Parasite Lost

Parasite Lost Chapter 8

It was no secret to anyone in the facility that security officer Apate Nevermore and Dr. Gideon Amontillado were together, but they did their best to keep things professional all the same. Public displays of affection were rare, almost to where it seemed like they made a conscious effort to ignore or put off one another instead of expressing their admiration. No one was fooled.

Due to conflicts of interest, most relationships were discouraged on expensive and important research projects such as this. Only because of Apate and Gideon's exceeding professionalism, and the fact they were in separate departments, did the administrative body permit them to work together.

Gideon had proposed to her shortly before arriving at the research facility that was to become their home for the next six to twelve months. Apate was overjoyed and accepted. They agreed to keep their engagement a secret until after the contract was complete and Gideon promised to make up for his poor timing by absconding with her to Pacifica, arguably the most popular, and expensive, luxury planet getaway in the solar system, once the contract was fulfilled.

By no means did this quench their passion for each other and despite their attempts at being responsible lovers Apate was pregnant within a few months. At first she didn't tell Gideon because she wanted to be absolutely sure and, gods forbid, should anything happen to the baby during the early stages of pregnancy, she didn't want to have that weigh on Gideon's mind during his research. Then the project took an unexpected turn.

Some of the infected miners Gideon studied complained of severe headaches and suffered from intense muscle spasms. 1264A, the name Gideon coined to refer to the infection, began to attack the central nervous system of the infected and their bodies were shutting down. Most of the miners suffered a gradual descent into paralysis, foreshadowed by the splitting head pain and sporadic muscle twitching. More and more miners slipped into comas before death. If they were lucky, the infected would die in their sleep from brain aneurysms or heart failure. Scientists studying the infection had trouble figuring out why. Not everyone died peacefully.

Some of the miners, the ones that lived through their coma, began vomiting blood. At first this appalled everyone involved, but upon closer study the scientists became fascinated with the act, Gideon in particular. He was the first to make the connection between the airborne parasites and their relation to the vomiting.

Gideon hypothesized that the host would inhale spores of the parasite, which would then lodge in the tissue of the lungs. Once inside the lungs the spores used the blood and nutrients of the host to incubate and undergo mitosis to form the next stage of the parasite's life cycle and spread through the rest of the body at its leisure. It would chew through the tissue of the lungs and cause the host to bleed internally. The pooled blood would feed the new zygotes and help them develop further to create new spores. Part of a grotesque form of pollination, the host would vomit the blood and attempt to spread the new spores to a different host. When Gideon made this connection, he immediately asked for approval to test on animals for further study.

Apate remembered him being very upset about an ultimatum the funding company had provided and he refused to give her any details for fear of violating their contract and risk getting one of them removed from the project. This would have been particularly devastating since Apate was only a month or two away from having their child. Now forced to delegate most of her duties, Apate had assumed more of an administrative position than she was used to. She always preferred to be active. She liked to be doing something productive, such as patrolling or dealing with physical confrontation personally, but until she had the baby she would have to resign herself to paperwork and patiently watching security cameras.

Tensions were running high because the last few surviving miners had undergone some radical changes in the previous weeks. Their nails and teeth turned jagged and black. Each miner complained about internal pains as well, a common note being that their 'bones hurt', and they were all becoming very testy. X-rays revealed that the miners' bones were actually growing. Bone density had almost doubled, and the bones were growing out towards the flesh in spiny tendrils. This would have accounted for the pain and possibly the increased aggression if every movement they made were as painful as they claimed. Animal testing hadn't reached that stage in 1264A's life cycle yet, so it was difficult to draw any conclusions.