(PARASYTE X WORM) CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Amy had noticed Victoria acting strangely for most of the evening, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on what had first drawn her attention to it. Her sister was still behaving normally enough that anyone else might have overlooked the little differences, but Amy knew Victoria too well to miss them. She kept finding reasons to leave whatever room Amy entered, and whenever they did end up speaking, there was something distracted about the way she answered, as though part of her attention was somewhere else.

Amy had tried telling herself it was nothing. Victoria had patrol, school, friends, and enough things going on that she could easily have been distracted for reasons that had nothing to do with Amy. And that explanation might even have been convincing if it hadn’t kept happening.

She’d watched Victoria leave the kitchen when Amy came in to get something to eat, then do much the same thing later when Amy joined her in the living room after getting home from the hospital. The second time, Victoria had lasted maybe five minutes before remembering that she needed to do something upstairs, and by then Amy had started wondering whether she was imagining a pattern where there wasn’t one.

She probably wasn’t.

At least, she didn’t think she was.

The realization made her uncomfortable, especially since Amy had spent the past week doing almost exactly the same thing to Carol. She’d been avoiding attention wherever she could find an excuse for it, yet somehow she’d become much more interested in what Victoria was doing than in her own problems.

She had enough problems of her own, and she was still doing her best to avoid thinking about them, but this was Victoria. Whatever was happening with her sister mattered more than whatever mess Amy had created for herself. If Victoria was upset about something, Amy needed to know what it was, even if she had to put her own problems aside for a while.

So she decided to ask.

She found Victoria later that night in the hallway, and when her sister noticed her approaching, Victoria’s expression changed for just a moment before she smiled.

It was a perfectly normal smile.

That was what bothered Amy.

Amy had known Victoria for most of her life, so she knew what her sister looked like when she was genuinely happy to see her. She also knew what Victoria looked like when she was trying to hide something, and the expression she’d just seen looked much closer to the second.

“Vicky?”

Victoria stopped. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

Victoria blinked, and for a second she looked genuinely surprised by the question. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve been acting weird.”

Victoria gave her an incredulous look. “That’s a little insulting.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.”

Amy frowned. “You’ve left the room every time I’ve come in today.”

“I have things to do.”

“You didn’t have anything to do five minutes ago.”

Victoria smiled, although Amy couldn’t quite tell whether she found the accusation funny. “Maybe I remembered something.”

Amy stared at her.

Victoria sighed. “Amy, seriously. I’m fine.”

There was something about the way she said it that made Amy even less convinced.

It wasn’t simply that Victoria was acting strangely. She was acting strangely around her.

Amy tried to think of something she’d done that might have caused it, although the list of possibilities had become uncomfortably long over the past few days. Had she snapped at Victoria? Forgotten something important? Stayed at the hospital too long again?

None of those explanations seemed convincing.

Victoria wasn’t angry with her. Amy knew what Victoria looked like when she was angry, and this wasn’t it. There was something else behind the way she kept looking at Amy, something Amy couldn’t identify no matter how many times she replayed their conversations.

A chill ran down her spine.

Had Vicky found out?

She hadn’t told anyone. She’d been careful about that, at least, because whatever else she’d done wrong, she hadn’t been careless enough to discuss the parasite with anyone who might ask questions. As far as Amy knew, the secret belonged to her alone.

So how could Victoria know?

Amy immediately tried to find another explanation. Victoria might have noticed that something was wrong, or maybe she’d simply realized Amy was hiding something, but that didn’t mean she’d discovered the truth. There were plenty of things Amy had been keeping to herself lately, and most of them had nothing to do with the parasite.

Except none of those explanations accounted for the way Victoria had been looking at her.

Amy rubbed her arms, trying to get rid of the chill.

Then another possibility occurred to her, and she immediately wished it hadn’t.

The parasite.

Had it survived?

Amy stared at the floor.

She’d created it to alter its host’s brain, and she’d never intended for it to do anything beyond that. Communication had never been part of its design. There had been no reason for an organism like that to speak, or even to develop anything resembling an independent personality.

Even if it had somehow survived, it couldn’t have told Victoria what Amy had done.

At least, Amy couldn’t see how.

She remained in the hallway for another few seconds before forcing herself to move.

The more she thought about Victoria’s behaviour, the less sense it made. If her sister had discovered something terrible about Amy, surely she would have confronted her by now. Victoria could be stubborn, impulsive, and occasionally far too willing to charge into situations before thinking them through, but she had never been particularly good at pretending nothing was wrong.

Yet she was still treating Amy like her sister.

She still defended her whenever Carol became too harsh, still invited her along when she went somewhere, and still found excuses to check whether Amy had eaten whenever she came home late. Those things hadn’t stopped. If anything, Victoria seemed to be making more of an effort to keep behaving normally, although there was an awkwardness beneath it that hadn’t been there before.

Amy couldn’t understand that.

If Victoria knew what she’d done, why was she still acting like this?

Amy could understand anger. She could understand disappointment, disgust, even needing some distance from her after learning something terrible. What she couldn’t understand was Victoria seeming uncomfortable around her while continuing to behave as though she loved her.

Maybe Victoria didn’t know.

Maybe she’d simply noticed that Amy was acting strangely and was trying to work out what was wrong.

That should have made Amy feel better.

It didn’t.

She spent the next day trying to convince herself that she’d imagined the whole thing, although Victoria made that increasingly difficult. She still behaved normally when other people were around, laughing at something their father said over breakfast and complaining about a patrol that had gone badly, but whenever Amy caught her looking in her direction, Victoria seemed to remember herself and look away.

By the afternoon, Amy had had enough.

She found Victoria alone and stopped in the doorway.

“Vicky, can we talk?”

Victoria looked up from her phone. “Sure.”

Amy stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.

“You’ve been acting strange around me.”

Victoria visibly hesitated before putting her phone down. “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

Amy waited.

Victoria glanced away.

“Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

“For now.”

“Why?”

Victoria was silent for a moment, then sighed. “I don’t really know how to talk about it yet.”

Amy stared at her.

That answer bothered her more than a denial would have.

“Talk about what?”

Victoria slowly bit her lips, and for a moment Amy thought she might finally answer. Instead, she shook her head.

“I can’t.”

Amy felt her stomach sink.

She knew Victoria well enough to recognize when her sister was trying to protect someone, and whatever this was, Victoria clearly thought keeping it to herself was the kinder choice.

That only left Amy with more questions.

She hadn’t told Victoria about the parasite.

The parasite couldn’t talk.

So where had Victoria learned enough to look at Amy like this?

Amy couldn’t think of an answer.

She wasn’t sure which possibility frightened her more, although she had the uncomfortable feeling that she hadn’t even thought of the right one yet.

There was no denying that Victoria knew something about her, something serious enough to make her hesitate whenever they spoke, yet she was still doing all the things she had always done for Amy.

Amy just had no idea how she’d found out.

And until she knew that, she couldn’t begin to guess what else Victoria might have learned.