Mira Grant - Symbiont

“How did you know?” My voice came out in a whisper. I didn’t move.

“You vanished from the monitors. There aren’t many places in the store that aren’t on the monitors, so I checked them all. You didn’t put the grate back in the changing room. Sloppy, Sal. Very sloppy.” Ronnie didn’t look at me. “You can come down from there. Hanging out in the air-conditioning isn’t going to change what happens next.”

“What is going to happen next?” I couldn’t figure out how to turn and put my feet out first, so I just pushed forward and toppled to the roof in an ungainly heap. My cheek landed on the fallen grate, and I felt it slice through my skin, adding the smell of blood to the eucalyptus and pigeon feather odors otherwise pervading the roof.

It should have smelled terrible. It smelled like freedom. Something tightened in my chest, and as I climbed to my feet, I decided that no matter what happened next, it wasn’t going to end with me going back into that mall. Either Ronnie would shoot me, or I’d get the gun away from him somehow… or I’d go over the edge of the roof. Whatever it took to keep myself out of Sherman’s hands.

I felt bad about the idea of dying before I got to see Nathan again. If he ever found out what had happened to me—what Sherman was planning to use me to do —he would understand why I couldn’t just go along with things. He would forgive me.

“Something,” said Ronnie, still sounding disinterested. “I don’t get you, Sal. Here you’ve got a guy like Sherman falling over himself to make you a queen, and all you can do is fight and try to escape. Lots of girls would die to be in your shoes.”

“And when he kills me by mistake during one of his little experiments? What happens then?” I glared at him, starting to pick bits of gravel out of my palms. “I didn’t volunteer to be a lab animal. Sherman of all people should know how much I hate having other people make my decisions for me, but he still thinks he has the right, just because he’s older than I am. Fuck him. I have my own life.”

“A life you stole.”

Ronnie’s words were mild, but they still stung. I snapped back, “Like he didn’t? We’re all thieves here. The only difference is that I decided to stop stealing once I had what I needed. He’s going to keep going until he has everything he wants, and that’s really different. That’s not okay.”

Ronnie finally turned enough to let me see the small smile on his face. “You’re a wimp,” he said, not unkindly. He made it sound like a statement of essential fact: we were on a roof, he was probably about to kill me or something, and I was a wimp. “You don’t act soon enough, and you don’t take risks when you really should. If I were you, I would have been out that vent weeks ago, and screw anyone who tried to stop me from escaping. You pretty much asked to be swept off the street and locked in a cage by somebody . Hell, if you want proof of that, look at where you are—trying to escape from a cage that you were put in by the man who took you out of the last one.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a wimp,” I said, picking the last of the gravel out of my left hand. The cut on my cheek was still bleeding sluggishly, but it didn’t feel like it was serious enough to worry about. I’d probably need a few stitches, assuming I lived long enough to get them. “The world can’t be made up entirely of leaders. Someone has to be willing to follow.”

“That sounds like something a wimp would say.”

I shrugged. The edge of the roof was about ten feet away. I couldn’t see the street from where I was standing, but the angle on the trees across from me made me think that we were standing on the third floor. That would mean a thirty-foot drop to the street, and I wasn’t going to survive that.

“Hey.” Ronnie snapped his fingers. I turned to face him. He looked at me flatly and asked, “What happens if you get away from here? Where are you going to go?”

“Back to my people,” I said.

“You gonna tell them where to find us? You gonna lead them straight back here?” He asked the questions like they were of no consequence, like he was asking whether I’d like cheese sandwiches with lunch tomorrow, and not asking about the potential fates of everyone he knew.

I thought about Dr. Cale’s lab, and her small army of assistants and unpaid interns, most of whom probably didn’t know how to organize a siege. With Tansy gone, the security was reduced by at least half. Fang could probably take Ronnie in a fair fight. I didn’t believe Ronnie was a fan of fair fights. And yet lying to Ronnie didn’t seem like a good way to get off this roof alive—assuming there was any good way.

“Probably,” I said. “I’d at least tell Dr. Cale where to find you. She’s going to want to know. I think she feels responsible for Sherman. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to wipe out the human race. So probably.”

“That’s what I thought.” He pulled his hand out from behind his back, aiming the gun at me. “You’re a wimp, but you managed to outsmart me once. I didn’t even think to check the vents. That won’t happen again.”

I started to raise my hands in protest, but I was too slow. Ronnie pulled the trigger, and a small fletched dart appeared on the right side of my chest, followed almost instantly by the feeling of being stabbed. I grabbed it and yanked it loose, for all that it wasn’t going to do me a lick of good: I had enough experience with tranquilizers to know that the dart’s contents had already done their work.

“Please don’t take me back,” I whispered.

“I’m not going to.”

“Why…?”

“Because you’re the only person here who used the pronouns I asked them to use,” said Ronnie. He put the pistol away. “That buys you one ‘get out of jail free’ card from me. If you need another one, you’re going to be on your own.”

I took a step toward the edge of the roof, feeling a strange languor starting to seep through my limbs. Most tranquilizers don’t work instantly, but they don’t have to, because they’ll stop you before you have the chance to get away. Every step seemed to take twice as long as the one before, until finally my knees buckled and I pitched forward, my cheek hitting the roof for the second time. There was no pain. Unconsciousness closed over me like a Venus flytrap closing on its prey, and there was nothing left to hurt.

The sun was fully down when I woke up. I was lying on a couch in a living room I didn’t recognize. All the lights were out, and the air smelled stale, like the occupants hadn’t been around to move it in quite some time. I jerked upright and winced as the incision in my head reminded me that I had recently had surgery.

In a weird way, the persistence of pain was a relief. I didn’t know how much time had passed since Ronnie shot me with the tranquilizer dart—hours? Days? But the incision still felt raw enough that it probably hadn’t been that long. It could even have been the same night. I stayed where I was for a few minutes, listening for any signs that I wasn’t alone in the house and waiting for my head to stop its spinning. Once I felt like I could stand without vomiting on the floor, I did, and promptly collapsed back onto the couch as my abused legs refused to hold my weight.

The first giggle escaped before I knew it was coming. I clapped my hands over my mouth, trying to keep any additional giggles from breaking free, but I might as well have been trying to dam a river with Popsicle sticks. The giggles came in a wave before giving way to full-out laughter, leaving me doubled over and clutching my stomach in an effort to keep from hurting myself. I was a captive, and then I wasn’t! I was someone else’s captive, and then I got away! Only now I was alone in an abandoned house where the air smelled like dust and mold, and my legs hurt so much from my escape that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do anything useful with them ever again. My choices were laughter or tears, and laughter at least felt a little bit better.