The Other Tree

by D. K. Mok

  “It may be crazy, but so is Chris. I just know she’s going to do something like try to fight Docker with her bare hands or a half-potato.”

  He rolled his eyes at the memory.

  “Okaaay,” said Luke. “Crazy, I get it. I had no idea it was transmissible, but everybody getting killed isn’t going to help.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Well, is there anything useful in the—”

  There was a deafening crack, and then an agonising scream tore through the flames. As Luke and Emir looked at each other in alarm, a dark shape moved towards the archway.

  17

  Chris could feel the shapes of the pebbles through her boots, and she was certain this was not a good thing. She could sense Docker’s presence close behind her as she forged through the sheets of flame, which was also not particularly comforting.

  Her mother had been murdered. In a sense, Chris had always felt that way, but Docker’s words painted such a different picture from the one she had grown up believing. Instead of a portrait of corporate negligence and apathy, it was exposed as an enormous mural of deliberate violence, persecution, and control.

  SinaCorp believed you could buy anything: silence, secrets, even eternal life. But there were things that couldn’t be swayed by wealth, no matter what the marketing departments said. Respect, pride, love, empathy, remorse— you could buy the semblance of them, you could even buy people to tell you that they were real, but they would always be pale imitations of the powerful human connections that people formed of their own free will.

  Chris couldn’t help feeling that her mother hadn’t been the only casualty in the desert all those years ago. In some ways, Docker had been destroyed that night, as well.

  She tried to wipe the sweat from her eyes, but she only managed to smudge soot onto her faceplate. For a disoriented moment, she wasn’t sure if she was even still headed in the right direction, and felt a brief surge of panic that perhaps the room had changed configuration.

  There was the sudden crack of an explosion, and an inhuman scream ripped through the flames. Images of banshees and fire demons flashed through Chris’s mind as she tried to make out shapes through the whirling fire. Several beats passed before she realised the noise was coming from Docker.

  Smoke rose from his hip, and through the heat shimmer it looked as though he were melting. There was another shattering bang as the gun strapped to his calf exploded, and Chris felt a spray of shrapnel sting through her suit. Docker started to collapse, engulfed in flames.

  Less than five steps brought her to his side.

  It was another long nineteen, through pulsing jets of fire, before Chris dragged Docker’s screaming body back into the cool of the cavern.

  Luke and Emir stared in horror as Chris hauled Docker over the threshold, away from the blazing archway, both of them smoking. Chris laid Docker on the dirt floor, her stomach clenching at the sight. Docker’s heat suit had melted onto his skin, bubbling and fusing with his burned body. There was a charred hole in flesh and fabric where his gun had exploded into shrapnel at his hip, and again on his calf. Chris gently removed his helmet, and he gasped at the cool air, eyes clenched in agony.

  Chris tried to staunch the blood with her hands, but there was too much of it, everywhere. She was getting molten flesh on her suit.

  Just scrape it off, thought Chris. Don’t stop.

  “Water,” said Chris. “We need water—”

  Luke and Emir looked at one another. Luke ran down the hall and pulled several bottles of water from one of the SinaCorp packs. Chris followed, reaching into another pack and grabbing a heavy armful. Emir crouched quickly beside Docker. There was a brief moment of hesitation, then Emir flicked his wrist, and a glass dropper appeared between his fingers. He squeezed the clear liquid onto Docker’s lips, then quickly stepped back as Chris charged over.

  Kneeling beside Docker, Chris carefully poured water over the smoking flesh and fabric. Docker choked on every breath, as though his lungs were full of fluid. His lips moved, staining with blood.

  “Should have…left you with a gun,” gasped Docker, his eyes opening a slit at Emir.

  “Don’t try to talk,” said Emir.

  Docker’s gaze flicked to Chris as she knelt beside him, trying to wash away the blood and ash, cooling the burned flesh.

  “Irrational optimist…” he choked out. “Just like…your mother… Didn’t end well…for her either…”

  “You’re missing the point,” said Chris, her voice tight, her eyes watering from the acrid smoke.

  As Docker’s eyes focused on a distant point, he seemed almost to relax, as though a lifetime of careful calculations and unintuitive rationalisations was lifting from him. His breathing grew shallow and intermittent.

  “Finish the mission,” whispered Docker, his eyes closing. “Go home…”

  The last of the water trickled from the bottle, spattering onto Docker’s chest. There was a long silence, then Chris quietly screwed the lid back on the empty bottle. She started to unzip her fire hazard gear, unclipping buckles and straps before stepping out of the suit. Emir moved over to Chris, his heart aching and pounding from too many things that should have been said a long time ago.

  “Chris, are you okay?” asked Emir.

  “Here’s your suit back,” said Chris woodenly, handing Emir the bundle of stiff fabric, still remarkably intact aside from a few shrapnel scratches. “Sorry about the blood.”

  Emir wasn’t sure he wanted to wear the suit again, but he wordlessly slipped it on, fastening clips and re-attaching his discarded gear.

  “I guess it’s lucky you got the good suit,” said Luke, his gaze briefly drawn to the misshapen figure on the ground.

  “Actually, I had mine custom-made in Italy,” said Emir, snapping a heavy wrist guard over his forearm. He glanced at Chris with a hint of guilt. “After we spoke in the plaza, I guess I…had my doubts.”

  That explains the flattering tailoring, thought Luke.

  Emir walked over to Chris, who was picking up her satchel from where it lay beside a pillar.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you,” said Emir. “I should have done something a lot sooner.”

  Chris reached into her pocket and pulled out a curl of leather cord, strung with a piece of amber.

  “Bale wanted me to give this back to you,” said Chris, holding it out in her palm. “He made it out, by the way.”

  Emir stared at the honey-coloured stone as it caught the fluttering firelight. It seemed like a lifetime ago, someone else’s, that Chris had stood there with the smooth piece of amber in her palm, her cupped hand filling with rain. The trees had loomed around them like pillars in some fantastic green palace, while rain drummed on the leaves.

  Emir had failed three of his first-semester subjects, and things with his family were strained, to put it generously. It was clear he wasn’t an academic, and it came as a deep disappointment to his parents. They had said it would be a waste if he didn’t go to uni. What they had meant was that he was a waste of all their sacrifices.

  Emir had been too young to remember much of the civil war. He had been four when his family had finally settled in a new country and built a new life in the suburbs. What little he remembered of his life before wasn’t the patter of gunshots through the night, or the boom of mortars landing on the street outside, or the screams that ended with sickening abruptness. What he remembered was the silence.

  He remembered the family huddled in the darkness, not daring to move, not daring to breathe, not daring even to think, lest the marching feet outside sensed your presence. He became very good at that—the silence, the stillness, the calm despite the pounding heart, the readiness to run.

  He didn’t remember the march through deserted towns, the trek over the border, or the long, overcrowded boat ride across rough seas—his sisters described those to him years later. However, he remembered the silence when they had arrived—a different kind of silence, so suffocating
and muted that he found it difficult to sleep for weeks afterwards. He would wake in the darkness at the sound of footsteps, ready to scramble out the window and bolt into the night.

  Emir’s eldest sister had become a heart surgeon, and his other sister was a lawyer in policy reform. Emir had only gone to uni at his parents’ insistence, and things had not looked promising. Earlier that week, he had tried to explain the grim academic outlook to his parents. Some harsh words had been exchanged. Mostly in one direction.

  He was not a fan of tough love. Nor did he approve of guilt and unconstructive criticism as parenting tools, but they were effective, and Emir couldn’t help feeling that he was, indeed, in many ways useless.

  He had been surprised by Chris’s invitation to the national park. He’d seen it as a chance to get out of the city, where he felt penned in by walls and rivers of traffic lights, and he sensed that Chris felt something similar. It had been the fourth anniversary of her mother’s death, and Emir had suspected she wanted to be far away from familiar reminders, but not quite alone.

  The day had been a glorious revelation. They had spent most of it sprinting through the rain and mud, vaulting logs, and being chased by dogs, bugs, and at one stage, a man with a stuffed duck on his hat. They’d scrambled over fallen trees, leapt ditches brimming with pillbugs, and he’d had to drag Chris from a rushing brook which had broken its banks. He’d never felt so alive and so at peace.

  He had watched Chris, who had lost both her sister and her mother, as she fossicked through the damp leaf litter. Despite losing the people she loved under such tragic circumstances, and being alone in the world aside from her frail father, she still found such joy in scraps of moss and wilted seedlings. The way she would light up at every small find, as though the world still held such infinite wonder and pleasure for her, amazed him.

  She had turned to him with her arm extended, a muddy rock in her hand as though it were something marvellous. And she had looked at him as though he were something wonderful, something worthwhile, someone she wanted to share this fascinating rock with. He had taken the pebble in his hand, and as the rain pattered down, washing away the mud, he’d seen the amber emerge. It had been like holding a piece of sunlight in his hand.

  Emir held the piece of worn amber in his hand, while Chris gazed up at him.

  Luke cleared his throat.

  “Is it just me, or is that rumbling getting louder?” said Luke.

  “I thought maybe it was for atmospheric effect,” said Chris. “Like the soundtrack loop in a carnival horror house.”

  She paused, feeling the rumbling through her now very-thin soles.

  “Now that you mention it, it does feel a little like seismic instability,” she said.

  “Two buttons and a door, right?” said Luke. “Sounds like we could do it with three people.”

  “And one heat-resistant suit?” said Emir.

  Chris rummaged around her satchel and pulled out a jar of dark goop.

  “I have fireproof gel,” said Chris brightly.

  “So we can die with great hair?” said Luke.

  Chris gave Luke a sour look.

  “It’s a fire retardant based on pine resin,” she told him. “You put it on your skin and clothes. They use something similar for stunts involving people running around on fire, mostly in comedies. It’s good for up to five minutes.”

  “Why do you have fire-retardant gel?” asked Luke.

  “I also made an airborne sedative and poison darts—”

  “How the hell did you get through customs?”

  “Language, please,” said Chris archly. “I label them as condiments.”

  “I don’t know,” said Emir, looking at the archway. “There’s fire and then there’s fire”

  “My coat’s made of wool,” sighed Luke. “So that should count for something.”

  “Are you serious?” said Emir, looking from Chris to Luke. “You’re really going to try running through an incinerator covered in pine resin? I can’t believe you guys made it this far.”

  Chris picked up Docker’s helmet, weighing it thoughtfully in her hands.

  “Fancy equipment didn’t do you guys much good,” said Chris quietly.

  Emir looked away, trying not to think of Roman’s fingers digging into his arms.

  Luke unscrewed the lid from a jar labelled “Blackberry Jam” and gave a tentative sniff. It smelled vaguely like the blackberry jam a neighbour used to make. Then again, she had been arrested shortly afterwards and the police had wheeled away the contents of her pantry amidst a tangle of biohazard tape.

  Luke grimaced as he wiped the resin onto his neck and hands—it felt tacky on his skin, like smearing himself with maltose. If Chris had mislabelled her jars, he was going to be very annoyed. Chris scooped out some of the resin, scrunching it into her shirt and slapping it onto her jeans.

  “If this works, I’m going to write a paper on it,” said Chris.

  “Hold on,” said Luke, stopping abruptly. “What do you mean, ‘If this works?’”

  “Okay,” said Chris, standing up. “Are we all good to go?”

  Emir nodded, crouching by the archway with his helmet on and his SinaCorp pack secure over his shoulders.

  “Wait, about this theoretical provision—” said Luke, but the rest was muffled as Chris pulled the helmet over his head.

  She gave the helmet a playful knock on the faceplate.

  “Let’s go!” she said.

  Emir sprinted into the flames, closely followed by Chris, a resin-coated handkerchief tied over the lower half of her face. In the empty hall, Luke stared at the roaring fire for a moment, wondering just how contagious insanity was. He took a deep breath and plunged into the burning cavern.

  It was hot. Not hot like a sauna. Not hot like a heatwave. Not hot like standing at a barbeque on a fifty-degree day, serving an endless queue of other hot and cranky people. It was hot like being on a barbeque on a fifty-degree day, the hotplate searing your flesh to a crispy well done. Luke felt as though he were burning, and he had the brief suspicion that he was running through fire while covered in blackberry jam.

  Interestingly, although his flesh certainly felt like it was cooking, he was still able to run and breathe, as opposed to collapsing in a screaming heap of oozing mess. As he crunched over the pebbles, he could just make out the shadow of a wall looming ahead and the frighteningly unprotected figure of Chris huddled against the arched doorway.

  About five metres to the left, Emir stood with his palm pressed against something carved into the wall. Luke skidded to the right and homed in on a wavering shape. As he neared, he could see a stylised image of a standing flame engraved in the stone. He glanced back through the swaying fire towards Emir, who made some kind of military signal, which Luke assumed meant “Now” as opposed to “Stop! Change of plan!” Luke pushed the emblem as hard as he could.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then a thin black circle appeared around the flame with the sound of stone on stone, and the circle depressed into the wall like a button. A grinding noise rumbled through the room, coming from the far entrance and growing rapidly louder. Emir ran towards Chris, who strained against the double doors, and Luke sprinted to join them. As the heavy doors began to part, Luke risked a glance over his shoulder and saw what appeared to be a wall rushing towards them.

  Luke decided that pointing this out would not be helpful, and he heaved against the doors, the rough marble digging into his palms. With a groan, the doors swung open, and Chris, Emir, and Luke burst through the archway, falling into a deep pool of water. There was a loud crash from behind them as a stone wall slammed into the archway, sealing off the burning room. Smoke drifted from the solid surface, pieces of twisted metal plunking softly into the water.

  Luke wondered briefly if perhaps they’d missed a set of switches earlier that would have deactivated the wall of doom. And possibly the flaming jets. The Book of June hadn’t mentioned conscientiousness as a prerequisite, but perhaps it�
�d been implied.

  For several seconds, the only noise was stunned, heavy breathing, as the three of them stared around the dim chamber. It was actually not so much a chamber as a circular pool, tiled all in white, and filled with chest-deep, crystal-blue water from wall to wall. The room was illuminated solely by the luminous lilies floating on the surface, their fleshy leaves glowing a silvery blue.

  Chris scooped up a small, glowing plant, studying the wet trail of roots and radiant leaves. Tiny salt crystals crusted the pale petals of a moon-shaped flower.

  “It looks like it’s related to aloe vera,” she said, half-smiling to herself. “I guess whoever built this place had a sense of humour.”

  She struggled to tug a specimen bag from her satchel and dropped the plant wetly inside.

  “Does anyone else notice there aren’t any doors?” said Emir, his eyes scanning the surface of the water warily as the plants drifted around in the wake of their entrance.

  Luke was paying attention mostly to the fact that he was no longer burning, and not yet drowning, so he was in a fairly good place right now. He was also happily discovering that the resin was water-soluble.

  Chris removed an empty water bottle from her satchel and submerged it in the pool, letting it fill before screwing the cap back on.

  “Did you guys have any riddles about this place?” said Chris.

  “After the flaming sword it was the final gate,” said Emir. “I’m not sure this is it.”

  “We’re not necessarily going to recognise it,” said Luke. “It could be a metaphor. As long as the ceiling doesn’t start coming down—I think I’ve had enough of nearly being crushed.”

  Emir looked at Luke, wondering how the slightly built priest had managed to get entangled in this mission. He clearly didn’t have an enthusiasm for adventure, nor did he seem to burn with religious fervour. Luke certainly didn’t seem enamoured of Chris, although Emir could sense a strong familiarity between them, and he suddenly wondered how long they had known each other. It occurred to Emir that Chris might well have had a whole slew of close friends she had met since they’d parted ways at uni so many years ago.