Parasite

“Science doesn’t always play nicely with the other children,” said Nathan.

Dr. Cale sighed. “So true. Come on, give your mother a hug—and for God’s sake, be careful out there. I still don’t know how D. symbogenesis is accomplishing all this outside of lab conditions, and I won’t know until I’ve had more opportunity to study the afflicted. There’s no telling what could happen.”

“Okay, Mom,” said Nathan. He squeezed me quickly before walking over to hug his mother, who returned the gesture with all the fervency of someone who had never expected to have this opportunity again. After a few seconds of that, Nathan melted into her embrace, and the two of them just held each other, long enough that I started to get uncomfortable. I looked away, studying the room instead.

In addition to the charts and graphs on the walls, there was a corkboard with a few tacked-up photographs, including a grainy shot of Nathan that had clearly been taken with a distance lens. There was one picture of Adam and Tansy sitting together, she with a shaved skull and a bandage taped to the side of her head, he with the doting smile of an older brother.

Something occurred to me as I looked at the picture. “Dr. Cale?”

“Yes, Sal?”

I turned. Nathan and Dr. Cale were no longer hugging, although he was still standing next to her chair. “Why did you call her ‘Tansy’? Isn’t it usually Adam and Eve, not, well, Adam and Tansy?”

“Oh, that’s an easy one to answer,” said Dr. Cale. “Tapeworms are naturally hermaphroditic; they only acquire gender if they take over something that has biological gender, like humans. I named him Adam because he took over the first male human body prepared for habitation. I named her Tansy because it was a good name… and she wasn’t the first.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and so I didn’t say anything at all. I just hugged the book to my chest, staring at her.

Nathan found his voice before I did. Sounding half-fascinated, half-horrified, he began, “Are you saying that there’s more than just the two—”

“Doctor C! Doctor C!” Tansy burst into the office without knocking, shoving the door open so hard that it actually slammed against the wall. “There’s a bunch of sleepwalkers in Lafayette! The local police are talking about shutting the freeways to try and maintain a temporary quarantine until they can divert the mob!” She was covered in dust, and had a new rip in the knee of her overalls. Blood was soaking slowly into the denim. It was hard not to stare at it, even with her shouting and waving her hands around. People were sick; the SymboGen implant was causing it; Tansy was bleeding. In that moment, all these things seemed to be of equal importance to me.

Dr. Cale remained perfectly calm. “How do you know, dear?”

“I took the police scanner sledding with me.” Tansy made the statement in a matter-of-fact tone, like it was entirely reasonable for her to have taken a police scanner out to play.

Dr. Cale nodded. “All right, Tansy. Thank you for letting me know. I hate to cut our farewell short, Nathan, but you need to take Sal and get out of here, now.” She gripped the wheels of her chair, starting to roll herself toward the door. Tansy stepped into position when Dr. Cale was halfway there, grabbing hold of the handles on the back of the chair. Dr. Cale stopped pushing as Tansy took over. “I need to scramble an extraction team and get them to Lafayette before the CDC seizes all the available subjects. You need to make sure that you’re not trapped here.”

“Mom—”

“Don’t ‘Mom’ me, Nathan! Not right now. You and Sal need to be safe.” She looked fiercely between us. “You don’t understand yet how important you are, but you will. In the meantime, be careful who you trust, and remember, there’s such a thing as knowing without understanding. You need to think carefully before you start sharing the information I’ve given to you.”

“Wait,” I said. “Subjects? Are you talking about sick people?”

“Nathan…” Dr. Cale gave him a pleading look.

“I’ll explain in the car, Sal,” he said, and took my arm.

I wasn’t happy about leaving without getting my question answered—but in a way, it didn’t need to be, because her refusal to say anything was answer enough. We were getting out of the bowling alley alive, and we had more information than we’d had when we came. That was going to have to be good enough. “Okay,” I said.

“I’ll contact you as soon as I can,” said Dr. Cale.

Tansy pushed her out of the room. Nathan and I followed. And finally, after some of the most confusing hours of my life, we went our separate ways.

The threatened roadblock between Lafayette and everywhere else didn’t materialize, but the California Highway Patrol did shut down all but one lane going in either direction, forcing all the normal traffic to slow to a crawl. Nathan and I found ourselves sitting in what was essentially a mile-long parking lot. Several of the local deer had nonchalantly emerged from the edges of the forest that lined the freeway on either side and were chewing on the median grass, all but ignoring the cars around them. Horns honked from all sides, having absolutely no effect on the cars around them.

Don’t Go Out Alone rested on my knees. I looked down at it, studying the black and blue forest on the cover. Then I glanced at Nathan, who was staring fixedly out the window at the road. He hadn’t really spoken since we left the bowling alley. I’d been okay with that—anything that means the driver is less distracted is okay with me—but if we weren’t going to move, we might as well talk. “Are you okay?” I asked.

My voice came out softer than I intended it to. That turned out not to matter; Nathan had apparently been waiting for me to say something, because his answer was out almost before I finished the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never thought that I was going to see her again. I thought… I thought she loved me enough to come back, if she could. She could have died, Sal. For real. She swallowed that stupid worm, and she… and she…” Words failed him. After a moment of staring soundlessly out the windshield, he slammed his fists into the steering wheel.

It was such an abrupt motion that I didn’t see it coming. I shrieked, flattening myself against the car door. If we’d been moving at all, I probably would have fainted again. As it was, the traffic was at a standstill, and I was able to keep myself awake.

Nathan looked instantly contrite as he realized what he had done. Wincing, he said, “I’m sorry, Sal. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just… she… fuck.”

I took a deep breath, trying to force my frantically beating heart to calm down. It was funny; at moments like this, my heartbeat didn’t sound like drums at all. It just sounded like being afraid of the world.

Once I was sure I could talk again without throwing up, I said, “Don’t do that in the car, okay? If you do that in the car again, I’m going to have to get out.” I wasn’t sure I didn’t need to do that anyway. This was the second time in the same week that Nathan had taken his hands off the wheel, and that was something I couldn’t handle. I could walk from here to the nearest BART station. It couldn’t possibly be more dangerous than staying in the car if he was going to drive like that.

“I won’t,” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay. Just… okay.” I took a breath. The book was still in my lap. I looked down at it, tracing the outline of the girl’s face with my index finger. She looked terrified. I understood how she felt. “How long was I out?” Why did you leave me alone when I couldn’t defend myself?

“A little over an hour. You sort of scared me when you just toppled over like that, but your vital signs were steady, and you’d already had a hell of a day… it seemed like a good idea to let you sleep while we did all the crazy science shit that you wouldn’t have understood anyway.”

“Yeah. I guess that was smart.”

Nathan gave me a sidelong look, but out of deference to my discomfort, he kept his attention mainly on the road. I could have kissed him for that, if there wasn’t a good chance that it would have distracted him. That was the last thing I wanted to do. “Mom told Tansy to watch you, and make sure you didn’t get scared when you woke up without me.”

“Considering that Tansy is the scariest thing in that lab, I’m not sure you made the right call, there,” I said.

He laughed a little, sounding unsteady. “You may be right about that. Did she stay until you woke up?”