Mira Grant - Symbiont

“ Mom .” Nathan sounded more impatient this time. His interruption was accompanied by a glance at the old analog clock on the wall, where the second hand was busily ticking off our window of opportunity.

“Sorry,” said Dr. Cale again. “As I was getting around to saying, Sal, people today carry expensive pieces of medical equipment with them at all times, and there’s a black market for that sort of thing. It’s rare, but not unheard-of, for someone to go in for a minor surgical process and wake up with their implant missing—especially if they have one of the extremely tailored varieties. SymboGen has done an excellent job of controlling supply and demand, making sure supply never manages to outstrip demand. Unfortunately, that means that if you need a new insulin source right this minute, or a worm that supplies anti-rejection medication, theft may start looking like your best option.”

I stared at her. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

“Thanks for freaking out my girlfriend, Mom, that was swell of you,” said Nathan. He stood, offering me his arm. “Come on, Sal. Let’s get you to the ambulance.”

“I don’t have any clothes,” I protested. Pushing away the covers had revealed that I was wearing nothing but a plain white hospital gown, the kind that tied in the back and left virtually nothing to the imagination. I didn’t mind that much—I’ve never been shy about nudity—but I had been told over and over that it wasn’t socially acceptable to run around half clothed in front of strangers. Fang and Daisy counted.

“We’re going to a hospital,” said Nathan. “Not having any clothes is a good thing.”

“You’ll be fine,” said Dr. Cale. “Just tell anyone who asks you that you have problems with the veins in your head, and that Dr. Chu and Dr. Lee are going to fix it for you. If they press, tell them you don’t know how to pronounce what’s wrong. Daisy or Fang can take things from there.”

“What’s Nathan going to do?”

“Stand there being quiet and trying not to be recognized, while he remembers that I didn’t want him to go with you in the first place,” said Dr. Cale coolly, shooting a look at Nathan.

Nathan ignored her. “All right, Sal. Time for us to go.” He took hold of my IVs, wheeling them along. I was glad he was taking charge of that part of the trip. I would have snarled the tubes on something before we’d gone more than five feet.

Dr. Cale didn’t say anything as we walked away. She just watched us go, expression unreadable, hands still knotted white-knuckled in her lap. Then the curtain fell closed again behind us, and she was gone.

I leaned heavily on Nathan’s arm as we walked out of the semiprivate room and back into the main bowling alley. Most of the terminals were abandoned at this hour—it had to be almost midnight, and I wondered briefly whether that would make our “borrow a hospital operating theater” plan more dangerous. Probably not. My condition wasn’t immediately life-threatening, and if Dr. Cale was sending us to the hospital now, she had to have a reason. Maybe it was just “we’ll have more luck finding an empty room at this hour of the night.” Whatever her logic, I had made the decision to trust her, and now it was the only thing I could do.

Fang was waiting just outside the interior door, in the dark room where I had lost consciousness before. He looked me thoughtfully up and down, from my bare feet to my tousled hair, and finally said, “You’d look good as a redhead. Consider that for when we’re done at the hospital.” He had a faint accent, although I couldn’t have said from where. “Come on, both of you. Daisy is outside with the ambulance, and we should move before someone stops to make sure that she’s all right. This would be like Al Capone being busted for tax evasion.” His smile was swift and tight, like he had just made a very funny joke but didn’t want to be the first one to laugh.

“You never talked this much at SymboGen,” I said. Now that I was up and moving, the sedatives in my IV were starting to hit me harder, making the world seem just a little out of focus, like a movie played on late night TV.

Fang smiled. “I needed to keep a low profile. Not so much an issue, now that I’ve been extracted.” He turned and walked toward the door to the outside, clearly expecting that we would follow. Nathan still had my arm, and Nathan did follow, leaving me with no choice but to do the same.

Normally I would have objected to being pulled toward a destination I had little to no say in, but normally I wasn’t under the influence of a really impressive assortment of pharmaceuticals. “Your mom is good at drugging people,” I said dreamily. My lips felt numb. That was sort of funny. They weren’t my lips—I’d stolen them from Sally Mitchell—so why could I feel them? I giggled. That was even funnier; it required the use of so many purloined body parts that I couldn’t even name them all.

I was still laughing when we walked out of the bowling alley and into the parking lot. An ambulance was parked right outside the doors, and a short, solid-looking woman with broad shoulders and buzz-cut brown hair shot through with ribbons of gray was waiting for us, one hand resting on a gurney.

“About time you guys got out here,” she said, casting a nervous look back at the ambulance. Its doors were standing open, revealing the clean white interior. “We have about an hour before someone notices that the GPS chip on this baby’s been jiggered, so let’s get a move on, okay?”

“You must be Daisy,” I said, swallowing the last of my giggles. “I’m Sal.”

“Nice to meet you, Sal,” she said genially. “I need you to lie down on this gurney. Do you think you can do that, or do we need to pick you up?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Honesty seemed like the best policy, at least when it kept me from falling on my face. “I’m a little woozy right now.”

“That’s to be expected.” She looked to my left. “Fang?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He moved faster than I expected, somehow scooping me off my feet without tangling my IV cords, and deposited me on my back on the gurney before I could do more than squeak. I blinked bemusedly up at the starry suburban sky, feeling like I’d just been part of an involuntary magic trick.

“All right, Sal, I’m going to strap you down now,” said Daisy, all efficiency. “I know you probably won’t like that, but it’s necessary if we’re going to keep you from getting knocked around during the ride. Also, if your balance is anything to go by, those sedatives are going to knock you out any minute now, and you’ll be a lot more comfortable this way.”

“I don’t mind being tied down.” My eyelids fluttered shut, seemingly of their own accord, and no amount of coaxing would get them to open again. Maybe they were tired. The rest of me was. “Tight is good. Nathan, you should tie me down sometime. I think I’d like that.”

“We’ll talk about it later, honey.” He sounded oddly strained, like he didn’t want to talk about it at all. Oh, well. I could ask him about that after I’d had my nap.

Daisy started strapping me down with quick efficiency. I lay perfectly still, figuring that was the best thing I could do to help—and besides, moving just seemed like so much work . I dimly realized that I was drifting off to sleep, but staying awake would have been even more work than moving. I was already gone by the time they started loading my gurney into the back of the ambulance; the shaking and thumping that would inevitably accompany that kind of transfer was entirely absent, not even making a dent in my slow fade into unconsciousness.

It was sort of nice to go down like this, falling slowly instead of flipped off like a switch. I settled deeper into my own body, letting the hot warm dark wash over me, and listened to the quiet sound of drums.