Mira Grant - Parasite

“Miss Mitchell—”

“I’d like you to leave now, please. I need to put some clothes on.” Beverly, picking up on my tension, stood. I straightened, keeping my hand resting atop her head. “Please,” I repeated.

The man sighed. “All right. But please, if there is any further trouble, don’t hesitate to call. Dr. Banks worries for your safety.”

“I won’t. Hesitate, I mean. I’ll call,” I said. I stayed where I was, trying to take some comfort from the weight of Beverly pressed against my leg, and watched as the man from SymboGen waved the others off the porch. He walked after them. Once he was outside, I stepped forward and closed the door.

I let my hand rest on the doorknob, closing my eyes, and just breathed. No scary dead-eyed people in the yard. No SymboGen security on the lawn. It was just me and my dog, my good, good dog, who deserved an entire steak for the way she’d come to my defense. I would put on some clothes, call Nathan, and—

The doorbell rang. I recoiled from the door, not opening my eyes until I was well clear of the wood. It wasn’t intentional; I just reacted. Beverly barked once, but it was an inquisitive sound, not a panicked one. Whatever was on the porch, it didn’t upset her.

I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to slow the hammering of my heart, and called, “Hello?”

There was no response. The doorbell didn’t ring again. I cautiously approached the door, finally standing on tiptoe to peer through the peephole. There was no one there. Feeling like this was the second stupid thing I’d done in the short time that I’d been out of bed, I dropped back to the flats of my feet and opened the front door. The peephole hadn’t lied; there was no one there.

There was, however, a plain white envelope tucked halfway under the edge of the welcome mat, where the wind couldn’t take it away. I held my bathrobe closed with one hand as I bent to pull the envelope free, and then backed up, nudging Beverly out of the way. Once the door was closed and locked, I turned the envelope over in my hands, looking for some sign to identify who’d left it. There was nothing.

“Beverly, if this explodes, I want you to drag my body to safety,” I said. She looked up at me and wagged her tail. “Good dog,” I said. Beverly sat down.

I opened the envelope.

Inside was an index card printed in an oddly uneven font that smudged when my thumb touched it. The letters were faintly indented, and I realized it had been composed on a typewriter—something I’d only seen in the hospital records department, where some very specific types of paperwork had to be written on carbon paper. It was just one line of text:

The broken doors are open; come and enter and be home.

Underneath was a street address in the city of Clayton, about an hour’s drive from San Francisco. I looked at it without saying a word for several minutes, until the text began to twist and slip away from me. That was my cue. I tucked the paper into the pocket of my bathrobe, pulling my phone out as I turned to walk toward my bedroom.

“Dial Nathan,” I said.

It was time to follow the map, whether or not it was going to get us lost.

I had to sacrifice a lot to get to where I ended up. As with so many other things in my life, while I may have regrets, I am not sorry. I made my choices. I knew what they had the potential to cost me. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d made other decisions, if I’d looked at certain possibilities and said “this is not worth the price.” I’m only human, after all. I’m allowed to have doubts every once in a while.

I will say this, without reservations: the choices I made meant that when the time came for Steven Banks to throw someone under the bus, there was no one else getting dragged along with me. I’m the one whose name went to the FDA when they questioned our research protocols. I’m the one who gets blamed for every irregularity in the research process. But because I made the choices I did, I had no weak spots for them to exploit. I was armor-clad. I got away.

I have regrets. I would have to be a monster not to. But I am not sorry.

I wondered when you were going to reach the falling-out questions. It always seems to wind up here, like this is the true north of every interview’s course. All right, here it is:

Shanti Cale and I parted ways over ethical differences. She was responsible for certain early development phases of the Intestinal Bodyguard™, and she made the decision to cut certain corners that could have resulted in some very bad things happening. Luckily, we were able to catch and solve those issues before they ever made it out of the lab. That was still the beginning of the end for me and Shanti, as a partnership, and as friends. I couldn’t trust her after that. I really view that as the greatest tragedy of my success. Richard’s resignation was heartbreaking, but he’d been having emotional problems for years. We all saw the writing on that wall. Shanti…

I loved her very much, as a friend and as a colleague. I never really believed she’d betray me. I still can’t understand how I could have been so wrong.

I was dressed and ready to go when Nathan pulled up in front of the house. Beverly’s dish was full, and there was a note on the refrigerator to keep my parents from getting worried if they got home before I did. I didn’t say anything about Mr. Carson and the others, or about the visit from SymboGen security. I felt funny about that, but if I started going into details, I’d wind up writing everything down, and there wasn’t time. I could explain when we were all together again.

Nathan honked the horn. When I’d called to ask him if we could go, I’d told him not to bother getting out of the car. The sound still made me jump a little, my stomach squeezing like a fist. Were we making the right decision? Should we really be running around with people who used quotes from obscure children’s books in casual conversation, and played cloak-and-dagger games for no good reason?

Did we have a choice?

Nathan honked again. No, we didn’t have a choice. Devi was dead. If we wanted answers, we’d have to take them wherever we could find them.

I locked the door behind me as I left the house, slinging my messenger bag over my shoulder one-handed. I was dressed for a clandestine meeting, in jeans, a dark blue hoodie, and running shoes—in case we found a reason to run—with my hair pulled into a ponytail.

Nathan looked over as I practically threw myself into the passenger seat. He blinked. “Sal? Are you okay?”

“Not really,” I said. “I’ll explain on the drive.”

“Okay.” Nathan reached for the GPS. “What’s the address?”

I read it off for the system. “There’s also another quote that sounds like it’s from that book you were talking about.”

“ Don’t Go Out Alone ?”

“Yeah, that one.” I held up the card, and recited more than read, “ ‘The broken doors are open. Come and enter and be home.’”

Nathan started the car. He didn’t say a word as he pulled out of the driveway. I slowly lowered the card, blinking at him. He wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at the windshield, where the glowing red printout from the GPS displayed at eye level.

I frowned, not sure what I was supposed to say, or what—if anything—I’d done to upset him. I wasn’t the one who wrote the note. I wasn’t the one quoting the book.