Scott Sigler - Infected

Amos thought for a moment. “That makes sense. It’s hard to tell with all the rot, but it looks like the growth causes a lot of damage to the surrounding tissue. Whoever engineered the growth doesn’t want the host to feel that damage. The level of complexity is astronomical.”

“Amos, you don’t have to root for the little buggers,” Margaret said, a dressing-down tone in her voice. “We’re here to stop these things, remember?”

He smiled. “It’s hard not to be astounded. Come here and take a look at what I’ve got under the ultraviolet microscope.”

Margaret shuffled to the device, where Amos had been working for the last thirty minutes. Her Racal suit zip-zipped with each step as if she wore children’s footed pajamas.

She peered into the microscope. The sample looked like a normal nerve cell. Amos had done a perfect job of isolating and preparing the tissue: fingerlike dendrites, stained and glowing electric-blue under the ultraviolet light, reached out and over the thicker axons. It was the same connection that provides signal communication for every animal on the planet.

“It’s an isolated cluster of nerve cells,” she said. “Where is this from?”

“I found it near the eighth cranial nerve. The rot is working its way through there, but I was able to find a few relatively clean areas.”

Inside the awkward biosuit, Margaret frowned. The eighth cranial nerve, or the vestibulocochlear nerve, was where signals from the ear entered the brain.

“It’s heavily damaged, shows signs of decomposition, but still obviously nerve tissue,” Margaret said.

Amos remained quiet. Margaret looked up from the microscope.

Amos leaned forward. “You’re sure?”

Margaret wasn’t in the mood for games, but she took another look anyway. She could see nothing unusual.

“Amos, if you’ve got a point to make, please make it.”

“The cells don’t belong to Martin Brewbaker.”

Margaret stared blankly, not understanding the statement. “Not Brewbaker’s? Why are you looking at other samples? If they’re not Brewbaker’s nerve cells, then whose…” Her voice trailed off as the significance hit home.

“Amos, are you telling me these belong to the growth?”

“I performed protein sequencing on the black thorn and the vein siphon. The results turned up some unknown proteins, definitely not human. So I took some samples from around the body and ran the same sequence. I found high concentrations in the brain-that’s how I discovered the cluster on the cranial nerve. I found the protein in other places, but no more nerves, only remnants of that peculiar rot. There were high concentrations in the cerebral cortex, thalamus, amygdala, caudate nucleus, hypothalamus and septum.”

Margaret felt overwhelmed. Much of the brain’s higher functions remained a mystery, even in this day of rapidly ascending scientific knowledge. The sections of Brewbaker’s brain infected with the rot composed part of the limbic system, which was thought to control memory storage and emotional response, among other functions.

What the hell was the growth doing in Brewbaker’s brain? It already had him controlled with the neurotransmitter overdose, didn’t it?

Amos continued. “What you’re looking at here is the only sample I’ve found that wasn’t completely decomposed. I’ve never seen proteins like this, so I assume they’re synthetic, man-made. If they’re natural, they’re nothing I’ve encountered. I’ve searched all the academic and biotech databases and found nothing similar. That means if the proteins are synthetic, someone is keeping their research well guarded, which doesn’t surprise me considering the vastly advanced technology we’re dealing with.”

She was awed. It was unthinkable that the organism’s creator had engineered a new parasite that could grow from a very small embryo, possibly even a single cell, and latch on to a human host. It was even more unthinkable that this creature produced neurotransmitters like some kind of factory, dumping them into the bloodstream. But it was numbing-yes, numbing -to comprehend the genius that had bioengineered artificial nerves so accurately that they could interact with human nerves.

“I follow the vein siphon, that makes sense,” she said. “But the siphon is just a physical attachment to draw nutrients. What good does it do the parasite to grow mimic nerves?”

“You’ve got me. But one must draw the logical conclusion that the growths tapped in to the nervous system, just as they tapped in to the circulatory system.”

“But why?” She spoke more to herself than to Amos. “The neurotransmitter overdose produces somewhat predictable, reproducible results. If the goal is to make people crazy, then why would they go through the trouble of tapping in to the nervous system? And what’s the purpose for doing so?”

Amos shrugged. He rolled his shoulders and twisted at the waist, trying to loosen up. He walked around the table, doing mini laps, trying to shake off the fatigue.

Margaret shuffled to her station, her mind spinning with possibilities and a new level of fearful respect for the mystery organism.

It had seemed so obvious-unbelievable and awe-inspiring, but still obvious-that this was an organism bioengineered to make people violent and unpredictable. Now, however, she wasn’t so sure. There was something else to the mystery, something that a theory of high-tech terrorists didn’t explain.

“Hey, Margaret, bring me the camera.” She looked back-Amos stood next to Brewbaker’s hip. All parts of him were being consumed by the black rot, but some spots weren’t quite as advanced. The hip was one such spot. She grabbed the camera from the prep table and handed it to Amos.

He pointed to the hip, to the little lesion they’d seen earlier.

“Margaret, look at this.” He knelt down and took a picture.

“I see it. You already showed me.”

“Yes, but do you see anything different?”

Margaret sighed. “Amos, no more drama, please. If you’ve got something to say, say it.”

He said nothing. Instead he stood, fiddled with the camera, then stood shoulder to shoulder with her so they could both see the camera’s small screen. The screen showed a close-up of the lesion, a tiny blue fiber sticking out of it.

“So?” Margaret said. “We’ve got shit to do before his body is goo, Amos.”

“That’s the picture we took when we first saw it,” he said, then hit the advance button on the camera. The picture changed. “And that is the picture I took just now.”

Margaret stared. The two pictures looked exactly the same, except for one thing-the second picture showed not one fiber, but three, a small red one, a small blue one, and the original blue one, which was three times as long as it had been before.

Even though Martin Brewbaker was dead, the fibers were still growing.

By noon the damnable things started itching again, and Perry had to wonder if he should see a doctor. But it was just a little rash, for crying out loud. What kind of a wuss goes to see a doctor for a little rash? If you don’t have self-discipline, what do you have?

He’d always been a very healthy person. He hadn’t vomited from a non-alcohol-related incident since the sixth grade. While others succumbed to the flu, Perry would suffer only a runny nose and a slightly queasy stomach. While others called in sick at the drop of a hat, Perry hadn’t missed a day of work in three years. He’d inherited his resilience, as he had his size, from his father.

Perry had been twenty-five when Captain Cancer finally claimed Jacob Dawsey, the toughest sonofabitch this side of Brian Urlacher. Prior to that last trip to the hospital, from which Jacob Dawsey never returned, he had missed only one day of work in his entire life. That day came when Perry broke his father’s jaw.