Mira Grant - Parasite

Tansy left after we finished making plans, pausing only to press the promised thumb drive into my hand. Nathan didn’t say anything as he walked her to the door. Then he walked back to me, took me by the hands, and led me to the bedroom, to the bed that was ours for the very first time, not just his. This was my home, too.

I just had to hope it would be my home for more than a day before I went and got myself killed.

“Sal…” he began. I stopped his mouth with a kiss, and conversation became unimportant for a while, replaced by the twin goals of removing our clothing as fast as possible and keeping our lips on each other at all times. The drums were back in my ears, but softer now, a signal of excitement and not anger or fear. This was where I belonged. This place, this skin, tonight. Everything else was in the future, and the future would have to wait for a few hours. I was doing this because I enjoyed being alive; because I wanted to stay that way. So it was time for me to celebrate my condition, even if it was only for the moment.

When we were done, both of us sweaty and satiated in the way that only accompanies really good sex after emotional turmoil, Beverly stuck her nose into the room and whined, signaling the need to go out. I groaned, starting to push myself up onto my elbows.

“Don’t worry about it.” Nathan pressed a kiss into the crook of my neck, close enough to the bruise from USAMRIID’s sedatives that it made my skin ache with phantom pain. “You’ve had a long day. I’ll take the dogs out.”

He was out of the bed before I could do more than mumble sleepy protests. I watched as he pulled on his pants and grabbed the leashes from the top of the dresser, whistling for Beverly and Minnie to come to him. Then he and the dogs were gone, and I drifted off to sleep by the warm light coming from the terrarium of carnivorous plants.

I didn’t wake up when they came back in. I didn’t wake up until morning.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” said Nathan. We were parked on the street near the SymboGen complex, which loomed larger than ever now that I was thinking of myself as a spy and not as a semi-willing visitor. “We can find another way.”

“How many people will die while we’re looking for another way?” I asked.

He looked away.

“Tansy says there’s a back door. I don’t like trusting her, but we have to trust someone, and I’m okay with it being your mother. Trusting your mother means trusting Tansy. It’s a tautology.”

“You mean it’s a syllogism,” said Nathan, smiling a little.

I blinked at him. “I do?”

“A tautology is a closed loop. ‘The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.’ A syllogism is a set of presuppositions. ‘Tansy is not trustworthy, I trust Dr. Cale, Dr. Cale trusts Tansy, therefore, I trust Tansy.’”

I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “What would I do without you?”

“Speak a version of English that no one had ever heard before, probably.” Nathan smiled briefly before sobering. “Sal…”

“Someone has to, Nathan. My sister is sick. My sister .” No one from my family had gotten in contact with me over the night. I was trying to make myself see that as a good thing. “Everyone who’s getting attacked by the implants is someone’s sister, or brother, or parent. If there’s something we can do, we have to do it. Anything else would be… it would be inhuman.”

Nathan sighed. “I love you,” he said. “Please try not to get hurt.”

“I’ll be fine,” I lied. “I’ll contact Tansy as soon as I’ve got the information your mother needs, and they’ll extract me.” After that… we were less clear on what would happen after that. We knew SymboGen couldn’t arrest me if they couldn’t prove something had been done, but they could potentially make my life difficult.

Or they could just decide that they were never going to let me leave.

“Okay,” said Nathan.

There was nothing left for us to say after that, and the longer I lingered, the harder it was going to be for me to get out of the car. I leaned over and kissed him again, this time on the lips, lingering just long enough to be sure he understood how much I loved him. Then I grabbed my backpack from the footwell, slipped it on, and got out of the car, beginning to walk slowly toward SymboGen.

It was time to go inside.

There were guards at the edge of the parking lot, watching the cars as they came and went. They greeted me with nothing more than a quick glance and a curt nod, apparently unable to see me as any kind of a threat. I was an empty-handed woman, one that they’d seen before, and ID wasn’t required until I got to the actual building. I ducked my head and hurried on, glad of my relative anonymity. I didn’t want to deal with answering questions until I had to.

The brave front I’d been putting on for Nathan aside, I was terrified. My stomach was a roiling knot of pain, and the sound of drums was low and constant in my ears, like something out of an old King Kong movie. They pounded in time with my footsteps, accompanying me all the way to the sliding glass doors into the lobby.

As always, a rush of chilled air and bland, overprocessed music rushed out to greet me when the doors swept open. The twin feelings of coming home and wanting to run away again swept over me at the same time. I’d barely taken two steps into the lobby when a pair of security guards appeared as if by magic, moving toward me with a tight economy of purpose that was all it took for them to be terrifying. I stopped where I was, trying to ignore the panic building in my gut as I raised my chin and waited for them to come to me. I had every right to be here. I was a patient of SymboGen’s. I was Dr. Banks’s pet project.

“Can we help you?” asked the first guard, once they were close enough that they wouldn’t need to do anything uncouth, like shouting.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead, but I didn’t know where else to go,” I said, trying to make my eyes believably wide and glossy. To my surprise, tears actually started to form as I continued, “I can’t go home. I just can’t. Can—can you tell Dr. Banks that Sally Mitchell is here to see him?” Now that the tears had started, they simply refused to stop. The past few days had been even more traumatic than I realized.

The guards exchanged a glance, looking as disturbed by my tears as I was. “Do you have ID?” asked the second.

Nodding, I dug my ID card out of the front pocket of my backpack and held it out to them. My hand was shaking. I didn’t try to stop it. It would only help with the image I was trying to project… and I didn’t want to know how I would react if it turned out I was unable to make the shaking stop.

The guard took my card, turning it over in his fingers like he wanted to be certain that it was legitimate. It must have passed whatever unknown test he was putting it through, because he looked to his partner and said, “Wait here with her,” before turning and walking toward the reception counter.

The remaining security guard offered me an earnest smile and said, “It’s all right, Miss Mitchell. We’re just going to call up to Dr. Banks and see if he’s free to see you.” I looked at him blankly, and he continued, “We’ve met before. You probably don’t remember me, but I was in the cafeteria the last time you came to visit us. So I know this is just a formality.”