Parasite

drums to buoy me up. No matter what we did, no matter what I learned or what I was able to share with my father’s lab, Sherman was still going to be dead. He was never going to teach me another vocabulary word, or threaten to seduce my boyfriend away from me. Sherman was gone.

In that moment, I hated SymboGen, I hated D. symbogenesis, and most of all, I hated Dr. Shanti Cale, for making it possible for the rest of it to happen in the first place. I hated them for ruining everything, and for hurting so many of the people I cared about. They were the ones who opened the broken doors, not us. But we were the ones who were paying for their actions.

My father pulled up at the gate, where sturdy-looking guard stations loomed on either side of the car. A young man in army green was seated in the driver’s side booth, a clipboard in his hands. My father rolled down his window. The young man rose, and saluted.

“Colonel Mitchell,” he said.

“At ease, soldier.” My father indicated me. “This is my daughter, Sally Mitchell. She’s on the approved visitor’s list. I need a pass for her.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man gestured to the uniformed woman in the other guard booth. The window rolled down as she approached my door. I hate it when drivers do that. It just reminds me of how little control I have.

“Ma’am,” she said.

“Hello,” I said.

“Please look at the blue dot.” The woman indicated a blue dot at the center of a smooth black metal box mounted on the guard station wall. I looked at it, bemused. The woman typed something on a keyboard. “Her pass will be waiting when you get inside.”

“Thank you,” said my father, and drove onward to the barrier, which rose as we approached it.

I sat back in my seat, blinking. “What just happened?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Dad—”

“We’re here.”

The San Francisco USAMRIID installation consisted of four main buildings, connected by stone walkways, and the boxy shape of the Level 4 lab, which was isolated from the rest of the facility by more than twenty yards. Collapsible tunnels connected it to the administration building. They could be sterilized and removed in less than ninety seconds, leaving the L4 lab completely cut off. The doors would lock automatically at the same time. Anyone left inside would find themselves depending on the vending machines and their own ability not to die from unspeakable pathogens until someone came up with an extraction plan.

Naturally, that was where my sister worked, and naturally, that was our destination. Dad parked the car just outside the lab’s main entrance, in the spot marked DIRECTOR. Similar spaces were reserved outside all the lab buildings, since there was no telling where he’d need to be at any given time.

“Now, remember,” he cautioned, as we got out of the car. “Don’t touch anything unless I tell you it’s safe, and don’t—”

“If you tell me not to lick anything, I’m going to throw something at you,” I cautioned. Not Don’t Go Out Alone—I couldn’t justify leaving it at home, but I wasn’t taking it inside, either. The book was in my shoulder bag, which was safely tucked under my seat, along with my notebook. Hopefully, no one was going to notice it there. It felt a little odd to be worrying about an old picture book and a bunch of half-coherent dreams. Then again, everything felt a little odd these days.

Dad looked abashed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that you haven’t been trained the way Joyce has, and I worry about you.”

I smiled wanly. “It’s okay. Let’s just go inside, and I’ll show you what I can.”

He nodded. “All right. But Sal… we’re going into a live research project. The L4 building is almost entirely dedicated to the sleepwalkers right now. You must follow my instructions at all times. Do you understand?”

“I do,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Dad nodded one more time before turning and leading me out of the parking lot, toward the unmarked but somehow menacing door of the Level 4 lab. I took a deep breath and followed him, with the oddly comforting sound of drums hammering in my ears. Whatever was behind that door, it would be something I didn’t know yet, and every piece of this puzzle counted.

Guards flanked the door. They saluted my father as he approached. He returned the salute almost absentmindedly, and turned to shield the keypad with his body as he entered his security code. The lock disengaged, and he pulled the door open, beckoning me inside.

“Be careful now,” I murmured, and stepped through.

-

The fact that the scientific community has willingly accepted Steve’s sanitized explanation for the origins of D. symbogenesis strikes me as a form of modern miracle—or perhaps it’s just proof that we inevitably get the saviors we deserve. In an earlier era, Steve would have been a traveling snake oil salesman, offering people cures too good to be true. Today, he peddles a new form of snake oil, one that can be just as dangerous, and just as destructive.

If you believed that D. symbogenesis was the simple, easily controlled organism SymboGen described in their press releases and paperwork, you have been sold a bottle of snake oil. While you may well deserve what that gets you, the truth is, I enabled Steve to become such a great salesman… and while I may not regret the science, I am truly sorry for the lies.

—FROM CAN OF WORMS: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SHANTI CALE, PHD. AS YET UNPUBLISHED.

I don’t think anyone can deny that the SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard™ changed the face of medicine as we know it. Chronic conditions can now be treated on an ongoing basis by the ingestion of a single pill—it’s just that the pill contains the egg of a D. symbogenesis, and the implant will handle all the ongoing medical care. No more worrying about affording your prescriptions, no more missed doses or mix-ups at the pharmacy. Everything is taken care of.

Were we perfect from the word “go”? No. Even if we weren’t only human, that would have been a little much to ask of us, don’t you think? We could only do what anyone is capable of doing: our best. We rose to the challenges we were offered, and we did what we could to meet and match them. I think that when history looks at our accomplishments, the good that we managed to do will outweigh the bad. I hope so, anyway. No one wants to set out to be a hero, and discover after the fact that they’ve been a villain all along.

—FROM “KING OF THE WORMS,” AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. STEVEN BANKS, CO-FOUNDER OF SYMBOGEN. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ROLLING STONE, FEBRUARY 2027.

Chapter 15 AUGUST 2027

After Dad’s dire warnings, the entry hall of the L4 building was almost anticlimactic. I was expecting something out of one of Joyce’s science fiction movies, with unfamiliar equipment and unexplained lasers everywhere. What I got was basically a hallway that could have been leading to any ER in the world. The walls were a hospital-standard shade of eggshell white, with bands of color painted on them to help guide researchers