“I thought you were dead,” said Nathan, without any more prevarication or pausing. “We lost you in that parking lot, and we knew that USAMRIID had you. Mom has some contacts in the military—not enough to break the quarantine, and don’t think that they wouldn’t betray her in a second if they thought they could take her—and she contacted them within the hour, saying that one of her lab technicians had been taken. They got back to her a week later, reporting that someone of your description had been there, but had been abducted by a person or persons unknown. Then they started asking her some fairly pointed questions, since whoever took you had killed a bunch of their men in the process.”
“That was Ronnie,” I said. “He’s one of Sherman’s chimera. He has impulse control problems.”
Nathan blinked slowly. “Impulse control problems don’t usually come with a body count.”
“From Ronnie, they do. He’s frustrated and angry, and I don’t think he likes humans very much.” We’d never really talked about it. I hadn’t wanted to upset him, not when I was trying so hard to get him to like me. Seeing Nathan’s frown deepen, I added, “What he did was wrong, but he’s the one who got me out of Sherman’s compound thingy, so I’m not really inclined to throw stones, you know? I owe him.”
To my great relief, Nathan nodded. “I owe him, too. He gave you back to me. But at the time, the news that you’d been kidnapped by people who didn’t care who they hurt… it was terrifying, Sal. We all knew that you were dead, or dissected, or worse. I kept Mom looking for you. I couldn’t stop. Stopping would have meant admitting defeat, and if that happened…” He took a deep, shaky breath. “I thought about killing myself. I decided not to, simply because I knew that I had work to do, and I knew that my death would do nothing to clear my family name. But I didn’t have anything left to live for.”
I bit my lip again. The world had ended while I’d been sitting in my nicely gilded cage. There was just one factor unaccounted for… “Your father?” I asked.
Nathan shook his head. “He stopped answering calls shortly after the primary outbreak started. He lived in Orange County, in a very densely populated area, and all the CDC and USAMRIID maps we’ve been able to purloin have shown high sleepwalker activity in that area. If he’s alive, it’s a miracle, and I’m not holding out much hope for miracles just now.”
“I’m so sorry.” The words weren’t enough. Words never were. They were all I had to offer him.
“He was a good man, and he had a good life. I think he’d be happy to know I found Mom again, and that we’re at least trying to be a family. I know he’d be happy to hear that I found you again, that we somehow went through this horrible thing and wound up in the same place.” Nathan reached out and cupped my cheek with one hand. “He liked you a lot, you know. He used to ask me when you’d be his daughter.”
“I already said I’d marry you,” I said, blinking back tears.
“Fishy’s ordained,” said Nathan. “I think it would be a Jedi wedding—”
I couldn’t help myself. I broke out in giggles at the very idea.
Nathan smiled. “This is where we live now. This is where we’re going to find a way to save the world. Do you need anything?”
“Sleep,” I admitted. “Ronnie knocked me out before he moved me to the house where you found me, but that wasn’t real sleep, and I had…” The teenage sleepwalker, all life gone from her eyes, reaching for me out of the pure, desperate need to survive. “…I had a hard day. I just want to sleep.”
“Okay.” Nathan leaned forward and kissed my forehead before he started shrugging out of his lab coat. “I could use a nap.”
I didn’t say it, but I was grateful that he was staying with me. Good as it was to see my dogs again, I didn’t want to be alone.
It didn’t take me long to be ready for bed—all I had to do was squirm out of my bloody clothes, which Nathan whisked away and dropped into a sealed, dog-proof hamper. It took him a little longer, since he was somewhat more properly dressed. When we were both naked, we stopped and just looked at each other, me tracing the new starkness of his ribs and pallor of his arms and chest, where his slight tan had faded back to his natural light brown skin tone, him studying the bruises on my arms, legs, and side, all the snipped-off bits of skin and the tracks left behind by Sherman’s needles. I was white as a ghost after a month without seeing the sun, and when he came to me, I felt like paper pressed against stone, devoid of anything but emptiness.
Nathan curled himself around me, and the dogs fitted themselves into the spaces we created with our bodies, and everything was finally right with the world.
INTERLUDE III: METAPHASE
Oh, my precious children, what have I done to you? What kind of world have I created that you would do this to each other?
We’re all going to wake up any day now, and this will all be a dream. Until then, why don’t we enjoy the chance to live in a science fiction novel?
October 2027: Tansy
Still here I’m still here I’m still me I’m still here.
But only barely, I think. Every day I’m a little less me a little less here a little less Tansy. Pieces of me are going. He’s stealing pieces of me, one by one, and all he’s giving me in exchange is pain. So much pain. Pain like it’s air, pain that is breathing, so breathing stops seeming like a good idea. I try to stop I’ve tried over and over again to stop to let go to empty my lungs like flat paper boxes on a hill and why do I think of that over and over what is the hill what does it mean why do I want to go there what do those boxes do? I can’t remember anymore. So I try to stop breathing, over and over again I try, and every time I think I might succeed his machines grab me and bring me back again, returning me to the place where everything is pain.
It’s been long enough that I’m not sure the world has ever not been made of pain. Maybe that’s a thing I made up, like all the other things that I made up. Like running and jumping and firing a gun pow pow bang bang and being free and being happy and being home. Like Adam and Sal and Sherman. How could there be other people like me when I’m not even possible?
He’d said that to me more than once. “You shouldn’t be possible,” and sometimes he said it like it was something remarkable, something to be celebrated, and other times he said it like he was angry with me, like I had broken a rule by not being something that was supposed to exist. It didn’t seem to matter how he said it. It always came with pain, and so I’d stopped really listening to his tone, and started listening for the silences between his words. If I could just fill my ears with silence, maybe everything else would go away.
I didn’t know how long I’d been where I was. I didn’t know anything anymore. All I knew was that I hurt. I hurt so bad.
There was a click as the door on the other side of the room swung open. I whimpered. I couldn’t help myself. I hurt so much, and I didn’t want him to hurt me again. I just wanted him to go away so I could practice not breathing. Maybe this time I would do it right. Maybe this time the machines wouldn’t realize what I was doing, and they’d let me go. Maybe.