Free The Proteus Cure by F. Paul Wilson, Tracy L. Carbone

picked up the bug. “Look, I’ll call Shen and have him do a sweep of all the offices.”
    “Do you think they’ll come back?”
    “Doubt it—not with Shen keeping an eye out. We’ll get rid of all the bugs and whoever it was will go away.” Bill was thrilled she seemed to be buying this. “Do you need the day off? After last night you must be exhausted.”
    “No, I’m okay. I’ll turn in early tonight.”
    Good girl, he thought.
    “I’m meeting Abra for lunch. That’ll bolster my spirits.”
    Oh, hell. How was he going to explain the bug to Abra? Well, he’d give her the GenEon story too. She’d have no way to disprove it. Shen would do a sweep, pretend to find and remove half a dozen others, and that would be the end of it. And during the sweep he’d replace Sheila’s in a new location with a lot more glue.
    “It’s a stroke of luck you found this. Who knows how long it’s been going on? I’ll get Shen on it right away.”
    Sheila got up and walked out.
    So much for a calm, smooth, easy morning.

TANESHA
    Tanesha Green looked around.
    Well, here she was again, back in an examining room. Second one in two days. Why did they all look alike? Did doctors all order their rooms from some catalog?
    They all
had
to order these dumb-ass paper capes from the same place.
    Tanesha dried her sweaty palms on the cape. Lordy she was nervous. That quack at the Penner clinic had her running scared. The way he’d washed his hands of her like … like Pontius Pilate. Did he think she was a lost cause?
    Worry wouldn’t go away and had kept her up all night. If she didn’t find an answer soon—
    The door opened and Tanesha almost puddled up and bawled as Dr. Takamura stepped in. At last, a friendly face.
    She remembered how gentle and caring she’d been back in the VG723 days, treating her like a real person, not some number. Everything here was numbers—numbered people getting numbered treatments. But Doc Takamura had been different.
    “Tanesha?” she said, frowning and knitting her brows as she looked down at the chart and up again. “You look …”
    “Different?” Tanesha bit back a sob. “I know. That’s why I’m here.”
    Dr. Takamura didn’t look any different though. Didn’t look a minute older than back when Tanesha was taking the cancer cure. Same reddish blond hair, same bright blue eyes and freckled nose, same slim body—Tanesha would kill for that body. Or would have before her skin and hair had started changing. Now she’d keep the blubber—she’d
love
the blubber if she could just get back to her old self.
    “I … I …”
    The look on Dr. Takamura’s face made Tanesha’s heart stumble. Her expression reminded her of that Dr. Kaplan.
    “What’s wrong? Why you lookin’ me like that?”
    “Because …” She stepped closer and touched Tanesha’s hair, then her skin. “Your skin’s half a dozen tones lighter.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “And your hair …”
    “Is coming in straight and light brown. I knows all that. What I don’t know is why.
That’s
what I needs to know.” She felt a tear roll down her cheek. “I’m scared, doc. Really scared. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
    Now the locked-up sob broke free. Tanesha squeezed her eyes shut to hold off a complete meltdown. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Dr. Takamura staring into her eyes.
    “We’ll lick this, Tanesha,” she said, her voice soft but firm. “But first we have to find out what’s causing it. When we know that, we can start working on returning you to normal.”
    Tanesha grabbed her hand and squeezed. “I knew you’d help. What’s happening to me?”
    Dr. Takamura shook her head. “I don’t know.”
    That didn’t sound so good. Tanesha felt her faint hope fading.
    “Girl, you saying you ain’t never seen nothin’ like me before?”
    “As a matter of fact I have. Just recently.”
    Tanesha could’ve started bawling again. She wasn’t the only one.
    “What