Parasite Eve (41 page)

    Anzai groaned faintly, unable
to get up.

    Something moved in the corner
of Toshiaki’s eye. He looked up to see Yoshizumi, who was making a dash for the
alarm switch on the wall.

    But Eve read his movements.
Just as Yoshizumi was reaching for the alarm, she opened her mouth wide and
bellowed.

    Yoshizumi screamed. His arms
twisted back, his body turned around once, and he fell head first to the floor
with a hard crack.

    Eve smiled, clearly taking
pleasure in his pain. His body lifted.

    She had complete control over
him. Yoshizumi began spinning in mid-air. He cried out. Eve’s eyes sparkled as
she flung him from wall to wall. After a while, his clothing was stained with
blood. When she saw that he was limp, Eve suspended him from his feet, then let
him drop suddenly like a marionette cut from its strings. Just before Yoshizumi’s
head hit the floor, Eve stopped his fall and lifted him up again, toying with
him like this over and over.

    “Stop!” Toshiaki yelled in
spite of himself.

    Eve swayed around and looked
at him.

    He swallowed and froze. There
was a heavy thump as Yoshizumi fell at last, but Toshiaki could not even turn
in his direction.

    Eve grinned.

    Toshiaki heard voices coming
from everywhere in the room.

    Panting voices. And not just
one or two, but many, growing larger like a chorus.

    He was terrified.

    It was Kiyomi’s moaning.
Something only he should have known. A sweet song that soared without end, it
had slumbered deep in Toshiaki’s ears. His wife’s moaning, responding
sensitively to his lovemaking...his wife’s moaning, echoing now in a frenzy of
vocal activity. He looked across the room. Someone spoke in Kiyomi’s voice. Her
figure flowed into his mind like a deluge. Every one of her expressions, every
gesture, bearing down upon him in raging waves. Kiyomi smiling, Kiyomi
frowning, Kiyomi crying, Kiyomi calm, and Kiyomi held in his arms... Tens,
hundreds, thousands of Kiyomis spilled into his brain.

    His eyes were captured by
these visions.

    The dissected corpse on the
floor opened his mouth, crying with pleasure in Kiyomi’s voice.

    The dead men in the green
operating gowns were all moaning with their eyes wide open.

    Toshiaki began to lose his
mind. The moaning was giving him the illusion that he was embracing Kiyomi.
When she moaned ah ah he sucked on her nipples when she purred with her mouth
closed he ran his tongue over her ribs and back when she seemed to wail he
stimulated her down there when she alternated between aaa and haa he entered
her hugged her tight kissed her many times thrust hard saw her limbs in
disarray saw her expression and it overlapped with the white corpse spilling
its intestines when had it stood up the ones in surgical robes too walking
towards him he was embracing Kiyomi the moaning came from corpses then Kiyomi
was a corpse dead but moaning made love to why what am I making love to what
this cold sensation what is this intestines wrapped around my arms is it Kiyomi’s
am I doing a corpse inserting into brain-dead Kiyomi’s body Kiyomi’s moaning is
getting louder she likes it Kiyomi is Kiyomi is Kiyomi is Kiyomi is

    “
STOP-STOP-STOP-STOP-STOP-STOP-
STOPPPPPPP!!”

    The voices ceased.

    The corpses fell to the
floor, glistened, and dissolved instantly with only a faint, damp sound. Not a
single flame to be seen. Eve 1’s evocation of fire paled in comparison.

    Anzai was clinging to Mariko
on the autopsy table and shouting madly. Her eyes were open, but she was
completely unresponsive to her father’s cries.

    Eve was giving Anzai a cold
stare.

    Don’t.

    Toshiaki raised his voice.

    Too late. Still looking at
Anzai, Eve tilted her head. One of Anzai’s legs shot up unnaturally towards the
ceiling. She was going to hurl him against the wall again.

    Even when his entire lower
body was in the air, Anzai refused to let go of his daughter.

    Eve frowned.

    He was immediately jerked
away. His body grazed Toshiaki’s cheek as it flew past into the wall with a
crash. He did not fall to the floor. Instead, he was stuck spreadeagled with
his face pressed against the wall. His eyes were shut tightly and he winced
from the pressure.

    Without warning, this unseen
power gripped Toshiaki as well, pressing him against the wall before he even
had the time to struggle. It was so strong, he could not even lift a finger.
His cheeks squeezed together, nearly touching each other. He couldn’t even
blink his eyes.

    Stop.

    Stop it now.

    He could not voice these
thoughts. He was unable to move his tongue. Eve’s figure was reflected in his
eyes. It walked slowly towards the two of them, glancing down at the blubbering
mass that was Eve 1, who smiled murkily in response. Eve beamed at her dying
mother, then turned back towards Anzai and Toshiaki.

   
It’s coming!
Toshiaki
screamed a silent scream. The pressure became stronger and stronger. His bowels
twisted painfully. His skull creaked. His throat was crushed shut and he couldn’t
breathe. He felt like sparks were flying from his body. Simply killing them was
probably too easy for her. The surgeons’ corpses had disappeared from sight in
but a moment’s time. Eve was just toying with them now, like a predator making sport
of its prey, like a child pulling the legs off an insect. He couldn’t forgive
his powerlessness before her. He couldn’t forgive himself that all he could
really do now was beg for his life.

    His consciousness grew dim.
Vision clouded with red as blood vessels ruptured behind his eyes. Something
popped in his body with a dull sound and a hot substance flowed out from it.
But Toshiaki continued to yell at Eve in his heart, to yell at her to stop.

    “Daddy...”

    Toshiaki was startled to hear
a voice. It entered his ears as an unintelligible grunt, but transformed into
language in his head. Eve had called him “daddy.” He felt faint. He saw her
with the corner of his eye.

    It had a horrendous grin on
her face.

    His whole body cried out. He
couldn’t believe what he had seen. Blood vessels burst everywhere in his body
and his bones cracked. Eve’s smile burned into him. He could not close his
eyelids, no matter how much he tried; he could not yell, to dispel that horrid
impression. It was a grin that could only be called horrendous. He couldn’t
bear it anymore. He did not want to live, with such a grin imprinted on his
mind.
Just hurry up and kill me
, Toshiaki prayed.
Crush me!

    At that moment, Eve grimaced.

24

    Toshiaki’s body fell to the
floor, followed soon after by Anzai.

   
What’s going on?
He
could not make sense of it.
Why did it stop?

    Eve appeared to be in pain,
tearing at her face with a look of anguish. Flesh fell from her in pieces.

    Toshiaki strained his eyes as
Eve changed form yet again. Her entire body rippled. Her waist’s curves
straightened out, and her breasts flattened while her chest heaved out. Her
shoulders broadened. The facial structure also changed. She wailed loudly. But
the voice, too, was transformed.

    What the hell is going on?

    What had been a woman was now
clearly becoming a man.

    Something protruded from
between its legs. At first the size of a finger, it began to swell and rise
menacingly, pulsing all the while. The gentle curves faded as muscles stretched
out in their place. Abdominals bulged out, and muscles swelled up above the
shoulders. The neck grew thicker, and the facial features sharpened. Sideburns
extended like a lion’s mane. A goatee and beard sprouted on the face. The
creature’s back heaved up like a mound of steel. Then, it put both hands onto
the floor and assumed a beast-like posture on all fours. Every part of it
embodied strength. A shout of indignation emanated from this new body as it
struck the floor.

    And then, it howled.

    Thunderous waves rattled
Toshiaki’s ruptured organs, nearly tearing him apart. There was another
enormous sound and the room went pitch dark. The electricity had been cut. An
alarm sounded from somewhere.

    Toshiaki coughed up the blood
rising in his throat. Ruptures along his skin oozed plasma. The inside of his
head burned.

    Something popped in his eyes,
after which he saw only red and black dots. A swarm of countless points ran
wildly in his vision like a sand storm. He could hear the creature, but could
not guess what it was doing. He heard concrete splitting open as chunks of wall
fell onto him.

    Yoshizumi let out a scream,
but Toshiaki could do nothing more than remain where he was.

    He then felt himself rise
into the air. Something hit him repeatedly. In the stomach, shoulders, head,
and chest. He was soon numb to the pain. While he knew he was being thrown
against the walls, he had no will to fight it. He could only wonder why Eve had
turned into a man. Mitochondria were definitely female. What did this mean? Was
this another evolutionary step? And if so...

    It all became clear to him
now.

    It can’t be.

    But there was no other
explanation. Intellectually, it was questionable, but the intuition of every
fiber of his being told him otherwise.

    As if in answer to his
thoughts, the creature yelled in agony.

    There was an explosion.
Toshiaki fell to the floor. The alarm blared in his ears.

    But an even more deafening
sound threatened to drown it out. It was as Toshiaki had suspected. Eve’s voice
was changing back into a woman’s.

    He heard what sounded like
wriggling flesh in between the alarm intervals. Eve was reliving her violent
regeneration and birth. Her pulse shook the air. A woman’s voice arose above a
man’s yell, as if to silence it. The man’s voice cut off the woman’s with the
ferocity of a jet exhaust. Male and Female were waging battle against one
another in the same life form, a balance of power being pulled back and forth
between them. Just when the female’s expression was about to appear, the male
formed its own figure over it. When the female cut out a womb in the body, the
male buried it and extended its distinguishing organ in retaliation. The female
twisted the penis back into the body as breasts arose in defiance. Toshiaki’s
intuition had been correct. Though he couldn’t see it, he could tell that the
new life form was devolving into a mess internally.

    Someone or something jumped
into Toshiaki’s mind. The voice was faint, as when phone lines got crossed.
Toshiaki realized right away that it was mitochondria, the ones that had
parasitized Eve 1. That monster had been melting on the floor, trying to
welcome her extinction, but was now dismayed at her daughter’s transformation.
The mitochondria were making one last desperate attempt at signaling the host
cells to propagate again. The mother longed to control this disaster that was
supposed to have been her perfection. But the host cells were damaged beyond
repair. The mitochondria’s sorrowful cry echoed in Toshiaki’s body.
This
cannot be, this cannot be!

    His head filled with a
brilliant flash. That which until now had caught in a corner of his mind,
refusing to be drawn out, now revealed its dazzling self. It was just as he
thought... The mitochondria in Eve 1 had overlooked one important thing. They
did not give sufficient consideration to it because they were female. His sperm
was obviously necessary to create new life, but Eve 1 had only thought of male
genes as tools for reproduction. The mitochondria had failed to notice that
their “daughter” was made up not only of themselves, but also of male
mitochondria.

    Eve 1’s mitochondria’s final
scream rang in Toshiaki’s ears, trailing off into silence. He felt her death
indirectly. Outer and inner membranes collapsed, spilling DNA from inside. They
were then torn apart by enzymes. All electrical transmissions diffused and died
out. Receptors dissolved into useless peptides before losing life completely.
Consciousness ceased. Cells burst, returning to mere fats, amino acids, and
sugars. Eve 1 was no longer a life form, but simply a heap of decaying organic
matter.

    Eve 1’s child screamed in
sexually dimorphous anguish.

    The ceiling began to crumble
as Eye erupted with pure power.
I need to get out of here
, thought
Toshiaki. But his body would not move.

    He heard people’s voices,
footsteps drawing near. Short gasps of shock and horror followed. A light hit
his face.

    Help had arrived at last.

    He let out an exclamation of
joy, but it did not take form in sound. He tried to move a little, but could
not quite gather enough strength.