Symbiont

  Sherman released my arm a split second before his hand caught Ronnie across the face, sending her rocking back several feet. I gasped. She spoke like an adult, but she looked like a child, and seeing him hit a little girl was unnerving in ways I didn’t have the words to express. Ronnie recovered quickly, training her venomous stare on Sherman. She didn’t rub the spot where he’d hit her. She left her hands down by her sides.

  “Sal is more valuable than you are, and I will have no compunctions about transplanting you if you continue to cause me problems. Do you understand me?” Ronnie said nothing. Sherman raised his hand as if to strike her again. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” she spat. “I understand that you’ve gone native. Enjoy your disgusting mammalian rutting, but don’t expect me to clean up the mess when you break her.” She turned, stalking toward the far end of the loading dock.

  Sherman sighed, taking hold of my arm again. It occurred to me that this had been my chance to run. I dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. Freedom was impractical right now. I wanted it, but I didn’t know what kind of weapons Ronnie had, and she was clearly fast enough to have killed all these people—people who presumably had military training—before they could react. I already knew that Sherman was faster than me. All I could have accomplished by running was getting myself hurt.

  Better to wait. Better to watch. Better to run when I could actually get away, to act with purpose, and not out of panic. And maybe if I kept reminding myself of that, I’d remember how to breathe.

  “You’ll have to excuse Ronnie,” he said, guiding me between the bodies as he followed her across the room. “She’s on her fourth body, and she doesn’t appreciate the fact that we implanted her in someone so small, even though the elasticity of the child’s brain has proven to be the missing factor. Her first three hosts were adult males, and while she preferred those bodies, they rejected her. Now she takes her aggressions out on whatever happens to be around.”

  Ronnie herself was waiting next to an open door, showing an intoxicatingly dark slice of the night outside. She scowled at Sherman. “I’ve told you before, I’m not a girl.”

  “And I’ve told you that gender is a construct of the mind, but while we live among humans, we must blend in with the humans,” Sherman countered. “A white British man with a little black girl is strange enough without that girl insisting on being treated as a boy. It would attract too much attention. Once we’ve taken over, you can be whatever gender you prefer. We can even find you a host of your preferred gender, if you’re ready to develop again.”

  To my surprise, Ronnie blanched, shooting Sherman yet another glare before she slipped out the door.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Sherman smugly. “Come along, pet. We’re almost home free.”

  My head was spinning, and so I didn’t fight him. He led me out of USAMRIID, leaving the dead soldiers behind, and into a parking lot that I recognized. We were in Oakland. The building where I’d been held…

  “They were keeping us in the Coliseum?” I squeaked, unsure whether to laugh or be offended by the stupidity of it all. The Oakland Coliseum was an oversized monstrosity of a building, used primarily for sporting events, massive concert tours, and indoor festivals. The Cause for Paws animal shelter where I’d been working for the last few years used to exhibit at Social Justice Fest—where we’d try to pawn adult animals off on people who had more compassion than common sense, according to my boss—and the Hemp Fest, where blazingly stoned twenty-somethings would coo over puppies and kittens before deciding whether they wanted a pet or another hash brownie more. Weirdly, we always got more returns from the Social Justice Fest, while the happy stoners plastered our social media channels with pictures of their pampered cats and dogs. I always thought it was sort of awesome that it worked out that way. Human nature was too big and too diverse to be pinned to something as small as what kind of specialty events you liked to attend over the weekend.

  Good memories of the Coliseum aside, learning that I’d been kept there made me feel oddly dirty, like I had somehow become one of those orphaned puppies or kittens, and Sherman was the man who had decided to take me home. The thought of him keeping me as a pet made me shudder. Sherman twisted to look at me, frowning, and gave me another tug as he tried to keep me moving.

  “Where else would they have put that many people, that quickly? Learn to think, Sal. I know you have it in you, and while I’ve enjoyed your pampered innocence more than you can possibly dream, playtime is over. Now is when you grow up and join the war.”

  I finally yanked my arm out of his hand. Sherman didn’t grab for me. If anything, he looked pleased, like this was something he’d been waiting for. “I’m not joining your war. I’m going with you because I don’t have any other options if I want to stay alive and make it back to my family, and I don’t want to be blamed for all the—” My throat seemed to close on the word “bodies.” I swallowed, hard, and continued: “All the dead people. You made those. They shouldn’t become my fault.”

  Sherman moved.

  His legs were longer, and he was the one who’d shepherded me through dozens of visits to SymboGen, holding my hand and guiding me from lab to lab. He knew what my responses would be better than I did. So when he was suddenly in my face, I didn’t know how to react. I froze, eyes going wide, as his hands cupped my cheeks and his mouth clamped down over mine, forcing me into a kiss.

  His lips tasted like mint and honey. I could feel his pulse through his hands, and as he pulled me closer, it felt like the drums in my head synchronized with the beat of his heart, one slowing while the other sped up, until we were breathing in unison, him and me, me and him. I didn’t want to be kissing him. I didn’t want to pull away. This was wrong, it was wrong in every possible way, and that didn’t matter, because the drums were beating together, pulse matching pulse, forever.

  Sherman was the one who broke away from me. He pulled back, a smug smile on his face, and said, “I told you a long time ago that you ought to leave that human boy you’re so besotted with and be with me. We’re the same, Sal. We’re survivors, predators, and you’re wrong, because you’ve always been part of this war. This war is all about you.”

  There was nothing I could say to that. My mouth moved, and no sound came out as Sherman, still smiling, took my hand and led me into the waiting dark.

  Sherman and his team had arrived in a black van with the USAMRIID logo on the side. It was a magnet: as we approached, Ronnie yanked it off and slapped up a cupcake store logo in its place. She shot me a glare, all but daring me to say something. I didn’t say anything. It felt like something had shorted out inside of me, leaving me mute and defenseless. I didn’t like it.

  Ronnie’s glare softened into something like understanding before it was redirected on Sherman, hardening again. “You kissed her, didn’t you? God, you’re such an asshole, Sherman.” In that moment, she sounded almost like a preteen girl. She wrenched the van door open and tossed her magnetic sign inside before grabbing my hand and pulling me away from Sherman, who let me go without a fuss. He’d already gotten what he wanted. Ronnie peered at my eyes, apparently looking for something. Whatever it was, she found it, because she pulled away and shot one more glare at Sherman. “Asshole,” she repeated, before pushing me into the van.

  Behind me, Sherman chuckled. “She didn’t say ‘no,’ Ronnie. You do know how much I love surprises.”

  “Surprising people with neural shorts isn’t nice,” Ronnie snarled. She climbed into the van after me, slamming the door behind herself and leaving Sherman outside.

  I didn’t even have time to hope before Sherman was opening the front door and sliding into the passenger seat. He waggled his fingers at me, drawing my interest, and then pointed exaggeratedly at the massive man who was sitting behind the wheel. I couldn’t see the new man’s face, just his long brown hair and broad shoulders. The hands that gripped the wheel were each individually large enough to have covered my entire face.

  ?
??This is Kristoph,” said Sherman. “He doesn’t talk, but he’s an excellent driver, aren’t you, Kristoph?”

  As if in answer, the massive man turned on the engine. The van grumbled to life, and he carefully reversed out of the space where he’d been parked. I fumbled to get my seat belt on, feeling encouraged by the care he was obviously showing. Maybe he really was an excellent driver, and this was going to be okay.

  Kristoph’s foot slammed down as soon as my seat belt clicked into place. The van lurched forward. My stomach leapt into my throat, and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe—

  “Oh, damn,” Sherman swore. There was a thumping sound, and then his hands were grasping mine, clamping down and squeezing until the pain broke through the fugue state that had been threatening to overwhelm me. “Sal? Sal, can you hear me?”

  I didn’t respond. It didn’t seem important. We were in a car, we were rocketing through the night, and I couldn’t control it, and I couldn’t stop it, and I was going to die. I knew it. There was no way out this time.

  “It’s all right, Sal,” said Sherman, his voice pitched low and earnest. There was no trace of mockery or frustration in his tone: now that I really needed him, it was like things between us had never changed. “You don’t know Kristoph, but I promise you he’s a safe driver. We need to get away from here before someone sounds the alarm, and that means we can’t go slowly. But Kristoph will get us home safely. You’ll see. It’s safe.”

  I forced myself to nod, trying to focus on the pressure of Sherman’s hands and the comforting repetition of the word “safe.” Once, when I was back at SymboGen, he had tried to explain why it was so nice to hear the same thing over and over again when I was upset, something about psychological conditioning and forcing the world to conform to an implanted expectation. I honestly didn’t care why it worked. Just as long as it did.

  Sally Mitchell died in a car crash. I nearly did, too. The trauma of the impact damaged her body in ways that were nearly fatal for me, soft, unprotected thing that I was. Then, after I woke up, everyone was happy to tell me how traumatic it had been, how damaging and horrible and how it was responsible for all my lingering psychological problems, like the amnesia that everyone was convinced would eventually clear, leaving Sally Mitchell restored to her proper place once more. That didn’t happen, obviously, and I shouldn’t have been as terrified of car crashes as I was. The phobia was her christening gift to me, the one thing she could pass on to the stranger who had claimed her body. Her gift, and SymboGen’s—I spent my infancy and childhood, brief as they were, hearing about the terror of vehicular transit. Was it any wonder that the idea of being in another car crash was the worst thing I could possibly imagine?

  Eyes still closed, I focused on the steady beat of my heart until it seemed to swell and fill the entire world, becoming the distant, reassuring sound of drums. I breathed slowly in and out, counting to ten each time, until the hot warm dark blossomed behind my eyes, and I was safe, and nothing in the world could hurt me, or would ever hurt me again. I was safe, down in the dark, surrounded by the comforting sound of the drums.

  “What is she doing?” Ronnie’s voice was distant, confused, almost drowned out by the drums.

  “Meditating,” said Sherman, keeping his hands clamped over mine. “This is how she deals with excessive stimuli. It’s a good short-term solution, even if it’s probably going to get her killed one day.” He sounded sad about that, or I thought he did, and it was nice to think that, so I let the thought remain. It was easy to edit things that way when I was down in the hot warm dark. It was only when I rose again that I would have to face reality.

  I didn’t like that idea. I sank deeper, away from anything that could possibly resemble the physical world. The drums were beating too slowly, out of synch with themselves. That might have explained some of my fear and lassitude. I focused on them, encouraging them to beat faster, to return to normal. It would be good for me, I was sure of that much, even if I wasn’t sure exactly why.

  Bit by bit, the drums responded, and the hot warm dark returned to the equilibrium it was supposed to have. I curled into it, content, and forgot that I had ever wanted to leave. This was home. This was where I belonged.

  Sherman shook my shoulder gently, snapping me out of my reverie. “Much as I hate to disrupt what’s proven to be a fascinating exercise in biometric control, I need you to wake up now,” he said. “We have reached our destination.”

  “That means move, or we’ll move you,” added Ronnie.

  I opened my eyes.

  We were still in the van: that was good. It was rare for me to sink so deep that I could be moved without noticing it, but after the night—or nights, I didn’t know anymore—that I’d had, I couldn’t count on that. The drums were quiet, although if I focused, I could hear the distant beating of my heart, which seemed to have resumed its normal speed and rhythm. I felt better, although it was hard to say whether that was a function of my heartbeat, or just the fact that the van wasn’t moving anymore.

  Kristoph was gone, leaving the entire front of the van empty, since Sherman was crouched in front of me with a thoughtful expression on his face, like he was assessing my value every time he looked at me. Ronnie was still in her seat, arms crossed over her budding breasts, eyes narrowed.

  “What the fuck did she just do?” she demanded. Her attention flicked to me. “What the fuck did you just do?”

  “I… what?” I moved to unfasten my belt with shaking hands. I hadn’t been told to, but I wanted to get out of this van as soon as possible. I didn’t mind small spaces, normally. This one was different. It felt oppressive and dangerous, like it could start moving again at any moment. “I didn’t do anything. I went down into the dark to avoid the drive. Where are we?”

  “What Sal fails to understand is that for most of us, ah, ‘going down into the dark’ is a difficult feat.” Sherman waited until my belt was off before opening the door and offering me his hand. Through the opening, I could see what looked like an ordinary parking garage, all gray concrete and emptiness. “Come along, pet. You make yourself more precious by the hour, and I cannot wait to start learning all the tricks you have to teach me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I took his hand. It seemed like the safest thing to do. “I don’t know any tricks. I don’t even know how I go down into the dark. I just do, when I need to.”

  “I’m telling you, rehome her.” Ronnie stepped out of the van after me, pausing long enough to slam the door. I blinked at her. She sneered. “We know she adapts quickly. Train a new one who doesn’t have all these stupid hang-ups.”

  “Ah, yes, because what one should absolutely do on the eve of war is take one of the best available weapons, break it down for scrap, and wait six months to have a new model on line.” Sherman shook his head. “Honestly, Ronnie, if you were in charge of this battle, the humans would defeat us handily.”

  “Maybe, but a lot of them would die first,” she said.

  Sherman sighed. “Come along, Sal. It’s time to introduce you to the people who will be your new family.”

  “I don’t want a new family,” I whispered.

  His smile was benevolent and terrible. “It’s adorable how you keep thinking that what you want has any merit.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just glared at him. He might have me at his mercy right now, but he wasn’t going to make me believe that I was going to be helpless forever.

  We crossed the parking garage to a large steel door, which Sherman accessed with a swipe of a plastic card and a scan of his left index finger. He didn’t bother to conceal either of these security measures from me, which made me sure that they couldn’t be broken, or at least couldn’t be broken easily. He would have made at least a little effort if he was worried about my getting away.

  The door beeped, the locks disengaging with an audible click. Sherman smirked and pulled it open, letting go of my arm. “After you,” he said.

  I was unarm
ed, effectively barefoot, and in an unidentified parking garage with no idea where I was. I went through the door…

  … and emerged into a defunct shopping mall, obviously long since gutted and abandoned by its original owners, only to be rebuilt by the people who came to claim it as their own. There was a fountain directly in front of me, the water trickling merrily out of a sculpted concrete flower to cascade into the basin below. A few people were sitting on the fountain’s rim. One was eating a sandwich.

  Stores extended in all directions, most still bearing the signs identifying what they had been before this place closed down. The shoe stores and shops selling scented candles were gone now, replaced by little swarms of people clustering around lab equipment. Unlike Dr. Cale’s makeshift bowling alley lab, which held to strict protocols, even if most of the technicians wore jeans under their lab coats, the people here could have just wandered in off the street and picked up a scalpel. I didn’t see a single lab coat or pair of scrubs, although some of the people were wearing gray bodysuits like the ones Sherman and Ronnie had on. As I stood there, trying to process the scene, a man walked by towing a pallet of caged chickens that clucked and fluffed their feathers at me. I blinked.

  “Welcome, darling, to the revolution.” Sherman slipped his arm around my shoulders, holding me closer than I was comfortable with. “I’m sure you recognize this place.”

  “No,” I said blankly. “I mean, should I? I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.”

  Sherman glanced meaningfully over my head. I turned to see Ronnie standing on my other side. She rolled her eyes.

  “Ugh, fine,” she said. “Your precious special snowflake is so sheltered that she’s not going to be a threat. I’m delighted to know that she can’t give us away. I’d be even more delighted if you’d let me cut her open.”