Prey

Jack dreams that he is marrying Julia again and Mae is their minister. In the dream, Ricky comes in and tells Jack that he has always loved him. He leans down as if he is going to kiss him; then Julia comes in and says, “Not now, you fool” (309). The dream changes, and Jack watches his children get infected. He wakes up early with a sore throat and wonders if he was unfair to Julia.

He finds Mae at her workstation. She tells him that Ricky lied about the wires being pulled. Then she shows him a video of Julia and Ricky kissing. Jack looks away briefly, then insists that she continue to show him the footage. They look for Charley in the videos. They see him arguing with Ricky and Julia about champagne glasses. On the feed, Charley tries to make a call, but Ricky stops him, shoving him, and then they chase him as he runs away. Charley finds a phone in the utility room. Ricky tries to stop him, and Charley swings a shovel at him. Vince enters, and the three men hold Charley tight while Julia kisses him. Jack and Mae see a black cloud passing between their lips. This is how they spread the virus. Ricky then pulls out the wires. Julia enters and startles the two of them by saying that they’re up bright and early.

Jack goes to get breakfast with Julia after she checks Mae’s screen, which shows twelve hours of bacteria growth; they convince her that was what they were watching when she walked in. She tries to get Jack to kiss her, then wants to know why he’s avoiding her. Her attempts at seduction and playfulness are awkward and forced. Jack doesn’t understand how she is harboring the swarm.

The others are in the kitchen. When they insist on a celebration, Jack angrily smashes a champagne bottle and leaves. Julia accuses him of going back to Mae when he walks away. He finds Mae at the fermentation tanks. She tells him that Julia, Ricky, Bobby, and Vince slept with the lights on, meaning they are all infected and used the lights to stay powered up. They realize that the particles have evolved to infect their human hosts without killing them and theorize that this milder infection allows the swarms to transmit more easily. She cries and says they’re going to be killed.

Jack wonders if giving himself an antibiotic would help. If he fills the atmosphere with a phage—a virus that would attack bacteria and prevent the nanobots from surviving inside him—his infected colleagues could breathe it in, which might shut them down. He and Mae agree that they must feed bacteria to the system so it will make viruses for them to use. Mae says that safety systems will shut the production line down before they can make enough to help them—because the byproducts of the virus reproduction will clog the filters—and that only Ricky knows the code to shut down the safety systems.

Jack tells her to release the virus into the production line anyway to distract them; meanwhile he will add more virus to the sprinkler system. She doesn’t understand, but Jack can’t tell her his real plan. She fills a tube with the virus they have made, which is in the form of a brown goo, and they both drink it. He believes that the phage they drink will kill the virus if it is inside them. Back in the kitchen, Mae carries out Jack’s plan as he watches on the monitor: She tells Julia that Jack wants them all to drink the brown goo to determine whether anyone is infected. When they refuse, suspecting that the encounter is staged, Mae confesses that Jack is putting the virus in the sprinklers. Julia kisses her and says that it won’t hurt unless she fights her.

They chase Jack to the fabrication room, where he hides the jug containing the phage and tells them he doesn’t have it. They shove him into the magnet room and give him one minute to tell them where it is so they can destroy it. He says he will only tell Julia. She enters the room and says the helicopter has arrived. She says Jack can leave if he gives her the jug and that he helped “create a new synergy with human beings” (336). Jacks asks why she refused to have an MRI in the hospital. He kicks a panel in the wall, and the magnet pulses as he holds her tight. It creates an effect like the MRI machine that neutralized the particles in Amanda. Julia’s surface appears to dissolve as the particles separate, revealing what is beneath. The Julia beneath the particles looks like a cadaver. She says the swarm is eating her and begs Jack to save her babies. He asks her to drink the phage from the tube, hoping there is still time to save her. Then the particles reform around her and the new Julia—looking again like her new, well-defined self—insists again that he give her the jug.