Parasite

  —FROM SELLING THE UNSELLABLE: AMERICAN ADVERTISING THROUGH THE YEARS, BY MORGAN DEMPSEY, PUBLISHED 2026.

  Chapter 17

  SEPTEMBER 2027

  The scrambler in Don’t Go Out Alone might have been good enough to block SymboGen’s bugs, but neither Nathan nor I wanted to test it against whatever listening devices USAMRIID had installed on their own property. We stayed silent until we were off Treasure Island and back inside the comforting Faraday cage of the Bay Bridge, whose metal infrastructure would prevent any signals from getting through, whether we wanted them to or not. Even if USAMRIID had planted bugs on my clothes or bag, we should be okay there.

  Once we were safely surrounded by the steel frame of the bridge, Nathan glanced my way, lips thin with tension, and asked, “Are you all right? I mean, really all right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “No. Maybe. I don’t know anymore.” I pulled Don’t Go Out Alone out of my bag and looked down at it, running my fingers over the letters of the title as I explained what had happened, starting when he dropped me off at my house. Nathan didn’t say anything as I spoke, and I didn’t look up, both of us preferring to let this seem less like a real thing that had really happened and more like a story out of a book.

  Only this story didn’t have a happy ending, at least not so far, and I wasn’t willing to bet there was one waiting up ahead of us.

  I had just reached the point where I woke up in the dark when Nathan finally spoke up, asking, “Do you know what they injected you with?”

  “No,” I said. “Some type of sedative. I passed out almost as soon as I felt the needle.”

  Nathan punched the steering wheel. I jerked my head up and stared at him, eyes wide and heart hammering in my chest. The car hadn’t so much as swerved, but that didn’t matter.

  For his part, Nathan looked instantly apologetic, although not apologetic enough to wipe away the fury in his eyes. He raised his hand like he was going to punch the steering wheel again, but restrained himself. Instead, he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, anchoring them more firmly against his face, and said, “This isn’t how I should ask you—I was planning something a little more romantic, or at least a little less awkward—but I want you to challenge your parents’ custodianship and move in with me. Please. I have a list of reasons you should consider it, and I know you don’t make much at the shelter, so I’m not asking you to help with the rent. I can afford the rent on my own. What I can’t afford is the lack of sleep that comes when I can’t reach you on the phone, or the urge to go back to USAMRIID and get myself arrested for assaulting a member of the United States military.”

  “Nathan—”

  “I’m not just asking because of this, although it’s definitely causing me to skip the original ‘dinner, a movie, and a casual question’ plan. But Sal, they sedated you with something they didn’t even bother to identify, much less ask you about. Who knows what they used?”

  His tone—angry and terrified at the same time—made my shoulders tense. I bit my lip before asking, “Well, if they used it, doesn’t that mean it’s safe?”

  “No sedative that knocks you out that quickly is strictly ‘safe.’ The best scenario I can come up with has them hitting you with midazolam along with whatever it is they used to knock you out. That way, your perception of how long it took you to go under would be skewed, and I wouldn’t be trying to figure out what they could have used to knock you out instantly.”

  “Oh,” I said, in a small voice. “I don’t think my father would hurt me.”

  “He wasn’t the one holding the syringe, was he?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But he was the one who called for it.”

  Unless he’d been too distracted by everything else that was happening, and by the fact that both his daughters were in a room full of homicidal sleepwalkers, to requisition a sedative. They might just have used whatever they had on hand. In a room full of people whose actions were unpredictable at best, you’d want to have chemicals to put them under as fast as possible. I rubbed the side of my neck, doing my best not to wince as my fingers skated over the bruise forming there.

  “I’d like to do some blood work on you tonight,” said Nathan. “Just to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Yeah,” I said faintly. “Yeah, we should do that.”

  “Good.” He leaned over to squeeze my knee with one hand. “What all do we need to get from your house?”

  “Some clothes. My computer. Beverly. We can go back for everything else later. When things aren’t so chaotic.”

  Nathan paused. “Do you mean…?”

  “I mean I’d be happy to move in with you, as long as your building doesn’t mind you suddenly having another dog. Beverly’s pretty well behaved, and I can take her to work when I have to go in. Maybe I can even get her certified as a service dog.”

  Nathan smiled. “What’s her service?”

  “Sniffing out people who are about to get sick, I guess. Or growling at people who upset me. That seems like a pretty full-time job these days.” I looked back down at the book. “I’m sorry I don’t seem more excited. I’ve wanted this for a while. I just… right now doesn’t seem like the time to get excited about much of anything, you know?”

  “Sadly, yes,” said Nathan. “I do.”

  I was trying to think of what to say next when his phone rang. Nathan swore.

  “Here,” he said, digging it out of his pocket and passing it to me. “Bluetooth tethering doesn’t work on the bridge. Can you just find out whether they need me at the hospital?”

  “Sure.” I’d been Nathan’s answering service before, and it was nice to have something to do, no matter how mundane. I didn’t bother checking the display—the call would go to voice mail before I could figure out what it said. I just tapped the phone to answer and raised the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “You both get out okay? ’Cause if you didn’t, Doctor C says I can maybe field-test my new rocket launcher, and that would be boss. So I’m totally down with you saying you’re hiding in a storm drain right now, waiting for a coincidentally convenient rescue.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

  “What?” she asked. She sounded more bewildered than annoyed. “Do they not have storm drains in San Francisco?”

  “Hi, Tansy,” I replied. “I’m fine. Nathan’s fine. My sister will hopefully be fine, if the treatment Nathan and Dr. Cale suggested works.” I was assuming Nathan had called his mother during the pause between phone calls. It was the only reason I could think of for Tansy to be calling him—or for her to know she should call and check in.

  “Of course the treatment will work.” Now Tansy sounded affronted. “Doctor C developed it, and that means it works. Just, you know. It’s pretty dangerous and it wouldn’t work on anybody who’s too far gone. Once the meat car goes sans driver for a little bit, there’s no pill in the world that’s going to bring them back.”

  My stomach turned as my own “meat car” reacted to the implications of her words. “Well, let’s hope Joyce is still firmly in the driver’s seat,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Nathan and I are going to my place to pick up some of my things, and then I’m going to stay with him for… well, for a while.” Forever, if the way I felt meant anything.

  “Ooo, a sleepover? Can I come?”

  That was a horrifying image. I couldn’t decide whether she’d keep us up all night watching bad movies and trying to braid my hair, or bring in something for us to vivisect as a party game. “It’s not that kind of a sleepover.”

  Tansy sighed. “Oh, whatever. If you want to be like that, you just be like that. Doctor C wants to know if you think you can get out here again in the next day or two. She says there’s some developments and stuff, and she doesn’t want to talk about them on the phone.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “SymboGen bugged my house, and now my father thinks I’m withholding information from the military. It’ll be hard for me to go anywhere without be
ing watched. Nathan might be able to manage it—”

  “No, I can’t,” said Nathan. “If they’re watching you, they’re going to be watching me, too. It’s not safe for either of us to try sneaking away.”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Tansy.

  “I did,” she said. “We’ll think of something else. For right now, you two sit tight and try not to get yourselves killed before I can get there to join the party.”

  “Tansy—” I began, but it was too late; she was already gone. I lowered the phone. “She hung up on me.”

  “Somehow, I’m not surprised.” We were leaving the comforting metal cage of the bridge, sliding back out into the open as the highway continued into the city. “Did she say what Mom wanted?”

  “Just that she wants to talk about some things she can’t discuss over the phone. She said they’ll think of something else if we can’t come to them. I don’t find that very reassuring.”

  “It’s Tansy,” he said. “You’re not supposed to.”

  I laughed again, and leaned over to rest my head against his shoulder as he drove us onward, toward the house that was no longer going to be my home.

  Mom’s car was in the driveway when we pulled up. I grimaced. I’d been hoping to get in and get out without any more family confrontations today. Nathan followed my gaze and grimaced in turn before asking, “Do you want me to come in with you, or would it be easier if I waited out here?”

  What I wanted was to just drive away without facing my mother. I shook my head. “You should come in. I don’t think I can carry a suitcase and manage Beverly at the same time, and I don’t want to go in there twice. Once I’m done, I want to be done.”

  “Right now, I don’t want to let you out of my sight.” Nathan turned off the engine. We got out and walked up the driveway toward the house.

  Mom opened the front door before we got there. Her face was drawn and pale as she looked out at us. I stepped onto the porch. She didn’t say a word. She just stepped forward, wrapped her arms around me, and squeezed so hard I was briefly sure I felt my ribs bend. It was like she was afraid that if she let go, I’d float away and never be seen again.

  “Um,” I said awkwardly. “Hi, Mom. Can you… this sort of hurts.” I patted her on the back with one hand, straining to move even that much. “Can we come in?”

  It felt weird to be asking for permission to enter my own house, even if I was planning on moving out. Still, it was apparently the right thing to say; she sniffled as she let me go, stepping backward and out of the way. “Of course, sweetheart, of course. Hello, Nathan. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Mitchell,” he said, politely not commenting on the fact that she hadn’t seen him because he hadn’t been allowed in.

  Beverly squeezed past Mom as I stepped into the house. Her tail was wagging so hard her entire backside was shaking, making her look like she was on the verge of coming apart in the middle. I crouched down to let her lick my face in greeting, and stayed crouched as I asked, “Did Dad call?”

  “Yes.” Mom sniffled. It was a small sound, almost obscured by Beverly’s panting. I heard it all the same, and my heart broke, just a little. “I… I understand why you feel you need to go, Sal, but I wish you wouldn’t. Not while your sister is still in isolation. The house is too big for me to be in it by myself.” She didn’t need to say that Dad wouldn’t come home until they knew about Joyce, one way or the other. I knew him well enough to know that.

  “I’m sorry.” I rubbed Beverly’s ears before I stood. “I can’t. I know it hurts, but you let him lock me up, Mom. Maybe you even agreed with him. I need to know that I’m not with people who don’t even trust me enough to tell me what’s going on in my own life. I need to know that I’m not with people I can’t trust.”

  Mom stared at me, looking almost like I’d slapped her. Then she nodded, wiping at her eyes with the side of one hand as she said, “That’s fair. I wish you didn’t think that way—and I still understand how we made you think that way. This isn’t some silly teenage rebellion.”

  “I’m not a teenager, Mom,” I said, as gently as I could.

  “No, you’re not.” Her eyes hardened. “You’re six years old. I shouldn’t let you go. You’re too young for this.”

  “Legally, I’m an adult.”

  “Only because we never expected you to try something like this. We shouldn’t have stopped with the custodianship. We should have had you declared medically incompetent.”

  Now it was my turn to react like I’d been slapped. My eyes widened. “You don’t mean that. You’ve always encouraged me to rebuild my life. To figure out who I was going to be now—”

  “You’re not my daughter.” The words were calm, almost clinical. That made them even worse. “My daughter never woke up. She hit that bus, and she died, and you moved into her body. You’re a stranger. My Sally was a wild girl, and she was careless sometimes, but she would never do anything like this to me. She was a good girl.”

  “Mom,” I whispered.

  “Don’t you even care that your sister is sick? That she might die, and now I find out you did know more than you were telling us—you two, you’d gone off and put your heads together and figured out a way to test for this horrible virus, and you didn’t come home and tell us immediately. Maybe we could have found out sooner. Maybe she’d have a better chance. Did you even think of that?”

  “I… you… you wouldn’t talk to me,” I stammered, floored. Of all the reactions I’d expected, this immediate, weeping offensive wasn’t among them. “I couldn’t tell you anything, because none of you would talk to me. You acted like I’d done something wrong. How was I supposed to tell you, when you wouldn’t talk to me?”

  “Your sister could die!” she suddenly shouted.

  Something inside me snapped. The sound of drums rose in my ears, distant and reassuring, as I said, “You can’t have it both ways, Mom. You can’t say I’m not your daughter just because I don’t remember growing up in this house, and then tell me my sister could die. If I’m not your daughter, Joyce isn’t my sister, and why should I care about her being sick? But I do care, because she is my sister, and that means I am your daughter. You’re being hurtful and mean because you’re scared. And that’s why I’m leaving. I have enough to be afraid of that I don’t need my family adding to the list. I’ve told Dad everything we know that might help them keep Joyce from getting all the way sick. I’ve been a good sister to her, even if you’re not being a very good mother to me. Now I’m going to go and get my things from my room, and get Beverly’s leash, and then Nathan and I are going to go, and you’re not going to stop us. I’m done being here.”

  “Sally…” Her face fell like she’d just realized what she was saying. “Sally, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean to…”

  “Yes, you did. You wouldn’t have said those things if you didn’t mean to. But that’s okay, because you’re scared. At the shelter, they taught me that scared animals are the most likely to bite, and you shouldn’t blame them for it. They don’t know any better. You know what else they taught me?”

  Mom didn’t say anything. She just shook her head, eyes wide and brimming with unshed tears.

  “They taught me that once an animal starts biting, it’s time to take my hand away from them.” I squared my shoulders with as much dignity as I could muster, and turned to Nathan. “Will you get Beverly’s food and dishes, please?”

  Nathan gave a very small nod. He clearly understood what I was trying to do.

  If I hadn’t already loved him, I think that moment would have been when I fell for him. “Thank you,” I said, and walked down the hall to my room.

  My bedroom was half decorated in things I’d acquired for myself since waking up in the hospital and half decorated in old things of Sally’s that I’d never been able to bring myself to get rid of. Not because they held some deep emotional importance to me—they didn’t, no matter how much I sometimes wished that th
ey did—but because they were so important to my parents, and to Joyce. What was just an old brown hand puppet to me was Mousie to them, the stuffed animal that had been beloved to Sally until she was in middle school. Old papers I didn’t see the point of keeping were her few certificates for class participation or sportsmanship. I’d been renting space in her room, and with every piece of clothing I stuffed into my suitcase, I felt a little lighter.

  Sally was gone. I’d been living with her ghost for six years. Now I was finally leaving, and I was leaving the haunted house to her. I hated to hurt my—our—parents, but I wasn’t sorry to be getting away from the girl I was never going to be.

  I stripped, leaving the clothes I’d worn to USAMRIID scattered around the floor, along with whatever listening devices they’d contained. I even left my messenger bag, replacing it with an old backpack from the closet. I didn’t trust anything anymore.

  After that, it only took a few minutes to pack up everything that I wanted to take with me. Some clothing, a spare pair of shoes, a few extra notebooks, the terrarium with my plants, and my computer: that was everything that actually mattered to me. The rest of it was Sally’s, and she was welcome to keep it as far as I was concerned. I turned off the light and closed the bedroom door, looking at it for a moment before pushing my hand gently against the wood.

  “It’s all yours now, Sally,” I said.

  Sally didn’t answer me, and I turned away and walked back to the front room.