I offered him a wan smile. “Both your sisters,” I said. “She wanted you to know about both your sisters.”
“Yeah.” Adam’s relief was palpable. “She said you’d come find us one day, because you were her daughter, and her daughters were always going to be curious. It’s in the way we’re made.”
“I guess I have a lot to learn. You’re going to have to teach me, you know. I don’t really know much.”
Adam abruptly spread his arms and lunged forward, moving so fast that I didn’t have a chance to react before he was hugging me hard, his head resting on my shoulder and his arms locked around my chest. I stiffened until I realized what was going on, and then I relaxed, bit by bit, and even raised my own hands to return the hug as best I could.
“I’m going to be the best brother, you’ll see,” he said. “I’m going to teach you everything, and we’ll both be here when Tansy comes home, and then she’ll like you, because you’ll be with us, not living all by yourself. We’ve both been so worried about you!”
The funny thing was, I believed him… and I wanted him to be the best brother. I wanted a family, a family that was mine, not Sally’s castoffs and hand-me-downs. I breathed in and he breathed out, until bit by bit our breathing synchronized, and the pounding of the drums in my ears quieted, becoming nothing but the distant thudding of my heart. Adam let go, sitting back on his haunches. I dropped my hands back to the cot, just looking at him. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it; there were no words.
“Are you okay?” he asked solemnly.
“I don’t know,” I said. “This morning, I thought I was a human being, and I thought my friend Sherman was dead, and I thought… I thought a lot of things. Now everything is changing, and it’s changing so fast that I can’t really keep up. So I don’t know if I’m okay.” I paused. “But I think I’m going to be.”
Adam nodded. “Going to be is almost as good as is,” he said. “I’ll be here. I’ll help as much as I can.”
I smiled. “See, that right there makes me closer to okay. I’m glad I don’t have to do this alone.”
“Me, too.” He climbed off the cot, bare feet slapping the tile floor. “I need to go tell Mom you’re awake—she asked me to let her know as soon as you woke up, but I thought it was more important that we talk a little bit first. That was right, wasn’t it?”
“Right as rain,” I assured him. I peeled back the blanket, finding that I was as barefoot as Adam, although someone had dressed me in my shirt and jeans while I was unconscious. I stuck the fingers of one hand under my waistband, and decided that Nathan had dressed me. I couldn’t see Dr. Cale remembering to tell her interns to put my underwear back on. “Why don’t I come with you?”
This time Adam’s smile was almost bright enough to light the room.
There were more technicians around than I had seen on previous visits to Dr. Cale’s lab. They swarmed around the equipment like ants, some of them checking cultures or typing at workstations, while right next to them others broke down shelves and packed glassware with an eerily silent efficiency. Adam led me unflinchingly through their midst, his hand clasped tightly around mine, like he had absolute faith that nothing here could hurt either one of us. A few of the technicians turned as we passed, and while they seemed perfectly comfortable with looking directly at Adam, their eyes skittered off me like I’d been Teflon-coated while I was asleep.
Seeing my confusion, Adam said, “It’s because Mom finally told them you were my sister, and they’re all getting used to the idea. They knew there was a control subject in the wild, and I think a few people—like Daisy, maybe—sort of suspected that it was you, but suspecting isn’t the same as knowing, you know?”
Did I ever. “They know I’m really a tapeworm? And who’s Daisy?”
“She works for Mom, and everybody knows.” Adam nodded, seeming to think that this was perfectly normal. For him, it sort of was. SymboGen had dedicated years of therapy and education to making me into a perfect human being; all Dr. Cale had ever forced Adam to learn was how to be a decent person. Maybe those two things weren’t as closely related as I had always automatically assumed. “They don’t care. Or they won’t care, once they get over the shock of meeting the control subject without realizing it. I think some of them are just a little shaky about it, you know?”
“It could’ve been them,” I said quietly. “If one of them had had an implant, and been in that car accident…”
Adam’s head whipped around to stare at me, his eyes wide and somehow affronted, like I had just insulted us both. “It could not!” he said. “Both parts of you had to be strong, and had to be clever in just the right ways, or you could never have become one person. You did it without any help, and that’s more than me or Tansy or even…” He stopped, affronted expression melting into guilt.
“I know about Sherman,” I said, the taste of his name on my tongue setting my stomach roiling again. I was starting to feel numb all the way down to my toes. Too many revelations at once will do that to a girl, I guess. “I get what you’re saying, Adam. I’m just… I’m like the people here, a little. I’m still shaky, too.”
“You be as shaky as you want,” he said. “I’ll be here to help you when you’re done.” He smiled at me.
I smiled back. I couldn’t help it.
We had walked maybe half the length of the bowling alley while we were talking and had stopped just outside a curtain of sliced plastic, cut lengthwise, like the screen on a butterfly aviary or a grocery store produce department’s storage area. I looked at it and swallowed hard. There was something impersonal and medicinal about those dangly strips of waxy plastic, like nothing I was on this side would really matter once I was on that side.
“The broken doors are open,” I murmured.
“That’s my favorite book,” said Adam.
“Of course it’s your favorite book,” I said. Don’t Go Out Alone had been written by a good friend of Dr. Cale. It had been a key part of Nathan’s childhood. It was only natural that it would be a key part of Adam’s as well. I was starting to be a little jealous. I was the only member of our family who hadn’t grown up with that book.
Adam let go of my hand. “If you’re still shaky, I think you’ll feel better talking to Mom and Nathan without me. It’ll be easier to pretend that you’re all humans, and not just all people.”
I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, and that his absence wouldn’t make anything easier at all—that no one ever made anything easier by walking away from it. I couldn’t. When I tried to form the words my lips shaped only silence, and in the end I had to force myself to smile, nod, and say, “I think that might be a good idea. I’ll come find you, though, when we’re done. I think I’m…” I faltered, and then continued, “I think I’m going to need you to teach me a lot of things about the way life is now.”
“Always,” said Adam. Before I could react, he hugged me, let me go, and trotted off into the lab, moving with a lanky sureness that somehow broadcast how comfortable he was in the shape of his own skin.
It seemed indecent, almost: he was a worm wearing a boy like a suit. Shouldn’t he have seemed awkward, or shambled like the sleepwalkers, even? Something—anything—to betray the fact that he wasn’t what he seemed to be. I hadn’t felt that way about him before. I considered the emotion for a moment, spinning it around in my head as I tried to find the angle that would tell me where it was coming from. In the end, though, the answer was so simple that I almost missed it: