Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2) (41 page)

Sure enough… “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “We don’t know where Sherman and his people are. They could decide to take you back, and we’d have no way of fighting them off. Or the army could step in. Or you could be attacked by sleepwalkers.”

“So I take Fang or Fishy with me,” I said. “I wasn’t suggesting I go alone, just that I
go
. I don’t think you have anyone who knows SymboGen better than I do at this point. I understand the layout of the building, and I can find her.”

“USAMRIID is there.”

“USAMRIID is a risk to me no matter what we do, or don’t do. Dr. Banks as good as said that they were planning to raid this place. We need to move.” I felt terrible about that, and I was certain everyone else was going to feel even worse. I had been Sherman’s captive while they were turning an abandoned factory into a home, nesting like they were never going to be forced to move again. The gardens, the hydroponics systems, even the catering and food service equipment… we didn’t have the capacity to take all that with us when we left. Wherever we went next, we’d be starting over from scratch.

Dr. Cale looked at me coolly, studying my face as if she could find the key to all her questions hidden there. Then, to my profound disappointment, she shook her head and said, “I’m sorry, Sal. I can’t let you do this.”

“Am I your prisoner now?” The words came out louder than I had intended for them to, but they weren’t as loud as my anguished thoughts.
I thought better of you
, they screamed, and
I thought you loved her
. Adam stopped fiddling with Anna’s IV and turned to face me, his eyes wide and liquid in his pale, drawn face. He looked terrified. I understood the sentiment. “Are we back to this again? Are you going to be like Sherman and lock me up for my own good? Or like USAMRIID, putting people in their private zoo? Or maybe like Dr. Banks, doing whatever it is he did to Tansy in order to keep her quiet? You know she didn’t go with him willingly. She kicked and she fought and he took her apart one piece at a time because she wasn’t being convenient. She wasn’t being
easy
. They both took prisoners. Everyone in this game has taken prisoners, except for you. Am I where you start?”

She stared at me for a moment. I was aware that all activity behind me had stopped, all the workers joining Adam in his silent observation of the scene, but I didn’t dare say anything. I didn’t dare do anything but look at Dr. Cale and wait for her to tell me whether I was about to run away from home.

Tansy had come to save me when I needed her the most. Tansy had been willing to risk and even lose her own life to bring me and the information I carried home. Well, what kind of sister would I have been if I hadn’t been willing to do the same thing for her?

“We don’t have a body currently suitable to play host to a fully mature implant,” said Dr. Cale, her eyes never leaving mine. “If Anna’s host dies, she’s going to die as well, because we can’t transplant her under the current circumstances. We may be able to harvest organs from the local sleepwalker population—assuming we can find a tissue type match and avoid shooting the possible donor in the wrong place in the process—and keep her alive for a while, but the stress of the additional surgeries is going to do her in just as quickly as the organ failure would. She’s dying, Sal. He took my daughter apart, he put her in a new shell like she was… like she was some sort of hermit crab he’d picked up at a pet store, and now she’s
dying. Do you honestly believe him when he tells you that the original is still alive? This is a trap.”

“Maybe you’re right.” I shook my head. “But if there’s even a chance that it isn’t, I still have to try.”

“How are you going to get to San Francisco?”

She wasn’t saying no anymore. That was a good sign, even if she was asking questions I didn’t know how to answer. To my surprise and relief, Nathan spoke up, saying calmly, “We’re going to steal a ferryboat.”

Dr. Cale’s eyebrows rose. “That’s a reasonable approach, I suppose, but it might lead to interference from USAMRIID.”

“Not if we take Dr. Banks with us,” said Nathan. “Hostages have a way of clarifying response during situations like this one.”

“What if they no longer consider him to be of use?” challenged Dr. Cale. “He came here with a damaged, dying chimera and no real understanding of the method used to create them. We would be sending him back with a fully functional, fully integrated chimera, and a doctor who is known to have been working in my lab in at least a low-level capacity since this crisis began. We’re more than doubling the value of their investment. They could shoot him and take you both, and we’d have gained
nothing
.”

“We’re not gaining anything now,” I said quietly. She and Nathan both turned to look at me. “We’re just spinning our wheels here. I know we don’t know anything about how to stop the sleepwalkers from taking over their hosts that we didn’t know before things got bad. We can’t put antiparasitics in the water at this stage without killing everybody, but if we don’t find a way to make the sleepwalkers stop, they’re going to keep taking over, and people are going to keep dying. We don’t know where Sherman is. This is a thing we can do. We can go to San Francisco. We can bring Tansy back. Isn’t that enough to take a risk on?”

“You’re asking me to risk my
son
,” said Dr. Cale. “That’s not something I can do on a whim.”

“I’m asking you to stand by while I risk myself, Mom,” said Nathan. “It’s not the same thing.”

She looked at him pleadingly, her wide blue eyes—so like his, and so unlike his, all at the same time—filling with slow tears. From almost anyone else that would have seemed like manipulation, but not from Dr. Cale. She didn’t manipulate people with tears. That would have been crude, and beneath her, which meant that any sorrow she demonstrated now was utterly, painfully real.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” she said. “Don’t make me do this.”

“You won’t lose me.” Nathan walked away from me to lean down and put his arms around his mother. I looked away, feeling vaguely as if I was intruding. Adam met my eyes across Anna’s unmoving body, and I felt a pang of guilt on top of my unease. How hard was all of this on him? He’d gone from having one sister and being the only beloved son to having two sisters and a brother, and then he’d lost one sister—maybe forever—and his place at the front of Dr. Cale’s affections at the same time.

“I found you again,” Nathan said, arms still tight around his mother’s shoulders. “Don’t you understand how huge that is? You left me because you had to, you
died
because you had to, and I found you. There was no way it should have happened, and it did. But that wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for Sal starting to ask questions—if it hadn’t been for Sal falling into my life in the first place, like some strange scientific miracle that just needed a place to shine. She brought me to you. She brought me through the broken doors when I thought that they were closed forever, and now she’s trying to take me to Tansy, she’s trying to take me to
save your little girl
, and you have to say that it’s okay. You can’t welcome me with open
arms and then not let me bring the rest of the family home. We belong together. We belong with you. Let us do this.”

“Besides, their doing this may distract USAMRIID from looking too closely at us, and that, in turn, will make it easier for us to begin tearing down the factory and figure out how to escape surveillance,” said Fang, speaking up for the first time since we had returned to Anna’s bedside. “The dogs will be a problem, but we’re going to have a lot of trucks and carts moving around in here as we shift equipment. Triggering one of Sal’s panic attacks would do none of us any good.”

I decided against reminding him that I only panicked when I was
in
a vehicle. “See? You need us out of here, and you need the diversion. We’ll go, and USAMRIID’s attention will be off you for a little while. We’ll use Dr. Banks to get into SymboGen, and we’ll be back with Tansy.”

“What if we’re not here?” asked Dr. Cale. “Once we start moving, it’s going to happen fast.”

“Just leave a sign.” Nathan straightened, letting her go. “We’ll find you. We found you before. We always find each other. It’s what we do.”

Adam looked at me again, expression bleak. I forced a smile for his benefit.

“Besides, it’s about time Dr. Banks learned what it’s like to have someone else using
him
,” I said.

That was the right thing to say. Dr. Cale looked at me, blinking, before she began, very slowly, to smile.

W
e couldn’t bring much. Traveling fast meant traveling light, and we were already going to be contending with a burden much larger than either of us would have voluntarily carried: Dr. Banks, who was almost sure to try running as soon as we were away from the factory. On one thing, however, I dug my heels in.

“We have to take her,” I said, gripping Beverly’s leash so tightly that I could feel the leather biting into my hand. Beverly herself sat calmly by my feet, tail thumping and snout canted upward as she gazed adoringly into my face. We were going on an adventure. That was all she knew, and all that she cared about.

Nathan frowned. “She’ll slow us down.”

“She’ll warn us of any sleepwalkers we don’t see,” I countered. “I can’t pick up on their pheromones as well as they can
pick up on mine, and I know I smell like something interesting enough to follow. But
their
pheromones upset the dog. She’ll bark her head off before anything can grab and eat us. That makes her worth however many potty stops she needs to make along the way.”

“Sal—”

“We need weapons, Nathan. Much as I hate to say it, Beverly is a weapon now. She’ll attack anything that wants to hurt us.” And if USAMRIID ambushed us, having a dog along would broadcast, loud and clear, that whatever we were, we weren’t sleepwalkers. It might buy us a few minutes before they shot us in the head.

“Mom’s sending Fishy with us,” said Nathan. “He always carries a gun when he’s in the field, and he doesn’t really believe that any of this is happening. The man has no fear.”

“That’s swell,” I said. “I want more.”

Nathan looked at me for a long moment before he sighed deeply. “We don’t have to do this.”

My eyes widened. “Yes, we do! We need to get Tansy back. I’m taking the dog, but that shouldn’t be enough to make you change your mind. We have to do this.”

“I know. It’s just…” Nathan stopped for a moment before he said, “Look, Sal. I won’t pretend not to worry about you. I worry about everything now. I worry constantly. We’ve been like this little… this little island of science surrounded by a world that’s falling to pieces. It’s like we’re on the Island of Doctor Moreau crossed with ‘Masque of the Red Death’—they’re stories,” he added, seeing my confusion. “One was about a man who made animals into men because he wanted to prove that he could do it, and the other was about a bunch of people who locked themselves away from everything when the plague came to town, and they danced and celebrated and drank while everyone else was dying. But eventually the men
turned into monsters, and the plague broke through the walls. Both stories end the same way.”

“Everybody dies?” I guessed.

Nathan nodded. “They’re cautionary tales, I guess. Sometimes I feel like my life is a cautionary tale. So please, forgive me when I seem like I’m being slow to adjust. I’ve adjusted more in the last months than I thought was possible. Bring Beverly if it makes you feel better.”

“It does, and that means we’re bringing the dog,” I said blithely. “I already made sure Adam has Minnie. He’ll take good care of her.”

“Good.” Nathan shouldered his pack, full of equipment I didn’t understand and first aid supplies I was all too familiar with. “Do you have everything you need?”

I turned and looked at the room that hadn’t been home for nearly long enough, and that I was probably never going to see again. Then I shouldered my own pack, looked back to Nathan, and nodded. “I do,” I said.

He offered me his hand. I took it with the hand that didn’t hold Beverly’s leash, and we walked away from everything, moving toward the distant, terrifying future.

Getting from Captain Candy’s Chocolate Factory to the ferry terminal was easier said than done. On paper, it was a relatively straight five-mile shot down Tennessee Street to the waterfront. From there, we’d be able to navigate the short, clearly labeled streets around the docks to find what we needed. Fishy and Fang both agreed that what we needed
was
the actual ferryboat: it was not only designed to be relatively easy to steer, but it was made to handle the shoals and waves of the open bay, while most of the smaller, privately owned craft were likely to capsize if the water got choppy. California didn’t have much of a winter compared to the rest of the world, or even the rest
of the country, but we did get more wind in November and December. Since a cold, wet shark encounter wasn’t going to help anything, it was better if we grabbed a boat that was big enough to do the job.

Dr. Banks complicated things. After a lengthy discussion with Fang, we had decided to cuff his hands in front of him for the journey. It would leave him relatively defenseless—not good—but it would also make it less likely that he would run away. Yes, any USAMRIID soldiers who happened to intercept us would immediately know that he’d been taken prisoner. That was a small price to pay for not losing him in the maze of streets that was downtown Vallejo.

Fishy was coming with us: Fang was not. Which brought us to the next problem on our rapidly growing list:

We didn’t have a security team. We only had one assault rifle between the four of us. And we had to travel almost six miles total, most of it through territory that had been ceded to the sleepwalkers, if we wanted to make it to the water.

“My biggest recommendation to you is take it slow, take it quiet, and whatever you do, don’t make any noise that isn’t strictly necessary,” said Fang, walking with us toward the exit to the parking garage. “The van is ready for you, but you should abandon it when you reach the harbor. The sound of the engine will just draw more sleepwalkers.”

“This is inhumane,” said Dr. Banks, giving another yank on his cuffs. “You can’t honestly expect me to stay quiet while your people treat me like a common animal.”

“You can’t honestly expect ‘my’ people to let you stay in the van if you insist on making noise,” Fang countered. He placed his hand between Dr. Banks’s shoulder blades, giving the older man a hard shove. Dr. Banks staggered forward a few feet before he managed to stop and turn, shooting a venomous glare back at Fang, who smiled serenely. “You must understand
my position,
Doctor
. You have never benefited me in any concrete manner. You have neither improved my life nor changed its course in any positive way. What you
have
done is knock everything I had ever planned for myself askew, trapping me in a future I neither designed nor desired. So please, enlighten me. Why should I recommend mercy when you’ve never deigned to show any to anyone else?”

Fishy yawned extravagantly. “You’ve been hanging out with the mad doctor too long,” he said, digging an elbow into Fang’s side. “I think making speeches is contagious.”

“It’s fun to watch you all treat Dr. Banks like a chewy toy, but I think we should probably get going,” I said, surprising everyone—even myself—with the assertiveness in my tone. Fang actually looked impressed. “We don’t want to be crossing the Bay after dark, and I
really
don’t want to land in San Francisco after dark.”

“Ah: that will be the next challenge,” said Fang. “There should be vehicles near the Ferry Building. If nothing else, building maintenance has to have had something they could use to pick up parts when necessary.”

“Hold on a second,” said Fishy. “What do you mean, ‘should be’? Don’t you know?”

“I don’t know everything,” said Fang. He ignored Fishy’s irritated muttering as he continued: “We can’t exactly scout the site before you go there. I will recommend you check the dock before you land. If you drive into the middle of a sleepwalker mob…”

“We all know how that ends,” said Nathan. He clamped a hand down on Dr. Banks’s shoulder. “It’s going to be fine. We’ll go to the ferry, cross the water, find a vehicle, go to SymboGen, find Tansy, and then do the whole thing in reverse. No problem.”

Fang raised an eyebrow. “Do you actually believe any of what you just said?”

“I believe that’s the plan,” said Nathan.

“I believe we’re never going to find out whether it works until we try it,” I said.

Dr. Banks turned his head, glaring at each of us in turn. “You fools are going to get us all killed,” he said. “If I survive this, I’ll be telling my lawyers about you.”

“Don’t be silly,
Steven
,” I said. His head snapped toward me, expression going startled. I smiled. “There are no more lawyers, remember?”

“And remember whose fault that is.” Fang gave him another shove. Nathan pulled him along, and Fishy and I fell into step behind them as we walked away, leaving Fang standing alone in the lobby. I managed—somehow—not to look back. It would have felt too much like admitting that we were never going to see him again. So I didn’t do it.

I just walked.

Getting into a car was stressful for me under the best of circumstances. The stress just increased when Nathan shoved Dr. Banks into the back of the van and climbed in after him, leaving the front seat for me… and for Fishy, who slipped behind the wheel like it was only natural for him to be seated there. I froze, my hand on the door handle, and shot a hurt, bewildered look at Nathan, who shrugged apologetically.

“Fishy’s the best urban driver we have,” he said. “I’m sorry, Sal. I’d do it if it wouldn’t slow us down.”

“Don’t worry your head, pretty little tapeworm girl,” said Fishy blithely as he reached up to adjust the mirror. He was short enough that everything had to be shifted a little, creating a complex chain of minor changes that took him long enough that I was able to talk myself into getting in and buckling my belt. He cast an encouraging smile in my direction. “I’m a great driver. I almost never crash into anything I wasn’t aiming for.”

I made a small, involuntary squeaking noise.

From the back of the van, Dr. Banks’s voice slithered forth, venomous and beguiling: “You may be scared of something as simple as a little car ride, but Sally wouldn’t even have noticed that she was moving. You should really try to get in touch with your inner human,
Sal
, if you want to survive this brave new world.”

“Shut up,” said Nathan. His command was followed by the sound of a body being shoved back against the seat.

“There’s no need to get rough, boy,” said Dr. Banks. “I’m just trying to help the little lady, that’s all. Since none of you can be bothered to do anything of the sort, it seems like it’s my fatherly duty.”

“The fucked-up road show is now prepared to get rolling,” said Fishy blithely, seemingly immune to the tension that was thrumming through the air. “Please keep your hands, arms, heads, and children inside the ride at all times. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to get bumpy out there.” He hit the gas like it had personally offended him, and we went peeling out of the garage at a speed that sent my heart into my throat, where it anchored, still pounding. The drums seemed louder than they had ever been, so loud that they threatened to rupture my eardrums from the inside out.

I closed my eyes and reached for the hot warm dark, seeking the safety and serenity that would allow me to make it to the waterfront with my sanity intact. But the dark wasn’t there. All I found was the inside of my own eyelids, a plain, undifferentiated darkness that offered neither safety nor isolation. I reached again, trying to find the one thing that had always been there for me, since even before I woke up in the hospital. I was born in the hot warm dark. I existed in its embrace, and it kept me from the things that wanted to hurt me. So how was it possible that I couldn’t find it now?

Calm down, Sal
, I told myself.
This is what
he
wants
. And
that was true, wasn’t it? Dr. Banks didn’t want me to have anything that he couldn’t manipulate or control. He was trying to make me lose touch with myself with his lies about Sally still being locked somewhere in my mind. It was
my
mind. Not hers. Not now, and not ever again.

The third time I reached out, the dark reached back to greet me. I tangled the idea of fingers into the idea of hands, and then I was plummeting down, down, down into the hot warm dark, where it didn’t matter how fast we were moving or how dangerous the things we were doing were, because I was safe and home and far away from everything but the drums that were my own pounding heart. I was alone. I was safe, because I was alone.

Wasn’t I?

Sally?
It was a stupid question to ask, even if I was only asking it of the silence at the center of myself—and the silence wasn’t really silent, was it? The drums were always there, so constant and so unvarying that they might as well have been silent. It was hard to put words on the things I saw when my eyes were closed. They were built into my DNA, never intended to be expressed in things as limitless or as limited as words.
Are you there?

There was no reply from the hot warm dark. I was alone there, like I had always been alone there, and there could be no answers unless I gave them to myself.

A hand touched my shoulder, pulling me back up out of the darkness and into the frame of flesh and bone and sinew that I had stolen for my own. I sat up a little straighter as my skin settled around me, and I opened my eyes, expecting to see the waterfront stretching outside the van like a watery promise.

Instead, what I saw was an intersection packed with the smashed remains of a six-car pileup. There were no sleepwalkers—at least not at the moment—but there was also no way for us to get the van through. I blinked, and then twisted to look behind
me. Nathan looked grimly back, his hand still resting on my shoulder.

“I waited as long as possible to wake you,” he said. “I think we’re going to have to abandon the van.”

“I’m not getting out of this seat,” said Dr. Banks mulishly. I got the distinct impression that he’d already made this statement several times while I was down in the hot warm dark, and that he hadn’t budged since the crisis began. That was almost reassuring. Even when things were at their worst, some people could be counted on to be absolutely terrible.

“Then you’re going to be the delicious filling in a big metal bonbon,” said Fishy cheerfully. His words were accompanied by the sound of a rifle slide slotting into place. I glanced at him and grimaced when I saw the assault rifle in his hands, held as casually as a child’s toy. He grinned at my grimace. “Don’t worry. I have plenty of ammo, and if I start running out, we can always smash vases and jars until we find more.”