Chimera (Parasitology) Read Free Page B

out how much of their data he was copying. But that’s none of your concern. I’m glad to see that you can still care about people, even if you’re caring about the wrong ones. No matter. That will change soon enough. Gentlemen, prepare her for transport.” Then he turned, and walked back toward the door.
    He took the handcuffs with him, which meant I could put my hands up to ward the soldiers away when they started closing on me. Their faces were grim masks, efficient and cold. “No, please,” I said, not knowing what they were about to do, but knowing that whatever it was, I wasn’t going to enjoy it—not when they were looking at me like that.
    I was so focused on the ones in front of me that I never saw the one who slipped behind me with the Taser. Electricity arced through my body, stunning and scrambling everything, and then I hit the floor, and if the pain continued, I didn’t know about it anymore.
    Everything was warm and dark and perfect. The drums hammered ceaselessly away in the background, and I felt like I was floating on a hot tide of weightlessness and peace. Everything would be perfect forever if the world could just stay exactly the way it was, filled with comforting darkness and the sound of drums.
    Only no. Everything
wasn’t
perfect, because while I waswarm and I was dark, this wasn’t the hot warm dark: this wasn’t the comforting sea that had buoyed me up since before I knew what it was to be a person. This was something different, and “different” was another word for “dangerous,” especially now that things were changing again, now that I was back in the hands of people who would use me for their own ends and not allow me to be who and what I really was. Dr. Cale was a scary woman, and the things she wanted weren’t always things it was safe or reasonable to want, but she’d never tried to force me to be anything other than myself, whatever that was. She wasn’t safe. She was safer than this.
    With comprehension came the return of consciousness, and with the return of consciousness came the slowly growing awareness of my body, coming back to me an inch at a time, like the power being turned on in an office building. It wasn’t the worst comparison. The connections between me and the body that had been Sally Mitchell were strong, built by science and reinforced by biology, but they weren’t as natural as a human brain’s connection to its own body. Sometimes things were slower than they were supposed to be. I’d attributed that to my accident, right up until I learned that it was really a case of mind over matter—my mind, Sally’s abandoned matter.
    When enough of the power had come back on, I opened my eyes and blinked up at a dark, oddly shaped ceiling. There were lights there, uncovered bulbs that were so bright they hurt, yet somehow didn’t manage to illuminate most of what was around them. It was a senseless design. I didn’t understand it, and so I closed my eyes again, willing myself to return to the weightlessness and the dark.
    Something nudged me in the ribs. “You dead, girl? Or worse, you turning into one of those
things
? We’ll kill you before you can hurt any of us, so don’t you even think about jumping up and going for our throats.”
    “I don’t think you can reason with monsters, Paul,” said afemale voice. It was farther away than the first voice; wherever we were, it was large enough to include things like “distance,” even if there wasn’t all that much of it. “If she’s going to rip your throat out, she’s going to do it no matter how much you kick her. Hell, maybe she’s going to do it
because
you kicked her. I’d go for your throat if you kept prodding me with your filthy-ass foot.”
    “Shut up,” said the man. The nudge to my ribs was repeated. Based on what the woman had said, he was nudging me with his foot. I tried to decide whether I cared, or whether caring would be too much work. Part of me still felt like I was floating,