Stormwatch #4

Grubby fingers pulled at the scarred skin of her arms. Maxine's broken and chipped fingernails dug underneath the scabs that lined her arms, and picked them, one by one, leaving red, angry puckered marks on her forearms. When she panicked, when she was anxious or worried, she reverted to pinching, scratching and biting herself. It was a tic she didn't recognise and worried is a further devolution of her mind into the dribble of animalistic instincts. At this point, as she felt waves of anxiety and pure elation rise and fall through her chest, she didn't know where she began, and the animals ended.

Those tiny moments of pain gave her clarity, gave her focus away from the drum beat of the blood in her ears, her veins. Rushing through her, coursing with a power that made her vibrate in place, the wrench of action, of running, wind in her hair, before it crashed her down again. Smashing her against the rocks of absolute exhaustion.

Turning slowly, with deliberate control bordering on creepy, she stared at Caitlyn, who stood behind her. Caitlyn was muttering to herself, panicked eyes bouncing to every opening, frequently looking above her as the clouds began to form above them. She was dripping from every exposed piece of skin, though her clothes were bone dry - seemingly dryer than any clothing should ever be. Water dripped from her extremities but on her face, particularly laced into her hair, and across her eyelashes, it had turned into a hard, transparent crust.

She quirked a lip at Maxine.

"This is your fault."

Maxine nodded once, in full agreement. She turned back to look across the street at the Sunderland Corporation Warehouse. Where Maxine believed they were keeping everything that would blow this whole conspiracy open. The doors, huge industrial things hung on cast-iron hinges that had been left from the previous company. They were rusty. Weak. Maxine could smell the metals decay.

"This is what you're supposed to be," Maxine said, he eyes locked on the building, and the bill board above it. "You're from the Clear, now."

Caitlyn snarled.

"You don't know what I am."

Maxine turned, with a simian flash of her teeth. Human smile. Animal aggression. Keep a distance. Don't challenge. Her eyes, now huge, round and dark like an Aye-Aye, stared back at Caitlyn, who looked away quickly.

"I can feel them moving around me," Caitlyn said quietly, "Is it like that for you?"

Maxine grunted once and tapped her wrist. The skin was marked with thin tributaries of blood.

"It feels like they're moving under my skin," she said, staring across the road, "It feels like they're all under there. Am I wearing them, or are they wearing me? The Red, the nature of animals. Holding me hostage. Tiny things under my skin that come out as roars, as spines, and teeth, and jaws and eyes. Little vibrations of every living animal on the planet."

Caitlyn paused, looking at her own drenched skin. Water dribbled down her cheeks and chin, dripping from the bridge of her nose and her chin. She looked up, feeling a leviathan, ponderously moving around in her peripherals, making bow waves through the air. She glanced back at Maxine, who stared at her with unblinking eyes.

"They're all around me," Caitlyn said, looking down at her feet. She could feel the quiet bubbling of brooks and waterways, sewer systems and subterranean aquifers beneath her feet. Calling to her. The moisture in the air, the condensers and the air-conditioning units, stripping the humidity away. She felt snow in the air and rain moving across the sky above them.

"I feel sick. This is..."

Maxine stood up and pulled her into a tight, firm hug. Caitlyn resisted, and then relented almost immediately, gripping Maxine's scarred back tightly, moisture clinging too, and freezing the ends of the Red dreadlocks that touched Caitlyn's skin.

"It's OK. It will pass," Maxine said, pulling Caitlyn to arm’s length. Her clothes were drenched, and ice crystals of her own had grown on her eyebrows, and across the neck of her top.

"Will it? I feel like I'm being watched. Pursued. This isn't what it was supposed to be like..."

Caitlyn trailed off, and Maxine cocked her head to one side.

"Isn't supposed to be?" Maxine asked.

Caitlyn looked taken aback and then waved at Maxine.

"When I saw your powers, and you told me about mine, I thought they'd be less...invasive. That I'd have more control over them, and they'd be less..."

Maxine nodded once and wiped some of the rapidly melting ice from her eyes. She crouched down and with a broken and dirty finger, she scratched the ground with her index finger, carving a small indentation into the concrete. She traced out what, at first glance, appeared to be a very basic tree, but it grew in complexity, with continuously overlapping layers and lines, until Caitlyn was sure it was something else.

"What is that?" Caitlyn asked. Waves crashed in her ears, and she felt sick to her stomach from the scale of her surroundings. The enclosed nature of the urban world.

"I don't know," Maxine said, honesty cracking her voice, "I dream of it sometimes. A tree made from blood."

Caitlyn shook her head again and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

"I can't take this," she said, "I can't do this."

Maxine pointed towards the Warehouse doors.

"This can make it better. We get in, get Pamela, and get out again. We can solve anything then."

Caitlyn stared at Maxine, who was dripping confidence. She sighed, and put her hands on her knees, feeling her insides slosh around, loose and wet.

"How do you know Maxine?"

Maxine beamed and held up a small, folded, dog-eared piece of paper.

"Because when the Red and the Green are together, everything works, Caitlyn. Red and the Green are the perfect balance of nature. Of Red and Green."

Caitlyn stood up and stared hard at her, stepping forwards she grabbed Maxine's shoulders and shook her once.

"But what does that MEAN? You keep talking about it all like it's supposed to make sense. About Manifests and Seedlings and the Red and the Green. They're just fucking colours, Maxine! It's not some grand godamned religious event, or conspiracy. They're just colours, and you're a deeply unwell woman. You've drawn me into this godamned nightmare that's full of bloody trees, and glacial monsters and..." She flicked her arms out once, "Dripping water all the godamned time. What have you DONE?! What IS THIS?"

Maxine said nothing, instead standing up fully and pointing towards the warehouse across the road from them.

“Pamela Isley is in that warehouse, and we’re going to rescue her. Once the Red and the Green are together…”

Maxine pads across the road, casting a sideways glance over at Caitlyn. The woman is look decided Blue in her skin tone. Maxine swallows and touches her chest softly, feeling for the ridges and rivers underneath her clothes. The scabbed diagrams that were the map of her world on Earth and within Nature.

Caitlyn sighed, audibly, from across the road and followed Maxine across, her feet squelching inside her shoes.

“There’s a lot more to this than the Red and the Green, Maxine,” Caitlyn said to herself, looking down at her wrecked phone. She tossed it against a wall and wiped a palm across her face.

***

Pamela Isley stared down at the plain, concrete floor before her. The room felt barren. The air conditioner hummed in the background, reducing the humidity, putting a chill in her bones that refused to shift, even after she’d put on an extra sweater supplied for her. It was uncomfortable, and the scent of bleach filled her nose. The whole room, and corridor and everything beyond felt sterile.

She could hear voices outside. Voices laughing and cajoling each other, as they passed her doorway. She hung inside it, for a long time, back pressed against the frame, her knees pulled under her chin. She felt utterly alone and broken. Her anxiety had passed many hours ago, leaving her with a deep-seated sense of loss and control. She felt cold, lost and disconnected. Her crutch, her faithful concerns and voices that whispered thought unbidden into her ear, were gone.

And she missed them, but it brought with it an awakening. Tendrils which had wrapped around her insides, her muscles and her mind, were slowly unraveling. She felt more and more like the Pamela she knew many years ago, the Pamela who had ideas above her station. The Pamela who was intense and passionate and powerful.

On a whim, an impulse from a voice she didn’t recognize until after as her own, she pulled the door open, quietly, holding it firmly in both hands to prevent any squeaking, before stepping confidently into the corridor. She knew there were horrors down here, and she knew that Sunderland was strip mining her old research for meaning.

She crept, quietly down the corridors. The signs were confusing, but she knew that at the left fork, something whispered. A tiny voice, from far away, calling to her. She padded quietly down the corridor, hearing voices at the end, after another series of complicated and oblique forks.

Pamela paused, pushing herself flat against the wall, chancing a peak around the corner. Constance Sunderland stood with her back to Pamela, speaking to a slightly shorter, gray looking man.

“Ms. Sunderland.”

Constance turned around, her attention leveling on the aging man before her. His cracked skin is grey, and seemingly paper thin. A tattoo dribbles down one side of his face, parallel lines which wavered across his forehead, down over his left eye and across his left cheek, plunging below his dirty and stained t-shirt. Beads of milky sweat cling to his temples, and bags hung underneath his eyes.

“The Doctor is trying to Commune with Yz again. It’s…well, it’s a fuckin’ mess.”

His eyes, furtive and bright, sickly yellow, flicker in his head. He raises his eyebrows in a conspiratorial manner, the bolts, nails and screws which are plunged, at varying lengths into his forehead, bob with each movement. He leans forwards to put his damp hands on the knees of his torn jeans.

“Jerome,” Constance holds the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, “Just deal with it, please.”

“If only I had the motivational skills and forward planning of the mighty leader herself, then I might of FUCKING WELL THOUGHT OF THAT,” he said, standing up straight again.

Constance stared at him, her own gaze meeting his and fizzled into nothing.

“Constance. Your Dad tried to intimidate me, and that didn’t work. You haven’t got a knats-dick of a chance.”

Jerome Cox coughed into his fist and leaned heavily on his cane, part twisted wood and part sculpted metal to resemble skull mounted with horns, with various Scuzzie and VGA Cable ports.

Constance’s smile becomes a tear of white against red-lips.

“Jerome. Please. I realize that you had some…arrangement…with my Father before I took over, and out of respect for the work you’ve done over the years I’ve continued to retain your position, but do not think I am anywhere near as beholden to your “irreplaceable” nature as my Father was.”

Jerome leveled a dirty finger, a sheared and broken fingernail dripping with motor oil, at Constance.

“Constance, you may think you have known what I am doing here, but you don’t. Believe it or not, and you must do considering the avenues you’re walking down, I am a Magician. I am keeping your little experiment plodding along whether you like it or not, and frankly, holding down the Doctor and stopping her from reaching the Gardner, or the Weatherman or even the Fucking Spirit of the Earth is driving me mental.”

Constance brushes something off her skirt, and approaches Jerome. Her smile melts into a sneer and she stares down at the small, bent man, dripping oil, grease and other unidentifiable fluids onto the floor.

“Do whatever it is that is necessary. You do it in whatever form you think is appropriate and using whatever skills you have, you sad, broken little thing. We have the Green seedling here, Jerome. The Red will be here shortly, then you can play your little game of snake-oil.”

“Magic,” he said quietly, looking down at the crimson stains ingrained in his fingers, “I do magic.”

Constance waved her hand at him.

“You do whatever it is that you do, Jerome, but you do it quietly, and you do it softly. I am not a hammer beating at the world, and neither should you be. What we do is…delicate. Screaming and swearing and behaving in this manner, it doesn’t befit us. It doesn’t befit what we do here, and it doesn’t HELP. So next time…DO something useful and helpful and bring me a solution, not a problem.”

She patted his shoulder twice and pulled a tissue from her suit jacket to wipe her hands on.

“Chop chop,” she said to him.

Pamela froze in place, her hands pressed against the wall. Constance’s heels clicked against the polished, concrete floor. She watched, through the long, straggly tendrils of her curling hair, the small man hobble in the opposite direction, leaving Pamela at a crossroads. Who did she follow? The broken man, who dribbled Petroleum Jelly on the floor, or the poised, and potentially dangerous Constance?

Pamela sighed heavily and closed her eyes. She pulled her hair into a tight pony-tail.

“Today will be a better day. I am OK today.”

Pushing off the wall, her bare feet slapping quietly against the ground, she walked, carefully, around the dribbled oil products, and followed Constance’s path. The corridors narrowed around her, the ceilings lowering. Pamela felt along the walls, as the path began to decrease in width. She felt a thrum in the air, a pulse of power that coursed through her in a rhythmic contraction. She paused and felt light headed – each wave brought a thumping in her ears, and a disconnection from her body.

She leaned against the wall and forged forwards. Constance’s words rolled around in Pamela’s head. She mentioned Seedling over and over. She knew. She understood what Pamela had first written about nearly five years previous, she had taken the time to understand Morphogenetics.

Pamela felt flushed with heat. Her anxiety was slowly unfurling from her limbs, the waves of pressure and energy thawing her out. She felt the knots slowly bloom into flowers inside her muscles, burning vines and leaves dropping away from her stomach and her mind. She felt like herself for the first time in a long, long time. Unencumbered by voices. By denial.

“You don’t HAVE the Green Seedling,” Pamela whispered to herself.

Pushing through the last wave of pressure, Pamela stumbled at its sudden dissipation. The corridor opened out again, and a huge laboratory laid itself bare before her. At the far end, nearly two hundred metres away at the other side of the Air-Craft hanger sized lab was Constance, talking to Richard Morse. He was disheveled as he always was, gesturing violently towards a container, which appeared to be roiling with a brown, viscous fluid, and lumps of indeterminate origin. Pamela squinted but couldn’t make it out. His voice was raised but Pamela couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Banks and banks of plastic sheets hung in cubicles along the wall, containing huge hydroponic systems. Pamela darted into one of the cubicles and nearly called out in surprise. Within the hanging sheets of plastic, collecting condensation, stood a humanoid figure made from Ivy, Bamboo and Flowers. It stared without eyes into Pamela, the flowers that made up its face drooping and browning at the edges. A being without consciousness but with an undeniable connection to something. Something that resonated to Pamela, within her, but she could not express.

She reached out and touched the chest structure, modeled around a rib cage of flexing bamboo, as though it were breathing. The framework was visible through the sparse leaves of the Ivy, and the dying flowers.

“Are you…?”

The humanoid said nothing, without a mouth, without a consciousness it had nothing to impart. Nothing except a sense of connection for Pamela. The Ivy shuddered and moved slightly, the leaves all turning at once to face her, the tendrils pulling themselves from their position, reaching towards the light above, to bend down and reach towards her. She allowed it to touch her fingers, to gently, slowly, begin to suck down and climb against her skin. She smiled.

“…not just use traditional base units, Constance.”

Pamela froze. She could hear the pair moving towards her. The sharp click of Constance’s boots, against the sloppy half shuffle-scuff of Richard.

“Richard, we have spent more than enough time on your diversions. I need something palpable in the next week or I will transfer you to something else – Perhaps from tester to testee?”

Pamela heard Richard gulp audibly while she crouched underneath a small potting table. It barely covered here, full of holes and slats. She felt herself cower.

“Constance, I am on the cusp of something here. Imagine how much money you could make with this? An enzyme that dissolves non-recyclable waste? You could win major environmental points with this, as well as charging every Government on Earth with this. The patents alone would make you Millions. Billions.”

The clicking stopped and Pamela watched Constance through the plastic sheeting.

“Imagine doesn’t make it happen, Richard. While I appreciate your tenacity and drive to make something from nothing, my little Garbage Man, this isn’t something I can use right now. Your remit was to try and understand the Morphogenetic Field, these by products for the destruction of plastic might make us a lot of money.”

Constance paused and stepped closer to Richard, his arms dropped to his side and he froze. Pamela watched the two silhouettes interact.

“You already have samples, Richard. I need to know, are we on the cusp of understanding this, or do I need to bring Pamela in to replace you?”

Richard stared, hard, at Constance.

“No,” he whispered, “Pamela can stay where she is. I respect her work but…” he coughed into his fist and looked away from Constance, “I am the Principle Scientist on this. I can make it work.”

Constance nodded once.

“A Week. Then I want a report and palpable results of you contacting or harnessing it. No more delays or detours, Richard.”

Constance turned on her heels and stormed off. Pamela watched Richard swear at the retreating woman behind her back, turn and stare at the ceiling, and then march back towards the other end of the lab. Pamela decided to follow.

She crawled at first, pulling herself through the plastic sheeting and into the lab proper. She could see now, there were three other lab technicians working with Richard, who had shrugged off his lab coat and was digging his way through a huge industrial skip. He pulled out a handful of plastic bags and set them into a smaller container. The bags quickly disappeared.

“He’s done it,” she whispered to herself, impressed. Crawling forwards, she pulled herself into another plastic sheeted area and sucked in an audible gasp of air.

Before her were two large, plastic rooms. Perspex walls held a woman, who looked malnourished and confused. She prowled the edges and froze as soon as Pamela came into view. Panicking, Pamela threw her index finger up to her lips. The two women stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. Pamela, though she could see tendrils of Crimson folding off the other woman like steam on a cold day. Blinking a few times the tendrils went away, and Pamela wondered if she really was losing her mind.

The woman barked. A single rough sound calling from a raw throat used to screaming and clawing. A sound that was utterly inhuman. Pamela scrambled, knocking over a tray of instruments balanced next to the woman’s plastic cube. Scalpels and syringes hit the floor.

She threw herself against the second Perspex cage, which held the desiccated remains of another humanoid plant. Though this one looked far more humanoid than plant. Pamela clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent her from screaming.

The technicians and Richard burst through the plastic sheeting, to find Pamela transfixed by the form in the second box.

“That could be me,” she said, staring down at the moss quietly sliding off bones, “That could be me. That could be me.”

She turned to look at Richard who offered her a pained look, before glancing down at the ground. Pamela followed his eyeline, and when she looked up, a second later, a technician brought a baton down on the back of her head.

***

“I worked with Isley, once,” Caitlyn said quietly. The pair descended into the narrow, dark grey hallways. Maxine’s eyes, wide and reflective flicked across to stare at Caitlyn, before almost immediately moving to scan the dark walls.

“What is she like?” Maxine asked, voice hushed and full of reverence.

“A cold bitch,” Caitlyn said, her feet slopping inside her shoes. “Wait.”

Caitlyn knelt down and untied her shoelaces, removing her trainers and tossing them to the side of the hallway. Maxine arched an eyebrow.

“She was…nasty?”

“Yes,” Caitlyn said, standing up and removing her sweater as well, leaving her stood in a pair of sopping wet jeans and a halter neck T-Shirt, which clung to her drenched skin “Come on.”

The pair walked down the corridor, the light source from behind them gradually fading until they walked in silence and twilight. Before them, a blank wall, the width of the corridor with nothing but the word “Door” written in Sharpie on the wall.

Maxine stared at it, touching the wall and pressing the word. Her fingertips skimmed over the surface, shifting through various animal skins. Amphibian Fingers. Shark Skin. Feline Pads. Primate Hands. Insectoid, Chitinous Digits.

“I don’t understand,” Maxine said. Caitlyn pushed past her and stared at the wall.

“Door.”

The wall flickered into life, transforming from almost black Gray to bright, shimmering orange, its surface undulating like the surface of a gentle lake.

“Sometimes, Maxine,” Caitlyn said, “Sometimes things can be simple. This world is wrong and broken and dragging me under but sometimes if it says it’s a Door, it’s a Door.”

Maxine nodded once and stared at the surface.

“This is from the Clear?”

Caitlyn shrugged and pulled a finger across the surface of the Door. It behaved like water, leaving rings that crossed and over-lapped each other as her fore-finger skipped along the surface.

“What do we do?” Maxine asked. Caitlyn shrugged.

“We can walk through it, or we can stand here and gabber all evening.”

Maxine paused at its surface and pushed her hand through, experimentally. She retracted it and stared at her skin.

“There is a thing called a Seedling,” Maxine said quietly, staring at her hand.

“A what?” Caitlyn asked.

“A Seedling. It’s what you were before. You were a Blue Seedling. Your powers hadn’t manifested yet, and you were waiting to grow into what you are now. A Seedling, growing into a Sapling and a Mighty Tree.”

Caitlyn narrowed one eye and stared down at the puddle forming at her feet.

“Does that not mix metaphors, slightly?” She asked, “Seedling, Sapling…they’re all for Plants. Isn’t that the…the…?”

“Green,” Maxine finished.

“Green. Yeah. Shouldn’t I be a droplet or something?”

Maxine smiled and turned to face Caitlyn.

“I only know it from the context of the Seedlings. I guess we’re all something. You’re a droplet, I’m a…”

“Psychotic idiot,” Caitlyn finished, with a small smile.

“Sure,” Maxine said, “Shall we go through the door?”

Caitlyn nodded. They both stood, side by side, not wanting to take the plunge individually. Maxine reached out for Caitlyn’s hand, which was cold to the touch, and dripping with liquid, which froze immediately as it touched the floor.

Maxine’s breaths were short, ragged and condensing as the seconds passed.

“Is this normal?” Caitlyn asked, “I just feel…weird.”

Maxine nodded.

“Nerves do strange things to our powers. I had a meltdown once and began to glow like those Bioluminescent things in the Ocean.”

The pair stepped forwards, their faces inches from the Door.

“Go?” Maxine said.

“Go.” Caitlyn replied.

They stepped together. The Door felt of nothing, but a gust of air as they went from a musty corridor to an airconditioned room.

Maxine opened her eyes, only to see a huge, hulking gelatinous humanoid before her. It gurgled something and swung a backhand towards the pair. Maxine let go of Caitlyn and ducked underneath, but her companion wasn’t so lucky.

Flying backwards, Caitlyn was unconscious before she hit the ground. The huge creature stared down at its now frozen fist in confusion.

“Glob?” a voice said from behind. It turned slightly, to reveal a man dressed entirely in black, save for a yellow mask which covered some of his face. It had no nose, and only a slight opening for the eyes and the mouth, “Are you OK?”

Glob gurgled, as Maxine attempted to run past the pair. Ducking between the legs of the Gelatin humanoid, and skirting around the edges of the other man, she bolted for the door.

Before she could get it open, she was frozen in place by two, huge two-fingered hands, pinning her to the ground. The speech of the creature that held her, she couldn’t place, but it sounded like numbers and formula.

She looked up as the Glob and the masked man approached.

“Good Job, Goriaiko. As for you, Redling? *Sleep*”

Maxine felt the persuasion pull at her consciousness, and seconds later, black seeped into her field of vision, and filled her consciousness.