Odyssey II Chapter 4 - So Now What?

Three hundred years. It was the kind of number your history teacher threw at you as he tried to convince you that these events were recent enough to matter today. Not the kind of number a reasonably attractive young woman sitting across from you in a small office responded with when you asked her how long these... things, had been trying to spread out into humanity.

"And in the beginning they almost succeeded. If it wasn't for the intervention by one of their own, we'd have had no method of stopping them," Maya continued when he failed to respond to her answer.

 Looking down at his thigh, he wasn't very comfortable with the idea that a parasite hundreds of years in the making was growing within him, even paralyzed as it was by the drug.

"So what does that mean for me?" he asked. So far the Proxitol had kept the thing from spreading too far, but he'd been informed that it was only a temporary measure.

"What it means for the moment is that you will be housed here with us until the Vishkill's progenitor can be located," she answered him, "Don't worry, you aren't necessarily a prisoner, as much as a quarantined victim. We can't risk you passing it on to yet another potential host."

"What about the guy from the carriage?" Paul asked.

"He's no longer a host, nor a concern," she answered, with a look that didn't bode well for his future.

 As he rose, the two towering gentlemen that had kindly escorted him to the office stepped forward to stand beside his chair. Taking a deep breath to calm his temper, as the last time he'd raised his voice to her he'd woken with quite the headache, he tried once more to reason with her, "Can't you just pull this thing out of me? I mean you don't need me here, just this Fishkill thing right?"

 Shaking her head with an almost pitying look on her face she responded the same way the nurse that came to check on him had the last time he'd asked, "Unfortunately it's not that easy." Why it wasn't that easy was apparently not an answer he was permitted to know. Gritting his teeth, Paul decided that he'd rather walk to his room than be carried unconsciously, and he sat back down.

"So what now?" he asked her, as it had been at her request he'd been invited up to the office after all.