Page 21 of Spread Me
Kinsey’s only ever seen them in pictures, never in real life. Her legs go weak. Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth. She is suddenly very aware that she’s in her underwear. The thin cotton doesn’t feel like enough of a barrier between her and the cool air of the lab, not now that she’s seen this. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, then stills, not wanting to create any more friction than she already has.
“Do you see it?” Mads asks. They’re very close.
“I see it,” she whispers. “Yeah. That’s a virus, alright.” Kinsey thinks of Domino tasting the air, saying that everyone could tell when she wanted something. She presses her thighs together hard.
“So. Okay.” Mads seems so absorbed by the possibility of this lichen that Kinsey realizes they probably wouldn’t notice if she started rubbing herself against the lab table. “I think we’re looking at a new form of lichen,” they say. “The fungus forms the structure, kind of a protective skeleton, right? Plus it captures water. And the virus keeps the whole thing mobile, provides some energy. Helps the fungus gain entry.”
“Entry?”
“Yeah.”
“What does that mean?”
The crackle in the air curdles. “You know what it means. You know what viruses do.”
Kinsey does know what viruses do. She forces herself to look away from the sample, meets Mads’s eyes. “Lichens grow on surfaces, though. You said you got this sample off the specimen, right? Was it in the hair, or…?”
Mads shakes their head. “This is the tissue sample. I took it from the specimen’s thigh, and another one from the back of the neck. They’re the same. They both look just like this.”
“That can’t be right. That would mean this is what the specimen’s skin is made of.” She looks at Mads urgently. “That can’t be right,” she says again, more insistent this time.
Mads lifts their shoulders in a high shrug and doesn’t lower them. “It is, though. And look at this.” They gesture to the second microscope.
Kinsey peers into the eyepiece. “I see what you mean,”she says, not wanting to admit what she’s seeing. “It does look the same. So this is the sample from the neck, then?”
Mads doesn’t answer.
“Mads? This is from the neck sample you took off the specimen?”
Still no answer.
Kinsey looks up to see Mads staring at her. Their gaze is hollow, their mouth slack. “No,” they say at last. They look like they want to continue, but they don’t.
It takes Kinsey a moment to understand, and when she does, she wishes she didn’t. She asks a question she knows the answer to, if only to buy herself a few seconds before the truth becomes true—before she learns something she can’t back away from. “Is this more of the sample you took from the thigh, then?”
Mads shakes their head again. “Kinsey,” they say softly.
“Don’t,” she says.
But they do.
“That’s from Domino,” they tell her. “That’s from the deepest part of the sample you took. I checked the entire thing, and there was no human tissueanywhere. This isn’t just contamination. As far as I can tell,” they continue, “that’s what Domino is made of now.”
Kinsey looks back down into the microscope. Her eyes land on the cluster of viruses. A muscle deep within her sex clenches at the sight, even as dread hisses across the surface of her mind. She remembers the strange way she responded to Domino—the irresistible frisson of attraction between them, the way she wasn’t able to look away from the deft movements of their fingers. It’s the same feeling she has now, looking into this microscope.
She knows that Mads is right. She knows that her instinct from earlier is right, too.
The Domino she knew is gone. And whatever’s left—whatever took their place—some part of her recognizes it for what it is.
A virus.
A virus she desperatelywants.
And it seems to want her right back.
Nkrumah is drunk. So is everyone—Jacques has been pouring a lethal combination of vodka, lemon juice, and grape electrolyte powder into them for hours. But Nkrumah is on the floor, lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling and rambling semi-coherently about desert carrion birds, so she’s the one they’re all making fun of.
“Shut up,” she says through a laugh, waving one finger at the ceiling. “Shut up, none of you are—listen. Listen!”
