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Parasitic Infection

S he was as equally nervous for the bio-terror apocalypse as she was for her first shift since her life went through the rabbit hole, over the rainbow, and launched her into Neverland. Equal because she hadn’t really had any other apocalypses to reference, so this bioterror might as well be like the first time she started working at the ER. Could she stick a vein? Would she find her supplies? But unlike her first first day, a new question arose. Would she have enough beds ready if the Bloodsucker succeeded? One problem at a time…

With Vincent and Tobias off to work, she prepared for her job alone, just like her pre-boyfriend life—except this time in the underground hideout beneath the hospital. But when she stepped out of the shower alcove, Vincent waited for her. No mask or cape but still wearing his protective body suit. Like this, he seemed like a mermaid or centaur or other half human/half other creature .

“I thought you’d be en guarde at the arena by now,” she said, dressing in her scrubs.

“I’ll return there in due time, but I wanted to see you in case—”

“In case the world goes to shit?”

His mouth twitched into a crooked smile. Wordless, he handed her a wrapped box, small enough to hold earrings or a ring—God, if it was a ring, she had a right hook with his name on it. On a day like today, he’d pull a stunt like that?

She tore off the paper and flipped open the lid. It’d be better to get moments like this out of the way.

It was silver… and shaped like a large bean.

“An earpiece,” she said. Not exactly the jewelry she had expected. But of course, he operated beyond predictability, didn’t he?

He pressed the earpiece; his suit glowed. “It’s wired to me so wherever I go, you go.” Adding a shrug, he said, “And Quinlan. He has a watch.”

Even separated, she would always be by his side. Marisol put it in her ear. “Jewelry isn’t allowed on the patient floor.”

“I’m sure your supervisor can make an exception. After all, I know the guy whose name is on the building.”

“I got something for you too.”

“Really?”

Not exactly, but she reached back and unclasped Abuelita’s necklace from around her neck. She placed it in Vincent’s hand. “My abuelita wore it until she was in hospice. Said it didn’t belong in the ground with her. Las semillas de la fe crecen por encima del suelo.” Faith’s seeds grow above ground. “Not sure if it’s lucky but—”

“It’s powerful.”

“It’s what you make it.”

He kissed the pendant and tucked it into a small compartment on his utility belt. She began combing her hair into a ponytail, but Vincent stopped her, tying the low ponytail himself. With a few brushes of his hands, he kept the earpiece hidden behind her hair. After he tightened her ponytail, he kissed her neck, below her ear, jawline, and then lips—a kiss so strong she’d jump up on him and forget the whole world-saving business.

“She said something else too,” she mumbled between kisses.

“Hm?” His prompt challenged her to keep going as much as it invited her to answer.

She tugged the hair at the back of his head, and he jerked away. “Deber antes que devoción.”

Duty before devotion. He nodded, rubbing his lips together. Then, as if he conjured them from thin air, he pulled on his mask and cape. He had completely become him: her vengeance and darkness, her savior and lover. The city’s Patron Saint, her saint.

The wall opened, and he stepped to the other side .

She tapped the earpiece three times. His suit pulsed three times with blue bursts of light.

He looked back. “I love you too.” Boom! The wall closed.

She didn’t know Morse code, but Vincent knew their code. That’s all she needed.

A throat cleared in her ear, buzzing her earpiece, and a familiar nasal and gruff voice cut through. “My watch is lighting up. What’s up?”

“I’m off to work, old man.”

“Vinnie and I will keep it nice and boring for you.”

“You promise?”

“A wise woman said my promises don’t mean shit, but I’ll see what I can manage.”

Marisol emerged from the hidden basement onto the sidewalk packed with fans decked in the Rooks ’colors: black and royal blue. Perhaps Vincent disappeared so quickly because he looked like an overzealous fan. She headed upstream against the traffic of people. Cars crawled along, filling the air with smog and the smell of diesel. There’d be no easy escape once people packed in the arena. She touched her clavicle at the hollow where her necklace would rest. Vincent and Tobias had to succeed.

She picked up the pace toward the employee entrance. By the time she entered the emergency room, she was running.

“Novotny! You’re back!” the janitor said .

Marisol nodded. She wound through the hall; people greeted her with “Novotny!” as she passed.

Clocking in, she asked, “What kind of day are we having today?”

Nurse Rossi answered without looking up from her smart pad, “Superfans who can’t handle their liquor already occupy a handful of beds.” As she set the pad aside, she completed a double take. “Marisol!” Before Marisol had a chance to speak, Rossi hugged her tightly. “When we heard about the attack, we thought—”

“I’d retreat with my tail between my legs? It’s going to take a lot more to get rid of me.”

“They must love you if they make today your first back,” Rossi said with the sarcasm of every jaded worker in America.

The bosses may be piss-shitting assholes, but they were Marisol’s piss-shitting assholes. Showing up when the world could end was her act of love. She placed her hands on her hips and flicked up her chin. Her invisible cape flapped in a gust of central air. “I go where I’m needed.”

But apparently, the sleepiest shift of her career needed her as she monitored saline solution bags and bandaged minor contusions. And—yes—she could stick a vein on the first try. Almost an hour in, and all she practiced was the type of first aid she’d been capable of since elementary school. However, Marisol worked enough ER shifts to treat calm with suspicion. Stillness in the Spring always warned that a storm was brewing .

Her earpiece rattled. “I see him!” Tobias said. He panted, probably running. “Freeze!”

Marisol ducked behind a corner to drown out the beeps and whirs of the hospital. She cupped her hand to her other ear.

“He complied. This is too ea—” Tobias gasped. Marisol dug her fingernails into her palms. “It’s not him.” After a faint ripping noise—duct tape from flesh?—a man shouted in the background. Tobias’s breathing became a wheeze. “There’s more of them. He’s got those weird parasite masks on people everywhere!”

“On it,” Vincent said robotically.

“Holy fireworks! He’s got explosives strapped to him. All the Bloodsuckers do.” He took a deep breath and shouted, “Everybody clear the area!”

The crowd screamed. A series of loud pops followed.

“Tobias!” Marisol clapped her hand to her mouth.

“Novotny,” Dr. Foster said with a sigh, “there you are. Come here! Something’s happening at the arena.”

Marisol moved to the massive room with curtains partitioning patient beds into temporary cubicles. Patients and medical personnel alike huddled to view the small flat screen television bolted to the corner of the ceiling.

Live footage from the arena showed hives of people scattering to the exits. Some barreled over the chairs. Others stumbled onto the court and ran away with the players.

The sportscaster said, “There appears to be some masked terrorists attacking the arena. People heard shots fired at the north end of the arena.”

Rossi gripped Marisol’s arm. “Why would anyone do this?”

Marisol could answer a lot after this week, but figuring why was a whole other conundrum. Appearing to brush a strand of her hair, she tapped at the earpiece. No sign of Tobias or Vincent.

“The crowd’s moving over there,” the sportscaster announced.

Marisol watched the corner of the television. The people parted calmly and synchronized. Darting through the pathway? Vincent on his motorcycle, dragging a gaggle of Bloodsuckers behind him.

“It appears some masked hero tied up the group and is helping the crowd move out of the arena,” the sportscaster said.

Marisol snuck a smile.

The broadcast showed Vincent tying the Bloodsuckers around a thick, rectangular column by driving his motorcycle in a circle.

“I transmitted a wave that would calm people. The crowd will leave the arena in an orderly fashion, so no one gets hurt. A quick body scan says none of these decoys have the virus,” Vincent announced over the earpiece. “Bomb squad’s on the way.”

“I swear I came in with this bruise!” The camera captured a giant man in a black trench coat tended by an EMT half his size. “Gonna take more than firecrackers to stop me.” Marisol leaned into Rossi as a rush of relief weakened her knees.

The television scrambled into broken pixels. The announcement broke into popping vowel sounds. Digital boxes moved across the screen until they finally settled on an image. Circular rows. Of teeth.

“You think it was that easy?” Ruthven asked. Marisol cracked a knuckle at the sound of that voice.

“He’s in the press box,” Tobias whispered, tickling Marisol’s ear drum.

On the TV screen, the Bloodsucker held up a triggering device that must be harnessed to the explosives strapped to his decoys. “I am a god. I’ll be your destroyer.” Though Vincent had stunned the crowd with a calming hypnotic wave, her earpiece caught their screams and whimpers from a new round of fear.

The Bloodsucker continued on the broadcast, “But I will be your creator too. It was me who ripped those good-for-nothing gangbangers from limb to limb. It was me who made this place safer. And when I’m through, it will be me you’ll thank when I take this city into the stratosphere! ”

Crash! Glass confetti sprinkled over the parasitic face on the television. Vincent had stormed into the press box, swinging from a cable. He knocked the Bloodsucker to the floor. The whole crowd cheered. Even a patient on the floor squeezed his fist into a Yes!

In the camera frame, Vincent threw the blue electromagnetic bolas. They locked up the Bloodsucker. “I have a place for bottom feeders like you,” Vincent said with a growl while pulling the connecting wires off the trigger. From his utility belt, he drew a small remote. After a high-pitched chirp, the transmission on the television cut out. “The trigger’s disconnected,” he said over the earpiece.

Marisol’s body unclenched, leaving her limbs a clammy, wet noodle. Without the television, the crowd on the patient floor dissipated. Patients limped back to their beds; staff helped them.

Dr. Foster barked, “Have more than enough supplies and beds ready. Patients will arrive from the arena!” But Marisol stood in a daze, concentrating on the melee in her ears rather than the ER.

Vincent boomed through her earpiece. “Ruthven isn’t here. Another decoy. That voice was a recording.”

Tobias said, “I think I see him. He’s in an EMT uniform, that rat fuck!” Rough shuffles jostled over the tiny speaker. Out of breath, he added, “Vinnie? Marisol? It’s been nice knowing you.” He grunted rhythmically to a running pace, but it became erratic like the chaotic thumping of a struggle. Then static, click , and nothing.

“Quinlan, come in. Quinlan?” Vincent called. “I can’t reach him, but I can track his movements. How is he moving through the crowd so quickly?”

Marisol said, “If he’s after Ruthven…”

“Right. I’ll follow his signal. He’s heading west, away from the arena.”

Marisol inched closer to the blank screen in the room’s corner. She begged it to turn back on, to give her answers. Police cars, ambulances, all must be flooding the streets. Not to mention the game-day traffic and fans. If Ruthven moved while the whole city was at a standstill, all attention would be on the arena and… not on the actual target.

What if Ruthven only wanted Vincent to think he’d attack the Rooks’ Legacy Game? Where would he plant the virus to hurt the city the most?

“I found him. Quinlan, that is. He’s pointing to his wrist. The watch. It isn’t on him! Then who is heading west?”

“Vincent, if Ruthven’s out to destroy you, where would he hurt you? At the greatest thing you ever accomplished. Your legacy. The—”

“Hospital,” Vincent said. “I’m on my way.”

With the city in a stranglehold, they couldn’t get buses here to evacuate the hospital in time. But she had to keep patients away from Ruthven. Perhaps Fate shone when Vincent built this hospital in the heart of the Cold War. Infrastructure was old and needed updating, but not the bomb shelters below.

Marisol ran to the nurse’s station and flicked on the intercom. “Attention. Code 5. Follow the signs down the stairs to the shelter. If you need assistance, staff will help you. I repeat, this is a Code 5.”

Dr. Foster ripped the cord from the desk. “Of all the things Novotny, this takes the cake.”

“I have it on good authority that the hospital is under attack.” Marisol gripped the intercom and tugged it back.

“You have it on good authority?” Dr. Foster’s nose wrinkled high enough, Marisol could observe the doctor’s frontal lobe.

“I may be a pain in your ass, but have I ever been wrong?”

Dr. Foster stopped, slack-jawed. She looked at the stripped end of the cord she ripped out, threw the intercom down, and pulled the fire alarm. Pointing to another nurse, she ordered, “Get to the intercom in oncology and repeat the message.” She wiggled her nose. “You’re either right or a felon.”

Over her earpiece, Vincent said, “I have binoculars set on his location but no luck locating. The tracker is moving in strange zig zags.”

Unable to spot moving through the crowd? How had she and Tobias moved around undetected ?

By going underground.

“He learned from us. He’s using the sewers!” That she said a little too loud before wheeling a wide-eyed patient in an oxygen mask toward the crowd at the elevators. Marisol felt torn in two as her body ran and cleared patients, her mind honed on Ruthven weaving ever closer toward the hospital.

“I programmed a home team advantage. Staci, enact hospital security.”

The computerized feminine voice, the same as the motorcycle, echoed through the halls of the hospital. “Security initiated.” The hospital rumbled as metal shutters covered the entrances and windows.

“That won’t keep him out, but it will slow him down until I get there.” The slow start of the helicopter pulsed in the background.

“We’re moving patients to the bomb shelters,” Marisol said.

“My computer can access the electronic locks. If you get patients behind the fire doors, that will keep him away from them.”

Boom! The shutters bent and crunched at the entrance.

Marisol swallowed. “Hurry.” She rushed over to stop Nurse Rossi. “Whatever patients we can’t get down in the shelter, you get them past the fire doors and far from here.” Rossi hugged her and took off with her oxygen patient .

Marisol jogged to an empty room and stuffed a scalpel into her pockets. Now she needed tranquilizers, anything to weaken the monster behind those shutters. Only this time, she didn’t have her brother’s gang for back up.

A hand touched her elbow. “What should I do?” Dr. Foster asked.

No, this time Marisol had her hospital gang. “Get me a handful of our strongest people and barricade that entrance with a hospital bed. We need to get ready for what’s behind that door!” Boom!

Marisol raced to the pharmacy, swiped her keycard, and filled a syringe with ketamine to its limit. She joined Dr. Foster, two orderlies, and a nurse at the hospital bed they dragged to the door. Her rocketing beats per minute qualified her for a tachycardia diagnosis.

Boom! And the skip in her heart, arrhythmia. Ruthven tore away the shutter like a piece of tinfoil. He burst through the last layer of glass.

But he had no place here.

“Ram him!” Marisol and the staff bombarded Ruthven with the bed, knocking him to the ground. They upturned the bed, and all sat on it to pin him to the ground.

He squirmed under the weight of the bed. Marisol jabbed the syringe in his neck and squeezed the plunger. Ruthven grabbed at his neck; Marisol reached into his EMT jacket and felt a small cylinder in his pocket. She ripped the nylon pocket and held up the cylinder. Strange to see something so sinister appear empty, but behind a thick canister, she had the weaponized influenza.

Ruthven’s squirming soon became thrashing. He had already metabolized the tranquilizer. “Run!” Marisol shouted to her ragtag crew, and they scattered behind the security of the fire doors. The doors locked with an electric click.

Marisol sprinted into the elevator and smacked the buttons for the door to shut. Too many buttons. She headed only to the third floor.

Ruthven threw the bed. He stalked toward the closing doors. She shut her eyes.

Ping! Ruthven’s fist dented the shut door.

She released her breath, having two floors to collect herself. “Vincent? I got the virus.”

“I’m almost there,” Vincent’s voice assured in her ear. “I’ll get you to the thirteenth floor. But first, a little help.” The elevator stopped and something metallic encased the car.

She scanned the panel for a button to push. “There isn’t a number thirteen.”

“It’s a dummy floor. It has a ladder to take you to the roof. How do you think I get around in secret?”

The elevator arrived on the third floor, opening to a wall of metal that reinforced the car. Fists thundered against it. Her eardrums shattered.

Ruthven found her, and she couldn’t avoid him for ten more floors. Marisol hopped up the elevator walls. She popped open the light on the car with her elbow and crawled through it, carefully placing it back.

Clomp. Clomp . Footsteps below. Then silence. Marisol held her breath.

The ceiling light burst up like an explosion. Marisol crawled over the side and squeezed into the crack between the car and the wall. Something clambered after her. Her back to the wall and legs pressing against the car, she lowered herself and gripped the thin brackets at the underside of the car. The stripped skin of her fingers stung as she dangled over the darkness. Her Hell would always be an elevator shaft.

A low grunt echoed after her. Its source disappeared back into the car. The car ascended to the next floor, arriving with a Ding! Stopping suddenly wrenched her biceps. Nine more floors to go. The footsteps faded down the floor above. She exhaled. “I’m hanging off the elevator car. Please tell me you’re close.”

“He’s in the stairwell. I’ll give you a boost. Hold on tight.”

She squeezed her abs, lifted her legs, and dug her toes into something to relieve the pressure on her hands. The elevator moved up at a clip, gaining speed with each floor. Six bells.

The elevator gradually slowed with a splintering squeal. The car stopped. She shimmied back between the car and the wall. One hand and foot pressed against the car and the other against the wall. Her limbs trembled from exhaustion, but she scaled up the wall and crawled into an open mouth lined in steel.

The hidden thirteenth floor.

“Follow that tunnel to the ladder. I’ll meet you on the roof.”

Ahead, a faint sheet of light blemished the dark. That must be the ladder to the roof.

Metal crunched and thundered behind her. She jumped with a start.

“He found me,” Marisol whispered.

“According to my tracking, he’s looking for you on the twelfth floor. Climb to the roof.”

Marisol touched the cylinder in her front pocket and ran to the light. She looked up to follow the light source. It ended in a tiny dot above, the way to the roof. By stairs, the distance would be nothing, but straight up in darkness with her jelly-like limbs? Even she felt the sick throb of vertigo.

She grasped the ribbed rung of the ladder. Plunk! Plunk! Her feet reverberated off the bars.

Halfway there, her lungs felt blistered. She pressed her forehead to the cool metal. While breathing through her nose and out of her mouth, she craned her neck to see the ever-approaching circle of light.

Dark tunnel. Meager light. Her brain hit a scratch in the record again. Her memory replayed her leg snapping from the fall. The phantom pain of it hooked into her gut, causing her “bad” leg to give out like it just happened. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said.

“I see the roof. Stay where you are.”

Her sneakers screeched against the walls while she kicked to find her footing. Helicopter blades thundered above her but farther away, as if she was underwater. Her fingers slipped, and the ribbed metal sliced into her palms.

A small and soft hand grabbed her ankle and placed it on a rung. With her footing regained, Marisol hugged herself to the rung and shook her sore hands out. The hand at her ankle? Where did it come from?

“Annie?” Marisol asked into the darkness below.

A shadow entered the circle of light. It had to be Vincent. Marisol touched the vial and scalpel rolling in her pocket and charged farther up the tunnel. The sun hit her eyes. Something lifted her out of the tunnel by her left arm onto the roof. She blinked away the blocks of darkness to find thin lips and gritted teeth.

“You have something of mine,” Ruthven said.

“And you took her from me.” Marisol reached into her pocket.

“The doctor?”

“Say her name, you son of a bitch!” She plunged the scalpel below his ribs.

He dropped her. Marisol fell to her knees and scrambled behind the mammoth-sized metal tubes of the duct system that snaked across the roof. She patted her pocket for the cylinder.

Nothing.

She peered over the duct to see the cylinder rolling where Ruthven writhed. Badum! Badum! Her heart rose to her ears. She dove for it. Badum! Badum! Ruthven pulled the scalpel from his side. Badum! Badum! She pinched the cylinder between her fingers. Badum! Badum! He dragged her toward him, raising the bloody scalpel…

Smack! Vincent, hanging from a cable off his helicopter, kicked Ruthven. Marisol’s muscles unwound with relief at once. Ruthven stumbled to his feet and ripped scaffolding off the ductwork. He swung the club-like piece at Vincent.

As fluid as a shadow, Vincent weaved and darted to avoid the attack. Midhack, Vincent grabbed Ruthven’s wrist in the air and cracked it against the galvanized steel of the duct. His bones shattered into a limp squid. As Ruthven’s hand tried to pop back into place, Vincent crunched it in his fist. Pride vibrated through her as her dark savior enacted her vengeance.

With his other arm, Ruthven swung wildly and erratically, wobbling his balance. Vincent led him to the roof’s ledge. While Ruthven struggled to center his gravity, Vincent whipped the bolas above his head.

Ruthven attempted to strike, missed, and toppled off the ledge. How would he mend together after bursting like a meat balloon ?

But her merciful Patron Saint released the bolas and caught the falling Ruthven. In a last-ditch effort, Ruthven flexed to break the cable, but Vincent tapped the remote at his utility belt.

The magnetic force squeezed Ruthven tighter.

The helicopter hovered above them. Vincent clipped the cable to its landing skid. “I’m taking him home.”

“Don’t forget your bioweapon.” Marisol held up the cylinder.

Vincent tucked the cylinder into a compartment on his belt. With the Bloodsucker bound and dangling off a cable, the virus was in safe hands. She earned the gloat about to escape from her lips.

But Vincent wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her in for a kiss. The impact stung with a jolt of electricity.

Marisol’s eyes popped open in surprise. But damn, it was that good kind of unexpected. In the corner of her eye, Ruthven strained and climbed up the building, using only his legs. The wind picked up. The surrounding temperature cooled. Ruthven lowered his head and charged at them. She mumbled a warning against those lips. “Vincent, look—”

Zzzz! Lightning pierced through the sky and hit Ruthven square in the chest .

Their mouths separated. Breathless and wide-eyed, they stared at each other and the knocked-out Ruthven.

“Did we do that?” Marisol asked.

“I think so,” Vincent answered with a boyish grin. Boyish. As if in his 500-plus years of living as a superhuman, he finally witnessed something unexplained and miraculous.

Vincent grabbed on to the landing skid and reached out his hand. “You can come with me.”

Marisol stepped back. “I have a shift to finish.”

“And that’s why I love you.” He climbed into the cockpit. She tapped her earpiece four times. The helicopter headed toward the horizon.

The door to the roof burst open. Marisol gasped before Tobias fell out of it, winded and holding his chest. “I just ran the whole way. I think... I think I’m going to barf.”

“Missed the big catch.” Marisol held out her arms. “He was this big.”

He spat on the ground and settled into a smile. “You did good, kid.”

“You did, too, old man.” She hugged him around his neck, standing on tiptoes. Before he could break away, she cupped his stubbled face in her hands. He closed his eyes and bowed his head. She pulled him closer and kissed him gently on his bruised eyelid. His eyebrows perked up.

As he straightened back up, grinning, his blackeye had faded into a wine-colored stain. Yeah right, he couldn’t heal that quickly. It had to be some trick of the shadows.

She tilted her head to get him to follow her back inside. “We have a lot of patients to move, old man. You can try the elevator, but I’m taking the stairs.”

And there wasn’t much to wheeling scads of patients back to their rooms or cordoned areas. Some needed an extra hand squeeze, others an extra hug. Even more needed a heated blanket to make it through the night. A few asked about the big guy who followed her around. Tobias, a friend, wasn’t fitting enough, so she told them, “Oh him? He’s family.”

But no one asked questions when Vincent Varian arrived and offered to help. They were too speechless, including her. The man looked straight out of a fashion magazine with his jeans and jacket curated just for this moment and his angelic hair tousled just so. The scent of sandalwood lingered behind him. That and a tinge of electricity.

The last place Marisol found Vincent Varian before she clocked out for the night was the children’s floor. He spun a child in a wheelchair under his arm. The child’s mouth burst wide with laughter.

And that’s why she loved him.