Symbiont

INTERLUDE IV: ANAPHASE

November 2027: Ronnie

It had been surprisingly easy for Ronnie to reach the reservoir. It was still under guard, of course; the soldiers supplied by USAMRIID and sent in with the doctors from FEMA were patrolling the borders of the area, rifles in hand and nervous sweat on their throats and temples. But Ronnie was quick, and lithe, and had nothing to fear from the sleepwalkers; they had long since learned what her (his) pheromone trail meant, and they stayed away, like worker ants avoiding the territory of a greater colony.

The water had been capped, of course, to keep seagulls from shitting in it and—more important now—to keep people from drowning and polluting the water supply of an entire region. This was the reservoir that fed the largest of the quarantine settlements. Some people drank bottled water, of course, but they were all higher-ups, people who could afford the luxury of worrying about contamination. For the average man on the street, crammed six to a bedroom in their shantytown containment, what came out of the faucet was the only option.

Some things could be filtered out of the water, and some things couldn’t. Ronnie slouched along the reservoir’s edge until he came to a small building, more like a hut than a pumping station, and slipped inside. There was a heavy lid, almost like a manhole cover, over the water access. That was easy enough to deal with. Crowbars were simple tools, and all you needed to operate them was pressure.

The lid slid open with a snarling rasp, like a file being dragged across concrete. Ronnie kept pushing until the opening was almost a foot across. Then he stepped onto the rim of the water access and pulled a small plastic bag from the inner pocket of his vest. Holding it over the water, Ronnie opened the seal and shook out the bag’s white, crystalline contents. They vanished into the darkness. Some of the powder would stick to the walls of the input, going nowhere, serving no purpose. But most would reach the water. Most would begin the journey toward their eventual homes.

The war had changed.

Ronnie took a deep breath and stepped off the edge of the access hatch, and plummeted, and was gone.