Infected

5.

The shells grew in size and durability. Still too small to see with the naked eye, it wouldn’t be long before they could not be missed. The same tiny, cell-like devices that built the shells used the available material to start making what went under the shells-a framework that would comprise a new organism, a larger organism.

A growing organism.

The seedlings built their third and final free-moving microstructure. Where there had been “readers” to gather the DNA blueprints, and “builders” to make the shell and the framework, now came the “herders.”

The herders washed out into the host’s body, seeking very specific kinds of cells-stem cells. The DNA blueprints showed that these were what the seedlings needed. The herders found these stem cells, then cut them free and dragged them back to the growing framework. First the herders cemented the stem cells to the framework with simple chemical bonds, then the reader-balls moved in.

The saw-toothed jaws sliced into the stem cell, but gently this time. Microfilaments bare nanometers across slid into the stem cell DNA. Slid in, and started making changes.

Because the “readers” weren’t there just to read…

They were also there to write.

The stem cells were not conscious. They had no idea they had just been enslaved. They did what they always do: grow new cells. The new cells they produced were only slightly different from those they had been originally designed to build. Those new cells spread out through the growing framework, adding muscle and other, more specialized tissues.

What arrived as a microscopic seed had hijacked the host’s body and used the built-in biological processes to create something foreign, in a way far more insidious than even a virus.

And while the seedlings had no concept of time, their mission would be complete in just a few short days.