Anise:

  How much excitement was enough before she could ask to go home?

  As great as it felt to be in decently potent mana again, something was seriously off about the nature she was feeling. The gnarled roots were unnatural. And the further into Uriel Point that she traveled, the more she felt her skin crawling.

  Something was watching them, and she just couldn’t sense where the feeling was coming from.

  And then she saw it.

  Of course it felt like she was surrounded by the presence. That was exactly where it was.

  The nearest root snapped around her ankle and tugged.

  She wouldn’t scream. She was too old for that. Still…

  This blows chunks.

  And then the root dragged her off into the darkness.

  Mari:

  They’d both gotten inside the underground facility, and then found no trace of Anise.

  They both had their weapons raised and were each on alert, but things went from bad to worse when she finally got a response from the girl via their communications.

  “So… yeah,” Anise said with audible frustration. “I got grabbed. Good luck, kiddos.”

  Mari blinked. “What the fuck?”

  “Well, that’s helpful,” Kris grumbled as she peeked around an illuminated corner. Then her breath caught.

  Mari joined her, and then paused.

  Before them was a huge open area set up like a shopping mall. Tiered layers overlooked a communal sitting area set around a single patch of greenery with an overgrown tree at the center.

  A skylight had been set into the ceiling above to give the tree light, and it had grown outward and upward enough to brush against the glass.

  Roots sprawled from the tree in every direction, often punched straight through the floor and walls. A mass of green, bulbous fruits hung from the boughs of the tree, with one partially formed around Anise’s feet where she hung from a large branch with her arms crossed in annoyance.

  Their eyes met, and Anise held a finger out to one side insistently.

  Following where she was pointing, Mari spotted a hanging sign that read:

  Lab Wing V: Vermillion Rot Sector

  Mari inspected the tree more closely, looking for any signs of visible infection.

  Because vermillion rot was one of the names given for the blood-based bioweapon that she was infected with.

  Kris seemed to have been doing the same, because she spoke. “I don’t see any signs of the bioweapon spreading to the wildlife. I don’t even want to think about monsters being infected.”

  Mari, careful to avoid stepping on any roots suddenly, made her way into the mall area to look down the corridor towards the lab sector.

  When she reached the right place to get a proper view, she stopped. The labs were shielded by an array of machines that she recognized as being the frequency emitters used to prevent the spread of the affliction. Roots were completely engulfing those machines, though.

  Something else shifted, and Mari whirled towards the tree in time to see the roots moving in the south direction as they reeled in a huge fish, brought it to the branches—still flopping back and forth as fish do—and then held it in place where a small stem reached down and pierced the fish, causing it to almost instantly stop thrashing around. Then a fruit began forming around the fish, just like it had with Anise.

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  “Fuck,” Mari muttered.

  Anise:

  Fuck indeed.

  Anise felt the fruit creeping down around her as she hung there, trying to decide on a cautious course of action that wouldn’t get them all killed. Sure, the treant couldn’t affect her with its paralytic sap. She still didn’t want to agitate it.

  For one thing, it had the same main affinities she did. Nature and freedom were core to the plant’s entire existence, and if she tried to use her abilities against it, they’d each barely affect one another.

  It limited her to brute strength, which she had in spades, but that would rile the monster into a frenzy and cause it to potentially break everything around it. Including very delicate machines preventing a complete outbreak of Mari’s little infection.

  There were few things she wanted less than to become a snack, though.

  “Any chance you can get into that lab and cleanse the rot? Then we can just fight the treant and move on afterwards.”

  Mari moved closer to the labs and looked around. There were side corridors in that direction, all layered with more roots. She and Kris were lucky they were too weak to be noticed by the monster, though that limited protection wouldn’t last once a fight broke out.

  Anise could see a dozen odd knots in the wood. They looked the same as what she’d seen right before she was grabbed. They were eyes. If they gave the treant a reason to look their way, they’d join her as snacks real fast.

  She really hoped Kris would come up with a plan sooner, rather than later.

  The fruit had grown to reach her thighs, and the sticky sensation was very unpleasant.

  Mari:

  The goal was clear. Remove the threat of affliction from what was guaranteed to become a battlefield to free Anise. Accomplishing that was not going to be easy, though.

  Their slow and steady sweep of the area turned dark fast. Literally and figuratively.

  A certain hallway had been battered to hell and back by the roots of the treant, which had taken out the lights. Mari almost wished she’d kept her flashlight off, but as much as the scene suggested something horrific had happened, it was only a suggestion.

  There weren’t any bodies, but there was blood everywhere. The hallway itself was mostly just streaks and smears of red from things being dragged away, but the room at the end of the hall was the result of a massacre. Based on scans from Mari’s HUD, fed from the nanites, the blood came from over two dozen people who’d holed themselves up inside.

  It wasn’t a bunker, either. Just a chemistry lab that was making the exact kind of chemical mixture that strengthened all the materials that Sylpharian structures were made from. The blood belonged to every race of their world.

  It was pretty clear that the roots of the treant had attacked the people inside, then hauled them off to string them up just like Anise or that fish.

  “That’s grizzly. But why isn’t it grabbing us?” Kris asked, carefully stepping around some thick roots as she shuffled papers around on a desk.

  Mari knelt by a shallow pool of dried chemical-spill. “My guess is mana density. Anise has a lot, as would most things exposed to the density of this area. There were no creatures nearby in the woods. It snatched up a salt-water fish from somewhere in the vicinity as well. I think what separates us is that we’re pretty low on mana, like ghosts compared to the ambient levels.”

  Kris let out a short huff of air that resembled a short laugh. “Pretty smart. A shame nobody else gets to see you be so quick-witted.”

  Before she could reply, Mari frowned, eyes cast to the ground more often than not to watch her step.

  “Look at this…”

  Kris went over a desk to reach her, skipping the root-laden ground.

  “Is that a head? In a helmet?”

  Mari gently nudged it with her boot, then scooped the object up.

  It was a head, but not a human one. Nor any other living race. The metal casing had wires and bizarre components sticking out from the neck. Mari was no expert, but Marielle had a few memories from R&D back on Earth and on the colony world. Most mechanisms moved using pistons, meaning pneumatics or hydraulics. The head showed no signs of either. No geared tracks, either.

  Kris placed a hand on it, then frowned. “This is… hybrid technology with etched runes and mana catalysts. Are there any other parts around? I’d love to study this.”

  Mari bit her lip. “It’ll have to wait. We can probably come back here, but Anise needs us for now.”

  With a sigh, Kris nodded, then strode for the door back into the hallway.

  Their trip around the rough area of the vermillion rot lab continued at a more brisk pace.

  “I hate to say it,” Mari began.

  “But there’s no way inside.” Kris finished.

  “Which means we’ll have to go with plan B.”

  Kris frowned. “And that is? Don’t tell me it’s some creatively suicidal plan.”

  Mari shook her head.

  “What we need is a distraction. Get the tree focused elsewhere, making an opportunity for someone to get into the lab, hopefully while the tree is destroying anything but this lab.”

  Kris shook her head. “How does that work out in your head? Its limbs are everywhere. The decoy will get grabbed up fast. And how does that help us get you past those frequency generators?”

  “I’ll have to burn out my own affliction first.”

  “I see. And that means I am the distraction.” Kris seemed unhappy. Mari wasn’t very happy about it, either.

  “The alternative is Anise, but she’s awfully close to the lab. I’m hoping you being hard to detect will work in our favor. Here’s my suggestion…”

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