Parasite

activity ceased. Sally Mitchell was born when her brain activity resumed. Maybe if the memory centers of your brain hadn’t been so profoundly damaged, you’d still be her, but they were damaged, and so you’re not her, no matter how much you might like to pretend you are. You’re someone entirely new, free of her sins and successes and emotional baggage.”

“There’s a chance my memory could come back someday,” I said, hating how weak my voice sounded, even under the steady pounding of the drums.

“And if it does, you’ll have the first Sally’s memories on top of the second Sally’s memories, and you’ll become a new person all over again. For you, recall would be a form of suicide. Maybe not if it had happened right away—then, all this would have just been a strange gap in the memory of the girl you used to be—but it’s been long enough, and you’ve lived a different enough life, that you would die if she reclaimed herself. Would that Sally have loved Dr. Kim? Would she have worked at the shelter for so long?” His gaze sharpened. “Would she have been willing to go through the broken doors at the behest of a woman she’d never met?”

“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t have to feign my shock.

Dr. Banks smiled. “Don’t you?”

I gaped at him, not sure what else I could say. As I did, I realized that by putting myself behind the desk, I might have gotten access to his computer, but I had done so at the expense of my access to the door. Dr. Banks was between me and the only exit. The windows weren’t the kind that were intended to be opened. Even if I could somehow smash them before he stopped me, all that would do was allow me to plummet to my death more than twenty stories below.

“Did you really think that I wasn’t keeping a close eye on you? I’m fond of you, Sally, but you represent a huge investment in research hours and medical costs. I’m not going to let you run around willy-nilly without making sure that I have some idea of where you’re going. The shower trick was a good one, I’ll grant you that. Unfortunately for you, I’ve had that shelter bugged since the day you applied there. We got everything. Including a few key words that only one person I’ve ever known would think constituted a cypher.” Dr. Banks leaned forward in his seat, expression sharpening. “I hoped you’d lead us to her. You didn’t. And so I’m asking you: where is she, Sally?

“Where is Dr. Shanti Cale?”

-

The number of keystrokes that have been wasted discussing my relationship with Dr. Steven Banks is frankly appalling. There were much better things the world could have been doing with its collective time, including researching the supposed genetic structure of D. symbogenesis, the little worm without which the private lives of two scientists would never have been up for scrutiny. We were a smokescreen, one that I didn’t realize he was intentionally casting until it was too late for me to get out of the line of fire.

Were we lovers? Yes, we were. I was married at the time—I’m still married now, as far as I’m concerned—but my husband and I both knew our careers might sometimes take us down less than savory paths. Steven was a bright, ambitious man who was willing to promise me the world. I would have been a fool to deny him whatever he asked from me.

As it turns out, I was a fool anyway, but not quite in the way most people wanted to believe. I was a fool for listening to the promises he made when we weren’t in the bedroom. Those may have been the only true words he ever whispered in my ear.

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

I always knew that this grand experiment would eventually reach a tipping point, a stage at which our only choices were evolve or die. Unfortunately, there is no way of predicting which choice we are going to make before it is made. No one can tell you which way the singularity can go.

For the sake of my children—all my children—I pray that we can make the right decision. The only problem is, I’m not sure any single decision will be right for all them. No matter which way this goes, I am terribly afraid that half of the people I love are doomed.

—FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. SHANTI CALE, SEPTEMBER 5, 2027.

Chapter 19 AUGUST 2027

I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said. My voice was level and calm. I was proud of myself for that. Really, I wanted to throw up.

“I think you do, Sally; after all, you mentioned her yourself not all that long ago,” said Dr. Banks. “Think hard. Blonde woman, curvy, fondness for lab coats and genetic engineering? Oh, and she’s your boyfriend’s mother, mustn’t forget that. Do you think he knows where she is, if you’re insisting you don’t? Do you think he’d tell me if we asked him?”

“Leave Nathan out of this,” I said, finding more strength now that I had something to defend. I sat straighter in my pilfered chair, trying to glare at him. It wasn’t working as well as I wanted it to. I was too terrified for that. “He has nothing to do with whatever you want from me.”

“Oh, no, believe me, he does. It was a stroke of amazing luck when you met up with him. I knew all along that he was Shanti’s son. She always forgot that I was the one who had recruited her in the first place—just one more blind spot in a series stretching all the way back to the lab. It’s a good thing she’s so brilliant. If she weren’t, her tendency to focus on the science at the expense of the human element would have gotten her killed years ago. We’ve been trying to hire Dr. Kim for years. If he would just consent to an implant… we couldn’t change the rules without tipping him off. Ah, well. Water under the bridge. Where is she?”

“Couldn’t you just have changed the rules if you wanted him that bad?” I asked, dodging the question.

Dr. Banks laughed. “Oh, Sally. I do love your sense of humor. Rules are rules. If I’d changed them, everyone would have known something was up. But oh, I’ve wanted to know what my old friend was doing, and that meant keeping tabs on her son. There was always the chance that she might decide to make contact sometime in the future—which she did, through you. You’re apparently more important to her than her own son. Interesting implications, don’t you think?” He tried that old paternal smile again. It wasn’t working as well as it usually did. “His interest in you was something we couldn’t have predicted, but I’ll admit, we did nothing to discourage it. Keeping the two of you in one place—a package deal, so to speak—made surveillance so much easier.”

I stared at him. “But why…?”

“Your father is the head of USAMRIID’s San Francisco office. We needed a way to watch him without it being suspicious. You were the perfect entry into his home.” Dr. Banks looked briefly apologetic. “We’re sorry to have disrupted your life as much as we did. If it makes you feel any better, we wouldn’t have done it if there had been any other way.”

“But…” I shook my head. “You couldn’t have planned this. I had an accident.” An accident I remembered absolutely nothing about. I’d never even spoken to any of the witnesses. By the time I was out of recovery and able to really wonder about what had happened to me, they had already put the incident behind them, vanishing into the general population without a thought for the girl whose car kissed a bus.

“I admit, Sally, I’d hoped we could convince you to join our SymboGen family,” said Dr. Banks. “I wanted to be able to protect you. You’re a special girl, and you deserve better than the world outside these doors. But if we’d accomplished that, Shanti probably wouldn’t have contacted you. She’s always been canny. While she might have