Chapter 8:
City of Flowers
When Iris runs through the institute, she does not think, does not stop to consider her choices. All she knows is that Cirsium steel can destroy her bones just as easily as the girl from the tunnel had destroyed the counter, and that the woman is hot on her heels. No—Iris spares a glance back. She’s not even running after her.
The door opens and the woman walks in, step after step, clack clack clack. Iris slams through another door, shoves between a couple standing in the middle of the hallway. She registers their shouts of protest, but not the specifics of what they are saying.
My life is in danger My life is in danger My life is in danger—
She fumbles with the knob on the next door before she flings it wide open, only to find another suited man in her way. His body is wide enough to block the entire doorway, and his hand hovers over his hip, where a holstered firearm rests.
“Target surrounded,” says the man.
Iris stumbles backwards; her feet refuse to co-ordinate, her heart is beating a mile a minute. Finally, she manages to shout a shaky “Who are you? What do you want?”
“No one and nothing, girlie. We’re none of your business.” The woman steps forward again, and it takes all of Iris’ willpower to stand her ground.
“It—it became my business when you cornered me at a zoo,” she stammers. “Like right now.”
“You’ve got quite a bit of lip for a nobody.” The woman’s painted lips stretch into a smile, an open wound against a powdered white face.
The man with the firearm grunts. “Are you sure this is the right girl?”
Iris continues to ramble, “What is it that you want? Is this a robbery? Am I being robbed? My mum’s single, I’m a second year uni student, I don’t have any siblings so they won’t have any income I guess, but we’ve still got money. Coins? Credits? I can do both—”
The man’s hand begins to float away from the firearm at his hip. His features soften. “Ma’am, this isn’t—this can’t be the right girl.”
“Point,” says the woman, baring her teeth, “the gun at her, Leo.”
A moment of hesitation. Then Iris feels a cold, steel barrel against her forehead and her tongue freezes in her mouth once again.
“We’re not mad at you, Iris,” the woman continues, her heels clicking into the tiles. “This’ll all be easier if you come quietly. Preferably, we’d rather not have to point any guns at anyone.”
She remembers the Blumen’s words. They want you, not dead, but alive and talking.
Bravery swells in Iris’ gut. “You’re insane. You’re just going to walk me out of here, through the foyer? Do you know how insane that’ll look? You think the tabloids won’t cover it?”
A long silence. Then, from the woman: “I don’t think, Iris. I know.”
“They’ll come looking for me. They’ll realise I’m missing. My tutorial classes, my professors, my mum. I’ve got an assignment due tomorrow. My professor’s going to be really mad if I don’t hand that in on time. Mad enough to call me. Maybe even my mother if I don’t pick up.”
The gun in her forehead seems to tremble ever so slightly, enough for Iris to notice but not for the woman behind her to realise.
“You don’t seem to understand, Iris. We control the outlets. The people come with the territory.”
Without thinking, Iris ducks her head and pushes past the man into the first exhibit. The couple watches her with wide eyes, their hands intertwined. She sees a child and her father through the foyer window; the child has a lollipop stick in her mouth, and she is playing with it between her teeth. She looks further, and she sees the flash of another firearm in another woman’s hands.
“Like I said, Gui-Hua. We’ve got you surrounded,” the woman calls from the previous room. “Come quietly. Don’t resist.”
What’s going to happen to all of these people? Iris’ thinks. They saw everything. What are they going to do to them?
The ground is shuddering. Iris feels as if she might lose her balance. The world looks as if it might fall upon her, concrete slab by concrete slab.
She knows the answer to her question; these people are going to die for her.
These people are going to die for her and there is nothing Iris can do about it. Her eyes grow misty, and her chest clenches tight.
And then she realises that the ground really is shaking.
The concrete splinters and cracks, and those cracks stretch and stretch, connecting, forming jagged webs where neat tiles used to be. A scent that is both sweet and bitter erupts from the newly exposed earth, and Iris tumbles backwards. Her palms slap against the jagged concrete, and she realises what the smell is; plant life.
Bleeding plant life.
Someone behind her screams—the man, Leo. Then he falls silent, and the sound of rock crumbling upon rock fills the air, the world.
"Shit. Shit. Get up!"
A pair of hands grips Iris by the shoulders. She registers the flutter of a white overcoat before she is hoisted up and guided towards a seemingly arbitrary direction. The floor shudders, and the woman tightens her grip on Iris.
"Let go," Iris says, but her voice is oddly weak, and it is drowned out by the sound of destruction.
"You'll listen to me if you want to get out of here alive, do you understand?"
"Let me go." She tries to pull away. Her head whirls, and what is left of the institution blurs into sky and rock.
The woman only urges her forward. "Yeah, yeah. We're both dead if you don't move."
They continue through the institution, one step at a time, left foot, right foot—the woman grunts with exertion as she pushes against a slab of concrete that is in their way. It does not budge; she lets go of Iris and slams both her hands into it.
"Let me help," says Iris.
Another grunt, and then, a scoff. "With that fucked up arm of yours?"
Iris touches her bicep gingerly. Her fingertips pull away crimson. The other arm refuses to respond.
She observes her dead arm for a bit, dumbfounded.
Something splatters onto her face. Something warm and wet. When she looks back up towards the woman, she sees a single bloodied tendril, blossoming from her chest like a recently sprung sapling. The limb draws back, and the woman falls to the ground, her eyes wide yet lifeless.
But the world continues to crumble. Then there is a pain at the back of her head that is sharp enough to make Iris taste blood, and then she is falling, falling.
—
She does not fall for long.
With a gasp, her eyes snap open. The world is still once more, and she is so relieved that she lies there, amongst the debris, gazing up at the open sky. When she goes to move, however, she finds that her body will not budge. She looks over, and sees concrete where her arm should connect to her shoulder.
Her arm isn’t gone, not entirely. But it might as well be.
The pain is dull, but it is still there. It's as if she is seeing herself through a movie screen, where she can feel her character's pain so vividly that her imagination has filled in the blanks, except that it is in fact very, very real. Her vision swims with blood and rock and dirt; there is no pause between one minute and the next. She might be dying.
But she can’t die. They want her alive.
But they’re also dead.
So who else wants her alive?
She looks around and sees lumps—lumps of beaten bodies, of clothes reddened by blood, of hair peeking out from under a slab.
“Hello?” she tries, her voice hardly a croak, “is—is anyone there?”
She does not expect an answer. Not with the air as still as it is now. Not with the woman’s still-warm blood seeping across the debris and into Iris’ blouse.
The head of a rose rises over the concrete.
A breath—dying and dry—leaves Iris’ lips.
Her hand is nowhere near her phone, but she knows what it means to say. There’s only one way out of this, Iris.
It slithers around the destruction, hovers above her dead arm’s shoulder where skin still meets flesh and bone still meets muscle. Not for long. It is either her life or the arm.
She swallows. Her eyes meet the razor sharp edges of the Blumen’s leaves, and her jaw clenches down.
Will you take it?
“Please.”
And then the leaves slam down, hard and heavy as a guillotine.
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