I said nothing. I just stayed in my curl, clutching my head and fighting the urge to whimper.
Ronnie sighed. “You don’t trust us and you don’t like us and you don’t have to, because we’ve all basically been assholes to you. I’m not going to lecture you on getting along with people who’ve fucked you over. But we need you alive, so if you don’t want to wake up strapped down and attached to half a dozen IVs, you need to take your medicine.”
“Why do you need me alive?” The question was faint and reedy, but I forced it out word by word. The effort left me feeling wrung-out and exhausted. I needed to sleep. I needed to sleep forever.
“You can learn a lot from a necropsy,” said Ronnie. “You sometimes learn even more from a living being.”
This time, I didn’t swallow my whimper. When you dissect a human being, you’re performing an autopsy. When you dissect anything else in the world, intelligent or not, you’re performing a necropsy. By using the word “necropsy,” Ronnie made it clear that he wasn’t talking about cutting up the human body that I inhabited. He was talking about the actual me, the pound and a half of tapeworm that was wedged tight into Sally Mitchell’s skull, like a squatter that had taken over the house while the original owner wasn’t home.
Ronnie sighed. “We’re not the enemy, Sal. Those people out there, all they want to do is wipe us out. Kill us off, even though we’re their creation. We’re part of a healthier, hardier world, and you’re going to help us make that happen. So yeah, we’re going to keep you alive, whether you like it or not. You’re going to be a lot happier if you just go along with things.”
I was silent. A few seconds passed before Ronnie sighed again, louder this time, and I heard his footsteps moving away. I waited until I was sure he was gone before rolling over and opening my eyes. The plastic tray he’d placed on the nightstand contained a bottle of water and a little paper cup of pills. It was only a few feet away from me. It might as well have been a mile.
It took what felt like an hour for me to inch my way across the bed and catch the edge of the tray, pulling it closer to me. For one sickening moment it teetered on the nightstand, seeming to be in danger of crashing to the floor. I swallowed hard and forced myself to keep moving, pulling it inch by agonizing inch into reach. It didn’t fall. I emptied the little paper cup of pills into my mouth, dry-swallowing them one by one, holding the others under my tongue until they were needed. I nearly choked twice, the round edges of the pills seeming to become jagged and sharp as they rasped against the walls of my esophagus. Finally, though, the last of them was inside me, and I collapsed back into limp motionlessness, looking longingly at the water. I wanted it more than I could remember wanting almost anything. I knew that trying to drink it without sitting up would make a mess without slaking my thirst, and sitting up was off the table as long as the pain was raging in my head.
Sherman had cut a hole in my skull. He’d decided to break me open without access to the tools that Nathan and the others had used when they’d done the same thing—only what they did wasn’t the same thing, it wasn’t the same thing at all. They’d acted with my full, informed consent, while Sherman had simply put me under and taken what he wanted. The acts themselves might be virtually indistinguishable, but the motives behind them made all the difference in the world.
There were only two things inside my skull: my brain, and my real body, soft and segmented and hiding itself among the cortical folds of the tissue around it. I couldn’t imagine he’d gone in looking for a piece of brain tissue, since there was nothing special about it that he couldn’t also learn from the blood and bone marrow samples he’d been taking since he locked me up. That left only one target for his exploratory surgery: he’d been looking for me. He’d been taking samples from my real body for a change, and not the one I wore.
That was the greatest violation I could imagine. I was small and soft and vulnerable without my human skin to defend me, and he’d cracked open my bony shield and gone into my sanctuary. I didn’t know that he’d taken tissue samples from my tapeworm-self, but I couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t have, not after he’d gone to the considerable trouble of opening my skull and peering inside. The thought of a piece of me, severed from the whole, identity and intelligence cut off and lost forever, made me want to vomit. Was he going to implant some empty body with another me? Would there be enough epigenetic memory for that little slice of Sal to remember that it liked watermelon juice and walking dogs and learning new words, or would it be someone completely new?
Worst of all, if it worked—if he was able to successfully splice “me” into another body and learn whatever it was he wanted to know about how I’d been able to bond with Sally Mitchell—was he going to take the rest of me apart next? He didn’t need to keep the original. Not when he could make a hundred knockoffs, one little sliver at a time.
The pain in my head wasn’t getting any better, but time was running out. If Sherman had really removed a piece of my primary body, he’d learn what he wanted to know sooner rather than later. I had to get out of here.
I sat up slowly, fighting the spinning in my head every inch of the way, and reached for the bottle of water. Drinking it made me feel a little bit better: I was still in a lot of pain, but at least my mouth didn’t feel like a used litter box anymore. Still moving with the utmost caution, I slid my feet to the floor and stood. The motion was accompanied by another wave of pain that almost sent me crashing back down onto the bed. I gritted my teeth and held my ground until it passed. I needed to get out of here.
Maybe deciding it was finally time to make my escape when I was still dizzy and weak from nonelective surgery was a bad idea, but it was the only way to avoid more nonelective surgery, and so I was going to go with it. Besides, Sherman wasn’t going to be expecting me to try anything right now. I had trouble remembering that he was the enemy when he wasn’t directly in front of me with a scalpel in his hand and a smirk on his face: we’d spent too much time together as allies, and deep down, I wanted him to still be the man that he’d been then. Maybe that was true in both directions. He wouldn’t have hennaed my hair and cut it nicely rather than hacking it all off if he didn’t harbor at least a little genuine affection for me.
The Sal he’d known for years was pliable and obedient, and had no idea that she could ever be allowed to become anything else. So maybe he still thought of me like that. Maybe I could get myself out of here if I stopped thinking like a good little girl, and started thinking like a chimera.
Joyce used to love going shopping, even when neither of us had any intention of buying anything. She’d haul me through malls and department stores with equal enthusiasm, pointing out sales and commenting snarkily on fashions she didn’t think anyone should ever, under any circumstances, wear outside the house. Thanks to her, I knew quite a lot about how stores like the one that had become my prison were constructed.
I started for the escalators, pausing only long enough to grab fresh jeans and a clean, cable-knit sweater from the Lands’ End display. I could get underwear and a tank top to go with it once I was upstairs in the lingerie section. I tried to keep my movements as natural as possible, and allowed myself to wince every time the incision in my head sent another bolt of pain searing through me, which was often. If Sherman or one of his people was watching me through the security cameras, I needed to put on a good enough show that they wouldn’t send anyone in to check on me.
The escalator was slow enough that I was able to peel my shirt off and throw it back down to the first floor before I reached the second. There were bloodstains on the back of the collar, marking the places where the fabric had brushed against my surgical incision. I shuddered, turning my eyes toward my destination.
Most of the lights on the second floor were off, saving power, since I was the only one in here and usually stayed on the first floor. I didn’t bother looking for the switches as I made my way toward the distant glow of the fitting rooms, which were lit independently of everyth
ing else. That same glow allowed me to find a bra, tank top, and panties that would actually fit me. There were no non-high-heel shoes left downstairs—all the good running and hiking shoes had been looted by Sherman’s people before they locked me away in here—so I didn’t bother removing my thick, plastic-soled socks. They’d be better than nothing if what I was planning actually succeeded.
This had been a nice department store, and like all nice department stores, they had been more worried about the privacy of their customers than the possibility of shoplifting. I entered the dressing rooms with my armload of fresh clothing, walking along the row of open, slatted doors until I reached the very end and slipped into the private cubicle. It was located closest to what I guessed would be the store’s outside wall, rather than feeding back into the mall proper. Even more important, this dressing room stall boasted a large, white-painted air grate, used to pump in heat during the winter and cold during the summer. It was quiescent now, the California September providing no opportunities to either warm or chill. That was good. I didn’t want to freeze to death in my effort to escape.
There was a small bench inside the fitting room. I pushed it to the wall under the grate and stood, reaching up to rattle the grill. It didn’t budge, thanks to the screws that were holding it in place. That was a small problem at this stage. I knelt and took my fresh bra off its hanger. This was a nice department store. They used wood and wire hangers.
I smashed the hanger against the floor until it broke. Then I scavenged through the pieces until I found a splinter of the right thickness and flexibility to serve my intended purpose. “If they didn’t want me to learn to improvise, they should’ve kept the shelter better funded,” I muttered, and got to work.
It took less than five minutes to unscrew all but one of the bolts from the grate. It swung drunkenly down, revealing the empty black chasm on the other side. There was a chance that was exactly what it was: a hole, rather than a tunnel. I paused, looking into the dark, and asked myself if this was really the right course of action. It could get me killed.
Even killed was better than captive. I hopped down from the bench long enough to strip and put my new clothes on, taking care to tuck the tank top into my jeans before letting the sweater hang over it. Hopefully, it would be enough padding to keep me from getting seriously cut up on any sharp edges inside the vent.
This was it: this was the moment where I would have to decide whether I wanted to be the girl I’d always been, or whether I was ready to become someone new. Someone who was brave enough to crawl into the dark alone, and see where the risk would take her. Someone who was going to survive.
I was going to see my family again. I was going to get back to them. I was going to see Nathan again.
I was going to survive, and then I was going to find Tansy, and we were going to get through this.
I reached up, grabbing the open edge of the vent, and hoisted myself into the unknown.
INTERLUDE II: DIPLOTENE
History will remember my name forever. Isn’t that the truest form of immortality? All you have to do to earn it is change the world.
–DR. STEVEN BANKS
I don’t think “human” means what people tell me it does. I’m just as human as you are. Everything that matters is underneath the skin.
–ADAM CALE (SUBJECT I, ITERATION I)
October 2027: Tansy
Still here I’m still here I’m still me I’m still here.
It hurts.
It hurts so bad, and I keep on still being me, I keep on still being here, but I’m starting to think that maybe not being me—maybe not being here—would be better, because absence hurts other people. Absence doesn’t hurt you.
The lights were too bright for my eyes. That was happening more and more, now that Dr. Banks had stopped taking things out of me and started putting things inside me instead. Tears were running down my cheeks, even though I wasn’t crying. I’d learned a lot about what crying felt like since he brought me here, since he strapped me down and started taking whatever he wanted out of me. He was running out of pieces. That’s why he’d decided to introduce some new variables.
“Now, this may hurt a little,” he’d cautioned. “But don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. The pain is temporary, but the knowledge we’re going to get in exchange is forever. You’re going to help me transform the world. Isn’t that wonderful?”
I hadn’t answered him. I hadn’t been able to answer in days, not since he’d sent two of his flunkies into the room to rip out four of my molars, all without the benefit of painkillers or sedation. Knocking me out apparently messed with my reactions in a way that would slow down the all-important research. “You understand,” that was what he had said before and after every procedure. He always had the same smug little smile on his face, like he wasn’t doing anything wrong, but was doing so much right.
It hurt. I hurt. For the first time since I woke up in this body, with its wonderful hands and eyes and legs, I could feel both of my selves independently. The human half of me was numb and distant, filled with pains I didn’t have a name for. The invertebrate half felt like it was on fire, skin scored with a hundred tiny cuts, fluids leaking out into my human brain and making my thoughts even more muddled than usual.
The lights in the room never varied. They were always bright and burning, too white for my eyes. They hadn’t fed me once. All my nutrients came in through a tube, plunged deep into my arm and filling me until my veins felt swollen and tight, like they were becoming worms in their own right. I hoped that they would break out soon, and that they would be able to slither their way to freedom.
It was getting difficult to remember anything before the room. I had a name once—Sandy or Tammy or something like that. I had a family, a mother who was a brilliant scientist and a brother who was smarter than I’d ever be. I thought I remembered going sledding, but that couldn’t have been true, because I didn’t remember snow.
I remembered Sal. I remembered her running away and leaving me behind. I remembered being glad. I clung to that gladness as hard as I could, because I knew that if it ever managed to slip away, I’d only remember how much I hated her. She shouldn’t have left me behind. Not even if I told her to, not even if her survival mattered more than almost anything else, because she was the one who carried the data we’d infiltrated SymboGen to take. She left me, and I wanted to hate her, and I wanted to love her, and that meant remembering how her desertion made me feel.
There was a click from the far side of the room as the door swung open. I kept my eyes closed. Opening them wouldn’t have done me any good. I hadn’t been able to turn my head in what felt like forever.
“How’s my girl today?” asked Dr. Banks, as genial and fatherly as ever. “I see you’re not moving. That’s good. That means the nerve blockers we’ve placed on your spine are doing their job. It’s important that you keep still. I’m sure you understand that by now.”
I kept my eyes closed.
“I know you’re not dead, Tansy. I can see your chest moving, and the monitor tells me that your vital signs are still clear and strong. You’re a fighter. You’ve got a lot of fight left in you before you’ll even be able to consider giving up on us.”
His words filled me with more despair than I would have believed possible. It felt like I’d been his captive for weeks. It could have been days, or even hours. With the constant light and the lack of solid food, I had nothing to measure time by. The sadistic bastard could do whatever he wanted to me, for as long as he wanted to, and it wouldn’t matter. I was never going to get away.
“Kill me,” I whispered.
“I intend to,” said Dr. Banks, with amiable honesty. “After we’ve wrung every drop of useful data out of you, we’re going to take you apart and find the things we missed on the first pass. But you’ve got some time before that, and we’re going to spend it together, learning everything you don’t even know you have in you to teach.”
I didn’t thin
k I had it in me to scream.
I was wrong.
STAGE II: DIAKINESIS
Mankind has been forgetting this simple fact since the dawn of time: when we transgress, it is our children who must pay the price of those transgressions.
–DR. SHANTI CALE
I didn’t do anything wrong. All I did was survive.
–SAL MITCHELL
Mom is sad all the time right now. She stays in her lab as much as we let her, looking at graphs and charts that show how the cousins are waking up, and sometimes she says bad words when she doesn’t know I’m there listening to her. It makes me feel funny when she does that, like she has a face I’ve never seen, because she’s always been so busy being my mother. She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. She’s a super scientist and she’s going to find a way to save everybody, not just the humans. But she’s sad, and I can’t make her better.
Sal and Tansy are both still missing. I think that’s a lot of what makes Mom so sad. I miss them too. Tansy’s always been my best friend, and I like Sal a lot. She’s my sister, and that means I have to love her forever, but nobody gets to tell me who I have to like. I decided I would like her all on my own. Now I just miss her a lot.
Maybe I should go and find her. Mom would be happy again if I brought Sal home, and then Sal and I can go find Tansy, and we’ll finally be a family the way we should have been all along. I can do it. I’m smarter than anyone thinks I am.
I can bring my sisters home.
–FROM THE JOURNAL OF ADAM CALE, OCTOBER 2027
The subject has shown surprising resilience. I expected her to die when I introduced antiparasitics into her food supply, but she proved unexpectedly resistant. The subject reacted to the antiparasitics as if they were an infection, resulting in nothing more severe than a brief spike in the host body temperature, with no lasting damage to the subject.