Disclaimer: I own none of the characters and/or situations from either Blade 2 or Shivers/They Came from Within and I don't make any money from this

Summary: Carolyn fills Reinhardt in on what's going on and they try to come up with a means of defending themselves.

Parasitic

Chapter 5–Explanations

A blood-splattered angel. He'd been rescued–although he assured himself he hadn't been in any real danger, he appreciated her efforts–by a Pre-Raphaelite angel in a leather skirt. Reinhardt had trouble wrapping his mind around what had just happened. This woman, this tiny little thing, had just hacked two people apart with a sword in front of him. To protect him. A total stranger. He towered over her by at least a foot and had a gun to boot, but she had defended him without a second thought. And her form with the sword was decent, too. Maybe he'd find out who trained her and send her teacher a thank-you note. Assuming he lived, of course, but that was an assumption he always felt safe in making.

She watched him, her eyes losing their expression of concern and turning suspicious. "Hey, mister, I asked you if you were all right."

He sighed and lowered his gun. "Fuckin'-A, angel, except that everybody on this island except for you and me seems to have gone crazy. Got any ideas about that?"

"Yeah, I do. But one thing before we get into that. Could you hold my jacket, please?" The woman shrugged out of the oversized leather jacket she wore and handed it to him, keeping her grip on her katana. Then she tugged her blouse free of her waistband with one hand and pulled it up, her bra going along with it, until her breasts were exposed to him. Reinhardt's mouth went dry. That Irish-pale skin, the blue veins visible through its thinness, the dark pink nipples that hardened under his gaze. Damn, would he like to get those in his mouth. When he managed to tear his gaze away from them, he found her regarding him with a strange mixture of fear and resolve. "Do you want to fuck me?" she asked.

The blonde chick flashed into his mind. Fucking anybody on this island was a piss-poor idea, unless they had a complete medical examination beforehand and a clean bill of health after. Cromwell was the poster boy for fuck-now-pay-later. "I don't want to insult you, because those are very pretty, but I'd rather have an explanation about what's going on around here. And you said you had some ideas about that, so spill them."

She sighed and the tension in her body relaxed as she pulled her shirt down. "Well, I guess you're not infected, then." She might have said more, but the door to the employee break room came open and the people she'd just escaped from poured out into the corridor. Grabbing his arm, she hissed, "Run," and dragged him toward the stairwell. Reinhardt forced her to stop. Terrified, she told him, "I just escaped from them. They're all infected. We have to go!"

"How many crazies are there?"

"Eight."

He put an arm out and pushed her behind him, then lifted his revolver and began firing. Six of the crazies that had erupted out of the break room went down before his gun went dry and she managed to get his attention. "Every infected person on this floor's going to hear that, and they'll converge on us. You don't have enough bullets to deal with them and I can only handle so many, so let's get out of here."

Lutz's apartment–as good a goal as any. "I know someone who lives here with a lot of guns."

"Those would come in handy." She looked past him. Reinhardt turned and saw the redhead from the information desk emerging from the break room, her breasts braless and visible through her open blouse, her mouth dripping blood. He sensed movement in the room behind her before his new ally took his arm again, not gently. "Let's go, tough guy. Now." Giving in gracefully, he followed her through the stairwell door and they began racing up the stairs.

"What floor is your friend on?" she asked after a few minutes.

"Nineteen," he replied. "He was a diamond dealer. Kept a small arsenal at his place to deal with thieves. But he wasn't what I'd call a friend."

"What do you mean? He'll help us after we tell him what's going on, won't he?" She had started to suck wind a little, so he stopped on a landing, both to let her catch a breath and listen for pursuit. The stairwell door hadn't clanged shut again after he closed it, but that didn't mean shit. They could have blocked it open. When he reached out with his senses, he didn't feel anything very near, but the smell of crazy permeated the building now and that made it hard for him to judge the distance between them and a threat.

"Doubt if he'll do much helping, since he's dead."

"Really." It wasn't a question, and her blue-green eyes narrowed. "Natural causes?"

"Lead poisoning. He turned into a crazy. His girlfriend infected my partner. God knows where he is now." She opened her mouth to question him further, but a small skittering noise from below them made them both fall silent. The woman shot a quick glance over the railing, then looked back at him and shook her head. Nobody there now, but it was a good idea to keep moving.

"You're demonstrating remarkable composure for a situation like this," she noted. "As soon as we get somewhere with a door I can lock, you're going to have to fill me in on how you wound up here."

"Fair enough, as long as you tell me what's going on as far as the crazies go." He saw her shiver and handed back her leather jacket.

She gave him a smile and let him hold her katana as she put it on. Reinhardt decided that she was prettier than he'd originally thought. "Deal. But I have to warn you that you won't like it a bit."

"Hey, I haven't liked one fucking thing that's happened to me since I got to this piece of shit island." That wasn't exactly true, though. He'd liked looking at her in the lobby. But he pushed that thought away as he handed back her katana. Might be a good idea to keep her handy, for watching his back. And in case he got injured and needed a clean blood source.

"That makes two of us." He started to move past her to the stairs, but she put her hand on his arm. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced. My name is Carolyn Robideaux."

"Dieter Reinhardt. And we still need to keep moving. We're only on the sixth floor as it is." When she tried to step around him, he pushed her back with his arm. "No way am I going to let you take point."

"Because I'm a woman?" A tinge of irritation entered her voice.

"No. Because I still have a gun." He held up the last guard's revolver. Apparently she couldn't find fault with that reasoning and fell in behind him as they resumed their trek upstairs.

OOOOOOO

Carolyn considered Reinhardt's broad back as they kept climbing stairs. For a man who dressed like a typical rich guy, he reacted without hesitation and a hell of a lot of violence to the threat of the crazies, as he called them. Whatever he seemed to be wasn't what he was, but any explanations had to wait, so she distracted herself by looking at him. He wore an expensive tweed jacket over a white silk shirt and tailored black pants, but his build ruined the whole disguise. No pencil-pusher he, with those muscles. So why had she felt the need to protect him?

It was a question she'd asked herself numerous times since she stepped out of Kaya into the corridor and saw him standing there, looking at the woman and her son. She had known instantly from their behavior that they were infected, but he could have been as well. When she'd turned her back on him to face his potential attackers, he could have taken her down easily, infected her, killed her if he'd had a mind to. But he hadn't. He'd allowed her to kill that mother and her son, and when she'd turned to check on him he'd had a gun pointed at her. Big tough guy. Like she would have hurt him after killing to protect him. The images of the two people she'd murdered rose up bigger than life in her mind and she forced them away. No time for that now, her inner warrior said. Later, when you can explain to him. Later you can grieve for them.

She must have let some sound of pain escape her, because he turned around to ask, "You all right, angel?"

"Fine." Her voice wasn't as strong as she wanted. "Keep leading the way, tough guy."

He smiled at that. "Good judge of character."

"Part of my charm." But it had distracted her from the memory of what she had done earlier. It was entirely different, knowing how to kill in theory and putting that knowledge into practice. But what other choice did she have? As far as she knew, the parasites couldn't be removed from their host bodies, but then why had that one parasite come out of the woman's mouth, attempting to infect her? From the evidence she'd seen, its means of transmission was most likely sexual, but she couldn't be sure that was the only way the parasite was transmitted. How could they protect themselves if they didn't know how to avoid becoming infected? There was too much she didn't know, and only one person might have the answers they needed: Dr. Corby. After they armed themselves at this diamond dealer's place, she intended to go back to the penthouse and get some more answers out of the good doctor. He might be reluctant to give her answers that could save her, but something told her this guy Reinhardt could get damn near anybody to talk. And she found it comforting that she wasn't alone anymore.

Then Carolyn remembered that he'd said his friend lived on nineteen. "I know someone who lives on nineteen. She might help us."

"Yeah? You think she has any guns?"

"Well, no, but she might know the building well enough so we can avoid the crazies and get off the island."

"Escaping's going to have to wait. I can't leave the island until I find my partner."

"Are you a cop?"

Reinhardt turned to look at her, his mouth dropping open. Then he started laughing. "What on earth would make you think a thing like that?"

She couldn't help but feel offended. "Well, you keep calling him your partner. You're not in uniform, but you have a .38 Chief's Special. That's standard police issue. It also doesn't seem to upset you to shoot people. You're pretty good at it, too. So I don't think it's such a ridiculous idea."

He sighed. "I'm not a cop. Let's leave it at that until we get somewhere safe."

That brought up all sorts of questions. If he wasn't a cop, then judging from his reaction she'd bet on him being a criminal. And if that were true, she'd bet money that he'd get rid of her at the first opportunity, since she'd only slow him down. So she couldn't trust him and needed to watch out not only for the crazies but for him. Wonderful.

They kept climbing stairs. The smell of blood, the blood of the people she'd killed, gagged her. She lifted her arm and wiped the arterial spray from her face with the sleeve of her ruined leather jacket. When they got to nineteen she intended to take a shower and get into some more sensible clothes before she tried to find Mrs. Porteous. Something told her the older woman wouldn't react well to finding Carolyn on her doorstep, covered in gore. The blood hadn't infected her on contact with her skin, so apparently the parasite didn't survive in the air unless it was full-grown. It gave her hope, unlike the tough guy. At least for now he was in front of her.

OOOOOOO

Reinhardt made Carolyn stay in the hallway while he checked Lutz's apartment for intruders. Since the lock on the door was broken, he didn't have much faith in it as a refuge from the crazies, but this was a big building. It would take them a while to search. And he'd bet that before the crazies made it up here, both he and the woman would be armed well enough to make them sorry. "The place is clean," he told her after he motioned her inside.

She walked into the living room eyes instantly riveted on the corpse of the jeweler and that of the blonde girl lying not too far away. "You said they were infected?"

"Yeah. After I shot him, something must have crawled out of his mouth. See the trail? But I wasn't here, so I can't tell you what it looked like. Then she infected Cromwell. My partner," he added when she gave him a blank look. "She tried to attack me after that. Maybe she wanted to infect me, but I killed her before she could. Then he tried to infect me with that goddamn parasite, but I fought him off and he ran. I didn't catch him and I don't have any idea where he is, but I can't leave the island without him. If he gets caught he'll rat me out, and my boss will kill me if that happens. So I either have to kill him or take him back to New York–"

"You can't do that," she interrupted. "If this parasite gets off Peachbloom Island, we'll have a pandemic that will make Ebola look like a slight nosebleed. This outbreak has to be confined to the island somehow. If they make it to the boats..."

"They won't. After Cromwell lost his mind, I disabled every boat on the island except for the one I used to get here. I have the keys, and he can't hotwire it. So for now they're trapped."

"Just like we are." Carolyn shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, heedless of the blood on her jacket. "I saw one of those downstairs while I was being attacked. It hadn't fully emerged from the woman's mouth, but it was big. Maybe the length of my forearm. The one I saw was purplish and had a segmented body. It's clearly parasitic, but I'm not sure how it spreads."

"I'd guess fucking."

"That would be my best guess too, but that may not be the only way. Probably not bloodborne, due to the fact that I wasn't infected when contaminated blood touched my skin. It's possible that blood-to-blood contact might transmit the parasite, but the organisms were originally implanted by means of surgery. We'd have to question Dr. Corby about it, assuming he knows."

"Who's Dr. Corby?"

"The cause of it all. He implanted the original parasite in a young woman and later killed her trying to remove it. She's our Patient Zero, and from the looks of things, she got around like a record. I'm not sure if that was part of his plan, but he did say he wanted to duplicate an experiment one of his mentors conducted in Montreal fifteen years ago. Shit, I wish I knew more about what happened there. I'd have some idea what to do." Slowly she removed the jacket and tossed it over a chair, laying her katana on top of it before approaching Lutz's dead body. Kneeling beside him, careful to avoid the slime trail, she took his head in both hands and turned it from side to side. Then she moved over to examine the dead blonde. "Exited through the mouth in both cases. Did you say the man was already dead?"

"Yeah. I shot him."

Carolyn looked up from the dead man. "Did you know he was infected?"

Reinhardt knew he'd implied that earlier, but she didn't believe it. Well, he'd have to be honest with her to some extent. "I knew something was wrong with him, but that wasn't why I shot him. My partner and I were sent here to rob him of a shipment of diamonds. Killing him was part of the job." It didn't matter what she thought. If she wanted to stay alive, she had to stay with him. He had guns. Simple as that. She had to depend on him. And he needed to hang onto his source of clean blood.

Biting her lips, she nodded. "Okay. So we can conclude that the parasite is capable of living outside the body for a limited period of time and most likely only uses the host body to breed."

He felt somewhat surprised that she let his statement go. "So how does that help us?"

"I'm not sure it does, but the more we know the better. Do you know the difference between a symbiotic and a parasitic relationship?"

"Refresh my memory." Reinhardt doubted any of this science stuff would do them any good, but it seemed to calm her to talk about it. The last thing he needed was some panicky woman on his hands.

"A symbiotic relationship is one where both parties in the relationship give and take. They get benefits out of it. An example of this would be eyelash mites. Those are microscopic creatures that live in our eyelashes and eat the dirt and debris there. This keeps our eyes healthy, and they get food out of it. A parasitic relationship, on the other hand, is one where one party gives and the other takes. The party that gives receives no benefit and may even die if the relationship goes on long enough. An example of this would be a leech."

"Or a vampire."

She looked up at him, surprised, then a bright smile spread across her face. For a second he felt like her star pupil. "That's a good example too. A vampire drains the donor of blood, eventually causing death, and gets sustenance but doesn't give anything. A parasite."

He wondered what she'd do if she knew what he was. But he wasn't the parasite she needed to worry about for now. "You said the guy who invented these things is here."

"Dr. Corby, yes. He's upstairs in his penthouse. I had to restrain him after he attacked me. I'd just found the body of that girl he killed and he told me most of what I just told you. He would know more, though. I need to get my hands on his lab journals, his research notes, and since he conducted the experiment here because he needed secrecy, they're probably upstairs in his lab. I was also hoping that you could question him for me."

"Why did he want to do something like this?"

Carolyn leaned over Lutz's mouth and peered inside. Reinhardt wanted to tell her to get back, but if there had been any more of those things inside him, they were either dead or they'd slithered away by now. "You want the condensed version?"

"Please."

"He thought people spent too much time thinking and not enough time fucking. So he decided to fix that."

Hearing her say "fucking" was kind of a shock, since she seemed like such a lady. It was also kind of a turn-on, but that wasn't a line of thought he wanted to explore until he got off this disease-ridden piece of shit. "So what do we do now, angel?"

"What we came up here for. You find this guy's weapons, and I'm going to go wash up."

"His girlfriend was about your size, I think. Might be some clothes in the bedroom that would fit you. If you want to change."

Looking down at her bloodstained clothes, she let out a harsh laugh. "I think that's an excellent idea."

"I'll keep an eye out for the crazies. Here." He handed Carolyn the revolver he had used to kill Lutz. "It only has two bullets left. Keep it with you in the bathroom, just in case."

She reached for the gun and their fingers touched briefly as the cold metal changed hands. "Where did the other bullets go? Other than the one in that guy's chest and the one in her head."

"Long story, but nobody else got dead." More than he already was, anyway, he amended silently. "Just go take your shower. I feel like paying a visit to Dr. Corby."

OOOOOOO

Carolyn took Reinhardt's advice and searched the bedroom closets for some more suitable clothing. The dead girl had been the same size, and she scavenged a pair of jeans and a loose, long-sleeved black shirt from her wardrobe. She drew the line at underwear, though. Gross as it might be, she'd keep her own panties and bra on. Unfortunately, Lutz's girlfriend had much smaller, wider feet than Carolyn, so she would have to continue going barefoot.

Draping the fresh clothes over her arm, she went into the connected bathroom and turned on the shower. The water blasted out of the showerhead, hot and cleansing. She tried to ignore the shaking of her body, putting it down to delayed reaction. But maybe she should ask Reinhardt. He'd killed people before. Was it normal to want to cry and vomit at the same time? Would it be like this every time, because she knew there would be more opportunity to kill on Peachbloom, opportunities she wouldn't be able to refuse? A little brandy might help, but she didn't feel comfortable drinking anything on this island until the parasite's means of transmission was established. Better tell him not to eat or drink anything until we're off the island. "Hey, Reinhardt?"

"You okay?" he called back immediately.

"Yeah. Just don't eat or drink anything on the island. The parasite might be able to live inside whiskey or water or food."

He laughed. "I'll try to restrain myself."

With that taken care of, Carolyn stripped off her bloody clothes. The leather skirt had been her favorite, the red blouse too, and now they were ruined. Everything had been ruined. Corby ruined anything he touched. Blinking her eyes hard to hold the tears back, she stuffed her clothes into the garbage can under the sink and stepped into the shower, closing the glass door with a click. The revolver rested atop the pile of new clothes on the sink, several steps away, but she didn't give it a thought. Any commotion from the other room would be warning enough for her to reach the gun, and she trusted Reinhardt to kill anyone who decided to come after them. Did she actually feel safe with a self-confessed killer? Hard to believe, but she did. At least while he still thought he needed her for whatever reason.

The water ran over her face, washing the blood away, plastering her hair to her body. When she picked up the bar of floral-scented soap and began lathering a washcloth, blood turned the soap and cloth red. Blood on her hands, now and always. The tears broke through her resistance and she began sobbing as quietly as she could, so as not to worry Reinhardt, crying for the mother and son she'd been forced to kill and for all the people she would have to kill before this nightmare ended. Clutching the soap and washcloth, she braced herself against the shower wall with her other hand and let the pain flow through her.

Her tears blinded her, the salt in them stinging her eyes until she closed them. So she didn't see the movement in the drain of the shower, or the segmented body hauling itself up, its head moving up, its blind eyes seeming to search for the source of the intoxicating warmth nearby as it inched closer to its prey.