Ruby’s Fire

I tell him what happened after Jan and Vesper stuffed pollen down our noses. Armonk chimes in and describes Dr. Varik’s pollination through his lesions. All the while, Thorn is rocking and holding his head.

 

“We need to help Thorn.” I rush to my brother’s side. “Dr. Varik would have wanted us to. We need to figure out what’s wrong with him.”

 

“I could examine him,” Blane offers.

 

Armonk peers at Blane with suspicion, and I shake my head at Armonk. “With the doctor gone, Blane is our only chance at figuring this out,” I insist, as much to myself as to Armonk. Again, Armonk nods with a dour determination.

 

Armonk holds out his arms to Thorn. “Come here, little man. Sit in my lap.” Thorn sinks down and wraps his arms around Armonk’s solid arms.

 

Blane collects an array of the doctor’s surgical tools and arranges them on a clean towel. Sitting next to Armonk and Thorn, he examines Thorn’s head, carefully thumbing through every inch of scalp, behind each ear and around the circumference of his downy neck. Blane’s hand stops at the nape of Thorn’s neck and he presses in. “Does that hurt?”

 

Thorn lets out a yelp and tries to push Blane’s hand away.

 

“No, don’t touch.” Blane looks over at me, where I’m kneeling. “Ruby, do you have your numbing elixir?”

 

I reach for the vial in my latchbag and unscrew the top. Blane shows me the red spot on Thorn’s neck and I spread my salve around the area.

 

“Hold him firmly,” Blane advises Armonk, and he complies, gripping Thorn’s shoulders and head so he can’t suddenly flinch.

 

What a relief that Blane and Armonk have finally gotten to a place where they can work together without sniping—even if it took the doctor’s death to get them there.

 

After a minute to let the salve do its magic, Blane takes a miniscule scissors and a tweeze style tool and gets to work.

 

I’m squeamish, and on top of the foul odor wafting from the doctor’s corpse, I have to steel myself not to spew. Veering away, I screw my eyes shut. My head screams with noise! It feels as if my head will detonate. Thorn must be feeling it too. Forget the nostalgic thrumming of the Reds and the Fireseed back at The Greening, what I wouldn’t gave for an annoying vanilla Stream Blast right now. Anything but this searing static. Clamping my head between my palms, I count down the seconds.

 

“Holy fire!” Blane exclaims.

 

“Mother of god!” Armonk cries.

 

Only then do I dare turn my head and stare at the object clamped in Blane’s surgical tool.

 

“It’s a totally different implant than Axiom stapled in us before the contest,” I say.

 

“That’s for sure,” Blane swivels the device in his clamps.

 

“Looks like a spiky space creature,” says Armonk.

 

“Or a collection device,” Blane says. “Whoever put this in Thorn wanted to get information from him. Maybe because he won’t talk, they tried something else to steal his thoughts from him.”

 

“Sucking on my brain,” Thorn murmurs.

 

I shudder. “It’s stamped with that NanoPearl logo. Who are those people?” As I say this, I realize that the dial on that horrible internal static has suddenly been turned down—no, it’s off!

 

Thorn says exactly what I’m feeling. “Better. No noise.”

 

We all stare at the implant, dripping with Thorn’s greenish gore. “Frying hellfire,” Blane mutters under his breath. “I’m sure this thing was collecting some kind of data from his brain.”

 

“And at the same time confusing it with noise.” I add. “Which I heard too because Thorn and I are connected through the stroma.”

 

“The stroma?” Blane frowns.

 

I explain to Blane how the stroma works, how all of the plants and even the Reds are connected to Thorn and me. How we read each other’s thoughts, how we feel each other’s pain.

 

Blane stares at me long and hard. I wonder what he’s thinking: probably that it’s one thing to have a formal knowledge of advanced genetics but another thing entirely to connect that with real people with beating hearts. “You say you turned into a chimera from inhaling Fireseed pollen?” he asks. When I nod he continues with an unexpected enthusiasm. “First we need to get the other chips out of our heads, and then we have to get back to The Greening. You have more pollen there?”

 

“I can gather more, why?”

 

“If we work collectively through the stroma, maybe we’ll figure out why they want Thorn’s thoughts so badly, what they intend to use them for.”

 

“You mean transform ourselves?” Armonk asks Blane.

 

“Exactly.”

 

“What a smart idea.” Armonk grins at Blane for the first time ever.

 

Thorn nods. “Stroma powers us.”