Greenhaus:Storm

by Reckelhoff, Bryan

  The contents of the letter were just another thing to add to the list. A tired Ella joined the remnants from the old Stone camp in the procession to a place they once called home. After the long walk back to the former Stone minicamp, she scanned the document again, paying special attention to the seal in the upper right hand corner. The striking similarity to the gold star that adorned the chest of her sworn enemies did not slip by Ella. She focused on the letters at the top, bigger and darker than the rest of the words on the page, though she could not identify any of them or the words they formed.

  A long, hectic day was ending. A day filled with multiple sirens. A compassionate encounter through the glass. A harrowing escape from that encounter. A dastardly betrayal that led to a quick, but deadly firefight that ended with Ella exacting a small measure of revenge for the betrayal by killing those who perpetrated the double cross.

  She was exhausted, not only from lack of sleep, physical exertion, and the normal malnutrition of her kind, but also from the emotional gamut she had run through that day. She wanted to go back to that place, where things were… better, and lock eyes with Stranger Friend, but deep down, she knew that would never happen again. They would never meet through the glass or anywhere else for that matter. She would forever long for him and the spell his eyes cast upon her. One brown eye, one blue, it was a gaze she would never forget.

  This brought the rage rushing back, and became part of a growing list of things that could trigger it. She tried to shut her eyes and get some much needed rest. Hoping that when she did, she would see him in her dreams and the compassionate look in his eyes would remove her anger as he had done earlier in the day. But, when she drifted off to sleep, all she saw was a toppled city of glass and mangled steel. Burning. And her dreams were not filled with desire or wasted chasing some Stranger Friend through the glass; they were spent figuring out a way to achieve that destructive end. Even if her conscious state had started to break and soften, her subconscious would remain hardened and forever loyal to the mission of the Masked.

  CHAPTER 9 (Jacob Niles)

  Everywhere Jacob looked, blood. Splattered on the walls and pooled on the floor beneath Jasper’s chair, which was also covered. Jacob had a bad feeling that something had gone terribly wrong, but given the evidence he now had, doubted it was an accident. Jasper’s empty chair, normally white and shiny like the rest of the seats in the transfusion chamber of decon, was now a deep red. So fresh it’s probably still warm. Jacob wanted to reach out and touch it, just to check, but given what Jasper had told him earlier in the day, he thought it wiser to remain still and keep calm. The pool of the dark liquid gathered beneath the chair and began to trickle away toward the drain, the story behind how it got there likely to go forever untold.

  Jacob was sure Jasper was already dead. Stunned from shock, he could not even begin to figure the who or the why yet. Was it coincidence that it happened on the same day they talked about so much? Not a chance. From suspicions about Harvard’s death, to waste, corruption, conspiracies involving departments any of these topics could have gotten them in trouble if heard by the wrong set of ears. But we were alone.

  And Jacob couldn’t shake that fact. Nothing about this whole situation was more puzzling. Nobody else, except the glassmen, were near enough to hear them and only then if they were shouting. Even in their relative close proximity, the glassys were too far away to hear their conversations over the auditory clutter of the annex worksite, especially in Jasper’s hushed tones. None of this made any sense, so Jacob decided to play it cool when Medical arrived with his clean blood.

  He watched a group from Medical clean up the blood, which Jacob presumed to be Jasper’s. Jacob did not wait for the elephant in the room to squash him, instead he attacked it. “Crazy old man Jasper, looks like he lost a lot of blood,” Jacob observed to the random Medic assigned to attend to him that day.

  “Yeah, they said he removed his needle and stuck himself four times in the neck before he could be subdued,” said the Med Tech. “He was screaming some incoherent nonsense about not wanting to live anymore, saying, ‘It will all be better if I’m dead.’”

  Jacob knew this was a crock of crap, Jasper seemed more alive than ever today, like all the talking was an elixir that cured some hidden terminal disease. Jacob could not tell whether this particular Medic was lying or simply relaying the information he was given, but either way, all were to be held in the same suspicion in Jacob’s eyes. The paranoia is growing in me.

  Jacob recognized some faces in decon, at least, he thought he did, but couldn’t name a single person in the room. Now that he was seeing things more clearly, or possibly insanely, this seemed odd, given that he had encounters with several Medics daily, over the course of years.

  The five shop tenders he passed each day between his apartment and the stairs that took him to ground level were the same, Sal, Gabe, Sierra, Armstrong, and Winnie. Rangers Bragg and Wells stood on daily patrol near Annex 23 guarding the entrance. Wipers sentenced to clean the windows, were all stationed in the same places day after day. He knew them by name and face and they knew him. And now, when he passed the Wipers instead of asking himself What did they do?, he would instead say, Maybe they did nothing more than talk too much, like Jasper. And then he thought, Maybe I will pass him cleaning windows one day.

  With his newfound suspicion, Jacob eyed the Medic next to him closely, starting with his haircut. His black hair was a short cropped buzz cut, something that did nothing to make him stand out from any other Med Tech; it was like they all had the same barber. He wore the same lab coat over the top of the all white Nu-Skin every other Med Tech wore. The brightness of its white was only interrupted by the big red cross on the back and their badge in the front. Jacob leaned in and it read ‘Med Tech Rogers’. Other than a different hair color, the name was all that distinguished Med Tech Rogers from the rest of the Medics Jacob could remember.

  Jacob played along with the story, “Doesn’t surprise me one bit. He blabbered all morning long about some gibberish and seemed very disturbed.” Jacob was not lying, except for calling it gibberish. Jasper did all of the talking, Jacob just listened. “Swear I was tempted to push him off the beam or cut his harness. The old man hadn’t said as much as ten words to me in a given day in all the years we worked together.” Jacob was being truthful about how little Jasper spoke before today, but he was laying it on thick about doing Jasper any harm, hoping all the while the skinny Med Tech was listening and that he was buying the act.

  Med Tech Rogers did not immediately respond, but instead silently went about unpacking his shiny metal brief case containing the bags, needles, and other assorted instruments needed to extract his blood and replace it with fresh and clean, nutrient rich blood.

  “Well Mr. Niles, we certainly don’t need any crazies running around the place, so maybe it’s for the better,” agreed Med Tech Rogers. “Even still, I am sorry to hear about your friend. Medics are doing their best to stabilize him.”

  “My father’s friend,” Jacob snapped. It was another lie, but one with a purpose Jasper of all people would understand. Besides it didn’t take a Medic to know that Jasper was already gone, the amount of blood being cleaned up told Jacob as much.

  “Come again?” quipped Med Tech Rogers.

  “My father’s friend,” Jacob coldly replied. “Jasper was my father’s friend. We were just co-workers.”

  “Hmmm, and didn’t your father pass from some strange incident as well,” replied Med Tech Rogers. “Seems like everyone around you finds themselves the victims of unfortunate events.”

  Med Tech Rogers was correct. These were incidents, not accidents. Unfortunate events true enough, but planned and coldly calculated by some unseen force. Jacob also noted that both his father and Jasper had similar thoughts about the ‘Haus, thoughts he too started developing when he walked into this mess. Thoughts they kept secret from everyone they knew, which he also planned to do. Thoughts that when finally expressed, cos
t them their lives.

  Jacob had no plans of joining his father or Jasper on the other side any time soon. Inside he was crumbling, and had so many questions that would now go forever unanswered. He wanted to break down and give way to proper grieving, having lost a close family friend and mentor, someone he knew longer than anyone except his mother. A man Jacob worked side by side with for five years, and planned to continue working next to until Jasper retired, but one he had to pretend to barely know right now.

  Jacob worried that he was walking the thin line between reality and uncertainty. Perhaps Jasper and his father crossed far over that line into a realm of insanity, conjuring up conspiracies until it drove them crazy and they took their own lives. What if Jasper did kill himself, my father too, he could have cut his own harness.

  He refused to believe either could have done such a thing. In his mind, they were onto something. They were completely sane. And he felt someone was watching him now. Or listening. Waiting for Jacob to slip up and give them a reason to eliminate him too. Paranoia, I can’t shake it. Was my whole life one big lie?

  Jacob flashed back to his schooling, specifically his Constitution recital. He replayed Article III over and over in his head. No citizen shall take up arms in a dispute against another. Someone had broken that law.

  But who? And how? Why? Will anyone report it or better yet will anyone get punished? What was the gain to be had? The questions flowed like water from a faucet, but the answers were nowhere to be found. Nothing added up, no matter how many times he tried to sort it all out. Med Tech Rogers stopped his train of thought, “Mr. Niles, this will hurt a little.”

  I pray to Mother Earth that it’s only a little, that I don’t end up like Jasper. Med Tech Rogers proceeded to stick needles in each arm. One was connected to an empty bag, the other a large tank full of clean blood. Or so Jacob hoped, there was no telling. He was at the mercy of the Med Tech. Jacob could feel the blood loss, as the new blood did not enter him as quickly as the old left.

  Light headed, but otherwise fine, Jacob lay back and tried to relax, continuing his downplaying of Jasper’s death. He was not sure if Medical was involved with all of this, but for now he was assuming everyone was. He wasn’t even sure what ‘all of this’ was, whether it was real or just imagined nonsense of men who performed mundane tasks over and over, driving them past the point of sanity into a world of lunacy.

  As he lost more and more blood, his head felt lighter and lighter and the lights became brighter and brighter. He tried in vain to fight the drowsiness. As he started to lose consciousness, his true colors started to show as he lost control of his emotions and began blurting out a nonsensical string of letters and numbers. Jacob felt a pillow pressed down with force upon his face before his whole world faded to black. Just before slipping into unconsciousness, he prayed to Mother Earth that it would not be for the last time.

  CHAPTER 10 (Ella Storm)

  Ella Storm, the voice repeated over and over in her head, a smile spread across her face as it did. Ella preferred this name to her previous ones; it fit her personality so well. Her camp plodded through the wasteland, two campers flanked Ella as they led the procession. The old Stone camp trudged along slowly pulling heavy sleds, which were nothing more than wooden pallets coupled together with wire and rope. The heavy skids gouged the wasteland, carving a path from their old camp to their new, permanent dwelling.

  Ammunition boxes held down clothes that would have otherwise blown away in the heavy winds that whipped toxic dust all around. An assortment of knives and other hand held weapons, stayed wrapped in cloth. Large boxes held tools, food, coal and anything else they could pack in them.

  The journey had been rough and the recent days long. The dismantling and packing of the camp was hard enough, but the hauling of it all, even worse. The slightest hill made for tough sledding, the lack of water and clogging air filters only added to the toll.

  Ella wasn’t sure how many other camps would join, but her one wish was to unite the entire camp. She was risking her camp and all their provisions on this bet. She knew they made an easy target for an ambush out in the open, but felt the risk was worth the reward.

  The remnants of the old Stone camp approached the fortress apprehensively. The slow pace was partly because of the heavy weights they dragged and partly because Ella wasn’t sure her if her rousing speech had a lasting effect. She wanted to be sure those occupying the fortress were indeed friendly to her cause.

  Two days prior, everyone else seemed ready to unite, to join as one and assume a single purpose. Time gives an idle mind a chance to rethink things. Time to plan a new strategy, to acquire new allies or targets, especially against someone who admitted killing their Elder, as Ella had done to so many of her fellow Masked. Power was something that had driven men insane for millennia. Those who shared what was left of Earth with her were no different.

  Snipers and spotters were posted along the walls as they normally would be, so Ella knew they were not the first to return. She felt a big bull’s-eye across her chest, maybe just her overactive imagination, but enough to stop her in her tracks and proceed with caution. She received a wave of the white flag from those on duty and she dropped her rope. Exhausted legs carried her body, covered in a layer of dust, toward the gate.

  “Elder Storm,” a meek but muffled voice was overheard from above.

  Ella raised her hand to stop those behind her as her camp approached the gate. She turned an ear to the fortress, to eavesdrop. The rage resurfaced, Ella was ready to break her own peace treaty, to riot with those she sought to unite. They have already named an Elder, without our input. Who are they to…?

  Her angry thoughts were halted, when the soft and muffled voiced repeated, “Elder Storm, welcome home.” This time she followed the voice to the wall walk atop the gate. A short, red haired spotter emerged from the cluster of snipers. She descended a ladder and walked toward the Storm camp.

  “Elder Storm, welcome home,” she repeated before adding, “Follow me, we’ve been waiting.”

  Ella remembered hearing this voice before, but couldn’t recall exactly when. Soft, but eerie when the effects of the masks were added, it was very distinct. Ella liked the sound of what she heard from the spooky voiced fire-haired girl, both the ‘Elder Storm’ part and the part about this being home.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw an army of workers separate her goods. Ella grasped the hand of her escort, and followed her lead, motioning the ex-Stone camp to join them. As they entered the fortress, Ella’s anger regressed and the bull’s-eye she imagined across herself vanished. Calming more with every step, she knew a hair trigger temper like hers meant the simmering rage stayed just beneath the surface, it could never be buried for good.

  As they spanned the length of the courtyard, Ella noticed the insignias painted on the masks of those they passed. Members of Cloud, Fire, Sky, and Ashe camps had already arrived. In addition to her former allies, Ella spied symbols she did not recognize.

  Supplies were being sorted into like goods, piles accumulated in each corner and along the walls. The red haired spotter from the old Fire camp led Ella’s camp into a corridor. More of her allies lined each side, but she continued to notice masks she did not recognize. Ella was showered with welcoming and congratulatory responses, ‘Welcome home’ and ‘Congrats Elder Storm’ being the most common phrases heard in muffled tones as she passed.

  They had chosen an Elder, but it no longer angered her. Her hazel eyes scanned the courtyard on final time before exiting, focusing on the piles of scrap, weapons, ammunition caches, and fuel that continued to grow. Those she passed in the corridor all held something they had brought with them. As she passed they raised their offerings to her, a symbolic pledge of support.

  “Elder Storm,” the small spotter said.

  The sound of that will never get old.

  “This way, quickly,” the soft voice of the diminutive escort instructed, pulling Ella past the procession of supplie
s being offered to the new Elder.

  Though she was not of traditional age to be Elder, someone, or more specifically a group of someones, picked Ella to lead them. Even though the decision seemed to be unanimous, she would always be cautious of those that may seek her title, using any means necessary to get it.

  The inoperable automobiles and other assorted scrap carried the stench of old metal and grease, a smell she remembered well. Caught up in the excitement of being named Elder and distracted by the gifts being presented, it only now dawned on her that she did not recognize her surroundings, odd since the fortress was so small and she had explored its entirety many times over. Her escort made a ninety degree turn, into another corridor even narrower than the previous. An internal panic grew when the old Stone camp was cut off from her as those lining the sides of the halls blocked the way.

  After Ella turned another corner, she noticed the path was a dead end. The procession of Masked she was led through now closed off the corridor, preventing her escape. The panic set in deeper, her realization came a few seconds too late. She and her camp were trapped.

  Ella stared intently at the mask of the spotter that had led her into this dead end. She ignored the ice and water symbols on the sides of her mask, instead focusing on the red and orange squiggly lines dancing down the center of her mask. The flames jumped out at her, triggering a thought that came ten minutes too late.

  Fire camp. How did I overlook that?!? How could I be so careless? It’s a trap and I’ve fallen right in. As Ella began to plan her escape, her escort clutched a pry bar. Without a word, the ex-Fire camper pulled it back and gave it a mighty swing. Ella froze and braced for its impact. Her eyes closed tightly, her inevitable fate accepted.