Read Online Chimera (Parasitology) by Mira Grant - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mira Grant
Tags: Fiction / Horror, Fiction / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Science Fiction / Hard Science Fiction
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you can think about how you can best help us. It’s all up to you, Sally. Everything that happens next is up to you.”
It’s done.
Kristoph reported back this morning, and Ronnie wasn’t with him. He had all of Ronnie’s knives, and he refused to give them to me when I tried to reclaim them. He just looked at me sadly and clutched them to his chest like they represented some sort of connection to his missing friend. For someone so intelligent, Kristoph certainly behaves like a fool sometimes. If he weren’t useful as he is, I would have him cracked open and reassembled in a body that came with fewer inbuilt neurological issues.
But I won’t allow frustration to dull my moment of triumph. It’s done, and by the time the humans realize the war is lost, it’ll be too late for them to even raise their hands against me. Welcome to the new age. The Age of Men is done.
—FROM THE NOTES OF SHERMAN LEWIS (SUBJECT VIII, ITERATION III), NOVEMBER 2027
One of the gardeners collapsed today. He was showing the classic signs of implant overgrowth, and he died within the hour. Examination of the body confirmed my initial diagnosis: There were parasitic threads twisted throughout his muscle tissue and digestive system, and the implant itself was located in the superior vena cava, which seems to be a favored spot of migrating
D. symbogenesis
.
Analysis of the worm showed that it was SymboGen stock, but had not been tailored for the man in question: His response was part immune and part tissue mismatch. Questions of black market purchase might have arisen had this happened some months ago, but the man had already been tested repeatedly for the presence of an implant and had come up clean. We must now ask ourselves how he came to be infected with a worm that was not designed for him, that was not present at his last checkup.
The body is currently undergoing sectioning and staining for a more thorough examination. More information as it becomes available.
—FROM THE PRIVATE NOTES OF DR. STEVEN BANKS, DECEMBER 11, 2027
Chapter 3
DECEMBER 2027
S omeone was screaming on the street outside my window. They had been screaming for more than an hour, and no one inside the house had been able to work up the courage to go out and try to make them stop. The last time one of us had gone out to make someone stop screaming while people were trying to sleep, it had ended in gunfire, and we’d suddenly found ourselves with more room in the house. That should have seemed like a gift—there were eighteen of us crammed into a three-bedroom home that had been designed for a single nuclear family, not a jumbled alliance of refugees—but instead, it had come with a whole new dose of fear, resentment, and anger, all mingled with our grief. USAMRIID didn’t allow any space to go unused for very long; their unofficial motto here in the quarantine facility was “Waste not, want not,” and there were always people looking to change housing. But the sort ofpeople who needed to approach strangers to find a place to live were generally not the sort of people any of us wanted to share a home with.
It was possible to get drugs inside the quarantine zone. USAMRIID’s soldiers thought they’d cleaned the place out, but people were clever about where they hid things, and the junkies and hustlers were forever finding joints taped to the back of toilet tanks or tabs of Ecstasy hidden in bottles of aspirin. I guess where there’s a need, there’s a way. I tried not to judge, but we’d already had two people removed from our block due to overdose after the need to escape overrode whatever sense of self-preservation that they might have once possessed.
Getting into the quarantine zone required no qualifications beyond “alive” and “not infected with a SymboGen implant”—and I was living proof that the second qualification could be gotten around, if you knew the right people and were disturbed enough to think this was a good place to be. It
It’s done.
Kristoph reported back this morning, and Ronnie wasn’t with him. He had all of Ronnie’s knives, and he refused to give them to me when I tried to reclaim them. He just looked at me sadly and clutched them to his chest like they represented some sort of connection to his missing friend. For someone so intelligent, Kristoph certainly behaves like a fool sometimes. If he weren’t useful as he is, I would have him cracked open and reassembled in a body that came with fewer inbuilt neurological issues.
But I won’t allow frustration to dull my moment of triumph. It’s done, and by the time the humans realize the war is lost, it’ll be too late for them to even raise their hands against me. Welcome to the new age. The Age of Men is done.
—FROM THE NOTES OF SHERMAN LEWIS (SUBJECT VIII, ITERATION III), NOVEMBER 2027
One of the gardeners collapsed today. He was showing the classic signs of implant overgrowth, and he died within the hour. Examination of the body confirmed my initial diagnosis: There were parasitic threads twisted throughout his muscle tissue and digestive system, and the implant itself was located in the superior vena cava, which seems to be a favored spot of migrating
D. symbogenesis
.
Analysis of the worm showed that it was SymboGen stock, but had not been tailored for the man in question: His response was part immune and part tissue mismatch. Questions of black market purchase might have arisen had this happened some months ago, but the man had already been tested repeatedly for the presence of an implant and had come up clean. We must now ask ourselves how he came to be infected with a worm that was not designed for him, that was not present at his last checkup.
The body is currently undergoing sectioning and staining for a more thorough examination. More information as it becomes available.
—FROM THE PRIVATE NOTES OF DR. STEVEN BANKS, DECEMBER 11, 2027
Chapter 3
DECEMBER 2027
S omeone was screaming on the street outside my window. They had been screaming for more than an hour, and no one inside the house had been able to work up the courage to go out and try to make them stop. The last time one of us had gone out to make someone stop screaming while people were trying to sleep, it had ended in gunfire, and we’d suddenly found ourselves with more room in the house. That should have seemed like a gift—there were eighteen of us crammed into a three-bedroom home that had been designed for a single nuclear family, not a jumbled alliance of refugees—but instead, it had come with a whole new dose of fear, resentment, and anger, all mingled with our grief. USAMRIID didn’t allow any space to go unused for very long; their unofficial motto here in the quarantine facility was “Waste not, want not,” and there were always people looking to change housing. But the sort ofpeople who needed to approach strangers to find a place to live were generally not the sort of people any of us wanted to share a home with.
It was possible to get drugs inside the quarantine zone. USAMRIID’s soldiers thought they’d cleaned the place out, but people were clever about where they hid things, and the junkies and hustlers were forever finding joints taped to the back of toilet tanks or tabs of Ecstasy hidden in bottles of aspirin. I guess where there’s a need, there’s a way. I tried not to judge, but we’d already had two people removed from our block due to overdose after the need to escape overrode whatever sense of self-preservation that they might have once possessed.
Getting into the quarantine zone required no qualifications beyond “alive” and “not infected with a SymboGen implant”—and I was living proof that the second qualification could be gotten around, if you knew the right people and were disturbed enough to think this was a good place to be. It
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