Chapter 5 - The Hideout
The sound of that metallic voice coming from my sweet daughter's mouth nearly pushed me into madness.
"What is happening to her?" I screamed at Mr. Davis, completely ignoring the passing traffic outside.
Mr. Davis looked genuinely terrified for the first time.
"The parasite is mutating faster than my intelligence reports predicted," he muttered frantically.
He ordered me to drive to an abandoned hunting cabin deep in the rural woods, far away from any cell phone towers.
We arrived at the remote wooden cabin just as the sun began to set behind the snow-covered trees.
I carried Chloe inside, her body still frighteningly stiff, her black eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
Mr. Davis dragged a heavy aluminum equipment case from the trunk of the car and set it on the dusty kitchen table.
He opened it to reveal surgical tools, chemical vials, and a portable ultrasound machine.
"The suppressant I gave her only paralyzed the host's body, but the parasite is still actively trying to sever her brain stem," he explained.
He turned on a harsh camping lantern and instructed me to lay Chloe down on the wooden table.
"I have to physically extract the main neural hub of the parasite before it permanently bonds with her spine," he said.
He handed me a pair of thick rubber gloves and a bottle of surgical iodine.
"You need to hold her shoulders down, Sarah, because when I cut into the skin, the organism is going to fight back."
I nodded, tears streaming down my face as I pinned my beautiful little girl firmly against the table.
Mr. Davis sterilized a scalpel and carefully made a tiny incision right above the dark, shifting line on her throat.
Instantly, Chloe let out a terrifying, mechanical shriek that shattered the quiet darkness of the cabin.
Black, wire-like tendrils erupted from the small wound, lashing out wildly like angry snakes.
I screamed as the synthetic wires desperately tried to pull themselves back under her skin.
Mr. Davis reached in with a pair of steel forceps, grabbing the thickest black wire and pulling upward.
"I have the main root," he grunted, sweating profusely under the lantern light.
He pulled harder, and a horrific, metallic mass the size of a marble slowly emerged from Chloe's neck.
But the parasite was not completely dead.
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Before he could drop it into a containment jar, the metal marble suddenly burst open.
A dozen razor-sharp microscopic needles exploded outward, driving themselves violently directly into Mr. Davis's hand.
