Pulse: Retaliation (Anisakis Nova Book 2) (4 page)

8 – Dr. Adam Baker

The two women chained to the tables knew each other. Adam wondered if they were sisters. Perhaps mother and daughter? Either way, he took great sadistic pleasure knowing they'd suffer and die together.

He smiled at the women and ran his hand down the older one's face. "I know you're upset you won't get to be one of us. I suppose you could take comfort in knowing you'll die instead. That makes you uninfected idiots happy, right?"

Adam turned away from them to get his implements. Laid out on the table before him was a small beaker of parasites and two needles containing MAC. The cure stopped Anisakis Nova eggs from maturing, but they were still dormant in the body. MAC attached itself to the eggs and blocked them from consuming enough glucose to grow into worms and take over the body.

They were months away from sequencing the entire Anisakis Nova genome, especially with his limited staff. They couldn't create a new species of parasite without that information. In the meantime they could see what chemicals would dissolve the barrier between egg and the human body and jumpstart the process. Once they had that information, they'd have a good starting point on sequencing a new parasite resistant to MAC.

Hopefully, once they got some uninfected scientists, the whole process would be sped up. Adam had many plans on how they could utilize the uninfected for domestic and scientific purposes.

One task at a time.

He picked up the beaker and fished out a pencil thin worm about as long as his middle finger. It wriggled, but was calm under his touch. The parasite had no reaction near infected. As Adam brought it closer to the hosts, it reached out to them.

"Where do you want it?" Adam asked. He moved it towards the younger one's eye. Her crying escalated. "How about here? Or here?"

Eventually he settled on her nose, and let the parasite wriggle its way up into her sinuses. Her body shook. Blood seeped from her nose.

"Why are you doing this?" The older woman's body went limp in defeat. "Why?"

Adam retrieved another worm. It was fun to let them burrow in through the face, but it often resulted in death if the worm found its way directly into the brain. It ate tunnels through it and ended up causing too much brain damage. He lifted the older woman's shirt and let the worm bite and wriggle into her stomach.

He wiped his hand, slimy from the parasite, on her chest. "I'll be back in an hour to administer MAC once the parasite has laid eggs. Yes, you'll be saved. But something tells me you'll wish you were dead after I'm done with you."
 

***
 

Adam stared at the corpses of dead dogs, ten in total, heaped in the middle of the lab. Someone hadn't taken the bodies out and they stank. He thought of their family pet six years ago, found by his twins behind the neighbor’s shed. It was summer and they let Lilah sleep outside. She hadn’t come home and the girls were worried. They called for her and searched the neighborhood every night. The neighbors to their left were gruff and never let the girls check around their yard. Eventually they climbed the fence and found Lilah. The animal had been rotting in the heat for days. It looked like she’d finally died of old age. The smell is what drew the girls to it. He held both of them in either arm as they cried.

Adam fought with the neighbors for an hour, criticizing them for their irresponsibility. Why hadn’t they just let him and the girls check their yard? Why hadn’t they checked themselves? Eventually they did apologize. The twins watched from their yard and after it all, called Adam a hero for standing up for Lilah.

As quick as the memory came, it disappeared to a sick thought. He found it ironic that they were in the pediatrics section of the hospital, tattered posters on the wall depicting friendly dogs with motivating, happy quotes. The irony was very humorous to him, and he laughed to himself, eliciting stares from the workers in the room.

After administering the parasite to his two host women, he needed to kill some time. He found himself returning to the lab the animal experimentation occurred in. While he didn't aid in the cause himself, he let others continue the efforts. It was a sore point for him. He was frustrated they couldn't make
something
happen. The parasite started in an animal after all. But the results were just as worthless as his human experiments. More so. Part of him had thought it would be easier to create a powerful monster using a dumb animal.

The dogs simply wouldn't take the parasite. Neither would cats, mice, rodents, or arachnids. No mammal except humans had thus far been a suitable host for Anisakis Nova. They tried infecting the animals in every way possible, but the parasite existed in the body like a normal roundworm would. It didn't reproduce by the hundreds like in humans, didn't create the same chemicals that caused violence and morbidity.

All that happened was that they latched on to the insides of the animal and absorbed nutrients and grew. Because of their speed, the animal died from malnutrition quickly, or burst the stomach and intestines as the size of the worm couldn't be supported.

Fish though? A whole other story. Adam's gaze shifted to the large aquariums lining the wall where at least a hundred infected salmon banged around. Their eyes were blood red. They had a sickly anemic color to their bodies. Some of the carcasses floated on the top, parasites swimming in the mix as well. They'd infected them by dropping in infected human blood and that was all it took. Less than an hour and they were fully matured hosts.

But fish were useless! What was he going to do with an army of rabid salmon? Launch an aquatic attack on millions of people who existed on
land
? Perhaps if he could make them grow feet, then it was a feasible option.

He barked another laugh, getting fearful looks from the scientists in the room. Adam gestured to the bodies. "Why are these still in here?"

A woman wearing a ridiculous pink tiara chewed on her lip before answering. "Sorry, Dr. Baker, sir."

She shoved a young gentlemen next to her, who looked normal save for his bloody eyes, and shouted at him to start taking the dogs out. He obeyed and started dragging them, one foot in each hand, from the room.

"Where the hell are we with this?" Adam demanded. "Why aren't we seeing any fucking progress?"

By the look on her face, Adam knew she had no idea. Mostly his "scientists" were people who could function in the most basic way. Some had experience in their previous life. They followed precise directions to the best of their ability but weren't what they once were. He knew the woman, Jean, had or was getting a PhD at UW. She was younger than him by a lot and he admired her drive to pursue a difficult field. During the few times he had the chance to give guest lectures at the university, he remembered speaking to her.

She was still a pretty woman, infected and all. Adam liked the way she looked, and even more so now despite her dumb, parasite-addled brain. He loved what Anisakis Nova did for mankind, but at times like this he was resentful. Why couldn't all of them be like him? Enlightened but still intelligent.

Jean chewed her lip so hard it bled. Adam stepped forward, running his thumb over the wound. "I'm not mad. I just wish we could do more. We are going to be fighting the uninfected soon and we need a trump card. A weapon, something strong to wipe those bastards out."

"I have an idea," she whispered. "A really good one."

Something in her shifted. The bumbling yet antsy woman took a step closer towards Adam, her chest grazing his own. She reached forward and pulled his lab coat to the side, letting her fingers drop to his pants.

"Jean, as much as I like you, I'm really fucking busy," Adam said, but didn't move away.

She frowned. "Get me pregnant. Don't you want to know what will happen? We're both infected. Anisakis Nova is part of us. What would a child born to us be like? Don't you want to know? We've tried animals, fish, adults, and children. We've tried so many things, but why not this?"

“
What
?”

The suggestion was abrupt. Adam glanced at the people left in the room. All eyes were on him. After a moment, he ordered them to leave.

The clarity was beautiful. She explained her reasons again and the words were crystal clear in Adam's mind.
Of course
. It could result in death, or it could result in something magnificent. He really didn't know. Adam was waiting for the next step in human evolution, yet he'd forgotten to address the idea of reproduction. So stupid! He doubted anyone had thought of it before.

And Jean? Perhaps she wasn't as dumb as he thought. He grabbed her by the hips, grinding his own into hers. Suddenly she became much more attractive to him.

9 – Jean

Jean felt it move inside of her abdomen, already active after only a few days. It was growing quickly, just as she expected. Like the parasite within her, she was conscious of it. The average human female was incapable of knowing they were pregnant this soon. Yet the subtle feeling of movement inside of her—energy shifting—was undeniable.

This was good. Very good.

In her life before, she didn't have kids. Children and husbands were a waste of time. Dogmatic. She was working on her PhD at the University of Washington and made that her life. She enjoyed it. That sentiment changed since she became infected. When the parasite took over, from the very beginning, the first thing on her mind was to reproduce. It seemed obvious to her and she wondered why people weren't doing it yet. She was torn between a part of herself that knew it was a bad idea and the other, primal part, which needed to procreate.

Before becoming part of Adam Baker's group, she conducted little experiments of her own to see what came of infected reproducing. She'd lure men and women to her house under the pretext of needing help (it worked better than she thought it would) and after incapacitating and restraining them, infected one and made them breed.

The infected men couldn't impregnate an uninfected woman. She would become infected and it never resulted in a pregnancy. Jean tried the experiment fifteen times. She called it quits, though there was plenty more room for trials.

She didn't want to risk her own life in pregnancy before knowing exactly how it would be, so the next step was to breed two infected. At this point, infected were in hiding for the most part and she had to create two herself. She asked them to breed. There was no forcing involved. They did it willingly.

No pregnancy. There were ten attempts after that, all resulting in no impregnation. Four managed to become pregnant, but miscarried a pulpy mess days after copulation.

Then came her miracle couple. Both were complete sadistic fiends who had remarkable control of their impulses. They were unlike the other oafish infected she used before.

Jean made them breed and the woman became pregnant. Months later she went into labor and delivered...a thing. Something. The result was horrifying. The baby was a monstrosity, a melding of human and parasite that was grotesque even to her.

But it was strong. In four days it had grown six inches and had an animistic spark in its eyes that made her wonder if it had true human intelligence. In another week, it was walking, stalking through the basement so quietly it frightened Jean. It had mannerisms exactly like its parents. The man always lolled his head in circles before lashing out at the woman. The woman liked to snap her jaws at people when she was angry. Their kin did these things, too. It was learned.

Wanting to raise the thing herself, she sent the parents away. They had no concern for their offspring and the parting was mutual. They were infected, thirsting for violence like them all, and needed to satiate it. The man told her they weren’t willing to indulge her forever and the woman didn’t like their child. Jean worried they might harm it. If she raised it herself, she'd have more control.

The day it tried to kill her, her opinion changed. She boarded the basement door, set fire to the house, and left. She had her answers. It was possible for two infected to conceive. While she wasn't sure why the spawn tried to kill her, since she didn't do anything to it, she still wanted to have one of her own. It was an impulse now. Her own offspring might respond better to her. Jean regretted sending the birth mother away. It was shortsighted of her, especially when she considered how the spawn emulated their behavior.

Having nowhere to go, but with a plan on her mind, she wandered. After walking around Tacoma for a day, she found Adam. It was then she knew he would be the one who would impregnate her.

Jean had a theory—and good theories were hard for her to form, since most of the time her brain wanted her to kill and dismember people—that a child with him would be different. They were both in control of their minds and bodies more than other infected were. More than her miracle couple. Some were absolutely insane, some exploded, and the top 1% were like them. She was sure their breeding would result in a better child. They would teach it. Mold it. With them as models to learn from, the spawn would be capable of amazing things.

Once she gave birth to the child, she would take precautionary measures to ensure both their safety. She would restrain it, of course, and study it. She would assess its strength. Lead by example.

Her baby would be better. It was, after all,
hers.