Rootspire

Darkness woke the light above her eyes.

Riko felt it happen. The familiar warmth spreading across her forehead as the last grey faded from the sky. The little lantern there, the bioluminescent lure that marked her as something other than entirely human, began its soft glow. Pale green white, just enough to pick out the rust on the railing and the fifty meter drop beyond it to the platform below.

She uncurled in her alcove, halfway up a collapsed stairwell, and immediately grabbed her left tail.

“Okay,” she said, her voice rough from disuse. “Left. Report.”

She lifted the tail, moving it like a puppet, and spoke in a higher, slightly silly voice. “The deep freeze is coming. I can feel it in my metaphorical bones.”

Riko frowned. “You don’t have bones. You’re a tail.”

“Metaphorical bones,” she made the tail insist, wiggling it for emphasis. “And they’re cold.”

She dropped Left and picked up Right, the second leopard spotted tail that emerged from the base of her spine. Right’s flower was still closed, a tight bud, while Left’s had bloomed white hours ago. She used her normal voice for Right, but softer, more serious.

“We should move east tomorrow. The plant place near the old tower is fruiting. We need stores before the freeze.”

“But that’s dangerous,” Riko answered herself, looking at Left where it lay limp on the concrete. “You said so yourself last time. The ground there is too awake.”

“Left is a coward,” she whispered with Right’s soft voice. “Left is scared of everything.”

“I am not!” She jerkked Left up suddenly, making it dance indignantly. “I’m cautious! There’s a difference!”

Riko smiled despite herself, olive green hair falling across her eyes. It was a stupid game. She knew it was a stupid game. But when she hadn’t spoken to another person in, she counted on her fingers, ten days. That wasn’t enough. She sat up, pulled off her right boot, and then her left, balancing barefoot on the cold concrete while she counted her toes.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,” she announced, wiggling her toes in the chill air. She frowned at the inconvenience of having to undress just to count properly. “Stupid feet.”

She pulled her boots back on. Worn, practical things held together with wire and hope. She let both tails drop. Time for breakfast. Half a can of beige protein paste, and one fruit from her small store. It was the size of her fist, skin translucent enough to show the faint amber glow within. A fruit from the plant places, the rooted grounds that didn’t belong to the world as it should be.

She bit carefully. One bite. Two bites. Stop.

Any more and her stomach would cramp for hours, her body rejecting the concentrated energy of the 003 zone flora. She knew this from experience, from that one time she’d eaten three because Right, because she, had convinced herself that hunger was worse than pain.

It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.

“Okay,” she said, addressing the empty stairwell. “Plan.”

She held up Left. “We check the lower levels for cans. The scavs missed a compartment last time.”

Then Right. “We avoid the main hall. The ground there is too responsive.”

“Agreed,” Riko said formally. She shook both tails, making them touch tips in a little handshake. “Partners?”

“Partners,” she made them say in unison, using a breathy voice that sounded like neither of them.

She coiled her climbing rope. She was strong, stronger than she looked, able to lift one and a half times what a strong man could manage. She checked her canteen. Practical wear, layers scavenged from ruins, mismatched but functional. She started down the stairs, the lure bobbing ahead of her, lighting the way through the perpetual twilight of Transit Hub Seven.

She found the body near the old platform signs.

It had been a woman, once. The deep freeze had taken her three days ago, Riko guessed. Preserved but not kindly. The cold had come quick and hard, negative one hundred degrees snapping through the hub like a closing jaw. The woman’s skin was mottled grey and purple, split at the joints where ice crystals had formed inside her tissues and expanded, slow and relentless. One arm was raised, frozen mid reach, fingers curled into a claw. The other lay across her chest, as if protecting organs that had long since stopped.

Her eyes were open. Filmed with ice, they stared at the ceiling with an expression Riko couldn’t read. Not fear, not peace, just stopped.

The blood had frozen before it could pool. Dark stains ran down the woman’s thigh, her side, spreading across the concrete in black, crystalline sheets rather than red. Riko saw where the roots had found her. Thin, exploratory tendrils, now frozen themselves, wrapped around her ankle and wrist. They hadn’t dragged her under. The freeze had come first, saving her from the plant’s digestion, trapping her here instead in a different kind of consumption.

Riko approached carefully. She had seen bodies before. The freeze took people who weren’t prepared, who didn’t have multiple shelters cached, who couldn’t read the signs. The way the air pressure dropped. The way the 003 fruit pulsed brighter. The way her tails’ flowers would suddenly close up hours before the temperature plummeted.

This one was different only in how recent she was. The smell hadn’t started. The scavengers, animal or human, hadn’t found her yet. Riko was perhaps the first living thing to see this woman since the temperature had risen three days ago, thawing the world back to its usual cold but survivable state.

“Left says we should take the boots,” Riko said aloud.

She lifted Left, but didn’t make it speak. She just held it there, the white flower brushing her cheek, and looked at the woman’s feet. Good boots. Thick, insulated, military grade by the look of them, laced tight. The kind that might last through a week of negative one hundred instead of Riko’s failing pair.

“Right says that’s disrespectful.”

She lifted Right, whose bud was still tightly closed.

“Right says she probably has a name. Right says she probably talked to someone once, and that someone is waiting for her, and we shouldn’t take her shoes while she’s still looking at us.”

Riko crouched, closer than she strictly needed to be. She was strong enough to break bone if she wanted. She’d learned that accidentally once, early on, when she’d tried to move a beam and sent it flying instead. But she moved gently now.

“I need boots,” she told the corpse, explaining to the frozen eyes. “The freeze comes three, four, five times a year. No pattern. I have to walk through it to find shelter. You don’t need boots anymore.”

The woman said nothing. Her ice filmed eyes tracked nothing.

Riko reached out and touched the raised hand. It was cold, hard, the texture wrong for skin, more like frozen meat from a can. She gently tried to press the fingers down, to make the reaching stop. They moved stiffly, reluctantly, then snapped.

The smallest finger came off in Riko’s palm, frozen solid, weightless as driftwood.

She stared at it. Then at the hand, now missing a piece, still reaching for nothing.

“Sorry,” she whispered. She didn’t know what else to do, so she put the finger in her pocket. She would bury it later, maybe. Or forget she had it, until she found it weeks later and wondered whose it was.

She took the knife from the woman’s belt. A good blade, serrated, with a harness that fit Riko’s hip. The boots she left, as Right, as she, had suggested. But she sat there longer than necessary, holding the frozen finger, looking at the face that had been someone’s daughter, someone’s scav, someone’s anything.

The silence pressed in. Too heavy.

“Left is complaining that we’re going to get frostbite this season,” she said abruptly, breaking the quiet with her own voice.

She lifted Left and made it answer. “Left complains too much.”

“Right is being sentimental about boots.”

“Right has standards.”

“Right has frostbite.”

“Right would rather have frostbite than be a grave robber.”

“I’m not a grave robber! I’m a recycler.”

“Left says that’s just a fancy word for.”

“Left can shut up.”

She walked faster, the lure swinging its small light, leaving the body behind. She tried not to notice how her own voice sounded too loud in the empty station, or how the echo took too long to answer back.

The plant place was exactly where she remembered.

Riko stopped at the boundary, where the concrete turned to that strange, woven texture that looked like wood but wasn’t. The air smelled sweet here, heavy, like sleeping with your face in a flower bed that wanted to eat you. The structure rose ahead of her, a 003 zone fruiting tree. Trunk wide roots splitting the floor, branches of woven fiber bearing those soft glowing amber fruits.

She approached slowly, hands visible and empty, showing she was small, showing she wasn’t a threat. She was strong, yes, but the plant places didn’t care about muscle. They cared about heat, movement, biological presence.

“Left is scared,” she whispered.

She made Left whisper back. “Left is being careful. Left wants to live.”

“Right says hurry up.”

“Right says the ground knows we’re here. Right says stop talking to yourself and take the fruit.”

“I’m not talking to myself,” Riko said, indignant. “I’m talking to you.”

The tail in her hand said nothing, because it was a tail.

Riko felt her throat tighten suddenly, a hot pressure behind her eyes that she didn’t understand. She shook Left hard, furious at it for being quiet.

“Say something,” she hissed. “Come on. You’re supposed to say something.”

The tail just hung there, the white flower drooping, a stupid appendage attached to her spine, nothing more.

“Fine,” she said, her voice cracking. “Be like that.”

She grabbed a fruit quickly, roughly, and the ground shivered. A warning. The root network detected her, recognized her as non plant, as threat or nutrient. She backed away fast, not slow like she should, stumbling over the boundary onto safe concrete. The fruit was warm in her hands, pulsing slightly, alive with the same energy that powered the world break.

She sat down hard, back against a pillar, and stared at her tails.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Truce?”

She lifted Left. The flower was wilting slightly from her rough handling. “Truce,” she made it say, her voice thick.

She lifted Right. At her will, the bud began to open, white petals unfurling slowly. “Truce.”

She wrapped them both around her waist, tucking the flowers close, and ate the fruit in small bites. One, two, stop. She talked to herself in two voices about nothing important, about the weather, about whether they should sleep in the east alcove or the west duct, until the silence didn’t feel so heavy anymore.

The lure dimmed as grey light returned. 2061′s weak dawn, the lantern sensing it and resting. Riko closed her eyes, curled small, and tried to sleep.

She woke to sound.

Not the station’s usual sounds. Water somewhere distant, structural settling, her own breathing. This was new. A rhythm, mechanical and wrong, coming from the eastern tunnel. Riko knew every sound of her territory. This was not one of them.

She grabbed her tails automatically, one in each hand, but didn’t speak for them. She just held them, tight, and watched the tunnel mouth.

The sound grew louder. Then light. Different light, white and steady, not pale green like hers. It swept across the platform, searching.

Riko pressed herself against the pillar, making herself small, making herself nothing. The light passed over her, moved on, then stopped. Returned. Found her.

She saw the shape behind the light. A vehicle, low and armored, with markings she didn’t recognize. A symbol painted in white. The Bureau’s hexagon, though she didn’t know it yet. Three figures inside, shapes behind glass, looking directly at her.

One of them raised a hand. Not a weapon. Just raised. Hello. Or wait.

Riko didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. She held her tails so tight the flowers pressed hard against her wrists, and she waited to see what this new thing would do.

The vehicle stopped. The engine sound dropped to a low hum. A door opened, and a person stepped out. Small, wrapped in layers of thermal gear, face hidden behind a reflective visor.

“Hey,” the person said. Their voice was strange, filtered through a mask. “You alone?”

Riko said nothing. She didn’t know if she was alone. Left and Right were with her. But she understood the question was really asking something else.

“You’re in the transit hub,” the person said, slower now, like Riko was stupid. “Sector seven. This is Bureau territory now. You know what that means?”

Riko shook her head. She didn’t know that word. Bureau. It meant nothing to her, just another sound in a world full of strange sounds.

The person looked back at the vehicle, said something too quiet to hear. Then, to Riko, “You got a name?”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. She had a name. She was Riko, she talked to her tails, she ate fruit from the plant places, she was her. But saying it to this person with their strange light and their strange word felt dangerous. Like giving something away. Like the frozen woman with her reaching hand.

“Okay,” the person said, not unkindly. “You don’t have to. We’re just mapping. Won’t be here long.” They paused. “You eat the fruit? From the plant places?”

Riko’s hand moved to her pack, protective. The person noticed.

“Didn’t take you for a scav,” they said. “You’re too clean. You live here?”

Riko nodded, once.

“Alone?”

She looked at her tails. The person followed her gaze, saw them wrapped around her waist, saw the flowers, one fully bloomed, one budding. Their posture changed. Something Riko couldn’t read, but stored for later. Tension? Interest? Calculation?

“Those are pretty,” the person said carefully. “The flowers. They real?”

Riko didn’t understand the question. Of course they were real. She could touch them. At her will, the bud on Right twitched, beginning to open slightly, responding to her attention. She touched the bloom on Left, and it closed into a bud, then opened again. Magic, or biology, or something broken in the world’s rules.

The person just shook their head. “Never mind. We’re heading east, to the tower zone. You know it?”

She knew it. She had planned to go there tomorrow.

“If you’re going that way,” the person said, “keep to the high paths. The rooted ground is active this season. Had two teams go missing last month. Roots took them down before the freeze even hit.” They hesitated, then reached into their coat and threw something. It landed near Riko’s foot. A small package, wrapped tight. “Emergency ration. Better than the fruit, if you can keep it down. Less side effects.”

They turned back to the vehicle.

“Wait,” Riko said. The word came out strange, too loud, her voice cracking from disuse. “What. what is Bureau?”

The person stopped. Looked back. For a moment, Riko saw their eyes through the visor. Dark, tired, older than they sounded. A low level mapper, a guard, someone who drew maps and didn’t know why the roads needed to be remapped every season, who didn’t know about 001 or the exploitation of anomalies for profit.

“We’re the ones who try to keep the roads pointing the same direction two days in a row,” they said. “The ones who mark the safe paths, when we can find them. You don’t need to know more than that.” They climbed into the vehicle. “Take care, flower girl. Deep freeze could be any week now. Three, four, five times a year, no warning. Find a warm hole.”

The door closed. The engine sound rose, and the vehicle moved on, its white light sweeping away into the eastern tunnel, leaving Riko alone with her tails and a package she didn’t understand and a new word to say to herself, over and over, trying to make it mean something.

Bureau.

She looked at the package. Opened it. Inside was food she didn’t recognize. Synthetic, preserved, with symbols she couldn’t read and a small device that ticked steadily. A watch. A working watch, solar powered, showing numbers she almost understood. 14:32, 2061 04 02.

Not fruit. Not cans. Something else. A way to count time without her toes.

She ate a small piece of the ration. It tasted like nothing and everything, like the idea of food more than food itself. She saved the rest, wrapped it carefully, and strapped the watch to her wrist. It was loose, but she could fix that later.

Left and Right were quiet in her hands. She didn’t make them speak. She just held them, and thought about the person’s eyes, and wondered if they had someone to talk to when they were alone, or if they also spoke to parts of themselves just to hear a voice.

“Tomorrow,” she said aloud, to no one, to everyone. “We go east. We see what Bureau is. We find more watches.”

She didn’t know if she was making a plan or asking a question. But it was the first time she had decided something based on another person’s words, and that felt like the beginning of a story she didn’t know she was in.

She touched the watch face, counting the seconds, and waited for the dark to come again.