By the time Carlos can force his way into the last remaining portion of Ben’s mind still occupied by him, it is very nearly too late. The godworm is now waging war with the entire arsenal of Ben’s memory and subconscious, reducing its host to a bundle of neurons flashing white-hot with fear, dread, despair, and whatever else can fuel a self-destructive feedback loop of the mind. It seeks to snuff Ben out by burning him up. For any other extrospector, this stage would mean certain death for the host. The parasite has become too deeply ingrained, forcefully extracting it now would be like ripping out a barbed arrow. However, Carlos has never failed an extraction and he still has his ace card to play.
To play it, he first has to access Ben’s inner psyche, which is now a far more difficult task. The pinprick entrance of the eye gets him in, but this far along in its pupation the godworm has set-up defenses. Carlos finds himself wading through the writhing dark of the forest, at every step ensnared by a slurry of tendrils and teeth.
Slowed but not stopped, he makes it to the edge of the forest and can see the scene playing out in the ditch. Two children, one of whom he recognizes as Ben, playing with a fawn in a field. It is not a threatening scene, but that’s a bad sign. At the stage of development just preceding emergence, a godworm’s manipulation of the mind becomes quite sophisticated. It learns how to use preceding comfort to make the following blow strike harder.
Carlos calls to Ben, tries to run to him, but the godworms' tendril forest manages to contain him. Carlos frantically searches for any neural paths to Ben that remain. The parasite stops him at every one, routing slivers of its attention to obscure his image and mute his voice. He watches as the scene turns. It is an ordinary final act, as final acts conjured by godworms often are. The cheap, generic horror scenes it begins with eventually evolve into subtler nightmares. The former bash like a hammer at the surface, the latter incises like a scalpel. The girl becomes a pregnant woman, the deer rots. The scene shifts in a hundred little ways whose effect would be inscrutable if Carlos were not inhabiting the head of the victim. Extrospection is an intimate affair, and emotions resonate even when higher connection is stifled. Carlos watches as the godworm unravels Ben and, at least emotively, understands the experience from Ben’s point of view.
It is in the final moment, what must be mere milliseconds in the hospital room, that Carlos gets his chance. Once Ben is fully burnt out the godworm will seize the vacant body in its brief interlude between life and death and take it as its own. In its eagerness, its attention on Carlos slackens just enough. He bursts from the forest’s edge and races across the field. There is one last spark of Ben remaining, but he ignores that, there is no way he could fight his way back from the brink now. If Ben is to survive, he will have to be rescued. Carlos goes on the offensive. He barrels into the pregnant woman, clamping his broad hands onto her face. He whips her body into the ground like a ragdoll. She is already unfolding to reveal a truer form of the Godworm underneath. Humanity sloughs off it like a molted shell and the awful visage from the void between stars emerges. He can’t stop it. Despite his best efforts it will easily expel him and get right back to finishing off Ben, unless he can offer it something better. While he has its attention, he draws its terrible visage close to his own, holding it nose to nose with himself. He opens his eyes to the monster.
Godworms are greedy. They cannot resist a fresh mind willingly opened to them, especially one that echoes with a choir of their brethren. It will enter Carlos, plant it offspring in his head, return to Ben’s nearly emptied husk, and gain two bodies for the price of one. At least, it thinks it will do this as it releases its tendrils from the crevices of Ben’s mind and slides into Carlos’s. It is an excruciating process. A lesser man would succumb. Carlos, however, has never failed an extraction. He will not start today.
Once it has fully entered, Carlos slams the occular door shut. Then he evacuates Ben’s head. Instantly he returns to the hospital room, with the overwhelming cocktail of migraine and vertigo and suicidal urge that accompany the maneuver he's just pulled off. It will pass, but he wobbles when he stands. Grace, never caught off guard, rushes to buttress his immense body with her own and saves him from toppling backwards.
At the same time, Ben awakes in a fit of hoarse cries and thrashing limbs. The bewildered nurse tries to intervene as he bruises his wrists against the frame of the bed. When she has secured his arms she turns to the pair of strange social workers. “Its time for you to go. Anything else you need you can get from the front desk.”
Grace looks to Carlos, who nods. The job is done. “Good to see he’s awake. We’ll let you handle this.” She says.
She helps Carlos hobble out of the room as the nurse attempts to soothe her patient. Ben, coming back to reality now, swings his wide eyes across the room and catches on Carlos. There is a jolt of recognition in him. The last thing Carlos sees is Ben bursting into tears. Its far from unusual for hosts to cry when brought back from the brink in far less dire extractions, but that doesn’t make the sight any less painful for Carlos, for whom the afterimage of Ben’s nearly final moments has not completely faded. Carlos does not want to leave him, and yet he cannot stay. Grace urges him along into the hallway and the door shuts behind them. The last they will ever see of each other, probably.
“What the hell was that?” Grace asks after they’ve exited the hospital and he’s regained enough composure to carry himself. She sounds equally angry and impressed.
“It was close.” Carlos says as he collapses into the passenger seat of their black government sedan.
“Close? I shouldn’t have let you go in a second time. I thought I was going to have to start throwing mirrors in an empty hospital any second! How on earth did you pull that off?”
“I’m good at extraction.”
“Specifics, Torres, give me specifics. I’ve never seen a successful second-attempt extraction.”
Carlos is used to praise from partners after feats like this, not questioning. His mind is still recovering, and what little brainpower he has in operation is fixated on Ben’s teary expression and the lingering bitterness of his psyche. Maybe its because he can’t think straight that he makes his second stupid impulse decision of the day.
“He was actually pretty stable in there. He held up well.” He lies.
“The host? Didn’t seem like it to me.”
“Outward and inside don’t always match, you know that. He was pretty resistant. Held his ground for a while. I had plenty of time.” Grace glares silently at the road in front of her. He can sense she’s doubtful. “He might be recruitment material.” He adds. The agency has been chronically understaffed, he knows Grace and the other higher ups are always looking for new Extrospector blood. Its not exactly something you can just put a help wanted ad out for, after all.
“I’m going pull info on the host as soon as we’re back to the agency. I want a full report on what happened in there from you. You’re sure about this guy?”
“I got a pretty good glimpse at what he’s made of.” This, at least, is true. “I think he’s got what it takes.”
He wonders why exactly he’s doing this. He feels an attachment to everyone he extracts from, but this one especially so. He hopes he isn’t taking a risk just because of a charming pair of lashes. Grace turns onto a street heading directly into the setting sun and his anxiety takes a back seat to his searing migraine. Recruitment aside, he has bigger worries. The mass of worms embedded in his mind writhes against the walls of their prison with new vigor now that another has added to their number.
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