The Black Garden: Chapter 12

Jak took us up into the misty green hills, along a narrow rammed-earth driveway and into a small parking lot in front of the Confluence residence: a stunning, organic building that disrupted very little of the surrounding rainforest. A blocky, matte-black armored van crouched to the other side of the lot. Parked horizontally across the short path leading to the entry were a classic blue and white patrol car and a sleek, featureless sedan finished in matte brushed chrome.

“Euun,” I groaned. “The only way that car could be any more obvious is if it had big scrolling letters spelling ‘GOVERNMENT’ on the side.”

“Klootzak.” Jak grimaced, the disgusted expression of a man who had just swallowed a beetle. “Yeah. That’s from the Governor’s office. Why the fuck are they here?”

Peering through the windshield, I saw a small knot of four police standing on the front porch, cradling shotguns while they chatted. A holographic yellow cordon had been sketched around the porch to about twenty feet out. “My guess would be ‘micro-managing’.”

Jak hawked in his throat, hauling my luggage out. I took the carry-on, which was substantially heavier than the larger suitcase.

“Come on,” he said. “I hope we aren’t too late. See that guy in the fancy coat up there? That’s Deputy Governor Mert Wigge. Zeelander’s lapdog.”

Some people just had names that suited them so well they could never be known by anything else – and Mert Wigge was one of those people. From the base of the hill, he’d been concealed by the squad of SWAT loitering in front of the closed front door. He was thin and shrewish, with a recessed chin and a large nose, beetle brows, and dark, piercing eyes that flashed as the crowd of heads turned to face us. He still looked flush and fresh, and mildly alarmed to see us.

“Ah. Detective Praetorius, right? That was fast.” He coughed into one hand, and folded them behind his back without shaking. The ‘fancy coat’ was a lightweight duster over a white shirt, red tie, and creased tan linen pants. The outfit made him look like the tropical version of a schlocky 1950s detective. “Thank you for collecting our newest star doctor… who is quite the lovely lady, if I might say. May I ask your name, Miss…?”

Jak started to correct him, but I blushed and turned a pretty, flooding smile onto Wigge like a spotlight. Jak tensed beside me as I offered a delicately poised hand. Without hesitation, Wigge took it and brought my knuckles to his lips.

“Masterhealer Soo An, MD, Confluence Accredited Surgery fellow, Interplanetary Environmental Services.” I intentionally dropped my voice another octave to a deeper, obviously masculine tone. “A pleasure to meet you.”

Wigge’s eyes bugged as he suddenly realized his mistake. He dropped my hand like it burned him. “Ah. Oh. Mister… An.”

“Soo,” I corrected with the same sweet smile. “Just call me Doctor. And you must be Mert.”

He glanced sharply at Jak. The detective returned it with a pleasant, boyish smile. The other cops were visibly struggling to keep their shit together.

“Deputy Governor Mert Wigge of the New Warder Governor’s office,” Mert said, stiffly. “And I’m sorry, Doctor, but we weren’t expecting you for another hour or so and the house isn’t ready for you yet. I only just arrived to complete the post-cleaning inspection.”

“Cleaned? This place was cleaned already?” Jak took a step forward. “The case is still ongoing.”

“Well, we were informed that the Confluence was sending a doctor, and this is the only Confluence residence in the city. What were we supposed to do?” Wigge shrugged. “The scene was closed this morning, detective. No signs of a disturbance, no indications of foul play… The forensics team left more mess than they discovered when they arrived. There was simply nothing there.”

I let out a light laugh and gave him a little limp-wristed wave. “No need for an inspection. I’ll handle any mess I find.”

Wigge’s eyes darkened with real anger. The flush still hadn’t left his stubbly cheeks. “The scene is closed. No one goes in or out.”

“I’m sorry, but this residence is the communal property of the Confluence, and our standards don’t mandate local inspectors.” I was still smiling, but bared more teeth. “So with all due respect for the authorities, I’d appreciate it if you stepped away from my door.”

Jak’s mouth pulled into a wry, one-sided smile.

Wigge clearly knew Confluence standards well enough to know that I was not only speaking to him, but recording him - footage I could send to New Warder’s neighbors to be used as leverage.

“The Confluence might own this house, but don’t forget whose soil this place is built on.” Anger rippled behind his eyes, but he fixed a stiff, officious mask on and gestured grandly to the door as he moved aside.

“Of course. I – and the Civil Service – appreciate your hospitality.” I squinted at him like a pleased cat, and put an extra flick into my hips as I breezed by. One of the SWAT guys was too close to the doorway and got a shoulder check on the way inside, grunting with surprise when I didn’t deviate my course. I turned when I was in the foyer, waited until Jak was in with me, then pointedly and firmly closed the door.

“Nothing like a tall glass of bureaucratic small dick energy to start the day off right.” I let out a happy sigh.

“He’ll remember what you just did,” Jak said. “But I have to say, I could get used to seeing that expression on his face.”

“If I’m living rent-free in his head after this, then I achieved my goal. But let’s talk once I’ve shown you something in the bedroom.” I put my fingers to my lips and beckoned to him. “Follow me. Bring the case.”

Jak’s lips quirked, but he obligingly followed me as I headed through the house. The Noosphere connected seamlessly, providing me with an overlay map and helpful tooltips as I led him unerringly to the main bedroom. It was bright and airy, with windows that looked out into the forest and a huge aquarium along one wall. There, I took the suitcase from him and waved him back. The cop stood awkwardly in the doorway while I lay the case on the bed and unlocked it. There were only three items inside. A combination first aid, lab and surgery kit with all the basic supplies I might need in an emergency. A case of toiletries, soaps and shampoo of my own design, brimming with robust bacteria that made Lifesight difficult for others to use on me. The third item was a flat case, the exact right size to fit inside the luggage. It seemed little more than a hollow, lightweight box with a small iridescent blue crystal lens on the top and no visible seam.

“Hello, my darling.” I cooed at the big box as I slid it out and lay it on the rumpled cream covers. “Tsa, my love, mind giving me a hand?”

The angel obligingly manifested an endlessly complex holographic fractal in the air just ahead of my eye. The case read my cornea through the projection, hummed softly, then split down the middle. The sides of it retracted somewhere to reveal a puddle of velvet blackness.

"Wat de donner?" Jak couldn't make sense of what he was looking at.

"Don't worry about it." I reached into the darkness, thinking about the item I wanted, and pulled out an octahedral crystal the size of a baseball from the interior. "Shibal no ma, I wish I could have had this with me on my last mission. This fun little toy would have saved me so much pain."

Jak eyed the crystal warily, but he was sharp enough to get what was happening. “Bit early for you to be showing me your personal toys, Doctor.”

“Oh honey, it’s never too early for that.” Tsariel and I also had to activate this device together. As we did so, the crystal rippled with waves of gentle light, rising from my hand to float, then separate. Two, four, eight times, until it appeared to be comprised of hundreds of tiny glittering motes. Jak took a startled step back as the nanite cloud zipped off into the air.

"Don't worry, it won’t hurt you," I said, pulling up a virtual ATLAS display to watch as the security scan got underway.

Jak harrumphed. “Ja, well, every doctor says that.”

I grinned. The scanners crawled the bed, locating and disabling one bug listening under the headboard, then another inside of the power outlet. They fanned out to penetrate and search walls, corners, inspecting every nook and cranny in the room. They whirled around Jak, to his consternation, and then around me.

My display flashed red.

“The fuck?” I scowled at it, and brought up the report as the cube-shaped swarm of crystals spread out and continued to orbit me.

Personal Integrity Scan

Subject: Sung, Min-joon

• Status: Critical Alert

• Aberration Detected: Unknown Abyss Presence

  • Location: Gastrointestinal system; posterior wall of the transverse colon.

  • Behavior: Passive; no active parasitic spread currently detected.

The parasite from Seoul left me a present. I pressed my lips together in a thin, grim line, then issued the command for the swarm to continue searching the rest of the house.

“I’m going to need your help with something as a matter of urgency,” I said, keeping my voice low. “And I sure hope you’re not squeamish.”

“People who are don’t tend to stay in my job for long.” Jak glanced back at the swarm as it fluttered past him like diamond dust, seeking its next targets. “What do you need?”

“Clean hands, a 500ml glass jar with an airtight lid. Tell the replicator to sterilize it, then fill it with 250 ml of distilled water and 2.25 grams of sodium chloride,” I said, briskly stripping my jacket off and throwing it to the bed.

“Sure. Something wrong?”

I pulled my shirt off, adding it to the growing pile. “I fought a big, nasty demon a few days ago. Tough customer. It seeded me with a parasite, which was surgically removed from my gut seemingly without any issues. But I think it laid, uh, eggs, and the eggs must have been either very small, or capable of mimicking the normal rhythms of my organs and cybernetics to blend in and avoid detection. Well, they’ve grown enough to be detected now.”

Jak’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say another word. He just turned and left, boots thudding as he headed briskly for the kitchen.

I opened my surgery kit, moving calmly and slowly. The bed wasn’t an ideal place for what I needed to do, but it was what I had, and my kit always included a rubber sheet. I lay that down on top of the covers, then arranged the things I needed on a tray beside the bed. Scalpels, blunt tissue hook, allis forceps, retractors…

Jak returned to find me lying down, spreading a cut-out square of gauze over my stomach. His ruddy cheeks blanched as he came over. I wordlessly handed him a mask.

“Not sure how deep I’m going to have to cut, so please wear this. Jar on the nightstand.” I took a sterilizing light and held it over the exposed square of skin for several seconds, letting it do its work. When I felt the skin start to heat, I switched it off and set it aside, then lay back. “I’m about to do some very gross and complex ReMa

, so take a seat and get comfy.”

“Sure. If you need any help, just yell.” Jak went and took a seat on the bench at the foot of the bed.

All acts of ReMa began with a breath. I drew one in, held it, let it out slowly, and turned my attention inward. Lifesight could be used internally, as well as externally: I dove through layers of skin, muscle, and organs, letting them unfold in my mind’s eye until I reached the horizonal length of my colon, the traverse. It was a complex area to navigate, full of suspensory tissue, webs of lymph channels, pockets of visceral fat, and large blood vessels. The pancreas, stomach, liver and spleen were all packed in above it. The report hadn’t been completely specific, but I had a hunch where the demonic payload would anchor… and sure enough, as I zoned in on the middle colic artery, I found them. The eggs were contained in a thin sac grafted onto the wall of this deep, delicate artery where it forked to either side of my abdomen. It had hooked into a nearby nerve, too, using the weak electrical impulses to mask its presence to my wetwear, along with any of the normal diagnostics the medical team aboard the Fetch Quest might have run on me. It was exactly the kind of thing I’d do if I was using Biomancy to engineer a bio-tracking device or a delayed kill switch.

“Motherfucker,” I muttered.

Jak’s voice was distant, like something in a dream. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah… it’s just a tricky location.” I didn’t open my eyes, keeping my focus on the site of the infestation. “They picked the wrong bitch to hide in, though.”

“I’ll… take your word for it.”

I had a feeling that if I fucked with it too hard, all those little black wrigglies were going to burst out of their eggs like fire ants. So the first step involved no cutting at all. I sunk deeper into trance, and focused on bringing the right kinds of cells to the site of infection. The engineering corps of my microscopic army were fibroblasts and Mesenchymal Stem Cells, MSCs. They were cells naturally produced by the peritoneum – the thin membrane that covers all your internal organs and keeps them definitively inside you – and within fat. Fortunately, I had packed most of my internal adipose tissue back on over five days of gorging on mango pudding and butterscotch candy. I stimulated the tissues to produce a flood of the cells I needed, willing them to converge on the egg sac and reinforce it with a mesh of fibrin and collagen. Endothelial cells joined the fray after a few minutes, adding fine blood vessels to the shell to prevent the eggs from detecting any change in oxygen.

Ten minutes or so of delicate knitting, and I had a tough, fibrous cyst the size of a golf ball perilously close to a major artery. Now the real fun started. I triggered the assault team, the macrophages. Almost immediately, a nasty, sick sensation seized me as my immune system reactively began disgorging hunter-killer cells into that part of my abdomen. Subtle chemical triggers drew them to the point where the caul connected to my artery like moths to a flame. They were joined by the gentler, but equally effective epithelial cells. Those secreted enzymes – collagenase and elastase – that broke down the link and sealed it off, while the macrophages chomped down on the dying tissue. I willfully contracted the arterial wall just before it separated, but even so…

“Euun.” I groaned softly as an unpleasant crampy sensation wracked my guts.

“Fair warning,” Jak said. “If anything crawls out of you, I’m shooting it.”

“You go… nngh… right ahead.” The eggs were freaking out now: wriggling, seething inside their newly-detected prison. Hook-shaped parasites within them burst free, only to find themselves confronting an impenetrable shell of fibrous tissue. But they wasted no time. They swung around, pushing drill-like tails into the walls, and started boring. I had a couple minutes before they broke through into my abdominal cavity.

Panting, sweating, I ordered the cellular army to gather around it and push it up. It felt like something writhing and lashing under the surface of my stomach, and the closer it got to the peritoneum, the more it hurt. I held my hand out. “First scalpel on the left of the tray, hand it to me. Left hand.”

Jak didn’t reply, save to clap the tool down into my palm. I brought it in and smoothly cut into my stomach as the top of the mass began to press up under the skin. Distantly, I heard the other man make a sound of concern.

“Grab that retractor, hook it on the side of the incision closest to you, pull it open toward you. Gently but firmly.” I ordered him aloud, vaguely aware that blood was flowing down my waist to pool underneath my back. “Hand me the forceps, the sharp ones.”

Jak fumbled on the forceps a little, but within a few seconds, I felt the retractor tug. Only once I was completely sure I could grip the cyst did I numb myself. Not completely, though: I used the pain to navigate, delicately pulling the cyst out of my body with the forceps and severing the ropy connective tissue that remained.

“Take this, drop it in the jar. Do NOT miss,” I said, holding the clamped forceps toward him. “Gauze, all of it.”

The cool metal left my hand, replaced by the gauze. I packed it against my stomach, shivering with fever, and put as much pressure on as I repurposed the surviving cells for their next job: sealing up the tunnel they’d carved before I bled out. The army reversed course, knitting tissue back together. This was the easy part: I let my body do its work and forced myself to breathe again, slowly and regularly.

“It’s in the jar.” Jak sounded faintly nauseous. “Or should I say, THEY’RE in the jar. What the fuck did I just watch?”

“A very fierce but tiny war.” I cracked my eyes open, blinking owlishly. For a few seconds, Jak was nothing but a diaphanous mesh of tissue, bone and organ floating in four dimensions, until my vision snapped back to normal and he came back into view.

“Well, looks like you won. I think.” He held the jar up, mouth twisted in disgust as he watched a mass of black parasites – each the size of a small tadpole and rapidly growing – thrashing around as they battled each other in the saline mixture.

“Those are Abyssal homunculi. We call them ‘vectors’, or ‘husks’. Biological shells a demon piggybacks on. In this case, the actual demon is a Yevon-class… an Abyssal pathogen.” I sunk back into the bed, grimacing. My skin itched with sweat and drying blood, but the deep wound was still healing – if I moved, the fragile new tissues would tear. “I’ve seen vectors similar to this before, but these things are really sophisticated. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were intentionally engineered.”

“For what?”

“The usual. Spying, tracking, assassination.”

“Ech. Glad your fancy crystal spotted it, then.” Jak swirled the water inside the glass, which was rapidly turning a brackish purple. “Klere… They’re eating each other.”

“Yeah. They do that. And if I hadn’t gotten them out in time, they would be eating me.” I shuddered, and lifted the gauze to look at the depression between my abs. The deep puncture was filling in, meshing over with new tissue.

“Didn’t know demons were this gross.” He wrinkled his nose, walking across the room to carefully set the jar down on top of the dresser. “You going to be alright?”

“As soon as this finishes sealing over, sure,” I said, keeping the pressure on my stomach. The numbing was wearing off, and it felt like I’d been stabbed. “I really need something to eat after this.”

Jak eyed the congealing pool of blood I lay in. He shifted from foot to foot.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he replied. “Just uh… surprised you’re thinking about food already.”

“Oh. Honestly, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been tits-deep in a ten-hour neurosurgery, break to let a T.A poke bits of sandwich and a juice box into my mouth like a baby bird, then get right back to slicing and sizzling.” I checked under the gauze again. The keloid was forming at unnatural speed, puffing up, then shrinking down as my cells churned away at their job. “You do enough surgeries over a long-enough time, and there’s a point where you start thinking of the body like a car or a jigsaw puzzle or something.”

“How long have you been in the business?”

“Assuming you’re in your mid-thirties, longer than you and your daddy and your daddy’s daddy have been alive.”

Jak blinked at me. “Didn’t realize Confluence anti-aging tech was that good.”

“Confluence anti-aging tech AND being one of the best human Biomancers in the Confluence.” I couldn’t help but feel a little smug. “But it’s rude to ask a twink his age.”

Jak looked me over. “Ja. I mean, just looking at you, you’re clearly not a day over twenty-five.”

“Good man.” I reached out with a hand. “Now, would please be a gentleman and help me up so I can go take a shower? Because my skin is crawling, and I am about five minutes away from madness if I don’t get this blood off.”