“Doesn’t the body normally replenish lost tissue? I’ve suffered wounds myself that have healed up and filled in.”
“Yes. But only to a degree. Burn scarring tends to impede such a recovery. That’s why one of the treatments is to strip the dead flesh away and encourage new flesh to grow. It’s not always successful.” The physician shook his head. “And never like this. If you look at those burn areas, you’ll see that the flesh has filled in, returning Mr. Schimmer’s body and features to normal.”
“Only with scales.”
“Yes.” The physician punched keys on the board. The view tightened up on Warren’s left arm, focusing on the burn area covered with greenish-black scales. “Interestingly, though, those new patches of flesh—as well as the scales—possess a different DNA from Mr. Warren’s.”
“A different DNA?”
The physician nodded. More buttons were pressed and two DNA marking charts showed up on the tri-dee. “Here is Mr. Warren’s.”
The top DNA string glowed.
“And this is the—well, the other DNA.”
The bottom string of DNA glowed then.
Warren didn’t know much about DNA or how it was charted. He remembered from school that there was something about a double strand that coiled around and around that made it unique, but that was all. He sat there feeling helpless, hating every moment of it.
“Have you identified the DNA?” Tulane asked.
“No. But I can tell you what it isn’t.”
Tulane waited.
The physician licked his lips and raked his hair back with his fingers. “It isn’t human, or from any species that is logged in the computer files.”
Not human. Warren stared in growing horror at the scales that covered his skin where the burned areas were.
“Warren’s DNA is not human?” Tulane asked.
Concentrating, Warren summoned his attention and tried to listen to Tulane and Haggarty, the physician. The two of them had continued talking between themselves, never seeming to notice the mental shape Warren was in.
“Yes,” Haggarty replied. “I can’t detect anything untoward or different about it.”
Warren stared at Tulane, wondering how it was the man might think he wasn’t human. Then he realized that growing scales was a good argument that he wasn’t.
“Warren’s body now has two different DNA signatures?” Tulane asked.
The physician nodded. “That’s not impossible even for a normal human. Say for instance that Mr. Schimmer had been a twin within the womb. If a chimeric resolution had come about—that’s where one twin literally absorbs the other twin after it died—that could account for the differing DNA.”
“But you would have two human DNA signatures,” Tulane said.
“Exactly.” Haggarty shook his head. “This second DNA isn’t human.”
Warren stared at the scales, wanting nothing more than to get a knife and scrape them away like a fisherman cleaning a fish. Even if he’d been able to stand the pain and didn’t mind risking losing the use of his arm, he remembered how hard it had been to get a single scale away from the crust that covered him.
“We have DNA samples from demons that you can do comparisons with,” Tulane said.
“I know,” Haggarty said. “I did comparisons. The second DNA is close to those samples we have, but they don’t match.”
“You think they’re demonic in nature.”
“I do.”
Tulane stared at Warren’s image. Breathing out slowly, Tulane whispered, “Fascinating.”
Warren looked at the two men, not believing how quietly and calmly, how thoroughly, they conducted their business. Then again, they weren’t the one who had been infected.
“I don’t understand how this happened,” Warren whispered.
Glancing over his shoulder at Warren, the physician said, “Nor do I, Mr. Schimmer. I’ve never seen anything like this.” He returned his attention to the image. “But it is my belief that the scales grew there to heal you. Maybe even to protect you.”
“Protect him?” Tulane echoed. “Protect him from what?”
Not what, Warren thought anxiously. Protect me from whom.
“How much have the scales spread?” Warren asked.
“I believe the original catalyst took root in the burned areas,” Haggarty said. He tapped keys and the burned areas on Warren glowed. “Those areas also show the highest concentration of the scales.”
Warren let his breath out as he stared at his injuries.
“But the scales are spreading,” the physician said. “For the moment they’re content to remain subdural, except in the heavily damaged areas. There they’ve surfaced.” He paused. “Maybe they’re more protective in those areas.”
“As if they recognize a weakness?” Tulane asked.
Haggarty hesitated. “To say something like that would be like calling them an entity.”
“Perhaps they are.”
“You mean like a parasite?”
“If you will.”
The physician didn’t offer a comment to that.
The thought sickened Warren even worse. He knew from Haggarty’s silence that the physician had been thinking along those lines as well.
“Could you—” Warren’s voice failed him. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Could you remove the scales?”
“Surgically?”
Warren nodded.
Haggarty was quiet for a moment, regarding Warren’s nude figure floating in the air. “The skin is an organ. The largest organ possessed by the human body. If we attempted something like that, if we were successful, if you survived, you’d be in terrible agony for a long time.”
“Couldn’t you put me out? Drop me into a coma or something?”
“A coma would reduce the healing factor. And it would be risky. We—you—have to consider the possibility that if we could remove this new skin, you might never grow any more.”
“I’m being invaded by a parasite that’s going to kill me,” Warren said, trying to keep his voice level but not at all sure he’d managed.
“You don’t know that,” Tulane said.
Warren glanced at the man.
“Don’t panic, Warren,” Tulane coaxed. “You don’t know that those scales represent anything harmful to you.”
“In fact,” Haggarty quickly put in, “I would say that scale layer has saved your life. If not for the healing that your new skin has provided, you very probably would have died. I believe they’re the only thing that saved your life. There’s no other explanation for why you survived those burns. Or why you’re not horribly disfigured.”
“I have scales,” Warren
