The Girl in Red

Now she was just The Girl, an annoying appendage without a name. Red tried to burn a hole in the back of Regan’s neck with her eyes. She caught Sirois giving her a sympathetic look.

Well, she didn’t want anyone’s damned sympathy. And she certainly didn’t want Sirois to remember that he had the magic staple gun in his hand and that Adam had submitted to his ministrations but she had not.

“So it’s something like a tapeworm,” Red said, as if the intervening conversation had never happened. “A parasite. But tapeworms don’t get inside people’s lungs. The digestive system and the respiratory system aren’t even connected in a way that would allow a tapeworm to get from your intestines to your lungs.”

Sirois gave her an admiring look. “You really do know a lot.”

“That’s grade school biology.” Red sniffed. “Don’t try to pretend you’re impressed. And anyway, I noticed you didn’t actually answer my question.”

“You didn’t actually ask a question,” he said.

Red drew her dignity around her and gave him her best glare. “I would think that the question was implied, but fine—if you want to be like that. If this . . . if whatever you’re talking about is like a tapeworm, then it wouldn’t be in the lungs, because biology doesn’t work that way. So how did it get there?”

“Who said it did?” Sirois said.

“My dumb brother,” Red said. “And you still didn’t answer the question.”

“Why does your brother think the . . . why does he think it’s in the lungs?” Sirois asked.

I noticed that, Red thought. I noticed that you have a name for this thing and you were going to name it until you realized what you were doing.

“He told you why,” Red said. “Because one time he was in the room when I was watching Alien and apparently it scarred his brain.”

“Well,” Sirois said.

He looked like he was contemplating Serious Thoughts. Red assumed he was trying to determine how to tell her things without actually telling her things. That let her unbend a little, because if he wanted to share some kind of information despite his “orders” then he probably wasn’t that bad. Probably.

But that didn’t mean she was going to trust him. Especially since he would shoot her arm with that tracker gun in a second if Regan said so.

“So, if you know about the digestive system and the respiratory system, then you know that the actual stomach organ is placed higher up in the body than most people think it is.”

Red nodded. “Right. When people say ‘stomach’ they think of their belly button, but that’s more where the intestines are located.”

“The stomach and liver are actually nestled pretty close to the lungs,” Sirois said.

“Okay,” Red said.

“And if something large, say, burst out of someone’s stomach with enough force, then it would probably throw the rib cage open as well.”

“And it would make a mess of the lungs on the way out,” Red said. “But that’s assuming that such a creature does exist. And I’m not going to lie—it sounds ridiculous. Parasites don’t behave that way. Sure, things like tapeworms can get pretty big inside a human, but they normally like to stay there. Why would you leave if you had a good thing going? Your person is going to keep providing free energy while you just camp out inside their body and eat it all up.”

“Guinea worms leave the body,” Sirois said. “So it’s not unheard of for human parasites to leave their hosts.”

Red held her hand up, because she wanted to get her ideas in order.

“All right. A parasite that grows larger inside the human stomach,” she said. She put one finger down as she ticked off each thought.

“And at some point it . . . becomes too large for the organ it’s in?”

Sirois nodded.

“So it bursts the bag it’s in, just like a baby emerging from the placenta.”

“You’re doing very well,” Sirois said.

“Don’t patronize me,” Red said. “And when it breaks out of the stomach it emerges with enough force to push the ribs out and scramble up whatever else is in its way.”

“Is it acceptable for me to nod?” Sirois said, with a half-smile.

“Yes, if I’m on the right track,” Red said. “But here’s the thing—what does it have to do with the Cough?”

Sirois shrugged. “Who says that it does?”

“So it’s not related to the Cough, which is still a dangerous pandemic that has killed thousands of people,” Red said.

Sirois nodded again. Red gave him an expectant look.

“What?” he asked.

“What is it and where does it come from and why does it behave unlike other parasites? Again, the questions are clearly implied.”

“Well, I thought our pleasant conversation would come to an end soon, and now it has,” Sirois said.

“Are you trying to say that information is classified without saying it’s classified?”

“I know how much you dislike the term,” Sirois said.

“You do understand that the key information here is the information you’re suppressing?”