especially. They almost always feel slightly dislocated. It’s not pain, not exactly, it’s just the feeling that they’re loose, not perfectly attached. Whoever glued me together didn’t use enough.”
He grimaced. “Did you talk to Rosenberg about any of this?”
“Of course. She said it wasn’t in my head, it looked like everything has changed since the last time I was scanned, even my brain waves are changing… and she wants me to come back to Willow Creek. She wants to do more tests, more and more, until I’m nothing but tissue samples on a plate. I think she’d be happy to keep me there for the rest of my life.”
“I thought you liked her.”
“I do. But I’m this century’s equivalent of the Elephant Man. I am her medical legacy to the world, and I’d be an idiot not to realize that.”
“That’s kinda conceited, you know.”
“I know. Am I wrong?”
Dee gazed at him steadily, for once at a loss for words, and then stood up, saying, “This is too heavy, I need a drink. Want one?”
“No, but thanks. I oughta get going.” He stood and wondered where he was going. Home, he supposed. Maybe he could stop at the store on the way home, pick some stuff up. Truth be told, he just liked wandering stores after midnight; it was his favorite time to shop. Almost no one was in the store, and those who were seemed as strange as you. It was a gathering place for the lonely, the desperate, and the misanthropic; the bar of the ’00s.
“You have to tell Dylan.”
He sighed heavily. “Yeah, I know, but he’s gonna tell me he loves me no matter what, and I don’t want to hear that. I want him to call me a freak and leave while he still can. Talk to him, see if you can wake up his sense of self-preservation.”
“Didn’t you just say he was the only thing keeping you Human?”
“Yeah, but maybe he shouldn’t. Straddling two worlds is killing me.”
At the door, when Roan was halfway outside, Dee said, “So the virus is progressing. Maybe you just need a little more time to adapt to it. Just ’cause the lion’s winning the battle now doesn’t mean it will win the war.”
Roan didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. It was an interesting theory, but just a theory.
On his way down to the parking lot, his phone hummed in his pocket, and since it was Rosenberg, he answered it. “Yeah?”
“You bastard, you couldn’t let me stay home and have a drink and watch Star Trek repeats, huh? No, you have to get me involved in this farkakt case,” she said, pausing to take an angry drag off a cigarette.
“You watch Star Trek ?”
“This from the punk rock nerd. Don’t you start.”
“What’s so farkakt about the case? Besides the obvious.”
“Everything.”
“She still alive?”
“No, you were right, she didn’t make it. Died before I got here. Know what killed her?”
“The poison.”
“You’d think so, but no. Acute agranulocytosis.”
Roan paused at the bottom stair and sat down. “In English, please?”
“No white blood cells. None. Her bone marrow completely shut down. To be perfectly honest, it was probably a low-level staph infection that killed her, but it couldn’t have if she didn’t have acute agranulocytosis.”
He was now glad he had sat down. “So this was a preexisting condition? Many infecteds can get immune system disorders—”
“Not on her chart. On her chart, she was as healthy as a noninfected, and at twenty-two, you’d kinda hope.”
“You know who she is then?” Stupid question, but no one had told him yet.
“Yep. Ava Pagano, she’s listed as one of the women missing from the bachelorette party. Someone was relatively sober enough to tell the cops they didn’t know where Ava was, and your cop friend was smart enough to track her info down. We got a match. None of her friends—if you can call ’em that—even knew she was infected.”
“A recent infectee?”
“Maybe.”
“So she did enter the club
He grimaced. “Did you talk to Rosenberg about any of this?”
“Of course. She said it wasn’t in my head, it looked like everything has changed since the last time I was scanned, even my brain waves are changing… and she wants me to come back to Willow Creek. She wants to do more tests, more and more, until I’m nothing but tissue samples on a plate. I think she’d be happy to keep me there for the rest of my life.”
“I thought you liked her.”
“I do. But I’m this century’s equivalent of the Elephant Man. I am her medical legacy to the world, and I’d be an idiot not to realize that.”
“That’s kinda conceited, you know.”
“I know. Am I wrong?”
Dee gazed at him steadily, for once at a loss for words, and then stood up, saying, “This is too heavy, I need a drink. Want one?”
“No, but thanks. I oughta get going.” He stood and wondered where he was going. Home, he supposed. Maybe he could stop at the store on the way home, pick some stuff up. Truth be told, he just liked wandering stores after midnight; it was his favorite time to shop. Almost no one was in the store, and those who were seemed as strange as you. It was a gathering place for the lonely, the desperate, and the misanthropic; the bar of the ’00s.
“You have to tell Dylan.”
He sighed heavily. “Yeah, I know, but he’s gonna tell me he loves me no matter what, and I don’t want to hear that. I want him to call me a freak and leave while he still can. Talk to him, see if you can wake up his sense of self-preservation.”
“Didn’t you just say he was the only thing keeping you Human?”
“Yeah, but maybe he shouldn’t. Straddling two worlds is killing me.”
At the door, when Roan was halfway outside, Dee said, “So the virus is progressing. Maybe you just need a little more time to adapt to it. Just ’cause the lion’s winning the battle now doesn’t mean it will win the war.”
Roan didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. It was an interesting theory, but just a theory.
On his way down to the parking lot, his phone hummed in his pocket, and since it was Rosenberg, he answered it. “Yeah?”
“You bastard, you couldn’t let me stay home and have a drink and watch Star Trek repeats, huh? No, you have to get me involved in this farkakt case,” she said, pausing to take an angry drag off a cigarette.
“You watch Star Trek ?”
“This from the punk rock nerd. Don’t you start.”
“What’s so farkakt about the case? Besides the obvious.”
“Everything.”
“She still alive?”
“No, you were right, she didn’t make it. Died before I got here. Know what killed her?”
“The poison.”
“You’d think so, but no. Acute agranulocytosis.”
Roan paused at the bottom stair and sat down. “In English, please?”
“No white blood cells. None. Her bone marrow completely shut down. To be perfectly honest, it was probably a low-level staph infection that killed her, but it couldn’t have if she didn’t have acute agranulocytosis.”
He was now glad he had sat down. “So this was a preexisting condition? Many infecteds can get immune system disorders—”
“Not on her chart. On her chart, she was as healthy as a noninfected, and at twenty-two, you’d kinda hope.”
“You know who she is then?” Stupid question, but no one had told him yet.
“Yep. Ava Pagano, she’s listed as one of the women missing from the bachelorette party. Someone was relatively sober enough to tell the cops they didn’t know where Ava was, and your cop friend was smart enough to track her info down. We got a match. None of her friends—if you can call ’em that—even knew she was infected.”
“A recent infectee?”
“Maybe.”
“So she did enter the club
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