Reaping What Grows

Vivi looks up at the doctor as she enters the cell. "Fuck you," she says, and doesn't move. She has to conserve energy, has to stay strong for as long as possible.

 

The guard drags the girl to her feet and Katters takes her hand.

She manipulates the bones in her palm, again, and something grinds against something else, shifts, and then seems to snap into place.

“Don’t move,” she says.

She tapes a piece of moulded plastic to the specimen’s hand, immobilising it.

 

She breathes in sharply as the doctor moves her hand again, but it fades away into a sigh of relief once she realizes what the doctor is doing. "Oh."

This is...good. This is a good sign. "Thank you," she adds belatedly. "Um. Water. Can I...I need water. Please." The words aren't quite coming out right, but she's probably close enough. The dehydration is affecting her much faster than she'd hoped - it must be the injury.

 

Katters’ mouth twitches again and she raises an eyebrow at the girl. She packs up to leave.

“We’ll see,” she says, finally, and she’s gone.

 

Now she knows the doctor isn't going to let her die, not yet, not so soon. There will be water, soon. There will be. And until then...

She slumps against the wall of the cell. There's no use doing anything else. She can't see a lot of her leaves, but the ones she can see are already turning brown and dry. So dry...

She closes her eyes and tries to sleep through the wait. They won't let her die. They won't.

 

Outside the cell, Katters turns on the guard.

“Why is my specimen not being given water?” she demands.

“Should it be?” The guard is surprised, turning to glance at CH-FP-3059-B through the glass. “I don’t think that’s in the instructions.”

“It’s a plant,” Katters says. “What do plants need?”

“Water, I guess, but—”

“So why isn’t it getting water?”

The guard scowls. “Well, you know, you’re snapping at the wrong person, here. It’s not my job to water the plants, maybe you should be talking to a gardener.”

Katters scowls back. “Fine,” she says, and stomps away. “Maybe I will.”

 

Vivi isn't sure how much time passes. She can feel herself wilting. Her hands are already too heavy for her to lift without a lot of effort, and even then they shake. She doesn't dare try to stand up.

It can't have been that long. They wouldn't let her die. She must just being losing - what's the word - focus. Something. It doesn't matter. Either there's water or there isn't. And dying wouldn't be the worst thing to happen, but she doesn't want to. She's not ready. Water is coming soon. She's waiting for the doctor to bring water. She'll bring it...

 

“Fucking,” Katters says when she gets back to the lab. “Thirty-Fifty-Nine hasn’t had water since before it got here.”

“Should it have?” Baines asks, and Katters glares at him.

“Yeah,” she says. “Things tend to die when they don’t get water.”

“Lots of specimens don’t.” He shrugs. “Thirteen-Sixty-Three — last one I worked on, some kind of golem thing, that one wouldn’t die no matter what we did to it.”

“Thirty-Fifty-Nine isn’t some kind of golem thing, it’s a plant.” Katters can’t believe she has to explain this to people.

Baines holds his hands up. “Sure, alright, so Thirty-Fifty-Nine needs water. Put in a request for it.”

“What do you think I’m doing? I just want to know why that request wasn’t put in with the rest of the paperwork, yesterday.”

“I think that was Baines,” Noel says, grinning. “Who did the paperwork.”

“I’m sure that was included,” Baines says. “It must have gotten lost between the cracks.”

“Between what cracks?” Katters asks. “Between the cracks in your skull? Through the traumatic brain injury that makes you think I’m going to buy that story and into the cavernous empty space where your brain should be?”

“Hey, now.”

Katters digs through a desk drawer for the requisite form. “You better hope Thirty-Fifty-Nine doesn’t have any kidney damage — I’m going to be pissed if our subject dies because you’re a moron.”

“Does it even have kidneys?”

She glares at him, puts the paper down and walks over to him. “You’re real funny,” she says. “Can’t say I’m in a very receptive mood, though.”

Noel busies herself with her work.

“Sorry,” Baines says.

“Would it help if I told you your job was on the line?” Katters asks him. “Would that get you to start taking this seriously?”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and keep it in mind anyway. Reflect on it the next time you think about half-assing your paperwork.”

She returns to the desk and the form. “Noel,” she says as she writes.

Noel squeaks.

“Tell me you have some good news.”

“Er.” Noel clears her throat. “No, ‘fraid not. Just a lot of inconclusives.”

“God damn it.”

“I think we may be running into the limit of what we can do with these samples, we may need to start looking deeper.”

Katters sighs. “Yeah,” she says, “alright. Well, look, it’s getting about that time, anyway — why don’t you two knock off while I finish this up and send it through?”

“You sure?” Baines asks.

“Yeah,” Katters says. “Maybe there’ll be some good news waiting for us tomorrow morning.”

 

Vivi wakes to the sound of the door being closed, and she forces her eyes open. The room is blurry, swimming. A shape in front of her slowly comes into focus. "Drink," he says. Not the doctor. But he has water.

She puts all her effort into lifting her hand to take the cup, but she still can't get it high enough and she lets it fall back to the floor. The man - guard? - rolls his eyes and puts the cup against her lips. It's tilted a little too far and she barely drinks more than spills out, but she drinks gratefully.

And then it's gone, and the guard straightens up and leaves. She curls up again, more relaxed now than scared, and tries to go back to sleep.

 

Katters arrives early again the following morning, some pep in her step despite the scant hours of sleep she’d gotten. She was up late doing cross-research on Apiaceae and naturally-occurring anti-hemolytics and estrogenics, and she thought she might have dug up some promising leads. But that’s not the source of her good mood.

She makes her way back to containment, after a brief detour to change and pick up some supplies. The night guard is still on duty, and she follows Katters to CH-FP-3059-B’s cell after some prompting.

 

Vivi scrambles to her feet before she realizes it's the doctor. "Uh, thank you. For the water." She hesitates, then holds out her arms uncertainly.

 

The guard takes one of the girl’s arms and starts to lead her to the door, but Katters stops them.

“Nah,” she says, “we can do it here.”

The guard looks uncertain, hesitates.

“Yeah,” Katters continues. “On the bed is fine. Prone.”

The guard moves the girl toward the bed while Katters looks around the room. After a moment, she sets her tools on the back of the toilet.

The guard gestures at the girl’s bed. “Lie down, on your stomach,” she says.

 

Her eyes widen. This isn't what she'd expected - they must have found something. She stumbles back a step without thinking. Prone. Vulnerable. They could do anything to her.

But she doesn't have a choice. They'd do whatever it is either way. Worse. She lies down on the bed, resting her forehead on her good hand.

 

The guard repositions herself above the girl, at her head, and holds her down by her shoulders.

Katters grins. “Perfect.” Whether she’s talking to the girl or the guard is unclear.

She steps over to the bed and stands at the girl’s side. She sets something just below the girl’s neck, something small but heavy, then tugs the girl’s shirt up to her shoulder-blades and her pants down to her tail-bone, out of the way. Her gloved hand brushes against the girl’s back, nitrile tugging at her skin like it wants to pull that out of the way, too.

Katters hums. Not any particular song, the notes don’t quite go together in any coherent way.

She wipes something on the girl’s back, to the left of her spine. The swabbing is much more thorough than it was before, by the time Katters is done, it has almost started to hurt.

There’s a moment’s respite as Katters returns to the toilet, to her tools. Then she comes back, and she starts slicing into the girl.

 

Vivi grits her teeth and thinks of sunshine. Rain. Soil between her toes. Fuck, even the garden again, anywhere but here, anything but this. Her feet twitch even though she tries to keep still. She can feel the guard holding her down, the blade cutting into her. No, no, think of the sound of the woods at night. Think of the feel of moss under your feet. Think - fuck! The pain snaps her out of any attempt to get away from it.

 

The incision Katters makes is small, but deep, the scalpel blade cutting into muscle. The line she draws into the girl’s flesh is curved and ultimately comes back to meet itself.

Katters removes the tissue with a pair of tweezers and stores it away.

“Two birds,” she says to no-one in particular, and picks up the thing from the girl’s back. It’s a needle, which becomes apparent when Katters stabs it into the incision.

 

"Fuck!" She can't hold still anymore; she kicks and thrashes and and struggles against the guard's weight.

 

Katters jerks the needle out and puts a hand on the girl’s back, pressing her down.

She snarls. “Don’t move,” she says, as though it’s that easy.

Hand still in place, she retries the needle, stabbing it through the incision with careful aim.

 

Vivi cries out but manages to stay still. Tears well up in her eyes and she tries to blink them away unsuccessfully.

"What are you doing to me?" she tries to ask, her voice shaking.

 

“Tissue samples,” Katters says. The needle goes very deep, almost like she intends to skewer the girl all the way through, but it does eventually stop.

There’s a click, and then a pause, and then Katters withdraws the needle. She looks at it thoughtfully, frowning, before walking over to the toilet.

“I’m not sure I got that,” she says. “Maybe three birds.”

She comes back with a fresh needle.