Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #22 – Dig Down

Lacrima grabbed an apple from the stand, smelled it. Its skin was red, almost as red as her rose, but the scent was different, pleasant. She considered biting it, but then she remembered that she had no money to pay for it. No eas, no apple. Stealing it wasn’t an option either: those people living in the shelter were acquaintances of Mimi – so Mimi would have got into trouble, if Lacrima did something bad. She put down the apple, with significant regret. Rhizomes didn’t need to eat, but even her taste buds needed some new stimuli once in a while. Her mind turned back to Mimi, to the moments they shared not even two hours before. Her water was good. Mimi cried so much while hugging her, so much that Lacrima was almost fully watered just by licking her cheeks. Seeing that human cry and ask her, beg her to call her Mimi and not Kryzalid left a strange feeling inside her. Mimi. Kryzalid. Two sides of the same coin. Mimi was the pulp, Kryzalid was the skin. And that skin was more fragile than she expected, while also acting tough and mighty. That story about the parasite plant in the humans she killed… was haunting, in a way. In that room, under four eyes (six, if everyone had a complete set of them, but that wasn’t the case) she kept talking and talking, in an endless stream of consciousness. Her expression shifted between a sad, tired mood and a fiery, angry one at the flick of a switch, all while periodically punching Dobrio’s abs.

“That damn parasite is the root of all my fucked up bad luck! I lost my sight because that… thing misfired and went almost full kaboom in my head. And that almost was enough to shred my optic nerves – or this is what the old hag says. Cherry on the top, my ears went full tinnitus too.”

“Tinnitus?”, Lacrima had asked. A word she had never heard. It sounded a bit like tit, that small colorful bird with the yellow feathers. It couldn’t be that, though: there weren’t any tits inside Mimi’s ears, otherwise she would have seen them, when laying close to her on the cot. Mimi had, of course, groaned, tipping her finger on her earlobe.

“You know when you keep hearing a beeeeeep all day long, even if you plug your ears closed? That. But the frequency… that frequency I hear is weird. It’s… it’s exactly the one that triggered my parasite. I don’t know why, but, from the moment I lost my sight, I have this godawful sound stuck in my brain. Beeeep. Beeeep. Beeeep. It’s been ringing there for so long I’ve almost stopped caring.”

Lacrima had pondered if that was equivalent to hearing a white bellbird’s vocalization on loop. That would have been at least mildly unpleasant, even for someone like her. She wanted to ask how that sound sounded, but before she could consider it, Kryzalid crossed her hands in front of her chest, heaving a longer sigh than usual.

“That sound was hidden in the mall music… and killed all of them. All. Of them. In front of me. Bang. Bang. Bang. All their heads gone almost at the same time. But hey, that was only act one. A second or two later, the sound changed… aaaand their stomachs went booom too. Because, yes, there’s another parasite in our belly, a sort of fallback that triggers on a different frequency and only if the main one has died – or so the old hag says, not that I’ve ever understood that part well. But mine was burned by antibiotics, and that’s how I survived the encore. Oh, apparently rhizome lymph burns them too – drink enough of it and it dies.”

“So, a Peacekeeper can be saved if they are turned into a lymph junkie… well, at least from the stomach parasite.”, Robin interrupted, with what Lacrima considered a sound conclusion from that outlandish premise.

“Yeah, but then they traded a big problem with a bigger problem. ‘Cause lymph ain’t cheap. Ask the moron here who sold his head to buy some more.”

“I got a bang for my bucks. Enough eas for one year worth of synth!”

“Synth, see? Not even the real deal!”

At that point, Mimi had leaned forward and shivered, staring deeply at the floor in a very un-Kryzalid way.

“So, here it is. Every Peacekeeper’s head goes boom at a frequency I know by heart. That’s how my violin works: nothing more than an amplifier with very sensitive controls. It’s not that I’m a goddess – though I might as well be, if you worship me enough – it’s that they are flawed. There’s a back door inside all of them, somehow – there was one inside me too. But… how and why these parasites exist? I have no idea. They might be connected with the real murderer – the one who turned Mimi into Kryzalid.”

That last sentence made her aimless gaze heat up like burning charcoal.

“The one I’ve been chasing for all this time.”

Lacrima stared at the apple stand again. Mimi’s face turned that shade of red, as anger poured through all of her pores. It was the border between her and Kryzalid, her two personalities mingling and supporting each other in her chase for her mark.

Do her tears taste better or worse, when she’s angry? And what about her sweat? And her saliva? And her…

She groaned, shook her head slightly, let that thought die. She had enough water for a week, no need to get greedy – even if curiosity was a big bad cassowary to tame. After all, Mimi was the first human who offered her own body to her to that level. She wondered whether humans drank each other’s water too, like Mimi and she did, exchanging lymph and nourishment with each other. That was something to ask Robin later. She didn’t want to give Mimi the impression that she didn’t know anything about it – what if that woman refused to drain her again, if she sounded too stupid or naive? That wasn’t something she could afford, not now that she finally found a way to make her drainage safe and way less unpleasant.

Her eye turned back to the stall, to the fruit that triggered those idle thoughts. Only to notice that the crate of apples was pulled away, closed and packed up. She glanced around the central room, looking at all the other stands, the beds, the cots. It wasn’t an isolated case. Everyone else was packing their stuff, placing it in metal containers, locking them. She stood there, without saying a word, in the middle of that tranquil chaos, trying to find a key to understand what she was witnessing.

“What’s up? Why so sullen, girl? Don’t you like the vibes?”

Lacrima turned around, meeting the collar bones of a man she had seen before. She raised her gaze, finally finding his eyes. The bald mustached human that welcome Kryzalid to the Eye. He had to have a name too, one that sounded awfully like shoebill. Seamus? Shamuel? Sean? She couldn’t remember it, right in that moment. But it was good that he showed up, so that she could ask the questions that were festering inside her brain, like cuckoo eggs laid inside a sparrow’s nest.

“Why’s everyone packing their stuff?”

“…‘cause your blind friend fucked up big time.”

His voice was powerful, almost as much as the roar of a lion but definitely not to the level of a white bellbird’s cry. Lacrima glanced at his features once again, at that bushy mustache running under his massive nose. Then, her attention moved again to his words. Blind friend. That had to be Mimi. But how? It didn’t check out.

“What did Mimi do?”

“Mimi? I’m talking about ‘Lady’ Kryzalid.”

The way he pronounced the word lady told Lacrima everything she needed to know. Also, his initial surprise signaled that he wasn’t aware of Mimi’s identity. That prompted Lacrima to break the promise she made to Mimi for her sake and refer to her as ‘Kryzalid’, at least for the span of that conversation. She waited for him to go forth, to explain himself better, since he looked like aching to talk more.

“Killing three dozen Peacekeepers in one go? Girl, the Corps are going to raze this place, I tell you. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. The moment they turn on the Panopticon, we are as good as fried. So, yeah, everyone’s moving to other shelters or going back to their homes. They just stayed as long as they needed to recover… and to thank ‘our savior’, ‘cause apparently that’s a thing.”

Lacrima stuttered. Three dozen. Thirty-six People. That didn’t match. That didn’t match at all.

“Wait, that’s… incorrect. Kryzalid terminated just four Peacekeepers. I was there, I have seen it with my own eye.”

“That means jack to them. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story, got it? Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe ‘twas an inside job. But the result’s all the same: thirty-six rest-in-peacekeepers. Swing it how you want, they have an incident to respond to, now. And who’s going to pay for it? All of us.”

He waved his arm at the ceiling, at the walls of what once seemed to be a metro station, now turned into a safety bunker.

“I sound old and bitter, but hear me, gal: this place was the jewel of New Babylon, once. An underground block for middle class folks. A city under the city that had everything – and I mean everything. Now, you see what’s left of it, after the ‘large scale peacekeeping operation’ of thirty years ago. Rubble. Glitchy panels. A sky that makes your headache stronger every second you look at it. Craters. Chasms. Buildings just waiting to crumble into pieces.”

He closed his hand like a fist, brought it closer to his chin.

“Everyone who could, went back up. All of those without choice remained down here. I? I decided to do my part and try to bring back Lower Aralu to its former splendor, with some… moderate degree of success, I can say. Now, what do you think the bozos up there will do? That’s right, another ‘large scale peacekeeping operation’. Destroying everything – everything that my people and I fought so long to rebuild. This ain’t fair, you see? And it all started when that blind idiot showed up dressed like a comic book character.”

He relaxed his grip, let her arm fall.

“…but, yeah, without her, many of us would have died already ‘cause of them plants. She saved many lives, very many. Without her, no second chance for deserting cops – like my wife. This ‘Lady Kryzalid’ lives up to her name, yes? So, I dunno what to do. I really dunno. Well, except packing my stuff too. Can’t be here when the ‘keepers enter gun blazing. Enjoy your stay till it lasts, but – please – start packing too. They’ll be here sooner than you think. Maybe they’re already on their way.”

Lacrima noticed the conflict in these words, but couldn’t reconcile it. She just followed the man (whose name she forgot to ask) with her gaze, till he disappeared behind a gate. She started scanning her surroundings, to ascertain to which level the occupants of that shelter were preparing to migrate. Backpacks, bottled water, dried food. Everywhere and anywhere. In the midst of chaos, a spark of organization, a collective action for the good of the flock. Then, she noticed them – two faces she had seen just hours earlier. A man with brown hair and a prominent lantern jaw. A woman with slick black hair and brown eyes, her skin covered in plasters and gauze. What were their names? One sounded like parrot, the other like Naretha – Narina? Nacunda? If only all people could be named like bird species. Robin was so easy to remember. Dobrio stretched her patience more (Dodo sounded so much better to her ears) while Mimi somehow stuck. Short. Two syllables. Repeated. Almost impossible to get wrong. She met Parrot’s gaze, saw him raising his finger, pointing at her.

“H… hey! Hey! You are one of Kryzalid’s friends, right? Where can we find her? We wanted to… thank her but also… huh, ask her some questions.”

Straight to the point, not beating around the bush. She liked it. No time or resources wasted.

“She’s resting and refilling her water.”

“Refilling her…”

Oh, right. Humans didn’t really call it like that.

“Drinking. I meant drinking.”

“Huh.”

Lacrima gazed at them, inspected their faces. The woman looked in moderate pain, with both of her ears filled with cotton and wrapped with bandages. Tampons in her nostrils too. The scars left by the parasite plant, the only traces left of it. Lacrima squared her from head to toes, before meeting her equally interested gaze.

“Did you get enough antibiotics to kill the stomach parasite?”

That was maybe too direct as a question, but she felt like she had to ask it. Naretha replied with a weak nod, one that left her looking away.

“Y… yes. A granny with a mech arm shoved two or three pills down my throat. She said I’m fine, now. But, honestly? I can’t really get it. Parasite plants? Inside my body? W… who put them there?”

Naretha leaned on Parrot, her balance still unsteady. She gritted her teeth, gave Parrot a side eye.

“…and why only I? Why not this moron too?”

Lacrima closed her eye, massaged her chin. Mimi’s words echoed one more time in her brain. Suddenly, she was there again, in that room, with Robin and Dobrio, listening to her story.

“Have you ever seen a man bloom? Well, duh, of course you have, right? But I mean… really. Like, head explodes, plant comes out. Not the kid-friendly version I showed you before.”

Dobrio had, of course, raised his hand. And, of course, he was ignored as usual. Still, Mimi patted his head a couple times, almost as a consolation prize of sorts, before resuming her lecture.

“Know that the difference between that slow bloom you saw and an… explosive one is in the frequency. You need to hit precisely the right chord at the right spot, with a leeway of a few millihertz… and it changes from individual to individual, albeit slightly. Making heads explode is easy. Making them not explode… well, that’s my art. That’s why I needed that check-up, first. Implants out of tune? Sucks to be that poor sod that listens to my music. Really. And that’s also why I can’t do that for every ‘keeper: it’s hard. Very hard. In the middle of a battle, I can’t focus enough on it. So, exploding it is. Not nice, not artsy, but at least it lets me survive. But, when I have time and when I’m called to help a deserter… that’s where Kryzalid shines!”

After that explanation, what happened in the Eye made more sense. What didn’t make sense – at least not to Lacrima – was why only Naretha bloomed and not Parrot. That was indeed a good question. But Mimi answered that too: only the Peacekeepers that worked with rhizomes were affected. The clerks, grunts and low-level traffic units weren’t. So, the Alphas, Betas, Gammas… they were the most at risk of blossoming. Why, she didn’t know either. So, instead of answering Naretha’s question directly, Lacrima decided to play around it.

“Does it even matter that Parrot didn’t bloom? Both of you survived, that’s what’s important.”

“Petr. Not Parrot. Petr.”

Lantern jaw grimly corrected her, causing Lacrima to nod again. Right, Petr. She could remember that for the next five minutes. Before defaulting back to Parrot. She walked right to them, looked at their eyes. Thanks to her platform shoes, she didn’t need to tiptoe to do that, which made her feel better about her size. Then, she wore what looked like a smile.

“I’ll tell Kryzalid that you are grateful to her, the next time I go drink her water. Maybe, she’ll cry tears of joy too. I wonder how they’d taste, though.”

Petr and Natasha (Natasha! That was her name!) looked at each other quizzically, unable to really understand what the deal with that woman was. Only for her to prance away, sliding through the crowd, under their more than confused gaze. After leaving them behind, Lacrima stopped in the middle of the hall. There was a huge clock standing right above her, hanging from the wall, with a cracked glass quadrant. Despite its poor shape, it was still working fine, ticking second after second. She read the time, focusing on the shortest hand. Almost twenty-two sharp. Almost too late. She picked up her pace, dashed through the flocks of people getting ready to evacuate, till her eye caught a glimpse of a figure with a red cape and a gas mask, leaning heavily on a pillar. Surrounded by children pulling said cape from all sides, right as she kept tapping her foot on the floor in annoyance. Lacrima waved her hand, only to be met with the blackness of her lenses.

“Finally. What took you so long?”

The distorted voice made the children chuckle, run around her in a circle. At which point her hand went for the holster, bringing out a shining white gun, aiming it at one of the kids, removing the safety. Causing the children to scramble, quietly, without saying another word, muttering something unintelligible. Lacrima reached for Robin, leaned on the pillar too.

“I was looking around. I didn’t expect there to be so many people, down here. And so many of them idolize Mimi…”

“Yeah, that was… unsettling.”

Robin holstered her gun, adjusted her mask, tightened the lock.

“Say, Lacrima, what do you think of that story? The one about the man who bloomed?”

Oh, yeah, the story of how Mimi learned of the existence of the plant parasites. It felt hard to believe, though, because the premise sounded outlandish – even for someone like her. Lacrima was totally absorbed by her speech, back in the room – at least until she reached that part. A part that began with a car ride. Mimi went full throttle on it, starting to talk at an impressive speed, piling up words on top of each other, maybe to keep things shorter, after such an exhausting day.

“So, the first time I saw a parasite went more or less like this: one of the blokes Dobrio and I – huh – ‘transported’ in our taxi vomited the green shit out of his bowels for half the trip, before suddenly turning full horror movie and splattering his brain all over the back seats. Which sucked, ‘cause we had just bought them new, but whatevs.”

Lacrima had almost jumped on her cot, her mouth agape.

“Wait, wait! Working as a taxi driver…?! You?!”

That question had the same effect as a flash bang grenade on Mimi. Only a rhizome could focus on the most trivial, inoffensive and possibly correct part of her story instead of the almost unbelievable core of her statement. Mimi had stopped talking for a second or two, with the face of someone who had just had first contact with an alien. She blinked, slowly, breathed, slowly, before joining her hands in front of her face and slamming her fist on Dobrio’s lower abs, eliciting a grunt of pain out of him. Then, she faced the general direction where Lacrima’s voice came from, crossing her fingers under her chin.

“That’s what surprises you? My goodness, you plants are such a piece of work. But, yes. I was working as a ‘taxi driver’… of sorts, let’s say. After I settled down here, I lay low for a while, just to quietly gather intel on the bastard that threw me into hell. Everyone ‘round the neighborhood knew me as Mia and… well, my fit when we met? That was my usual. I still wear it when I’m not on stage, it’s super comfie. I love baggy pants and sneakers, I tell ya.“

Lacrima nodded in approval. Indeed, that fit with face mask, long untied hair, eyepatch and cap suited Mimi quite well – more than that preposterous fantasy violinist attire that left her legs and feet completely bare – although she had to admit that visualizing that costume in her mind made her excess lymph production accelerate, for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint.

“Dobrio and I moonlighted as – uh –‘transporters’ to make enough eas for plant juice and to pay back that slave driver of my aunt. That old hag opened shop here a couple years ‘fore I came and was the one who installed all of my implants. She’s… very good at it, but has no patience at all. That’s why she went underground: less regulations, easier to work with illegal suppliers… and a bad case of ‘fuck the cops’ attitude.”

Mimi’s voice shifted when referring to ‘that old hag’, in a warmer tone than usual. Lacrima wondered whether that was a sign of respect, annoyance, or both.

“Back to my story… one day, a guy who defected from the Corps used our ‘services’ to disappear in Lower Aralu and – huh – turned full screaming plant. So, we turned full ‘kill it with fire’.”

Dobrio clapped his hands, giggled like a teenager seeing their favorite PV celebrity crush.

“Cowmower my beloved!”

“So many bullet holes and bloodstains. We had to replace the back seats again.”

“No regrets.”

“I know.”

Mimi tried to punch him in the face, missing it and hitting his shoulder instead, causing her to start cursing like a longshoreman. Before turning yet again to her guests.

“So, huh… after that unadulterated disaster, I…”

“We.”

“Yes, we were scared the hag wouldn’t believe us and would put the cab repairs cost on our tab. Well… she surprised me again, huh? Instead of lecturing me, she just handed Dobrio a scrap of paper with an address written on... asking me to go there.”

A commotion. Noise all around. Back to the present, back into the shelter hall. Robin raised her head, Lacrima followed suit. In the distance, in the middle of two open rows of people, walked a woman. Ripped dark cape, red braids, a hood on her head, a blindfold covering her eyes, an exquisitely crafted violin in her left hand, a bow in her right. With a shite-eating grin plastered all over her face.

“Ladies, are you ready? We’ve gotta go places.”