To Be A Killer

Chapter 42: Blue

"Oh, there you are, Five. Time to head out of Abel," Sam says, and I rub my eyes in annoyance. "Yeah, sorry for the early wake up call, but you'll never guess what happened."

"It's too early for me to be guessing right now," I reply in a groggy voice. I turn to Paula, an eyebrow raised. "What happened?"

"The seeds Veronica McShell gave you at the Treetop labs have finally sprouted. Cameras of the planting grounds seem to show they've grown up overnight."

"Yeah," Sam says. "It's freaky, but good. Freaky and good, if we can find a way to refine the zombie calming formula. Could come in very handy now that we know where the Comansys ship is. Hands up for who doesn't think Comansys will have a whole army of mind controlled zombies guarding our people."

I hear the door to the coms shack suddenly swing open.

"I'm so sorry I'm late!"

"Ah... Dr. Lobatse." There's bitterness on his tongue, seeping into his words. "Didn't think you were joining us today."

I purse my lips. I don't like his tone of voice very much.

"I'm so, so sorry," She says again. "I didn't realize the flowers had germinated."

"Yeah, don't worry about that. It's so early, we didn't want to wake you up."

"Nonsense," She scoffs. "Of course, you must wake me up when there are important experiments to conduct-experiments that may lead to the rescue of Dr. Meyers and Mr. Shelly. I wouldn't want you to think this didn't matter to me."

"No, wouldn't want that," He murmurs, and I growl warningly.

You're walking on thin ice, Sam.

'You promised me,' I tap out on my mic.

He sighs. "Yes, yes. I know."

"Sam, we'd better set out for the flower patch," Paula says. "Who knows what effect daylight will have on them?"

"Yeah. Uh, raise the gates."

The alarms go off as the gates go up. There's no need for any bullets to fly this morning, since there are no zombies around the township. Lucky for me, I guess. I feel completely drained this morning, and the sound of gunshots and growls would only put a bigger damper on my day.

With the nightmares I keep having, I'm not surprised I feel so tired. They've been happening a lot lately-nightmares, voices in my head, flashbacks. Just last night, I had a dream about Sarah, and the night before that, I dreamt about Archie-when me and Jaime had to go rescue her... and we failed. I haven't thought about Archie in weeks. I haven't... heard her in weeks.

I thought I might actually be getting past all this, but now I'm not so sure. These nightmares, along with the weird vision I had a few days ago, make me wonder if this is all somehow connected.

Not Archie-no, she was innocent, good. She was only an access point to the memory. I miss her. I miss Sarah. They both have something in common-Van Ark killed them both. Those blue plants, the formula I think that unknown lady was yelling at me to put on-it belonged to Comansys first, before the Treetop Base was created.

So... what if Van Ark and Comansys are somehow connected? I mean, he was certain the apocalypse was the company's fault, but why? There has to be a reason. The man was crazy, no doubt, but that doesn't mean he just threw out accusations on a whim, or a guess.

There's a reason. Now if only I could figure it out.

Although, I suppose right now I should be thinking about these plants. I don't seem to want to put any of it on in my vision, but there must be a reason on it. There were some Comansys notes saying a sort of warning on it, but I can't remember exactly why. But, I at least know we'll be able to get something from the plants and use it. That's progress, I believe.