Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #9 – Greenhouse Lullaby

Commander Primula, drawn by Yamda

“I’ve heard you’ve been grilled.”

“Grilled is putting it lightly, Prim.”

The morning sunlight filtered through the glass cage, inundated the soil, the leaves, the lush vegetation spread around the complex. An arboretum, twenty meters by twenty, hosting species from all over the world. The private paradise of rhizome agents, the one place they could photosynthesize in peace. Still, the blond rhizome sitting under a tree, covered in a bunny-themed towel, was willing to sacrifice part of that alone time to listen to the woes of a Peacekeeper – one that gifted her an emotional support plushie, no less. So, she let him rest his head on her lap, caressing his dark locks, as his gaze soared to the infinite sky behind the tempered glass. That wasn’t even an idea Mal came out with on his own. To his utter surprise, it was Prim who suggested that arrangement. And there he was, having his hair patted by a rhizome, while her tendrils were spread around him, in a dry hug of sorts. Mal let out a long sigh, closed his eyes, listened to Prim’s breath, the rhythm of her heart. Despite being more plant than human, she still had one. Her veins, her arteries pumped lymph around her body. In a way, they were both extremely different and very similar. Prim’s finger forced his eyelids open, staring deeply at that wreck of a man lying on her.

“And? Why did they grill you?”

“They wanted to know why I didn’t shoot the renegade. I told ‘em the truth – that my rifle got jammed due to a broken spring. That’s how it is.”

“Mal.”

Prim’s voice turned stern, as she started pinching his cheek, moving it up and down.

“If there’s anyone whose weapon wouldn’t jam, it’s you.”

Mal let her play with his cheek for a while, before finally moving her fingers away, as gently as he could. He looked straight at Prim, his irises and hers meeting, reflecting into each others.

“You got proof?”

“You disassemble and reassemble your rifle every night before going to sleep.”

Using the loudest tools available to him, while listening to high volume heavy music. All allowed by the letter of the rules, which asked Peacekeepers to regularly take care of their weapons by all means necessary. Mal had somewhat successfully argued that high tempo music was mandatory for him to focus and that wearing headphones would be detrimental during the reassembling procedure. The end result was that nobody could sleep in his dormitory till he finished putting his standard issue rifle together. Just another pitiful attempt at being discharged, one that his superiors had already defused. Still, that meant that any other weapon in the precinct was more likely to jam due to dirt or mechanical failure than Mal’s. The care with which he replaced even the just slightly damaged parts, continuously asking for new components to an annoying degree (another early-discharge tactic?) made it seriously unlikely that his gun malfunctioned. Prim could surmise how the higher ups thought the same.

“If there truly was a spring close to its breaking point, you would have replaced it already.”

Mal closed his eyes again, inhaled, exhaled.

“There ain’t cameras here, right?”

“Nope. No mics either.”

“Rhizome privileges…”

“Captain Commander Lily wanted to be absolutely, positively sure that Dr. Zonta couldn’t get his hands on hours of footage of naked rhizomes photosynthesizing in the greenhouse. By all means, I agree with her. That man… creeps me out.”

Mal frowned, let himself be lulled by Prim’s soft touch, her fingers still playing with locks of his unruly hair. Yes, Zonta was a creep. An unsettling, card-carrying creep even, a statement every single living being in the precinct – no matter if man, woman, non-binary or rhizome – would stand by. Yet, he blessed that no-cameras, no-mics policy put in place to stop the man from peeping at his own creations. It meant he could be more honest, at least with Primula – especially now that she was reiterating the question.

“So, about that rifle…?”

“Okay, okay, you got me. It’s not that my rifle jammed. It’s just like…”

He groaned, tried to find the right words.

“Listen, it was loaded with herbi…”

Prim shivered. Her whole body. Her tendrils. Her fingers. All shaken, in an unstoppable feeling of powerlessness. Herbicide. The black skin. Herbicide. The excruciating pain. Herbicide. Failure to breathe. Herbicide. Crying out lymph.

Herbicide.

Burning.

Burning.

Burning.

Burning.

Burn. Ing.

Bu.

Rn.

Ing.

BURNINGBURNINGBURNINGINGINGINGINGING

A shriek. She let out a shriek. Her heartbeat accelerated, almost to the point of exploding. Her arms clenched around Mal’s body, her breathing ragged, irregular.

Herbicide. Herbicide. Herbicide.

“I’ll be good! I won’t break the rules again! I’ll be good! Don’t punish me! Don’t punish me! No! No, please! I’ll be good! I’ll do everything you say! Don’t punish me! Don’t punish me! Don’t…”

“Prim!”

A voice. Mal’s voice. The sunlight. The greenhouse. The plants. The soil. The towel. Mal. His dark locks. Riri. Her heartbeat started to decelerate, slowly, constantly. Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. Exhale. Inhale. Breathe. Prim’s vision returned to the current moment, to her personal Eden. It was fine. She was fine. There was no burning sensation. There was no herbicide. She was fine. Fine. Fine.

“See?”

Mal’s voice. Again. Anchoring her to that reality. It had a soothing effect on her nerves. It made her remember that she was there and not… in that other place. Not in the incinerator.

“Now, how could you ask me to spray herbicide on a rhizome after having seen you… go through that?”

Illogical. Mal’s point was completely illogical. Inconsequential, even. He was a Corps soldier. Rhizomes were weapons. They had to take care of weapons. And herbicide was a means to that end. So, that made no sense. She didn’t care for humans. Humans shouldn’t care for rhizomes. Symbiosis, mutual benefits. That’s where it ended. Nothing deeper than that. Yet, there she was, cradling a human in her lap to… thank him for an emotional support plushie. After having spent countless hours of her off-duty time browsing the comnet, looking for topics like ‘how to react to a gift’, ‘how to thank a human’, ‘how to reciprocate feelings’. The answers had been kind of cryptic, for her limited understanding of how humans functioned, but the part about ‘cuddling them when in emotional distress’ sounded doable. Mal was ‘in emotional distress’, after having been interrogated for three hours straight. So, ‘cuddling’ it was, whatever it implied. However, in a twist Prim couldn’t anticipate, caressing his hair had a soothing effect on her spirit too, almost like petting Riri. That softness made her feel at ease, made her forget her troubles, her woes. Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. There was that other topic suggested by users on blogosphere, but that felt gross, in a way. And she was sure Mal was no lymph junkie. Which made that a no-go. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Back to Mal’s question. That meant that he didn’t want to see a rhizome suffer from the effects of herbicide. Which also meant that he was unfit to be part of the Corps, for better or worse. Prim twisted another lock of his hair, petted his head.

“Sounds like you had a horrible day.”

“Yeah. Today’s my turn to feel like shit.”

“Then, keep talking about it. Am I not your ‘emotional support plant’?”

“Nah, I guess I’m fine. Thanks for listening, though.”

Prim let out a rare smile, breaking the wall of ice that encased her emotions. She pinched Mal’s nose, poked it with her finger, before patting his shoulders, giving herself time to tell something more – yet another part of her clumsy ‘thank you’ strategy.

“Say, do you… want to grab some fries, after lunch? My treat.”

Indeed, ‘lunch together’ was another one of the suggestions she had read on the comnet. Except, rhizomes didn’t need to eat, their lunches were a simple combination of soil, water and sunlight. Nevertheless, that came handy to satisfy one curiosity she had. Though, Mal didn’t seem to have expected that.

“You eat fries?”

“I don’t eat them, my body doesn’t need them. But I want to see if they taste better than those replacement pills. Everyone tells how good they are, but I have… huh, never tried them.”

“What about a cowburger too? Cowburger with fries is the real deal!”

“N… no! What if I developed a taste for meat?”

“Scared you’d try to eat me?”

“Sorta…?”

He shrugged.

“You’d be a cute carnivorous plant.”

“Ugh, don’t joke about it.”

A hiss of compressed air diverted her attention. The sliding door to the greenhouse. Opening. All of a sudden. Prim’s head turned towards it, her heart braced for impact. There was nothing in the rules against a rhizome ‘cuddling’ a Peacekeeper, but… but…

“Yo, Prim. Having some sweet time with your human pet, I see.”

That abrasive voice. That perfectly tanned skin. Those intricate branches that looked like deer antlers. In front of her, stood none other than Felce, wearing nothing but her bark and bare skin, plus her usual black marks under her ever-annoyed eyes. Prim inhaled. Exhaled. Breathed. ‘Human pet’. Mal was no ‘pet’. But it was Felce talking, someone with even less tact than her. She clenched her arms around Mal, hugging him even stronger than before, all while her eyes locked in with the newcomer’s gaze. Her tendrils started to move too, forming a crown behind her neck. An instinctive reaction, much like that of a pufferfish. Still, Felce just shrugged it off, slowly walking to an empty spot, before spreading her arms and welcoming the light of the day.

“Uff. I reaaally needed it.”

Prim gritted her teeth, raised her voice, didn’t want to be ignored any longer.

“Why are you here?”

“You don’t have a monopoly on the greenhouse, you know.”

“Yes, but…”

But you’re never around at this time of the day, so why now? That was the true question. Prim carefully selected her time in the greenhouse to avoid every other rhizome, Felce included. Only Mal was allowed to interrupt her routine and spend time with her. Only he. The fact that Felce was standing there, right then, was an anomaly.

Then, she noticed something amiss on her body. The gash on her chest, from her left shoulder to her right hip, freshly cicatrized. Her bandaged hand with swollen fingers. Her torn vine. Whatever happened to Felce, it had left marks on her body, marks of a fierce battle that she probably lost. That could only mean one thing. The renegade. The renegade did that to her. Prim stared back at Mal, still keeping her hands around his neck, her roots around his body.

“My apologies, but I fear you can’t stay. This place is… open only to rhizomes. And, as such. I…”

Felce’s voice thundered in the greenhouse, bursting into what sounded like a burst of laughter.

“Prim, stop being a sissy – I have no issues with this guy hanging around, as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid. Heck, I wish I had a pet like him…”

She smirked, licked her lips.

“…someone to help me relieve my excess lymph, drinking it right out of my body, licking my sweat, gulping my saliva, swallowing my…”

“Enough!”

Prim hugged Mal even stronger, almost making him gasp for air, while her eyes crossed with Felce’s in a contest of stares, the prelude to a war. As if to make a statement, Prim patted Mal’s head, twisted her fingers in his hair, still entangled in his black locks. Then, she whispered in his ear, her lips dangerously close to his cheek.

“Mal? Leave us alone. Now.”

She relented her grip, let the man finally breathe. He stood up, slowly, still trying to gauge the situation. In front of him, Primula and Felce were standing across each other, their eyes locked. Prim seemed tense to the point of exploding. Felce was smirking at her playfully, her pose and demeanor exuding a boastful air of challenge. Mal could almost see lightning bolts, static shocks moving among them, a storm hanging up, waiting for a trigger. He didn’t want to be that trigger, so he quickly and inconspicuously left the greenhouse behind, slipping through the sliding door. Only to hear Prim’s voice once again.

“Wait for me in the cafeteria, after lunch. We’re having those fries – no matter what.”

“Oki-doki! C… catch ya later, then!”

Then, he disappeared in the corridor, the automatic door closing behind him with the usual hiss. Leaving Prim and Felce, face to face, still looking at each other for five, ten, fifteen seconds longer. Before Felce burst into laughter.

“Oh, my goodness, his face! His face, Prim! And yours! We’re having those fries – no matter what. That was comedy gold!”

Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. Prim closed her eyes, let her muscles relax. Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. She untied her towel, rolled it around a tree branch close by, freeing her body from the embrace of that soft fabric. Then, she spread her arms, welcoming the sunlight still coming through the windows. Felce did the same, in silence, matching her pose, savoring the delicate balance of moisture and warmth that the greenhouse provided. She let her laughter die, turning back to a more serious demeanor.

“I’m sorry, I was just joking about that guy. But, for someone who sees humans as sacks of water, sure you reacted weird.”

“He had a bad day. He didn’t need more trouble.”

“Well, I had a bad day too.”

“Yeah, I saw the gash. Still not healed?”

“Not completely. My hand hurts too. That damn Lacrima birch hit me hard. Her kick cracked some of my ribs too. It hurts to breathe.”

Inhale. Exhale. Prim relented, let her stress flow away. She glanced at Felce, at the omnipresent dark marks under her eyes. Rumor had it that she spent half an hour in her cubicle every morning, to draw them, no matter what happened. It felt an odd feature to wast her time on, but Prim couldn’t help but being fascinated by them… and by Felce’s unexplainable tan. The greenhouse glass filtered all UV light, so she couldn’t have got that dark of a complexion by photosynthesizing there. That combination of tanned skin, antlers, dark marks, black hair and almost black eyes made Prim feel things she would have rather not. She couldn’t take her eyes off Felce’s body, scanning it from head to toes, from toes to head, and back. That was new to her. They had never been in the greenhouse together, in the three years they had been dispatched to the precinct. So, she had never seen her figure from so close. Prim shook her head. That question. She needed to ask that question. She couldn’t wait any longer.

“How did you get so tanned?”

“Envious, huh?”

“I… guess a little bit of color wouldn’t hurt.”

Felce smirked, winked at her.

“Well, I photosynthesize outside. I hate doing it inside this crappy greenhouse, but today I have orders not to leave the premises, yes? It sucks.”

“Outside?”

“Yup. There’s a nice beach not far from here, hidden between the rocks. The soil is trash, the nutrients are bad, but there’s never a human around. I can sunbathe there for hours, just me and the seagulls. Some even stop on my branches. It’s relaxing.”

Prim pictured that image in her mind. Felce. Photosynthesizing on a beach, in front of the sea, her whole body exposed to the sun, with seagulls and crabs as her only company. That sounded… nice, in a way. As if she found her own, personal place in that world. That, though, made her feel suddenly down. Felce was so cool compared with her. Independent, active, energetic. In contrast, Prim was apathetic, reacting instead of acting.

“Wanna go there together, once? You can bring your human pet, as long as you both keep your lips zipped.”

“Mal is not my pet.”

“He sure looks like he is.”

“Well, he isn’t. He’s my ‘emotional support human’.”

“Now we’re calling them like that, huh?”

Suddenly, Felce gritted her teeth, her hand going for her belly, for the cicatrized gash. Drops of green fluid flowed from the wound, seeping on her fingers.

“…it still hurts, dammit.”

She curled forward, almost bit her lips, before standing up again, wiping the gash. Prim looked at it, looked back at Felce in silence, waiting for her to say something more. After a couple of seconds, Felce let out a longer sigh, turned around to face Prim.

“Prim, have you… ever met an unregistered rhizome?”

“No, never. I didn’t even know there were any, until yesterday. Renegades? Yes. Fugitives? Yes. But they were always registered at birth. I can’t believe this one wasn’t.”

“Me neither. I was kinda shocked, but we got neither a name match, nor a feature match. Or, well, we got one, a partial match that is one hundred percent wrong. I tell you what, that Lacrima was… strange.”

“How strange?”

Felce raised her gaze, looked at the glass ceiling. The clouds, the blue sky, the sun. A vast amount of freedom, of unknowns. The stars. The Moon. What even were they? How did the space stations floating around Lagash worked? She didn’t know. There was so much she didn’t know. And, among these mysteries, Lacrima. Another long sigh, before starting to talk again.

“Have you watched the video?”

“No, just read the reports. I was too busy working on the Kryzalid case. Funny how she was mentioned there too.”

“Well, yes, apparently your Kryzalid helped my Lacrima escape, but that’s not the point – the point is that that rhizome looked almost exactly like…”

“Like…?”

“A miniature iron bitch.”

Prim frowned, crossed her arms, right as her neck tendrils started closing around her neck.

“…what do you mean by that?”

“A rose in place of her left eye. Left arm made of vines. A sword. White hair. Whiter skin. Red iris, singular. Reminds you of anybody?”

“Lagash be damned…”

“Yup. Creepy, innit? There are rumors spreading fast, rumors that our dear Captain Commander lost a branch somewhere and that it spawned this shortstack clone – cause she’s short, at least thirty centimeters shorter than the original. Like, even with her platform shoes on, she wasn’t that tall!”

Prim massaged her chin, stared at the ground in contemplation, moving her toes up and down the soil, tapping the terrain while thinking. An unregistered rhizome. Looking like a degraded version of their captain. Cooperating with the terrorist known as Kryzalid. It sounded like a complex deal, more complex than she originally thought. Yet, that also meant…

“…so, we’re working on the same case, just from two different angles.”

“Seems like it.”

Prim nodded. That wasn’t what she had in mind at first, but now it started to click. Kryzalid showing up again after so much time. Killing twenty people. People whose water had something amiss, a subtle difference in chemical composition. Then, Felce facing an unidentified rhizome the day right after. She fought her. Lost her. Mal found her again, but didn’t manage to shoot her. Both of them survived the encounter. And maybe, just maybe, the same Kryzalid was involved too, in a daring rescue operation that apparently involved a battered taxi and a massive mechanical guy with an exhaust port on his neck. Pieces of a puzzle she couldn’t glue together, yet, for the first time, also the feeling that something greater was at play there. And that she couldn’t crack it alone. Which led her to the only possible conclusion.

One that she would have never expected to reach.

“Hey, Felce…”

She stared at the other rhizome, dead in her eyes.

“…what about joining us for fries too, later? My treat.”

Yes, no other choice. Their rivalry could wait.

Getting to the bottom of that case had utmost priority.