Chapter 3

Down, down, down

Nat rushes through the corridors, the harsh echo of their feet and ragged air through their lungs drowning out any other sound. There are very few corners left to flee to. There's no out, no escape. The gate is shut, the storm is raging overhead. The walls are closing in and there is no place left to go.

Ron is right, of course, and they hate him for it. They hate him for throwing it into their face like this, for knowing exactly what to say to make it hurt, because it's true. He’s right that they’re nothing now, that they have nothing. They can fancy themself whatever they want, be that hobby botanist, critic, polyglot—in the end, he knows them better than anybody else. And he sees the long chain of their failures, its end in their hands, and he can see that there is nothing good left that they can do.

Nat used to have a future, five, ten, fifteen failures ago, when their foster parents pawned them off to Bishop, the one good thing that they'd ever done. When he saw something in them that no one else had seen before, put them on the path to become something more, something great.

And then the same old fear gripped them and they discarded it all before they could be discarded instead, and they ended up as leftovers at the bottom of society's hazardous waste bin anyways. A conman. A thief. Every rush of getting one over on somebody, every win, every making it big, is always so goddamn temporary. None of it is going to last, and if anybody ever knows their name, it'll be because they've failed at this too.

Nat fumbles with the traveler hook, slippery against their sweaty hands, and throws the door open again, that same door at the end of the corridor.

The smell of rot knocks all air out of their lungs.

Blinded by tears of disgust, they fight their way into the room, behind the door, and to the last beautiful thing in this entire building. They cannot, no, no longer want to resist the draw. Spores or not, it pulls them back in.

The flower stands, no longer purple, nothing now but a brown husk on the dried up lake of blood. It’s too late. Nat falls to their knees.

They don't fold their hands. They don't pray. There isn't a single shred of faith left in them that God won't simply look down on them and laugh.

It's one in the morning, then. Two in the morning. Three. The feet that fall against the linoleum are no longer theirs. There is no voice left in their throat. Nat moves in a haze; where to, they don't know. Just not back to their room. That's all they know. Just not back to their room.

Down, then. They are going down.

There's no fear to it now as Nat takes the elevator, towards the stairwell, down to the -7th floor, and then through that door that shouldn't be there, the door that might be the only thing in this building that can still swallow them up. It feels like climbing into the bowels of an angler fish. They hope that it eats them up and leaves no trace.

The door slams shut behind them. For a long moment, they just stand there, unseeing.

Then they descend.

It is an endless stairwell. Water drips, ever so quietly, in the dark. There is nothing, nothing, and it is unclear what it even is that they want, except, perhaps, to be eaten.

And then it hits them, and there is nothing gentle about it. Blue floods through their lungs like shrapnel rends flesh, blue sears the tip of their tongue. It's that same smell again, the one they'd forgotten in the span of just a few hours, the one covered up so cruelly by memory again and again until the wound is torn open once again and Nat remembers, terribly and all at once. And although they stumble into the perfect darkness as their foot leaves the last step of the stairs, although there is nothing but the sound of labored breathing in the dark, there is not a single doubt in Nat's mind as they walk out into the middle of the room, setting their feet as though they can see it clear as day, only stopping as they stumble over something soft, something that cracks as their foot catches and has them freeze.

It is only then that Nat realizes there is not one set of ragged breathing in the room, but two.

"Who's there?" they bark, voice cracking the silence in two. Their fingers wrap around the hilt of their knife as fast as their heartbeat, but it's a thick, pitch, tarry blackness, and there isn't a way in hell for them to see the hands coming that wrap around their neck.

Nat gasps, struggling, but as they take a deep breath to fight off their assailant, that same lightless sightless blue burns them again, down to their core, searing the fight straight out of them. They’re lost. Their limbs go slack.

But then, instead of tightening, the cold, ice cold hands hesitate.

"What?" a second voice breaks through the dark, as clear and as brittle as glass.

"What?" Nat's own voice hitches as the hands leave, and they feel a shift, before there's a click to their right, and a yellow light paints the room bright. Two big blue eyes stare into Nat's, sunken, bloodshot, in a face that cannot be much older than their own, but is much, much less alive.

She is shorter than Nat, a pallid face surrounded by lifeless, chestnut brown curls. Her eyes are glassy, the corners of her mouth cracked, and the skin of her cheeks is drawn through with reddish craters, slow healing, but perfectly untouched by rot. She looks the perfect argument in favor of blood plants, a flawless demonstration of the principle of the walking dead, evidence A that, all those decades ago, when flores sanguinis were nothing but an idée fixe to save a dying planet, somebody knew exactly what they were doing.

And then they crash into each other like waves, stumbling to reach the other's hands, arms, neck, forehead. It's feral, unromantic, wanting each other not like a person but like another part of themselves. The girl's hands are in Nat's long hair, cupping their head, and Nat's are on her maltreated face, pulling her closer to look, to see, to understand what they are actually holding.

"You smell—" she starts.

Nat just nods. "You too. Like blossoms. What—how?"

The girl pulls out of their arms and tears her shirt up, to the sight of a rib cage wide open, and bright blue fine-petaled flowers with their roots wrapped around exposed, pulsating lungs. Nat almost forgets to breathe themself. It's—it's nothing else but perfectly, all-encompassingly beautiful.

Nat fumbles as they tear their own turtleneck off, catching their pierced lip, and the girl actually has to help them to get them free, their shirt in her hands as Nat tears away bandages, as she stares.

Their bright red spider lilies are pressed flat against their skin again, squashed by the indignity of hiding, but they're alive, they are beautiful and they're alive.

"I can smell you," the girl laughs. "You're just like me! And you're still alive! And you talk!"

"You're doing me dirty," Nat smiles. "by calling what I do just simple talking."

The zombie—person—girl laughs, high and clear and dusty. "You talk!"

They smile back and come closer again, wind their fingers into her short brown hair. "What are you doing here? How long—"

"Oh," the girl laughs. "About a week or two now." A week? That’s about the time span—The horror of reason tugs at Nat's nerves. They look away from her, back to where they came from—and in the light of the flickering lamp, they see that what it was that they stumbled over. A human corpse lies flat on the ground, blood oozing from his exposed, half eaten torso, a grey guard uniform pushed up to make way.

It wasn’t just one zombie falling in, Nat realizes, a numbing, clarifying horror pulling them back into their own head. It was two.

Nat recoils from the zombie like they put their hand on a hot plate—but the girl pulls them deep back into her smell, into her shoulder, into the flowers, and it's forgotten as quickly as they saw it.

"No, come back," she pouts, and Nat laughs through a thick delirium, a sound foreign to their own ears.

"Sorry, sorry," they smile.

"How wonderful," she says. "That you came down here. That you came for me. Did you sense me? Did you smell me?"

"I think so?" Nat wonders as they worry their fingers through a ragged piece of her shirt. "I didn’t come down the first time. But something pulled me down here. I think it was you?"

"We bonded," she laughs. "Are we a horde now?"

"I think so," Nat laughs. "Go figure, I didn’t think it was that easy. I think that we—"

"Nat?"

It comes from behind them, sharp like a bark. They whirl around, half-snarling—it's Ron. Nat's features soften when they see the way he's clutching his knife, white-knuckled and scared. He still looks 16 sometimes, even four years past that point, overgrown and lanky like a puppy with too-big paws and his tail tucked between his legs. They've completely forgotten what they were even fighting about with him just a few hours ago. …They were fighting, weren't they?

"Heyyyy," they slur at him, their head still on the girl's shoulder, her flowers soft against their chest.

"Nat," Ron says again, and there's a panic to it they haven't heard from him in years. "What are you—please come back? Hey, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry for the shit I said."

"Aw," Nat coos. "Don't worry. Already forgotten."

"Okay?" Ron tries, high and strained and unsure. "Cool, um—does that mean you're coming back upstairs with me?"

"What, back up there? Nooo," Nat says, and to their utter surprise, the zombie girl growls, loud and deep and guttural, rattling like there's something in her lungs.

Ron looks like he's seen a ghost, but instead of backing away and running, he fumbles with the top of his shirt and pulls it over his face as he advances. It's only then that Nat sees the tiny seeds around him, dancing with the dust against the light. It’s a sight that should trigger a certain feeling inside them, but all they come up with is wonder.

"Hey," he says. "Hey, okay. It's cool, that's fine. Message received. Uh, but I still need my friend back. Okay?"

The zombie girl snarls, and her teeth look chipped and painful. "Your friend?"

Ron takes a deep, shaking breath through the fabric of his shirt. "Yeah. Yeah. Hey, okay. Nonviolent solution here, right? We are all so fucking chill right now. So chill. Nat?"

"Oh, whatever," they wave him off. "Go back to bed, I'm busy."

"Okay," Ron says. "Yeah, you're absolutely not thinking straight right now. Okay. Okay."

He takes another unsteady step forward, shaking with nerves. The girl growls again and Nat bats a hand against her chest, scolding, but in the next moment, they're landing hard, thrown backwards onto the floor. It’s all they can do to brake their fall, hand scraping bloody against the concrete as the zombie strikes for Ron, and he hacks his knife straight into her shoulder with a wide swing. Blood splatters, a sickly red in the yellow lamp light, and he swings for a stab, but the girl dodges and gets her teeth into his bare upper arm. He screams.

It jolts Nat awake like they've been electrocuted. They're on their feet before they know it, their arms around her neck in a merciless choke hold from behind as they watch as Ron stumble. He’s holding his bleeding arm, bright red dripping over the warm brown of his skin. There is something so fucking wrong with their brain that they want to lick it up, see how it—but the girl in their arms thrashes against their choke hold and, distracted, Nat loses their grip.

In an instant, she's on Ron again, looking for all intents and purposes like she's reaching for his head to break his neck. Nat pulls their army knife, white-knuckled. They yank her back by her curling hair, back and down and back until she's forced to look at them upside down with her shocked milky eyes, her pupils pin pricks, and pull their knife clean through her throat.

Thick blood sprays out of her veins. Paints the air. And then she falls.

It's Ron who pulls them out of the room by their hand, Ron who forces them back up the stairs, Ron who links his fingers with their fingers and doesn’t let go. Nat's feet don’t cooperate. Their lungs itch, their veins flow with thick sludge. And their head—and her head—they have killed her, simple as that. The first thing they have ever met that was like them, and they killed it. Killed her.

They didn’t even ask her name.

Ron cusses the entire way back, first in English and then more and more in Portuguese, old curses Nat used to hear almost daily years ago, back when they weren’t only two people, that ring like faint echoes of a nightmare now. He's crying, they realize, but Nat can't find the words to comfort him. The only exchange of meaning between them are his blunt nails, dug into the flesh of their hand like a tender bear trap.

They stumble as he pulls them through the door, out into the hallway and towards the elevator, a yellow key card in his shaking, bloody hand. They don't realize he's talking to them until the doors open. "Sick bay," he whispers. "Sick bay, right the fuck now. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go."

That tears them out of their stupor like a freight train to the face. "No!" Nat cries out, and yanks their hand away from him so hard that he takes some of their skin off. "Are you out of your mind?!"

"I’m not, but you are!" He tries to catch them again, wild eyed, but Nat jumps back.

"I can't go there!" Nat pleads. "They'll give me a broadband. They'll kill me. Ron, they'll do a full physical and see my—and they're going to kill me."

"We're full of spores," Ron pleads. "God fucking help me, Nat we're going to die one way or another."

"I can't," they panic, "I—no, Ron please, I can’t, I can't.”

Ron shakes, his hands to his face, and fights to take rasping, shaking breaths. "Oh fuck. Fuck, oh fuck. The—okay, the shower water. The drinking and shower water. It's getting laced with the broadband right now. Just—keep it away from your shoulder. Shut your mouth, close your eyes. It'll be fine, it'll be cool. Just—rinse, we need to rinse."

Nat whimpers, but they don't feel that they have a choice. It's the shower or the med bay, and there’s no arguing beyond it.

They jump under the shower together, clothes and all, and red blood runs from his arm and blooms by their feet as the basin fills up with toxic water.

Ron makes them stay there for a full hour, lathering and rinsing and squeezing, taking off their clothes and squishing them into a ball by the side and lathering some more. Nat rinses the wound on their hand as well as they can, but it burns, and their flowers protest in their veins, screaming at them to leave, and, numb with panic and fear and grief, they quickly start keeping their scraped up hand out of the flow.

It has to be four in the morning by that point, maybe five. Exhaustion starts to dig its teeth into them, weighs down their limbs. Eventually, Nat can barely stay upright, and neither can Ron—Ron, who is taking short, shallow breaths now, and whose eyes won't quite focus on Nat anymore.

"You need—you need to go to the med bay," Nat slurs through the exhaustion. "Alone."

"It's nothing," he tries, but in the next moment, he has to support himself against the shower wall, heavy as his ribs meet the glass before he can get himself upright again.

"Nothing my ass," Nat says. "I'll stay here. You need to—to get fixed up."

"I'm not going to leave you," he protests, but Nat shoves him weakly by the shoulder that doesn't bleed.

"Then don't die," they retort.

"I'm not going to, I'm tough, it's fine."

"You're literally swaying," they snort, weak. "And who’s blood is all this? Fuck off and go. I didn't save your life to watch you slowly bleed out in some stupid shower."

"Fuck." Ron leans his arm heavily against the shower wall, hides his face in it. "I want my mom."

He doesn't come back. Nat waits for him in the shower for another half an hour, then eventually towels off and lays down in bed, cold and exhausted.

They want him back, want him in their arms. They think about asking him if he wants to fuck, like they sometimes do, when either of them is bored or horny or lonely, or because there’s no one else around. It’s a stupid thought. Nat doesn’t think that sex can fix flesh wounds.

They wake up to their alarm with a start, wide awake in an instant when the second set of breathing is missing from the room. Nat is out the door before they've so much as tied their hair up, a bandage haphazardly around their hand.

But their iron resolve falters the very moment they make it to the door of the sick bay. Their feet are rooted to the ground, their blood frozen in their veins, even as they scream at themself in their own head about what a damn coward they are. Behind the door, the nurse’s voice rings, muffled. To go back in there with her, with the sterile smell of rubbing alcohol, the cabinets full of medicine, the syringes and the diagrams and the knives—They can't. They simply, physically can't.

What they need is a clear head. They take off down the hallway, away from the sick bay and the canteen and Leeway's office, and run the plastic of the stolen key card through the reader at the stairway again to slip through.

It's just their goddamned luck that, in that very moment, Matcha calls their name, just as the door falls shut behind them. Matcha, who really shouldn’t see them here.

Nat presses their back against the handrail of the stairs. Behind them, only the abyss yawns, five entire stories deep. And, worst of all, as Matcha opens the door to come into the stairway herself, the look on her face is not one of surprise. No, in fact, it could almost be rage. On her face? How novel.

"Okay," she says slowly. "Gabriel came to the med bay yesterday, and Paulette asked me to help out. Yes, I know. Apparently I'm expected to do everything around here. Anyways. I know that your boyfriend is not doing well, so this is a bad time, but it's also the only time I can do this."

"How is he?" Nat can't help but ask, and more quietly: "And he's not my boyfriend."

"Still in isolation," Matcha says. Her eyes have never been this intensely trained on Nat before. She's always avoided looking at them directly, gaze always darting off to the side or to the ground. "Nat, you know that I know that you can't be in here, right?"

"Get the fuck on with it," Nat chokes out. "Say it."

"Well," Matcha folds her hands in front of her face. "The siphons we fixed together? Some of them are fine. But some of them are not doing very great! And so I started wondering about your qualifications, which I’m sure you can’t hold against me, and I checked the files."

"What?" Nat asks. "What files?"

"The admin files," Matcha says, visibly trying to keep her calm. "The ones that I have access to. You know. As an admin."

"Oh my God." An involuntary laugh tears itself out of Nat. "You're snooping around in there? Over something like this? Girlie, what the fuck are you even doing down here? I figured when I found your stupid USB thing that you were just fishing for the banking password!"

"Yes, okay," Matcha says, "but that's because that's what you would do. Isn't it? I didn't find your names in the files, Alexis. And the techs that this water facility called are only supposed to get here in a week!"

Nat falls silent.

"I know you two are frauds" Matcha says. "Frauds that apparently stole key cards, to break into the rest of the building with and do who knows what. I mean, where on Earth did you even get those from? And you had the—the nerve to blackmail me? I can't believe you!"

"You're going to rat us out, aren’t you," Nat says slowly, as the fear and exhaustion that have been sitting in their bones slowly seep out.

They watch as something changes on Matcha's face. "Wait," she says, much less certain. Nat takes a step towards her. Matcha takes one back.

"We might be fake filtration techs," Nat says, "but what is it, actually, that you are doing down here?"

Matcha flinches as her back hits the heavy door. The door which opens to the inside of the stairwell to keep people from trampling each other to death in the corridor, the door which, from where she’s trapped now, she cannot open without first running straight into Nat's arms.

"I'm not—" Her eyes dart back towards Nat. "I'm not telling you that. Alexis, don't come any closer. What are you doing?"

A smile breaks out on Nat's face. Oh, her fear is palpable. And just like that, they’re already feeling better. The control is back in their hands. What a rush. It makes them want to corner her, makes them want to squish her like a mouse. "Ohh," they drawl. "Wait, let me guess. You're an actual proper spy, aren’t you? Selling government secrets to the highest bidder? You don’t even have an accent, I really wouldn't have thought."

"What?" Matcha gasps. "No—why would you of all people care about that? Why would I need to have—No, I'm just—" Nat takes another abrupt step forward just to see her twinge. Instead, Matcha reacts by pouncing to the left and up the stairs. But Nat is faster. They're not done with her, too fucking long has she gotten on their nerves now for them to let her run off and tattle just like that. They grab her by the arm and yank her back down violently, her feet losing purchase on the stairs as she comes crashing down. Matcha shrieks as she hits the ground, and then Nat is already picking her off the ground by the front of her shirt and slamming her back against the wall. She weighs nothing to them.

"I'm just looking for water quality recordings," she babbles as she tries to struggle out of their grip. "I'm trying prove that what happened here was negligence—Alexis come on, Alexis?!"

"That's a nice story," they growl, pull her forward, then slam her back into the wall harder. The effort makes their muscles sing. She's taller than them on any other day, but now, she's practically folding, face inches from theirs, the eye that isn't curtained by her cascading black hair as wide as a dinner plate. "Even assuming that's true, what, you want me to be happy that I'm dealing with a second goody-goody, as if coping with the crap of one isn't enough?"

"Is the other one Gabriel?" Matcha squeaks, her voice high with panic. She clutches at Nat's hands on hers, tries and fails to get them off of her. "He's great. I'm sure he would hate it if he knew we're fighting? But we're not, right?"

Nat laughs bitterly into her face for it. "Oh Matcha, Matcha. Don't bring him into this."

"Please," Matcha struggles against them. "I promise I don't care, and I'm not going to rat you out, and—"

Nat laughs again, wild. "You can't con a con artist, Matcha. I know a liar when I see one."

For a moment they think she's going to break, going to cry. Catharsis is so close that they can taste it. This is all her fault, she’s the catalyst, she’s what started this whole chain of events, and they just need to make it right.

But to their shock, Matcha doubles over and bites down on their arm. Nat shrieks, and just like that, she’s out of their grip and throwing her body into theirs. But Nat is steady on their feet, too steady to be pushed over by some beanstalk.

They grab her again and throw her face first against the wall this time, grab wildly for her head. Their fingers in her hair, they bash her forehead right against the rubberized stone wall.

"You fucking black hole of a person," they growl, the imprint of her body’s impact burning against their nerves. "You absolute waste of resources."

Matcha sobs, a ragged, desperate sound that Nat has earned, that they deserve so much right now, and it's incredible. She's swaying, would keel over if it wasn’t for Nat’s hand in her hair, and they watch her reaching for her weapon at her hip. Never has it been this easy to disarm somebody. All Nat really has to do is pull her knife out of its sheathe and throw it to the floor. Furious, heady, Nat sweep kicks it towards the handrail and listens to it clatter into the abyss and down, down, down, until it lands with a tiny, distant bounce.

They can't help but laugh, cackling like a hyena with the adrenaline high, but it's cut off abruptly as Matcha elbows them in the gut. She has to be aiming for the stomach, but all she hits are Nat's ribs. Can't she do anything right? Still, it gets her out of their grip, but even as Nat’s back hits the wall and as pain blooms hard through their ribs they kick at her again, and Matcha crashes right into the banisters, folding like origami.

There is animal panic in her eyes when she looks up at Nat, tears streaming down her pathetic face, blood in a long trickle down her forehead. It makes Nat seethe with hatred, to think how much such a useless idiot has ruined their mood, makes them thrum with adrenaline desperate to break through their veins. She's going to fuck everything up even further than she already has. Rat them out to that Leeway guy.

And they can’t let her get away.

Nat is on her again like a bull, their hands in the front of her striped sweater, her face inches from hers, all ribs and lungs and muscles and pain, and pushes her over.

Nat only sees her hand, outstretched for them, her hair beating forward around her face, and those big, black eyes.

A crack, distant, far down. And then, nothing.

Nat stares down between the dimly lit spiral of the stairs, down what they've done.

And, instantly, they don’t feel angry anymore. They feel cold.

At the foot of the stairs, they drag her broken body the rest of the way to that strange door, push it down the steps into the darkness, and shut her in.

Ron stabilizes rapidly, within the course of just a day. Leeway and the nurse are in a tizzy about Matcha's disappearance, and Nat has to work hard to convince themself they’re safe. Why would they ever check the door at the foot of the stairs?

And as the storm subsides, hours before it was projected to, Nat and Ron simply slip through the cracks, through the tizzy, pack their shit, and leave.

They just have to get out of here. Finally get out. They hope the sky will open as it welcomes them. They hope they never have to step another foot into a building like this again. Nat heaves their bags into the back of their ATV, Ron drags himself into the passenger seat and all but collapses there.

"Hey," he says as they pass the gates, "I haven't been able to find Matcha either. Didn’t really say goodbye to her."

A cold prickle runs over Nat's neck. "Ah, well," they say. "Sorry, but I think that those two looking for her like this, this is our only chance to book it. I'm pretty sure that they're on to us after your infection and the ways we fucked up the maintenance on the filters, so—" They look at him, and he looks crushed. Nat softens. "I’m sorry. You have…" They can barely bring the words over their lips. "Matcha's number, right?"

"Yeah," he croaks, and the next moment, he's already closing his eyes again. "True. I have that. Yeah."