The Abandoned Farm, Part 1

Ray was running before the comms unit in his mask had played its last crackling word.

As soon as the message had begun, another one of the modifications that Ade had made to the mask had been activated. A small display lit up in front of his eyes, opaque enough to be clear but transparent enough that he could look through it if he needed. It was a map of Portas, zoomed in on Sector Four, where they currently were. As the clean-up request had promised, there was a red marker on the western edge of the sector.

Yves had started his sprint a step behind, but his long legs carried him quickly ahead of the smaller Ray. They didn’t need to speak—both understood the implications of the message, and neither were willing to let harm come to the white-haired woman.

The beacon marked a long, narrow street that ran alongside a factory farm like the one that Ray and Legs had worked at. This low in the city, however, it would likely be abandoned. As the toxins from the Wastes grew thicker in the air, as they had every year of Ray’s life, the ORA had been forced to shut down their operations where the air was truly unbreathable. Too many Harvesters had died, and the agency had decided that it was more cost effective to relocate than it would have been to invest in the necessary protective equipment or allow their labor source to keep coughing up their organs.

The abandoned factories were massive, hollow monuments to the danger of the wastes, but their size made them popular hideouts for waifs, strays, and vagrants, so they were patrolled regularly. For that reason, Ray steered well clear of them while looking for his shed.

The white-haired woman, however, likely hadn’t known to avoid the factories, however. Hell, Ray thought, she hadn’t even known about the ORA. He had been the one to tell her that seeds were illegal. The old farms would have seemed like inviting shelter, and if she had been growing more trees, they would have easily been found by patrolling agents.

“Be ready for a fight,” Yves said as they approached the marked alley. “Stay behind me and don’t try to be a hero. If the agent is still here, I’ll deal with them.”

Ray nodded assent, hoping Yves could see if out of the corner of his eye. Where the toxins were more heavily concentrated, the hazy air was thicker and darker as well. Further up, the bright neon of the streetlamps cut through the worst of it, but in the abandoned levels, visibility was low.

Yves entered the alley first and stopped so suddenly that Ray nearly crashed into his back. Ray was thankful that he had been able to twist aside—he wouldn’t have enjoyed hitting the rigid exoskeleton that he knew was beneath Yves’s coat.

Regaining his balance, Ray straightened up beside Yves and took in what had made the huge man come to a surprisingly agile stop.

There was an ORA agent in the alley, but they weren’t standing over a body or waiting for a clean-up crew. If not for the golden shield insignia stamped on their chest, Ray wouldn’t have even known that they belonged to the ORA.

The agent’s body was flat on the ground near the factory wall, stiff and dead. The exoskeleton that had encased their upper body was ruined, twisted around broken limbs, and blood was mixing with the toxic sediment on the ground. It was horrific, but it wouldn’t have numbered among the ten most gruesome scenes Ray had seen in the abandoned levels, and it definitely wouldn’t have halted a warrior like Yves mid-stride. Had Ray not seen an apple tree sprout from concrete the night before, he would never have believed what was before him now.

A tree had sprouted from the agent’s mouth. Its roots had shattered the agent’s skull as they expanded and wrapped around the rest of the body, where they now drank the blood of the mangled corpse that they enveloped. The trunk of the tree rose high into the air, twisting around a drainage pipe that ran to the upper levels of the abandoned factory farm. Small white flowers blossomed along its length and, as Ray’s eyes followed the plant upwards, he caught a glimpse of matching hair disappearing through a hole into one of the upper floors of the factory.

“Up there,” he hissed to Yves, at the same time as a familiar voice spoke.

“What have you done?” In those words, there was shock and fear where there had once been only disgust.

A figure stood at the far end of the alley, obscured by the heavy haze, but Ray recognized its demonic silhouette. The impossibly broad shoulders and thick arms were common of many types of exoskeletons, but it was the three-foot blades that extended from those arms that put a chill in Ray’s soul. That, and the tusks that curved from the figure’s face.

The agent who had killed Legs, who had tried to do the same to Ray, approached, each heavy step sounding out a threat on the filthy ground. Ray could feel the cold steel of those blades piercing his chest and knew well the darkness that followed.

And he knew how quickly it came. In a blink, the agent had covered half of the ground between them, and as before, Ray hadn’t been able to take even a step backwards. Even when he was ready for an attack, he was still too slow.

Yves was not. He spoke a command—“Encase”—and charged forward, his exoskeleton shifting beneath his cloak to emerge and sheathe his fists in steel. He met the agent’s blades with his gauntlets, and a brawl began around the corpse-fed tree.

Ray remembered Yves’s commands to stay out of any fights and chafed at how unnecessary they had been. He couldn’t have joined the battle if he tried, so far above him was the combat. There was nothing he could do.

It had been the same with Legs. Ray stood in a different alley now, and this time his friend could defend himself, but Ray was as useless as ever.

A vicious blow from Yves’s fist drove the agent into the trunk of the tree, shaking a few white blossoms loose. They quickly fell to soak up the blood and grime on the ground, but in their fall they were pure and perfect, just like…

Ray straightened up as he recalled a flash of white hair. There was something he could do—in fact, it was the only reason Yves had agreed to bring him along.

Ray began to run.

“Push him back!” he shouted, and luckily Yves understood. Gauntlets flashed through the air, and Yves followed them up with a blitzing tackle, lifting the agent and slamming him into the ground.

The takedown didn’t keep the agent on the ground for long, but it cleared a path for Ray. With everything he could manage, Ray leaped for the tree, grabbing onto the twisting trunk where it began to wrap around the drainage pipe.

And, as the agent fought to his feet and the battle continued below him, Ray climbed.