I glared at him. “You can’t make me do anything.”
“Oh, but darling, as you’ve already seen, I can.” He smirked. “All I need to do is get skin-to-skin with you, and you’ll dance to any tune I play. Now make yourself comfortable: find something to wear, find a bed in housewares. I’ve got cameras on this whole place, and the front of the building is sealed off, so you’ll not be escaping. Aside from that, feel free to do as you like.”
“Where are you going?”
“Didn’t you hear me before?” This time when he smiled, he showed all of his teeth. I quailed away. “I’m going to go start a war.”
-
That’s enough science for today. I can’t really focus on it anyway: it’s all just facts and figures and not enough answers. I need answers. I’m not going to find them in a Petri dish or a simulation, but those are the only places that I’m being allowed to look.
Sal has been missing for almost a month. Those words are still so hard for me to type, because they don’t make any sense. We were home free. We were safe. All we had to do was make it across a parking lot and we could get back to the lab, back to the safety of Mom’s defenses. There was no way anything could go wrong, and I guess maybe I thought that too loudly, because the universe decided to make sure I knew just how wrong I really was.
There hasn’t been a sign of her since USAMRIID grabbed her out of that parking lot. I know she’s not dead. I can feel it. I also know that I’m probably lying to myself, because psychic powers don’t exist. She could be rotting in a freezer by now, and I would still swear she was alive. I’m going to keep swearing she’s alive until we find her, and then I’m never, never letting her go again.
Please, Sal. Please come back to me.
This is Private Arlen West with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. I have been stationed in the San Francisco base for the past year. I have gone AWOL. I am releasing this recording without consent from my commanding officers. I understand that there will be consequences for this action. I also understand that those consequences cannot be carried out before I am able to insert the muzzle of my service pistol into my mouth, make my peace with God, and pull the trigger. I am doing a service to my country with this announcement. I am fulfilling my duty to the American people.
The sleepwalking sickness has not been contained. It is not a new form of the swine flu. It is not airborne. There is no vaccine. I repeat, there is no vaccine. The vaccinations you are receiving are standard flu shots, and will not protect you from the sleepwalking sickness. You are already infected. You have become infected of your own free—
They’re trying to break the door down. I guess I don’t have as much time as I thought. Take antiparasitic drugs. Take them now. Your life depends on it.
Chapter 8
OCTOBER 2027
It was hard to keep track of time in Sherman’s converted mall. There were no windows in the department store that was my home and my prison, and the metal plates that sealed the doors to the outside world were snug with the ground, preventing me from even figuring out whether it was day or night outside. I guessed at the time by how many people walked freely in the mall outside my cage, and tried to measure the days by the delivery of my meals. It was harder than I’d expected it to be. Every time I felt sure I’d cracked the code, the meal I thought of as dinner would be pancakes and sliced fruit, or the mall would empty out completely during what I’d assumed was the middle of the day. Before long, I was completely disoriented.
That was bad. I needed to know how long it had been. Shelter animals became dispirited and withdrawn after six weeks in cages. Sherman seemed to think I was too weak to stand up against him, and that meant he was probably waiting for that magic mark before he did anything he couldn’t take back. I just wanted to figure out their routines, and find the hole that would allow me to get away.
It would have been easier if anyone had been willing to talk to me, but no one was. They walked past the grill that kept me from getting out into the mall, chattering with one another or silently bustling from chore to chore, and the few people who even glanced in my direction did so with an odd mixture of contempt and pity that I couldn’t begin to decode. I still watched them, hungry for even the illusion of contact.
It was funny, but after a few “days” I started to think I could feel people coming, even started to be able to predict who would walk into view by the tingle at the back of my mind. It wasn’t completely dependable, but it was close enough that I began to wonder if it was real. Sleepwalkers communicated through pheromones. Maybe chimera did too, on some level.
Maybe I was learning.
So I was lonely and isolated, but I wasn’t completely alone. Sherman visited often, even when I wished he wouldn’t, even when it was inappropriate for him to do so, like when I was asleep or giving myself a sponge bath in the employee restroom. My burgeoning sense of “someone is coming” only worked with him about half the time, which made his unannounced arrivals all the more jarring. I would think I was safe and then he would just walk in on me, his eyes crawling across my nakedness in a way that made me profoundly uncomfortable, despite my general lack of a nudity taboo. He looked at me like he was trying to decide whether or not to eat me up. It wasn’t right. I started closing doors and hiding myself in closets, and he still kept coming. He seemed to enjoy the challenge of being forced to track me down.
Ronnie and Kristoph took turns bringing my meals. Apparently, having been the ones to collect me from USAMRIID, they were also cleared to interact with me—or maybe this was a punishment of some sort, and I was a chore they had to complete before they could be considered forgiven. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. All that mattered was that they weren’t Sherman, and every time they brought me a tray or came to draw another vial of blood, it wasn’t Sherman putting his hands on me again.
The meals were the best way I had of keeping track of time. I seemed to get one roughly every four hours, followed by a long period where I was supposed to be sleeping. But even that wasn’t perfect, since the first meal usually arrived about an hour after I woke up in the “morning.” Presumably, they could be feeding me six times a day. I wasn’t gaining weight. I was also running laps around the abandoned department store, which probably burned off as many calories as I was taking in. I’d even started doing push-ups in what used to be the perfume department, letting the acrid burn of the chemicals spilled on the floor motivate me to keep pushing myself away. Maybe if I’d been stronger, I would have done a better job of fighting for my freedom. Maybe I wouldn’t be here now.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
They had had me caged up like a lab animal for roughly three weeks, according to my best guess. I was running another lap around the store when someone fell into step beside me, keeping up easily. I turned to see Ronnie jogging next to me, his shorter legs pumping hard as he ran. Despite that, he didn’t look like he was in any distress. I was trying to get into shape. He was already there.
Ronnie caught me looking at him. He frowned, brows beetling together above dark brown eyes, and growled, “What?” He tried to pitch his voice low, but it came out in a soprano squeak, so distinctly feminine that it made me stumble for a moment. I’d been here long enough that I didn’t have a problem viewing Ronnie as male anymore—he said he was, and that was good enough for me. It was no more of a stretch than me saying I was human. But his voice always threw me.