Endosymbiosis

4. Emergency

She opened her iatric bag and practically dove into it. Apparently she really wanted to get out of here, to the point of trusting me.

I had always seen iatrics like hospital pieces, placed there even before the pillars of the construction and consistent as if they were always going to be there. I never imagined that one of them would want to run away so badly... Maybe, deep down, everyone did.

"I only have a scalpel..." She held up the blade, which gleamed under the garage light like her eyes as if they were made of the same material and did to men the same.

"It should be enough."

I chose an ambulance - a victim - and squeezed myself between it and the ground, while the iatric crouched beside me to see what I was doing, frighteningly curious. She seemed to be the type of person who wouldn't give up until she knew everything... But not everything she would know about me.

I looked for the ship's panel and connected the wire I had implanted in my forearm - my enhancement - ​​to the vehicle's controls and, as if talking to the soul of the machine, I ordered it to open the doors.

"Done." Then I got up.

The iatric stared at me as if I was wrong, but then I opened the ambulance door like a gentleman would and she cracked a smile like those gems men got in trouble for. It didn't last long, however, because the seriousness of the obligation soon took her face.

"Now we need to unlock the garage." She said.

"And do we need a key for that too?"

"No." She stared at the distant gate which separated us from the infinite beyond, where so much freedom existed that sometimes I didn't even know what to do with it. "To unlock the door is required the blood of two individuals of the same species..."

And when her eyes returned to me, I saw something in her that I hadn't been able to decipher until now, something familiar that you don't expect to find in a stranger, because you never look for it. Maybe she'd spent months - or even years - in that place, looking for a way out that was within her fingertips but impossible to reach. And now that I was here, a leaky lifeboat, she couldn't let herself waste a single minute.

"They decided this so that if anyone wanted to run away, they would clean the hospital of species that weren't determined to work..." She explained. "And then they made promises to those who stayed..."

A painful silence engulfed the garage, which, at some point, I took it upon myself to break:

"But are you sure we are both really human?" She raised an eyebrow. "Because, looking closer, you seem kind of alien..."

She laughed and punched me softly in the shoulder.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

The iatric then walked to an opening beside the garage door, took the scalpel and placed it on the tip of her finger, breaking the skin barrier to spill a drop of blood. She handed me the blade and watched my blood drip onto the tray like liquid gold, mingling with hers and opening the first garage door.

We turned to head back to the ambulance, when a curtain of white mist began to trickle down from the ventilation tunnels near the ceiling, pooling in a pale carpet on the floor. We stared at each other.

They knew we were there.

We ran to the ambulance as the fog level rose rapidly, engulfing us in the currents of a milky river. I was in front of the iatric, maybe because my stride was longer, or maybe because I was used to running away from everything, but then I started to get slower, as if weights had been strapped to my ankles. When I looked down, the fog was already up to my waist and my feet seemed so far away that each command took ten times longer to reach them.

My face turned to the ambulance, drowned now by the fog. It seemed so far away... Almost as if the space was widening between me and my goal. The floor and walls appeared to move around, trying to pull me and drown me in the flooded ground.

The gas was already in my chin when I yelled to the iatric behind me:

"What does this gas do?!"

But I didn't received an answer.

I faced the white sea behind me... And realized I was alone.

She had already disappeared into the mist.

And, before I could say anything else, my legs gave out and I dove too.

• • • ֍ • • •

The gas did not knock me unconscious, as I had imagined, but it immobilized me.

Every part of my body had become tons heavier, my eyes taken by the white curtain where blurred shadows moved. Far away, the iatric was also on the floor, trying to get up, unsuccessfully. A figure stepped in front of me, so close that I could see his black chelicerae, escaping the sides of the mask that shielded him from the mist. His body was a lime green blur with tiny rivers beneath the transparent skin, and, between his claws, rested one of the best weapons in the Empire - something that would have made my life so easier if I'd had it in my hands hours ago.

Several beings like that surrounded us and one that appeared to be made of jelly crawled towards the iatric. He stopped in front of her and vibrated in strange patterns, as if there was an earthquake only he could feel. Maybe he was saying something, but I couldn't make it out, while the guns pointed at my face conveyed the message quite clearly.

At some point I heard the iatric's voice rise above the tormenting silence, talking to the jelly:

"And that was a mistake..."

What? Was she surrendering?!

My fist clenched, slowly regaining control of my body... But then my ears were drowned by the dry, powerful sound of a gunshot.

Not again...

The sound. The blood. My father.

Me running away... Instincts taking me far when I didn't want to go. My heart pumping more alive than the rest of me felt...

The pain. My mistake...

The strength returned to my body in an explosion, and then exceeded.

What ran through my veins - the fear, the fury, the parasite - took control... A monster beneath my skin that would not only make me survive more than I ever would alone, but so much more...

His power exploded out of me, tearing everything in his path as if my skin were made of wrapping paper, while my mind kept intertwined with his. Before, he had been hidden in me, but now it was me who was buried in the depths, unable to see the boundaries where he ended and I began. My hands were no longer human, because they held a power no human should have and burned in a warning that told me that those claws didn't just belong to me. The creature's strength burned my core, demanding to be used in the most profound destruction... And I couldn't contain it.

He could do anything, and, being as much a part of me as a foreigner, he turned me into a god of death. I could open cracks in the earth, raise mountain ranges, blow up continents, devour worlds, recreate them, understand the universe and criticize it. There were no questions I would dare to ask, because there were no more doubts, no limits, no fear... Because nothing was scarier than me.

My limbs became frighteningly powerful, propelling me with each leap as if I were lighter - albeit much bigger. I flew, spreading thunder with each shock of my paws to the ground, and lunged at the armed guards.

Before, I had thought they were monstrous. But now they were so easy to devour...

The green liquid beneath their transparent surfaces painted my vision like insects squished into the windshield of my teeth with an explosion of unfamiliar flavors. I felt the addictive taste of their fear in every inch of the mouth I shared with the beast, the scent of their dread, the terror in every cry... And I was salivating.

What had the beast done to me?

I felt like a powerfull monster, as much as an intruder in myself as I was in this universe...

And, for a moment, I considered that I really was the parasite.