Chương 31: Blue

All eyes were on Tancred. For once he had managed to get us all genuinely attentive to what he was saying.

"So, the Pachira..." he trailed off. A pregnant pause.

"... Has basically nothing to do with this." Instinctively, my hand clenched and the squeal of the metal seat in my grip drew his eyes to me.

"What The Hell are you talking about, Tancred?"

"I mean what I say, kid. It's not about the specific kind of plant," he elaborated.

"They just needed a tree to grow. I didn't get all the details because Father Pine is a damn space cadet, but what we could gather was that they're using a tree with some special fertilizer to make a 'throne.'""... For?" asked Christian.

"Well that's the thing, I didn't get that out of him."

"Why not?" added on Jairo. Tancred wiggled his hand again to gesture for us to flip our briefing pages. A collective rustling of papers, met by gasps and a nauseated groan from May. It was that bastard who tore my arms up, limp in a chair similar to the one that I sat in this weekend, head back. His mouth had vines pouring out of it. Some were coming out of his ears and eyes. What little of his eyes were visible told me that he wasn't happy this was happening.

"You see, for some reason, as he was going on and on about how the throne will be at the seat of some great power, a bunch of that Wyrdwood shot out of every fucking orifice and he suffocated. Dead in minutes. No one here's fault, none of us could guess they had suicide provisions." That brought the silence back from earlier, until I found the words for all of us.

"What about the others?" The auditor shook his head.

"Alive and stable. Couple of them will probably never walk again but you know what? Good. Good lesson to teach them." The others were still in shock, unable to even put things into words. Except Sam. She was just quietly observing the papers. She might have been the only one besides me to know what a dead body looked like. Couldn't leave it at just that.

"Did any of them have information of note?" He shook his head a second time.

"All of our legally permitted interrogation techniques have gotten nothing so far. At this point it's legal proceedings. The big issue there is booking them. We have one attempted murder with Flowstate's shooting, and two cases related to illegally-obtained firearms, but two of them are presently looking at just trespassing."

"That's ridiculous. You've got them connected, there's no warrants or anything?" I asked. Tancred shook his head for the third time so far, and my disappointment became far harder to measure.

"Like I said, they were at legal gatherings where you couldn't necessarily prove they were intentionally colluding with the ELF or anything. And due to a lack of concrete events connected to them, the ADU aren't labeled officially as terrorists yet. Up until now there were just vague threats to logging companies." Sighing, I crossed my arms.

"Is there any actual good news out of any of this?" Finally, the auditor gave a nod.

"Like I said, there was an attempted murder. Legally, you guys are technically deputized with the feds, just not the state. Attacking a federal agent is big trouble. We can use that in our report to the FBI. That's gonna open the case up to potentially marking them as terrorists in the form of special interest extremists. That means just association can prompt arrests."

"Doesn't feel like all that big of an achievement." I could see his mustache curl into a frown.

"It's pretty damn substantial, given they've only just started acting this week. The goal is to get them hit with the label before they actually cause damage. Flowstate's situation is a great opener. If we can keep investigating and intercepting, we can build a case. The good news is we've already got momentum. Now, kids, we keep it. Any questions?" Silence. Looking over past Sam, I could see May was biting her finger. Chris had his hand over his mouth, eyes fixed. Jairo's gaze was off elsewhere.

"You just made me look at a dead body, Tancred," May snapped.

"Look, I get it, this is pretty serious, but-""That wasn't something I was told to expect any time soon!" she continued.

"Spectroma, hey-" Chris started, but May intercepted, standing up.

"No, I'm not going to just sit here and act like that's normal-" Then came the gravelly voice of the asshole running this show.

"Sit your ass down. Besides the fact you're signed on, did you really think superhero duty was going to be a bloodless endeavor? You can count the number of superheroes who don't deal with death on one hand. And lemme tell you, they don't help a fucking ounce." Tancred leveled a calloused finger at her, his gaze practically melting the lenses of his sunglasses.

"It upsets you to see, right? Repulsive, sickens you? That's just these assholes. If you don't use your God-given gifts for good, that could happen to a lot more people. Innocent people who can't fight back. You're not here for all the good, you're here to help scoop all the shit away. We're in the shoveling phase, now. Now sit your ass down." May stared Tancred down. I could see a glint building in her eyes. Part of me was expecting her to just blast him point blank. But the staring match kept going.

"You're sick," she accused. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"And there's no cure when you end up like me, kid, it's terminal. But I'm also the medicine that keeps everyone else from being like me. And that involves making sure any and all deaths are limited to this guy. And you're gonna have to bear witness to it, just like these guys." Tancred gestured to all of us.

"Welcome to the operating room, doctor. Now sit. The fuck. Down." The staring match continued, before May sat back down. Jairo was still watching some wall somewhere. Sam reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. The auditor took a deep breath, his exhale sounding almost like a death rattle.

"Do any of you have any other questions, objections, anything like that? This is your last chance to make those complaints, because I bet you this is the best-looking corpse you're gonna see on this job. Come on." He pointed a finger at Jairo.

"How about you, space case? Too much for you?" Chris spoke.

"Hey, Tancred, I think you're being a bit too aggressive here." The agent rubbed his forehead.

"Fucking. Maybe, yeah, probably. Look, I'm sorry," he definitely isn't, "but I can't exactly leave room to tolerate being tetchy about death right now. We've got lunatics with guns in talks with tree people who want to spill human blood. Now's the time to tense your back, stand straight, and recognize you'll see corpses from here on." May let out a slow sigh.

"I didn't think I'd be seeing someone in that state, alive or dead."

"No one predicted this was going to happen, including me. But now it's here, we gotta all be on the same level and know what can happen. It's not my first rodeo. It's not the first rodeo for some of you either." Didn't like that. Don't remind me of the kid. You didn't even know his name. Due to only keeping my protest in between my ears, he kept going.

"And now you know what you're preventing when you do your jobs well. This guy's a piece of shit. His death will offer no negative consequence. He spent his life aiding and abetting supervillains, and died a fanatic for trees. Time's moving regardless. Let's keep it moving in our favor."

"Great pep talk," I commented. The response was a calloused middle finger.

"Get out of your costumes and get to the van. You've got another rehearsal tomorrow. I won't be here, since I gotta help with legal. Billy'll take you here, and he's in charge if any of you screw up." With that, we were carted back home after getting changed. Most everyone retreated to their rooms as soon as we returned to base. The only ones who didn't were Sam and I. I had taken a seat at the kitchen island, and Sam had turned on the TV, much to my surprise. As the TV failed to flicker on, she sighed.

"Everything's on the fritz. Has your ear piece been giving you trouble like Jairo's?" Shook my head.

"Worked when I needed to call you guys in. Only time I've bothered." A hum from her was then accompanied by a nod, before she simply clambered into another stool by the island, leaning on it.

"He said some of us," she piped up.

"Huh?" I asked, not immediately keen to her words. She started to elaborate.

"When he was talking about dealing with seeing dead people, he said some of us had already been through it. I don't think Jairo did, since he was hiding out. I know May hasn't." Never liked being part of the process of elimination. Didn't stop her from asking the question, though.

"Did... you... see something like that?" Letting out an exhale, I nodded. Better to explain now.

"Did my papers not go over why I was fighting those drug dealers?" Sam shook her head.

"Initially, I had been pretty reactive. Just scaring off thugs, making sure anyone who tried vandalizing stores wasn't willing to do it again, all that." Memories flooded me. Grabbing the golf clubs and lead pipes used for breaking windows and bending them like rubber. The looks of fear on dumb thugs' faces as they scrambled off.

"Then the drugs showed up." More memories. People walking around erratically. Some just standing limply on street corners, in dazes.

"People started acting different. Just a case of the town getting shitty regardless. I blamed it on doctors." The "some" increased in number. Some streets packed with them. More of those assholes picking their pockets, breaking stuff. Had to try and weave through junkies to intercept most of the time.

"Then one day, during my searches, I saw a kid on a street corner." The sight of his face was sharp in my mind's eye. Pale, sickly skin. Nothing behind his eyes. Rail thin. His-"Lips were bright blue. Overdose. As I picked him up to try and find anything on him, I recognized him. Name was Darrel. Came from the same foster home as me. Was there while his mother lost her home and was trying to secure a new one." The door opening. A tired older woman's face.

I can't hear a thing, but I can see her face curling and wrinkling in disgust, heartbreak, a bit of rage. Her mouth opened to scream, but I couldn't remember the sound. I could feel it echoing through my chest, though.

"At that point, I decided this shit was done. No more. Selfish reason, but a reason nonetheless. I came down on every son of a bitch who seemed related like a tidal wave. By the time I got arrested, I had scared every single one into roughly the same six blocks. I couldn't narrow them any further because of sheer numbers." My neck started to strain. I hadn't realized I was statue still until then. Looking over towards Sam, I let out an exhale.

"So yeah. Not the first corpse I've seen. My first corpse sighting is why I'm here." Sam nodded, arms tightly wound across her chest as she leaned across the counter.

"I get it. Not... not directly. I've seen bodies from my medical studies, so I had some exposure therapy. But a lot more clinical. Honestly when I saw the body of 'Father Pine' my reaction was to try and figure out if it was suffocation or something else that killed him."

"Any conclusions there?" I asked, trying to be constructive.

"Might have just been an intracranial hemorrhage — brain bleed — from a vine splitting his frontal lobe open, but impossible to say for sure." I nodded, sighing.

"I suppose. But like you've said, you've already had to see bodies before. So you're not as put off by it like the others." The doctor gave me a nod, staring off at one of the walls.

"It never really was something that upset me. When you're dead, the body's just... loose meat. The things that make you 'you,' whatever you call it. The pattern of synapses that forms consciousness, bodily warmth, your soul, whatever. Those are gone. My goal is preventing those from being gone, but..." She clicked her tongue.

"... Sometimes it just happens. No one's fault in particular. You make every right move but all the right moves do is reposition you against what's going to happen regardless. And that repositioning I think is the important job. You made sure we got some info out of him before it happened." I nodded to that.

"That makes sense. Just had a hard time believing it. But..." She cocked her head, which helped alleviate my own self-consciousness over doing it.

"... He did say some. Two of us isn't some. Did Christian...?" Her face soured a little.

"Yeah. He's got experience with it too." My chest clenched at that. He seemed too damn chipper for that. Though... there was that time he mentioned something like avenging people who couldn't be saved. One of the only times I saw that stupid grin on his face wipe off pointlessly. And I saw that early.

"What experience did he have?" I asked. Sam took a deep inhale.

"I really shouldn't be telling you this. But I bet if I didn't, Chris would take a year at least to tell you." I turned to face her, and she looked me square in the face.

"Christian watched his little sister die."