The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

When all hell broke loose and the buzzing started, my first thought was to chase Tim as he ran after Violet, leaping over the Porteque man she’d shot, my legs moving furiously. Then I caught a glimpse of Peter moving through the door on the left, and something took over—a snap decision, an instinct from deep within. All I knew was I couldn’t leave that man running around the caves. He hated Violet, hated me, and he would hurt her to get to me. The thought of him and her ending up in this horrific place together after I’d let him pass by was unbearable.

The mist was dense, but I followed the dark shape of his shadow, my gun still in my hands, my feet pounding on the uneven ground. Without missing a single step, I ejected the magazine and slammed in a new one, continuing my pursuit. I kept his form in my sights through the swirling mist, but always felt one step behind.

Someone’s scream lanced through the cave, and I paused, my ears straining. Sweat had accumulated on my brow. I wiped it off impatiently, my chest heaving. The scream stopped suddenly, and I heard growling and the wet snapping of teeth, but the sound was muted, seemingly coming from somewhere in the distance.

Licking my lips, I looked around, my listening hard for any sound of Peter’s footsteps but finding none. I moved forward. I had been running for at least a minute, maybe closer to two, and I still hadn’t hit the edge of this cavern. It must stretch out widely, and the lighting had changed to the soft blue of ultraviolet light, making the fog glow an eerie green.

I moved forward through the mist and stopped again when I heard a grunt, somewhere off to my left. I took another step forward, and then froze when I saw a dark orange vine cutting across the moss just inches from my left foot. My heart pounded as I slowly withdrew my foot to avoid contact with it, Alejandro’s warnings ringing loudly in my ears. The orange vines were attached to a carnivorous plant, one that used the vines to ensnare prey.

“God, what is this?” somebody muttered, and I immediately recognized Peter’s voice, a rush of cold rage going through me. I stepped over the vine and kept an eye out for any more. The mist swirled and spun as I stepped through it, and I waved a hand in the air, trying to get it to settle. It thinned some, and I could make out someone struggling a few feet away.

I stepped over another vine, keeping a healthy distance from it, and then I saw him. An orange vine was wrapped around his leg, steadily moving up to encircle his torso. The man was bent over, fiddling with his shoe, while the vine was already excreting slime that acted as a digestive juice. Eventually, according to Alejandro, the vine would drag Peter back toward the heart of the plant, where he would be deposited in a giant pod and left to be digested, the plant growing stronger as it fed on his remains.

As I watched, the vine flexed and grew tighter around the man’s midsection, making him cry out in pain. The slime was covering his torso now, his clothes beginning to disintegrate. He continued to struggle, which only caused it to exude more digestive slime, and I hesitated.

This man was about to die, either by my bullet or the plant’s slime, and for a long moment, I considered just walking away. It would be a painful, gruesome death, but one that he deserved. He was a monster who tormented women. Surely he deserved this. I should just walk away.

Yet as my conscience was decrying those dark, hideous voices crying out to leave him, he stood up victoriously, a satisfied smile on his face and a knife in his hand. Before I could even shout warning, he began cutting the vine.

You should never ever cut an orange vine, Alejandro had told me.

At first, nothing happened as he sawed into the fibrous vine, trying to cut it off.

“Stop,” I said, stepping forward through the fog. Peter paused only for a moment, looking at me like he didn’t even register my presence, before he began to cut deeper. The plant flexed under his hand, and white, milky liquid began to ooze from the cut. At first it only dripped, but as he sliced deeper, it sprayed out, catching him in the face.

Peter’s skin erupted in burning blotches, and I could actually hear the sound of his flesh sizzling. The fiery rash spread rapidly down his neck, chest, and arms, and he opened his mouth to scream before collapsing on the ground in agony, his body jerking and flopping around as he tried to tear at his flesh.

Alejandro called it the “orange vine’s revenge,” but it was far more gruesome than it sounded. The liquid would burn through his skin, right through to his bones and vital organs.

I stared, the sight too hideous to turn away from, and then lifted up my gun, firing a shot and ending his thrashing. It turned out that I couldn’t let him suffer after all, no matter how much he deserved it.

Turning away from his disintegrating corpse, I looked around, realizing two things. One, I had lost Violet—everybody—in the mist, and two, I didn’t even have a map.

Violet? I said cautiously into the comms. There was a burst of static, followed by… nothing. I tried a few more times, tapping the comms, and then gave up. We were either being blocked or the walls were interfering.

I turned off the useless subvocalizer and slowly moved forward, searching for a wall. I kept a sharp eye out for orange vines, taking care to step over them. I was damned lucky that I hadn’t come into contact with one while I was chasing Peter.

I was so preoccupied looking for a wall to orient myself and avoiding getting caught in the orange vines that I didn’t notice the toe of a boot peeking through the mist until it was too late, and I slammed into the person on the other side of a thick curtain of mist. That person made a startled noise, and a shot rang out, almost right next to my ear, making my ears ring from the proximity.

“Thomas!” I shouted, and the flailing next to me stilled.

“Viggo?” he asked, squinting up at me from where I had knocked him to the ground. I quickly checked to make sure I hadn’t pushed him into any vines, and then helped him stand upright.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”

“He is,” came Owen’s voice, and I saw a dark shape approach and then step through the mist as though parting a curtain. “So am I. The comms aren’t working.”

“I know,” I replied, looking around at the group I’d found myself with and feeling glad we’d developed a contingency plan. “So it’s time to move on to our backup plan. I wonder how Ms. Dale and Henrik knew there was a chance we were getting separated.”

Thomas seemed not to notice my sarcasm. “The probability was too high to ignore,” he said. I looked at Owen, amused, and he shrugged.

“Your mission is my mission?” he asked, and I smiled.

“Don’t let my wife hear you say that. She might think we’re in love,” I quipped. “And yes… I think I’m the person with standing orders here, so you’re following me.”