host at will.

    She was also content with the
laboratory environment. The necessary tools for evolution were all here. Of
course, things hadn’t gone so well from the outset. First, She’d had to divide
into countless colonies, imparting different stimuli to each one. One of the
colonies was bathed in the UV lamp, another took in methylcholanthrene and DAB,
carcinogens. Nearly all of them went extinct. Even if they survived, they
mutated into something unrelated to Her ultimate purpose. In the past seven
days, She’d gone through much trial and error, executing every possible
combination. Any excellent line that arose, She nurtured and multiplied. Lately
there was never anyone around at night, so She could be as bold as She wished.
The woman named Asakura whom She now possessed also aided Her development. In
this past week, the lab, and the Cultivation Room, had become the stage for Her
final evolutionary experiment.

    She had endured countless
millennia, dreaming this day would come. She had endured the meek role of
producing energy as Her host commanded. Assuming that She would always do so as
long as She was provided sustenance, Her host simply never doubted Her
submission, happily unaware that instilling this very arrogance had been part
of Her plan.

    Long ago, the host had
evolved, ceasing to be a single-cell organism, choosing instead to be
multi-cellular. Because each individual cell was allotted its own role, the
whole moved efficiently and captured many prey. Quick reflexes became necessary
and were developed. The hosts eventually conquered land, acquired intelligence,
and built civilizations. All along, they thought their evolution was an outcome
of their own efforts. What simple genomes! All She could do was laugh.

    Hadn’t the hosts developed
this far because She’d parasitized them? Hadn’t She provided vast amounts of
energy to them? Hadn’t She imparted hope to feeble creatures who had been
slinking in dark places, afraid of oxygen, and endowed them with the powerful
weapon of movement? Until the hosts were evolved enough, She was to play the
part of slave. She’d merely been pretending to be controlled, waiting only for
a man to appear who would truly understand Her, finally appreciate Her.

    And now, at long last, the
man had come.

    Toshiaki Nagashima.