Chapter 9

Sera Westbrook's POV

The shop was at the end of the street. The sign had long since fallen off, leaving only the rivet holes in the doorframe.

Jax lowered his binoculars and pointed ahead. "Looks intact—door's shut, no pry marks."

Kyle didn't answer right away. He took off his helmet and looked up at the mutated kapok trees around them.

That stand had spread all the way in from the west side of town. The trunks were already taller than a two-story building, each one swollen out of proportion, and every branch was hung with capsules like bubbles about to burst. Gray-white fluff drifted slowly between the crowns, blocking the light and turning the whole street into a murky white fog. Visibility inside it was less than ten paces.

"Deal with the kapok first." Kyle put his helmet back on and lowered his voice. "We can't go into town with that thing sitting behind us."

He closed his eyes and ran a neural resonance scan.

"The root systems are connected," he said, opening his eyes, his tone flat. "The capsules open and close in sync. The whole stand is one organism. We can't clear it by brute force. It needs surgery."

Cole set his hover bike down on solid ground at the roadside and looked at the soil under his feet. "Deep roots."

"Three meters, above bedrock."

Kyle looked at me.

I was already crouched, both hands flat on the ground, palms over the cracks in the broken asphalt. There was water under the road—seepage, contaminated by spores, but water was still water and still usable. I reached down along the cracks, found the water table, and looked up.

"I can do it."

Jax took two steps back. "I'm standing further away."

Vera swatted him. "Stand still. Don't move around."

I let the water creep up through the seams in the root system. Not forced—following the path of least resistance, along the gaps between soil grains, along the outer walls of the root hairs, pushing the film of water into the fibers a little at a time. The kapok roots went deep, and they were dense, with almost no dead space. Once the water went in, the capsules started taking it up; the swollen bodies began to sink under their own added weight, the tight rhythm of opening and closing fell out of step, the cracks in their surfaces drew inward, and the fluff dropped to the ground instead of floating.

The spores settled under their own weight, and the gray-white cloud dropped a layer at a time. Visibility along the street came back slowly.

Jax raised his binoculars and swept them around. "Most of it's down—there's still a big mass on the west side. The wind's coming from there, and it's still feeding spores in."

The words were barely out before the wind changed.

No warning—it just changed. A mass of gray-white spores got picked up by the airflow and came in fast from the west, the whole sheet of it bearing down, aimed straight at where Jax was standing. He had no time to react.

I took one step, put myself in front of him, and took the cloud head-on.

The concentration was high. I could feel the spores going into my airway—not a sting, just a faint change in pressure, like something accumulating in my windpipe. The breathing monitor lit up: GCI 95.6%. Two points higher than before.

Affected by the spores, Jax reacted strongly. He coughed hard and his knees nearly buckled. Vera caught him. "You're fine, you're fine. Breathe—slow."

Kyle didn't move, but I felt the line go taut all at once.

Not gradually. All at once.

He must have felt something.

Jax recovered, steadied himself on Vera's hand, his voice a little raw. "You took that for me."

"Mm."

"…Thanks."

I didn't answer. My attention was already back on the ground.

The rest of the cloud had already been pressed to less than a meter off the ground. Jax took a long moment to recover, patted his chest, returned to normal, and began to use his ability. Jax pulled a deep breath, put both hands to the earth, and brought up earth-devouring. A wide stretch of ground sank, and the settled spores and the waterlogged kapok remains were drawn down with it—fibers, fluff, fragments of root, all of it swallowed into the soil—the surface sealing back over until nothing was left but a flat stretch of gray-brown.

Cole followed, palm against the exposed cut of a root, and ran geological shaping down along the root line. What root hairs were still left above the rock layer hardened one section at a time, going from pliable to brittle, no longer able to send anything up again. He pulled his hand back, dusted his palm, and said nothing.

Just like that, the whole stand of mutated kapok was cleared.

Loose spores still hung in the air, but the concentration had dropped below the danger line. Jax read his numbers off to Kyle. Kyle glanced at them and nodded. "We can go in."

I stood up, took two steps forward, and got ready to mount the hover bike. I didn't notice the broken branch beside me—a length of kapok wood was sticking up at an angle, and it dragged across my left forearm.

My arm seemed to be cut again, and I still felt nothing.

I looked up at Kyle and happened to meet his gaze. Kyle said, "You're hurt again."

I was silent for a few seconds, then said, "I'll be more careful from now on."

Kyle looked at me quietly, took my wrist, and examined my wound. "I'll bandage it for you when we get back."

I said, "Okay."

My healing rate was fast anyway.

"Take care of yourself. Don't keep getting hurt." Kyle paused for a few seconds. "I'll feel it."

That was a fishing tackle shop.

The sign was covered in spores, the letters blurred, but the display window was intact, and everything inside was plainly visible: carbon fiber rods lined up on the rack from thin to thick, sealed bait boxes on the display table in front, waterproof tarps stacked neatly along the left wall, the tie straps still intact. The sinkers and line reels on the shelves hadn't been touched. There were no bodies in the shop and no signs of anything being rifled through.

Jax put his nose against the glass, eyes wide. "How… how has none of this been touched?"

"Low contamination," Dorian's voice came over the channel. "Tackle isn't food and it isn't medicine, so nobody grabs it first. But carbon fiber rods don't corrode, sinkers add weight, tarps seal well, and bait boxes seal even better. For holding crystals and ampoules, they're steadier than the metal cases we've got, the ones about to fall apart."

Basically, everything in the tackle shop was coming with us.

After some hauling, there was far more tackle than expected. Six cases of sinkers alone, carbon fiber rods that took two people to lift, and a whole stack of tarps. The hover bikes were at their load limit, and Cole called the Titan in to dock, but the Titan needed time to get around the kapok remains, and it hadn't arrived yet.

Kyle stood watch at the door with his back to the shop, scanning both sides of the street. The spore concentration on the street kept falling. The Titan's shape came around the corner, engine almost silent.

Kyle turned to look at me. "How are your numbers?"

I raised my wrist and saw a reading that was more or less normal. "95.2%."

Kyle said, "Okay. Remember to take your medicine on time."

I nodded. "Got it."