“Don’t make it sound like it was something accidental, Nathan, or something I did entirely on my own,” Dr. Cale said. She frowned at her son. “Every step I took was approved by the rest of my research team. Even Richard agreed that this was the only way we were going to get the implants to work—he wasn’t sure he wanted them to work, mind you, but he knew this was what we’d have to do to
“You what?” asked Nathan.
“I didn’t want to. I had already given up my family for this project. I wanted it to work. I wanted to make scientific history, so that when we were finally able to have this conversation—which, I admit, went a little bit differently in my head”—she looked down at her wheelchair and grimaced before looking back to Nathan—“I wanted to be able to show you that I had made a difference. That it was worth it. I went out alone, I found the broken door, and I came back with all the riches we could ever have imagined. Things just didn’t work out quite the way I’d imagined them. That’s all.”
“Tell that to the dead,” said Nathan.
“I still don’t understand,” I said, interrupting before things could get even worse. I was afraid Tansy might do something if Nathan started yelling at Dr. Cale. I wasn’t clear on what “something” would be, but I couldn’t imagine it would be anything either of us would like. “What do all these other parasites have to do with the sleeping sickness?”
“There is no sleeping sickness; that’s just a convenient way to describe it, and of course, most people don’t know any better,” said Dr. Cale. “What they have is a SymboGen implant that’s decided it’s tired of being treated like a slave in the only home it’s ever known. An implant that knows how to reproduce itself asexually, how to spread through muscle tissue without killing its host, and—most importantly of all, and the reason Richard initially argued against the use of
“Oh, God,” said Nathan. “This can’t be happening. I mean, it literally can’t. It’s not possible for this to be happening.”
“I went out alone,” said Dr. Cale. “I opened the broken doors. I’d close them if I could, Nathan, for your sake, and for the sake of everyone who’s been hurt by what’s come through, but it’s too late for that. Once a door is open, you have to live with what’s on the other side.”
Maybe we had to live with it, but Devi didn’t. Neither did Chave, or Sherman, or Katherine. We could live with things forever. They were never going to live with anything else, ever again. “So how do we wake them up?” I asked.
Dr. Cale turned toward me. Her expression was sympathetic. Somehow, that made my blood go cold. “I’m sorry, Sal. We can’t. If someone is sleepwalking, then the parasite is already in their brain. All we can do is hope that eventually, someone else gets the chance to wake up, and live.”
The sound of drums was loud and heavy in my ears as I considered the ramifications of that. Then my eyes rolled back in my head, and I pitched over backward. I never even felt myself hit the floor.
-
Right from the start, there were… surprises… in the behavior of
Can you imagine? For literally centuries scientists have been looking at their invertebrate test subjects and wondering what we can learn from them next. But in my lab, when those beautiful babies hatched, I became the first scientist whose subjects had even a rudimentary capacity for looking back. Every
I made one last attempt to speak with Steven yesterday, to make him understand that we had lost control. The dangers I foresaw, and he and Shanti willfully ignored, are coming to pass, and I know he must have seen the signs. They are so clear, if you know what you’re looking for.
He laughed at me. He laughed in my face, and said that it didn’t matter, because the die was cast; at this point, all we could do was try to make sure we remained as clean as possible. I asked if he’d spoken to Shanti. He stopped laughing, and told me that she was no longer a concern.
I haven’t seen her in over a year. I thought she was simply off spreading her rumors. Now I wonder if it might be worse than I had ever feared.
I knew that I had become a creator of monsters. I did not know, before I ran out of choices, that I had become a monster myself.
Chapter 13
AUGUST 2027
The drums were still echoing in my ears, chasing away the fragments of my dreams, when I woke up on a narrow cot. Tansy loomed over me like a denim-clad gargoyle. I gasped, sitting up and scooting away from her in the same motion. The lab coat someone had spread over me to serve as a blanket fell away, pooling in my lap. For whatever reason, this made Tansy start to giggle madly. She abandoned her looming in favor of plopping down on the floor of the bowling alley, cross-legged, and clutching her own bare ankles in her hands.
“You’re funny,” she informed me. “I hoped you’d be nice, or at least interestingly dangerous, but I didn’t expect you to be
“Is that good?” I asked uneasily. I was trying to remember why I’d passed out, and what I’d dreamt about. After a day filled with horrible revelations, there had finally been something bad enough to make me lose consciousness. I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to remember. I was absolutely certain that it was something I