Chương 143: Dan, Part 1

The aftermath of that encounter, in the shadow of all the trees, was quiet and polluted with shame. Most of the ADU troopers were taken away by roots at the same time Quercus left. The ones remaining were hired henchmen who surrendered immediately, knowing they weren't being backed up now. They kept going on about how "Money's not gonna mean shit anymore" and the like. Unfortunately, the police weren't very equipped to arrest them.

The prison still had multiple holes in the walls courtesy of Father Quercus, and the holding cells in the police station. From what we overheard on radio chatter on the way out, they were going to look in to repurposing the one parking garage not torn apart by trees into a makeshift holding area. Attempts at contact with the other cities to hold them there were met with silence. Going by the inexplicable emptiness on the horizon, I had a guess that there was no way to reach anyone at all.

Billy took us back, beaten and bruised, to the testing facility. We could see on the horizon that a sizable tree had torn about half of it apart in the recent overgrowth. None of us had words for it, just indistinct grunts and wails of upset over yet another home of ours being ruined in all of this. We didn't even know what happened to the office base, either, but there were no optimistic guesses for that. I didn't wait for the others when I forced my way out of the van.

The situation was too high priority for me to even think about deliberating or resting. The smell of dry blood in my nostril or the echoes of the migraine I put on myself didn't matter. The door clattered open and revealed to me a tragic scene. About half of the room was just inaccessible due to roots and vines helping fallen portions of building block it off. In one corner was a makeshift infirmary with what was available, where multiple staffers were being looked over by each other. I made my search for Tancred.

I ended up in what little was available of Sam's research area, where he and Dr. Tudor were just quietly observing Sam frantically piling through various wires and electronics, shakily trying to put things together. Upon hearing my footsteps, Tancred turned around.

"Hey, Leo," he greeted. Tired. Multiple bandages across his face and neck. Hand in a makeshift cast.

"What I get for trusting that bitch, I guess." I don't think I'd heard him this forlorn before. Even his attempt at a snipe just fell short.

"What happened?" The auditor shook his head.

"Agent Richmond, a couple of minutes into your operation, started tearing the place apart. Disconnected just enough of skin from people's jugulars to make 'em bleed out. Disconnected Diamond Bob from his bank account. He's out back, missing both arms. Disconnected ammo from guns. Disconnected me from my fucking balance so I kept falling into everything. Disconnected our comms. I got one clean shot on her leg with a derringer I hide in my sleeve, but that was just some.

22LR, so it wasn't gonna cripple her if she, say, disconnected herself from pain." Made me realize just how dangerous a Patriot Project agent could be if she was able to just tear through an entire base with effectively no resistance.

"What happened after that?" I asked.

"Made her way to the kids. Did… something that kept Sam from being able to approach her while she picked up her kids, then just… vanished into thin air. If her power is abstract enough, I think she used it to teleport. What about on your side, what did you hear?" I sighed.

"Every single thing we've been doing to fight the ADU has been some kind of distraction, I guess. They were secretly preparing something called the Nemean Throne out of sight. That included Richmond, who apparently got hit with some kind of vision by Gleditsia. He called that giant out in the distance the 'Platanos.'""Hm," hummed Dr. Tudor. He had a black eye that darkened almost a quarter of his face.

"The boy and girl are clones, yes? The 'Sperma tes Parthenou.' Makes me think it may be some kind of magical ritual they're engaging in." Yanking off my mask, I took a breath of air not as tinged with the smell of dried blood.

"I figured that, too. Since Agent Lafeuillade needed virgin blood for a surgery she did on me, and Sam was the source. I didn't pick up on it earlier until he told me Agent Richmond was the one who was going to get two of them, out of the three he first mentioned." As I spoke, I could see Tudor in the corner of my eye squinting at me. I tried to ignore it.

"…But who could be the third?" Tancred asked.

"Must be someone they've kept mum about until now. They've got more numbers than we expected. Though presently we're unable to get much information on it. Our GPS systems, our radio comms, all of it's been thrown out of whack since the skies started getting weird. I almost wonder if they've deployed some kind of perpetual, localized EMP." The auditor then looked up at the ceiling, before letting out a hissing grunt.

"No. We've got lights on, and none of them have Faraday cages."

"…Quercus said information will be put out on what surviving electronic devices remain. Are any of the TVs working? The one the staff watch the news on?" I asked. Tancred nodded.

"Yeah, but they've been just playing the local EAS. Specifically the one tuned for earthquakes. Must've been put into place after that 5. 8 in Louisa County a couple years ago and was set to automatically go off if something tipped the Richter scale. Might be from combined events all going on at once," he mused.

"But yeah, we should keep an eye on the TV. I'm gonna… handle that. I'll brief the others in the mean-time. I can see you took a few hits," Tancred remarked, pointing at my nose.

"Get yourself checked out with Sam and Dr. Tudor." With that, he stepped past me, reaching out to put his good hand on my shoulder. He stopped, however, just clenching his hand in the air and trudging off to the others. Before I could say anything, Dr. Tudor spoke.

"Leo, that nosebleed… have you experienced any headaches? Vision issues?" I thought about it. The twitching in my eye. That migraine's last little rumblings in the side of my head.

"A little bit. Why?" His lips pursed, concern pulling all the pieces of his face together into a portrait of a much deeper upset than I expected in the moment.

"That… How about your powers? We couldn't get much on activity in the moment due to Richmond's attack. Were you doing anything differently?" I sighed.

"I was upset. Angry, frustrated we were scammed several times over. I ended up punching out an entire wall from the building just trying to hit Father Quercus. The force was enough to cripple the other guy, Father Texas or something. Any time something was trying to hit me, I just kept thinking about how if something falls from high enough, it just breaks apart. And every time Quercus tried to hit me with something, it all just shattered. It was the strongest I felt in a while."

The concern and worry exacerbated in Dr. Tudor's face, his hands moving from behind his back as though he were trying to reach for me, but his hands just kept themselves half way. Fingers curled in trepidation.

"I was hoping that wasn't the case. We know your powers balance with your cognitive load. If you're forcing your powers to work consciously when you haven't really grasped how to handle them, you're going to overwork your brain. That could result in aneurysms or strokes. Encephalitis — swelling of the brain. Even if it didn't kill you, that could cripple you for the rest of your life." Foras' warning. A stroke.

"You already have a history of severe memory loss from abusing your power, and that was back when you likely remembered how it fully worked. You're forcing it to function based on a misunderstanding, there could be so many steps you're skipping that's causing this damage-" The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"I'm fine," I interrupted, stepping past him.

"I have a headache and a bloody nose because Quercus decked me before leaving while my guard was down. I'm gonna go talk to Sam." Without another word, I just kept moving. Didn't even want to give in to those thoughts. If I let the fear that warning put in me win, then we were all so far up the creek that we'd never be able to come down from it. Sam didn't even seem to react to my approach to her. First time the sound of my footsteps didn't make her flinch.

"Hey," I said, which similarly didn't get a reaction from her. She was wrist deep in electronics, trying to solder something together. I had absolutely no idea what. This was the most frenzied I'd seen of her in a while.

"Hey," I repeated.

"Sam."

"Hey-" She quickly replied, her voice unnaturally high. Taking a couple more steps, I could see how red in the face she was. She was barely able to see through her glasses with how scrunched up her face was.

"Just trying to get this all put together." Her sentences were coherent, but at such a distressed pitch I was half-worried she was about to burst back into tears.

"What are you even making?" She shook her head, as though it were a non-question.

"Just this thing to pump a bunch of high voltage current that can dig into any tree roots. High voltage boils the water in the wood, kills the roots entirely. Just need to somehow connect to the power grid, and then-""Sam," I interrupt, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"What do you think a big electric root killer is going to do?" She snapped towards me, her face curling in rage.

"It'll get my fucking kids back, Leo! I'm not going to sit here and just helplessly cry because we lost and my kids are being taken for God-knows-what! I didn't have those kids so they could get caught up in all of this! I just wanted people who actually wanted to be around me! I even started feeling happy that they were normal, that they-" The rage melted away by the burning hot sorrow as the sobs came, her body already going slack as the tension failed to wind up any further.

"-That they weren't going to end up like me. They were supposed to live normal lives, Leo. This isn't fair. They haven't done anything wrong, they're babies. They're my babies. Why did this have to happen to my babies?" Through her tears, she stumbled forward, face buried in my chest. Every sob echoed through me heavier than any blow from Technofiend or Quercus or Gleditsia ever could. There was something tiny in me, icy cold, pricking at the back of my neck. Some little bit of guilt.

Not that it was my fault, but that because she was so on her own for so long, it just opened up an opportunity for Richmond to take them. Another fault on my list, it seemed. My hands went on her shoulders.

"Sam," I started, standing her straight so she could look me in the eyes. Her face was a portrait of grief and mourning. Suffocating on a lack of her closest to her. Hiccuping and sniffling, eyes glassed over.

"Please. I'm not going to let them do this. But if you're doing all of this instead of resting, what's going to happen to you? If you panic yourself into a heart attack, who's going to be there when I get those kids home?" She sniffed. I thought maybe a bit of reason came out of my words and hooked into her brain. Enough for her to step out of my hands.

"Just... just let me tinker. I need something to do with my hands. I can't just stand here. I won't do anything stupid. Please let me work." Every other sentence was interrupted by coughing and sobbing. Maybe she was trying to hold it together. Maybe she was just trying to get me off her back. Almost robotically, she turned back to the device she was working on, though it wasn't as frantic as before. If it calmed her down at least, that was the most I could get out of her.

As I just watch her for a few minutes, I overheard some shouting from another part of the facility. I rushed over, to see the rest of the team and Tancred crowding around a TV. On the screen were four people in this odd room. Dimly lit, bark for walls and flooring. In the center of the group was Master Sequoia. On his right was Agent Richmond. I could see a similar affliction across her neck and cheek that I'd seen spreading on Gleditsia's face. On Sequoia's left, was Hidalgo, who had wrapped around him that…

creature. That monster he called Hidalga. I was reminded of her again, trying to figure out how I could've forgotten such a horrible visage.

"Greetings, citizens of Charlottesville. I am certain you are surprised. Confused. Injured, most likely. I am here to explain some details of the coming events of what is to come. We, the Anti-Deforestation Union, have taken into fully assimilating with the Arboreal Senate. We have now started the first steps to bring the Arboreal Senate to Earth, so that they may overtake the planet and oversee us as superior caretakers to the planet we have spent so long ruining." As opposed to what the fucking Wyrdwood did?

I hated this man more and more every time he opened his mouth.

"And you may be wondering," he continued.

"Where are the police, the military, who is coming to save you all? The answer to that is that none will be coming. In order to prevent any outside interference, we have received assistance from a former member of the United States government's Patriots Project, Agent Richmond. Using her powers, augmented by a blessing of Wyrdwood, she is actively keeping Charlottesville and the greater Albemarle County disconnected from the rest of the world." The haze in the distance. The sky no longer having a sun.

A completely empty horizon. All of that was because of her power? She could do that so easily, now? When she had to stop all the Technoimps she acted like it could only last a few minutes. Was it all the Wyrdwood, or was she lying about how strong she really was?

"And until the ritual is completed, which will take approximately five days, the region will stay disconnected. Until then, and after then, we are the de facto rulers of the land. You will follow our laws, our requests, our demands. Any resistance will result in early integration with the Wyrdwood. If you seek to join us, you may come to the base of the tree we are in, the Platanos, to seek assimilation with Father Quercus. You may also pray to God, and simply die, for He cannot hear you here." The TV went black.

Looking at the others, each of our faces were wrought with worry.

"We need to do something," Chris started.

"I just… I don't know what. They're all in the tree, right?" He asked.

"Yeah," Tancred answered.

"But have you seen the size of the fucking thing? It would take days to get up there. Probably a week."

"I could get up it fast," Jairo noted.

"But then you need to fight a man who can control all wood, and probably Brother Gleditsia," Tancred added on.

"We know that's too much for any single one of you. Especially since we'd also need to stop Agent Richmond, who I bet is being protected by Hidalgo and whatever that fucking thing is." As I looked between the group, I inhaled.

"I can do it. With my lunges, while I'm not as fast as Jairo, I could probably get up there in time. And I can beat Brother Gleditsia. You know I can. If I go first, too, I can clear the way so that the others can target Richmond. They handled Hidalgo and Hidalga before." Tancred looked at me, taking his sunglasses off and glaring at me with those dark, dark eyes.

"Leo. You're all beat to shit. You've been on your feet all day. Your pupils are different fucking sizes, for crying out loud. You need to rest before we even think of what to do." I took a step forward.

"No, Tancred. We're not waiting on this. Every second we take is going to be another chance for this to all end terribly. Toss me some painkillers and I'll go handle it. I'll buy the others time." He began to open his mouth.

"Don't question me on this." He closed it, and Chris spoke in his place.

"I don't want you to do this, Leo. We all know how bad it is. But if you're on your own, when you're clearly not doing alright, you could die. If you're dead, who's gonna help us with stopping all this?" My gaze moved towards Chris.

"Of all the things that've happened to me, do you think this would be what kills me?" Tancred finally interjected.

"It's not about what could kill you, it's about what will kill you." I shook my head.

"We're dead anyway if we don't do this, Tancred. It's our one move. This is how we can coordinate. I give them room to reconnect Charlottesville with the rest of the world. By that point, even if I don't beat Gleditsia, we can win from there by getting other heroes. It's the only way." He stared at me. Eyes heavy, boring past me, through me. Like he was almost looking in a mirror. Finally, he nodded. Digging through his pockets, he handed me an orange pill bottle.

"Ketorolac. Fastest painkiller around. One tablet lasts up to eight hours. No more than four per day. Don't ignore that warning or you'll die before you even do anything useful. I'm trusting you with this. Please, Leo. Hercules." Slipping on my mask, I nodded to the others, all of whom looked at me with grim demeanors.

"No goodbyes. We're gonna see each other again." And with that, I rushed out. Past the staffers, out the door, and with all the tension I could put in my legs- THOOM I launched, flying through the air towards the nearest building. As the asphalt roof crunched beneath my feet, I took a few steps close to the ledge. I looked across the city, torn and mangled in vines and roots. A city in pain, in need of help. And off in the distance: That tree. My destination.