Free Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2) by Mira Grant Page A

half pull me into a seated position. The room swam briefly out of focus, and then swam back just as quickly. “Oh, wow. Oh,
ow
.”
    “Are you dizzy?”
    “A little bit,” I said, starting to nod. I realized at the lastmoment that it would be a bad idea, and turned the motion into a semi-bob of my chin instead. Even that was enough to make my head spin. “Everything’s a little gray around the outside.”
    “As long as it’s just gray and not black, you should be okay.” He picked up a glass of orange juice from the coffee table, offering it to me. “This will help.”
    “I’ve given enough blood voluntarily to know that orange juice doesn’t equal instant recovery,” I said, and took the glass. My hand was shaking. I willed it to be still, and once I was sure I wouldn’t spill juice all over the floor, I raised the glass to my lips. Sweetness flooded my mouth, almost strong enough to make me gag. I did choke a little, before forcing myself to keep on drinking.
    “The better it tastes, the more you need it,” said Nathan. He grimaced wryly, and added, “Except when it goes too far, and you feel like you’re turning into a hummingbird. And no, orange juice isn’t an instant restorative. But you didn’t lose enough blood to need a transfusion, thank God, or we would have needed to go to the hospital no matter how bad an idea that was. This should give you enough of a boost that we can get back to the car with the dogs.”
    “Thank you for not being willing to let me die in our kitchen,” I said, and took another drink of orange juice. “Has anyone noticed the body in the stairwell?”
    “Not that I’ve heard. The building’s been pretty quiet since you passed out. As for the rest of the city…” Nathan shook his head. “I turned the news off when I realized that it was just getting worse. We’ve passed some sort of critical mass of sleepwalkers. More and more of the implants are waking up.”
    I looked at him solemnly as I sipped the juice, trying to force myself to choke every last drop of it down. There was no way any of this was a coincidence; not with Sherman on the loose, not with his team of doctors dedicated to championing the cause of
D. symbogenesis
over the cause of the human race.
    I was almost relieved to realize that the thought that he was doing this on purpose made me sick to my stomach. I might not be human, but I still knew right from wrong. That was no small accomplishment, given the circumstances.
    “Sal? What’s wrong?”
    “I don’t think it was just reaching a critical mass that triggered this,” I said, setting the empty juice glass back on the coffee table. Nathan was right about one thing: while I still felt shaky and weak, I no longer felt like I was going to collapse back into unconsciousness at any moment. “This is Sherman. He was so
mad
, Nathan. I think he really expected me to go with him. To just throw up my hands and say, ‘I understand now, I’m really one of you,’ and let him lead me to his secret lair beneath the city.”
    “If his secret lair is under San Francisco, the first big earthquake will solve this problem for us,” said Nathan. There was a brittle edge to his voice, like he was joking because he didn’t know what else to do. “Do you really think Sherman could do this?”
    “I think Sherman doesn’t consider himself human, and he doesn’t see dead humans as dead
people
,” I said. “He was pretty clear on that point when we were at SymboGen. He wants to be the dominant species. He wants us to be the only things that live here. And we know that sleepwalkers trigger other sleepwalkers. If you wanted to spread them through the city like… like a real disease, all you’d need is a few index cases to scatter around the streets. They’d go wandering and anyone they encountered who was on the verge of going over would succumb.” It was so simple, so elegant, and so horrible that I could barely believe that Sherman, who had always been