“Baby, oh, God, no.” Michelle reached out to touch her, and Adesina’s eyes snapped open. They were black and shiny—not her usual brown—and showed no recognition of Michelle. They were lifeless and inhuman. Michelle recoiled. All the while, Adesina’s mouth kept extruding the silky thread wrapping around her. Adesina’s legs manipulated the filament, helping to snug herself in the cocoon.

“What the fuck is going on?”

Michelle heard Joey, but it was as if she were a long way away.

“Michelle, fuck me, what’s happening to the niblet?”

Michelle shook her head. This was what Adesina had done when she had been injected with the wild card virus. At the time, the trauma had been so great that she had wrapped herself away from the world in order to survive. So whatever was happening to her daughter now, it was bad enough that she was responding in the same way.

Michelle reached out to touch her daughter, but Joey stopped her. “Don’t,” she hissed. “You don’t know what touching her might do.”

Michelle yanked her arm away. “She’s my baby!”

But she didn’t know what to do. She was helpless. And no matter how much she wanted to do something—anything—she couldn’t help her child.

Wednesday

WEDNESDAY

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, Michelle watched in mute horror as Adesina encased herself. By morning, there was a cocoon the size of a basketball in the middle of Adesina’s bed.

“What should I do?” she asked Joey. She’d lost count of how many times she’d asked it in the course of the night.

“I don’t know,” Joey replied, as she had every time Michelle had asked.

Michelle was sitting on the edge of Adesina’s bed, her hand lightly resting on the cocoon. It felt like rough woven canvas. She’d let Adesina finish building the pupa before touching it. And Joey had helped. Joey had held her hand all night and kept her from going crazy with fear.

But she needed to do something. It was past time for sitting on her ass. She didn’t know what had triggered this. She’d thought it was PTSD from the horrors of Adesina’s life in the PPA. But Adesina had insisted that wasn’t the case—that there was something else walking through her dreams. Something horrible enough to send her into what amounted to a coma. And what would she be when she came out of it?

Then there was the question Michelle didn’t want answered: would she ever come out of it?

“C’mon,” Joey said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here for a while.” Michelle let herself be pulled from the room.