Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #15 – Solitaire

“What’s a ‘dyke’, Dobrio?”

“A colorful way to call a woman who’s sexually or romantically attracted by other women.”

“Huh.”

Lacrima fell silent, ruminating on that answer, on the parting words of Ms. Frankberg. She was sitting on a short brick wall, just a couple crossings away from ‘The Wrench Wench’, kicking the air with a regular rhythm. Dobrio stood close to her, performing some light aerobic exercises, keeping his muscles in motion, under Robin’s confused gaze, now hidden behind the gas mask again. She kept looking at that iron giant, a guy who – his words – sold his head on the BM for money. That massive junkie felt like an overgrown child, with a somewhat simple vision of life. She couldn’t say he was the first he met in her life. There were many other Dobrio, many Kryzalid, many Carola Frankberg in her past. Yet, that didn’t reduce the impact of seeing one of his kind any less striking. She tapped her finger on the right side of her mask, making some words and numbers appear on the lenses.

“How much longer do we have to wait?”

Her distorted voice made Dobrio turn towards her, while still performing his full body exercises.

“Oh, not much. Carola should be done soon.”

“Don’t we have to wait for you too, after she’s done with blurry eyes?”

“Nah, I’m gucci. I mean, yeah, I need some minor adjustments, but they can wait. Nothing too serious…”

Compared to Mimi, he wanted to add, but decided at the last moment that there was no need to share that piece of information with his reluctant business partners. Nevertheless, he could feel annoyance in Robin’s voice, even through the camouflage. Evidently, the ‘truth’ she was served till now wasn’t of her liking. He stopped moving around, stretched a little instead. Yeah, Robin needed a little incentive to stick around, and Dobrio needed her to stick around, so that bird-brain stuck around too and had no incentives to leave. Their end goal, after all, was simple – convince Lacrima to start living with them as a house plant. A win-win situation – she gets her lymph drained in safety, they get their fix of plant fluids. But Robin was a wildcard. Dobrio hoped she went away like a ghost during the night, leaving only Lacrima around. Unfortunately, not only that didn’t happen, but she caused a minor flooding in their flat too. Though, he had to admit that she had ovaries of steel: not even the sight of Kryzalid licking lymph out of Lacrima’s wounds and biting her rose in a most sensual manner fazed her. Not even Dobrio collecting some of Lacrima’s lymph in a can and shoving it down his feeding pipe caused a reaction. Disgust and repulsion for both of them? Sure. But she didn’t show it or made a fuss about it. Which is what made her more dangerous: criminals do be criminals. Junkies do be junkies. But reclusive cultists that don’t show their hand? That was where the real issue began. So, his brain went places in order to hatch a plan with a minimal desired set of results:

1. Keep the plant

2. Gain the cultist’s trust so that she doesn’t snitch to the Corps

3. Shoo the cultist

4. Find a new hideout

5. Profit.

So far, he was stuck on point two. Shoving her down a bridge while Lacrima was distracted by a random crow felt like an alluring option, but not one without risks. So, maybe, just maybe, sharing a little more ‘truth’ would have helped better in the long term. He waved his hand at Robin, catching her attention.

“…well, about that, Robin... what’s your take on what you saw, back inside?”

Robin returned his gaze, her eyes seeing without being seeable behind the lenses.

“I’m not sure what the purpose of that circus was, but I guess you wanted to show me how frail your friendly mass murderer friend is? Which, you know, doesn’t make her less of a mass murderer.”

“Provided she’s one at all.”

Lacrima’s remark caused both of them to turn towards her in surprise. She kept kicking while seated on the short wall, her eye firmly fixated on the ground.

“She doesn’t give me villain vibes. Broken? Yes. Depraved? Maybe. She bit my eye rose a bit too hard, last night, and her hands were a bit too eager to explore my body. But she feels… honest, in a way. Genuine. Her tears were sweet. Uncorrupted. It’s a strange contrast, one I can’t wrap my head around.”

Robin chimed in, failing to suppress her resentment.

“She killed twenty Peacekeepers two days ago, Lacrima. That’s a fact.”

“But why? She faked her death already once, she disappeared in Lower Aralu too! So, why come back to the surface again? Nobody sane would have acted like she did without a reason. There was nothing for her to gain and everything to lose! I just… can’t get it.”

Dobrio glanced at Lacrima. Then, at Robin. Then, at Lacrima again. His red eye moved around its socket, swimming into it like a fish in a bowl, trying to keep both of its targets in its limited field of vision. He clapped his hands, seizing their attention, making them focus on him.

“Okay, hold on. I won’t tell you the full story, but you can be sure of one thing: Mimi had a Lagash-be-damned good reason to kill those ‘keepers. Which is why she’s bringing you to the Eye: to show you what said good reason is. And she needs to be in peak condition for that.”

Robin walked towards him, pushed her hand on his chest.

“I’m fed up with this attitude. Just tell me already!”

“If I just told you, you wouldn’t believe it. You have to see it!”

“Try me, tin man!”

“It’s Mimi’s call, not mine. Can’t you just… you know, wait one hour longer?”

“Fine. One hour. That’s all you got. But if you can’t convince me by then…”

“…lemme guess: you’re snitching on us to the Corps to get your record clean? How bold and original.”

“Oh, shut up!”

Lacrima stopped kicking, stood up on her platforms, still mourning their missing two additional centimeters. Her left arm was itching, under the fabric, the end tendrils arranged again in the shape of a gloved human hand. She ascertained her reserves of lymph. Almost full, already. Enough to rebuild a sword, if she put her mind on it. She decided to make use of all that excess and transfer it to her vines to craft a new weapon, one that didn’t break as easily as the last one. Her plant matter and bark reacted with the lymph, started shaping it up under her sleeve, protected by a tangled envelope resembling an arm. Whatever the truth behind Kryzalid was, she couldn’t leave anything to chance. Especially because, while the Corps might have lost sight of the blind violinist and her mechanical friend, she had a hunch they could track her better due to her nature as a rhizome. They could jump on her at any time and bring her back to… to that place. Provided they even knew about it, that is. Still, defusing the deadlock between Robin and Dobrio didn’t feel like a priority. If anything, quarreling helped them pass time, so she let them go on. Her eye was suddenly attracted by a book – a rather thick volume, crumpled, tattered, close to where Robin was sitting. She grabbed it, browsed its pages quickly. Illustrations. Words. Numbers. All of them handwritten, penned in black ink, not printed. It looked ancient, maybe two or more centuries old. She glanced at the cover again. It was red. Simply red. No title at all, except a number – four – embossed in gold on the red carton. Yet, the words inside made no sense to her. She could understand the characters, but not what they meant. It seemed similar to the language of science, but, at the same time, very different. She turned the pages around, slowly, with care, till her eye rested on a black and white depiction of a hummingbird sucking nectar from a flower. That illustration was a labor of love, full of details and life, filled with little annotations and marks. Yet, something felt wrong. The wingspan. The shape of the beak. The feather pattern on its body. All those features had been recorded in at least one species of hummingbird, but, all together, they didn’t match any specific variety she knew of. Maybe the artist was commissioned the drawing and was only given vague descriptions and a bunch of reference pics, or maybe they cut corners when it came to accuracy to the source material. Or, maybe, they were better at drawing flowers than birds. She closed the book, left it where she took it. Robin was still arguing with Dobrio, so she probably didn’t notice, but it was better to leave her stuff be.

That’s when she heard a familiar voice, loudly coming from the other side of the road.

“Hey, losers! Missed me?”

Kryzalid was standing right outside the store, ripped cape, blindfold and all, swinging her violin up and down with grace. A wide grin painted on her face, her pain seemingly forgotten. She nodded towards Dobrio, arced her bow to point at the store entrance.

“Please, the old hag’s waiting inside for your check-up. She brought in the big tools, just for your hide.”

“I’m good, it can wait.”

“No, it can’t! And you know it, idiot!”

Dobrio shrugged.

“Fine. But you go already, ‘kay? Bring’em gals to the Eye, go for your show while auntie dearest fixes my nerves. Otherwise, Robin here will stage a little revolution.”

Kryzalid grinned even harder, snapped her fingers.

“That’s rich. I’m the queen of revolutions.”

“And queens get decapitated all the time. So, please – just this once, listen to me, Mimi. Alright?”

**

The Eye was a strange name for a structure of that magnitude, but not a wrong one. A vast open area, surrounded by bombed buildings, encircling it as an impromptu impact crater. The rubble, the scars of a war long gone, made it impossible to survey the area, to even find it, if one didn’t know where to look for it. A vast network of galleries, many of them collapsed, most leading to dead ends. Just a small fraction of those sunken arteries was still usable, if at all. And, among those, only an even smaller fraction led to the eye. Even when knowing its exact coordinates, reaching the Eye was no joke. Unless one had the help of a local, that is. Or you were led there by one of them. For example, as a prisoner.

When the blindfold left his eyes, the man couldn’t help but gasp. He walked for hours, pulled around like dead weight, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, hoping that his guides were really going to bring him to his goalpost. Him and his superior officer – former superior officer. His eyes started to adapt to the darkness, punctuated by flickering neons, by the distorted patches of Aralu’s ‘sky’. A movement on his left, another gasping sound. He turned around, his gaze met a familiar face. A woman in her thirties, slick black hair, brown eyes, white skin.

“Natasha!”

He found himself almost shouting, in surprise, relief. Only for said relief to turn into terror, as he realized their position. The two of them. Placed at the center of the Eye. Surrounded by a metallic mesh, forming a ring. The person who unhooked their blindfolds had already left the area, closing a metallic door behind them, now moving around the outer ring. Right outside of the barrier, a bald man stood still, his arms crossed, his mustache twirled. Many other people, slightly behind him. Children, even. A huge crowd of gazes, all focused on the people brought inside. Not a word, not a sound, except the breathing, the heartbeat of the two figures in the focus of the crater. The woman looked around too, trying to gauge the situation, before heaving a sigh of relief, turning to her fellow captive.

“Good. We made it, Petr.”

“We made it? But we are…”

“If they wanted to kill us, they would have already done it.”

He stopped for a second to consider that angle. She was right on one count: if they wanted to kill them, that would have been easy. But why bringing them into what amounted to a cage? And why keeping their wrists tied? A tremendous thought scorched his brain. What if… what if…

“They aren’t… going to make us fight each other, right?”

The woman named Natasha chuckled.

“That would be real cheesy. No, I think they have something else in mind. Let me do the talk.”

She stood up, her hands still tied behind her back, walked slowly towards the edge of the enclosed area, where the bald man stood.

“This was not what we agreed on, chief.”

The man, though, didn’t reply, dissimulated indifference, almost as if the woman didn’t exist. Yet, Natasha pushed further.

“Listen up, I’ve done my part. I’ve proven my identity, I’ve given you some classified intel. All I asked for was a clean slate, a new name and a place down here for me and my subordinate. So, tell me – what game are you playing, old man?”

Silence again. The man turned around, looking back at the exit of what once was a metro station. He glanced at his watch, glanced at the opening again, mumbled something under his breath. Then, he heard it. Music. First, faint, very faint. Then louder, stronger, closer any second more. The echoes of the notes bounced around the Eye, making everyone turn too. Children, adults, men, women, people of all genders, ages and races. All staring at that metro station exit, enraptured by the music. Till a dark hood emerged from it, followed by a blindfold, followed by red braids, a bow, a violin, long, slender legs, bare feet with varnished black nails.

And the crowd cheered.

Chanting a name.

“Kryzalid!”

“It’s Kryzalid!”

“Kryzaliiiiid!”

That name made Natasha and Petr shiver, exchange worried gazes. Kryzalid. The former Peacekeeper known as Mimi LeFou. The terrorist who killed more than sixty people in cold blood. The dead woman that was refused by Hell and reincarnated as a devil, a wretched eldritch soul eater in human form. Natasha stepped back from the fence, gained distance from it. Kryzalid. There. Walking towards the Eye. Followed by two other figures. On her left, a person wrapped in a red cape, donning a gas mask. On her right side, a short woman with tall platform shoes and an eyepatch. Natasha gritted her teeth, shook her head in confusion, cursed. Petr stared in awe, his mouth agape. It felt like witnessing a religious ritual, the sanctity of which hinged on the diminutive figure of a phantom violinist, a specter from times long gone. All what was missing were candles. Yes, candles would have make that turn into a real procession, like in those old tapes he watched as a kid. Natasha, though, had none of it.

“This wasn’t our deal! You can’t sell us to this criminal! I swear, the Corps will get your…”

“Oh, shut up.”

The bald man waved his hand at her, before turning towards the newcomer and her entourage. He twirled his mustache, squared the trio with his ever-moving black eyes.

“Who are those two? Where’s Dobriovchka?”

Kryzalid responded with her best shite-eating grin.

“Them gals here are on a kindergarten field trip. Just let them watch, ‘kay? I’m guaranteeing for them, they won’t interfere.”

“You word is pretty worthless as a currency.”

“Fine. Aunt Caro guarantees for them. You can call her, if you wish, but she’s fixing my pal now and I’d prefer if you didn’t bother her. Now…”

Kryzalid raised her bow, pointed it at the fence.

“…what do we have here?”

The bald man’s finger aimed at the two people inside the ring.

“The woman is Natasha van Rijverik, last denomination: Beta Twenty-two of the Peacekeeper Corps. The other one is called Petr Roshtok, from the Corps too – a low level grunt from the traffic unit. They deserted yesterday evening.”

Kryzalid massaged her chin with the back of her hand, deep in thought.

“…Beta, you said. So, Dobrio wasn’t joking.”

“And this is why you’re here.”

Kryzalid felt her robe pulled on the side. She couldn’t see who did it, but it came from below. A kid. It had to be a kid. Before she could inquire or even ask, a sound of steps reached her, arms grabbed the child, ripped it back. A woman’s voice in her ears, one she didn’t know well.

“My… my apologies, lady Kryzalid! My baby is too curious, and…”

Lady Kryzalid. She would have laughed, in any other situation. But not there.

“Relax, he didn’t do anything wrong. ‘Sides, I love the li’l ones, as long as they don’t pull my braids.”

She bent her knees, looked in the general direction of where the kid had to be, wore her best smile.

“Hey kid, this might be rough, so be sure to close your eyes when you hear the first scream, alright? It’s not a show for children… but, hey, your call. Better learn quickly, yes?”

Then, she stood up again, slowly walking towards the fence. The bald man grabbed a handle, turned it down, letting her enter the Eye. He closed it immediately after, locked it too with a heavy key. Leaving her inside, with the two deserters, now staring at her with eyes wide open. Petr screamed, almost instinctively. Which made the child from before cover his eyes with his tiny hands, as requested, only for him to try and peek through his open fingers. Natasha gritted her teeth, lashed at the hooded woman.

“You bastard! You were all in cahoots, were you? New life my ass! You… you…”

Music. Suddenly, unexpectedly, music. The violin, a virtuous solo performed by capable hands, a cascade of notes, a waterfall of sounds. Everyone bracing around the fence, observing in silence, revering the mysticism of that moment. Kryzalid danced around the ring, lightly tapping her feet on the molten asphalt, plucking the strings faster and faster, arcing her bow too at irregular intervals. Petr fell on his knees, closed his eyes, his teeth clattered, his whole body shivering. Kryzalid. The mad violinist. The same one who killed twenty of his colleagues with the sound of her instrument. Making their heads pop like balloons. Pop. Pop. Pop. One by one. That was a cruel ending. That wasn’t what he signed for, when he decided to defect. No, he wanted a new life, a quiet life, away from the Corps, away from weapons, rhizomes and what not. Kryzalid’s brutal massacre was the final straw, the one that convinced him to act, to follow the lead of Beta Twenty-two. And now… and now…

And now…?

Nothing.

He felt nothing.

Despite the music. Despite the vibrations.

He felt nothing.

He opened his eyes, took a long breath. The music was still playing but his head… his head was still there? On his shoulders? That couldn’t be. He carefully opened his eyes, looked up. Kryzalid. Kryzalid was still dancing and playing, pirouetting and prancing around the fenced area, with sort of ethereal elegance, one that made him forget his situation for an instant. But, then, he heard it. Coughs. Fits of coughs. Natasha. Natasha on her knees. Vomiting green slime. Coughing. Coughing. As her eyes turned red, her vessels dilating, getting thicker under her skin. Coughing. Coughing. Spitting more and more of that green fluid.

“…Natasha?”

Outside of the fence, Lacrima stumbled, fell into Robin’s arms, as if hit by a dizzy spell. Her world started to spin, her stomach to shake. That sound. That sound. Where did she hear it before? Not the music, not that. The one hidden inside it. That frequency. That vibration. How did Kryzalid know of it? She altered her structure by a little, to make that off-tune with her own structure, forcing her body to respond to that unnerving signal. Robin grabbed Lacrima unceremoniously, while still staring at the macabre show unfolding in front of her eyes. Kryzalid was using her violin… to inflict pain on someone who left the Corps. That was inhumane. So, what? What was the ‘truth’ that Dobrio so much flaunted? That Kryzalid was also a sadist bastard who was turned on by inflicting physical pain on others? Yet, she couldn’t stop watching. Her guts told her that something was going to happen. Something unexpected. Something greater than everything else combined. And her guts rarely missed.

Natasha coughed another time, her eyes bloodshot, her throat dry, her tongue overextended. Till something else came out of her mouth. A vine. Two vines. Three. Seven, twelve, twenty. From her nostrils. Her ears. A scream. She screamed. What was left of her, screamed. Yet, the scream was muffled, blocked, stopped by a structure emerging between her teeth.

A flower bud, on a long stem, getting out, quicker and quicker.

A flower that bloomed almost instantly, opening up its corolla with supernatural elegance.

A flower with beautiful white petals, shining in the neon lights of the Eye.

A flower that spread tendrils in all directions.

Piercing the body of Natasha, delving into her flesh.

And starting to drain her of her water.