Frozen Flora (The Gene Thief Series Book 2 - Short Story) (3 page)

Sprinting down the hill, Kira’s shoes drove deep into the snow drifts. Her feet felt heavier with each stride, her legs caught on fire. She was just fifteen yards away from the plant. She snuck in from the back, while this poor group of people fought for their lives. What had started out as a beautiful night with the joyous kill and dinner on the fire, turned out to be a fight for survival. She heard the screams of the people and the tearing of flesh. She heard the weapons being swung with such force that they met bone and often cracked it. She could see bodies falling to the ground, sinking into the impressionable snow. The men of this tribe were fighting with such vigor and zeal, showing no signs of slowing down. Although the numbers of the invaders were dwindling, it still seemed like such an uphill battle. Her heart bled for these people. She wanted to find a weapon and fight beside them, show them that she could see the honor in their culture, the courage in their people, and that it still meant something in today's world.

It was no different than the modern-day wars back at home with humans not realizing the beauty of coexistence and cooperation. It is one of the few traits that sets humanity apart from every other species, and is taken for granted every day. Even in remote parts of the world, greed and anger exist.

Kira was now in the thick of the plant. Not that it mattered, but she stayed true to her promise to take only what she needed.

She gathered the plant and put it inside the vial where various enzymes would break the plant down. She placed the crude DNA product in a conical tube. She hadn't done a plant extraction in a while, but her hands were still, muscle memory intact, and things were progressing as fast as they needed to.

The sounds of the battle still raged on in the distance. Her surroundings were pure chaos, but with her vials and camera in hand, her world was completely still. When she was working, she was in the zone, and her concentration was impenetrable.

She tilted the vial, so a single drop of lysed cells poured out. The drop landed onto the glass slide, and she took a picture with the camera. Process initiated.

She knew it would only take a few minutes until the gene was sequenced and extracted, but looking up at the battle, she knew she only had a few more minutes. This plant worshiping clan was down to its last six or seven members. The invaders still numbered around thirty although they had started with over one hundred.

She quickly started to pick up the bones from around the plants and stack them. She made a stack of ten before she stopped, carried them under her arm, and set them down on the side of an igloo. Nearly completely hidden from sight, she couldn't resist helping. She had never been put in such a situation where she could help during a mission, and she could not just sink and hide.

She picked up the first bone she saw. It felt like a femur, or a rib that was straightened out. She touched the tip, and her fingertip bled as if it had been touched by a needle.

She tossed it up in the air and caught it, palm up, over her shoulder. She noticed an invader coming from the side of the village, undetected, with bloodlust in his eyes.

She reached back, and thrust forward. Bulls-eye. She struck him square in his chest, the bone penetrating a good six inches into his sternum. The man looked down at the bone in disbelief and looked up. His eyes met Kira's. She stared at him blankly with complete disregard and lack of remorse. This savage was what was wrong with the world. This bone was her tool to cleanse it.

His eyes fell back down towards the bone. He fell to his knees, and he fell forward face first into the snow. Motionless.

She picked off three more invaders that were planning sneak attacks on this clan. The rest of them were in front of the plant worshipers, and she had confidence that the axe-wielding tribesmen could handle his own. They deserved better than to be backstabbed, though.

She didn't want to push the envelope, though. With the gene in her backpack, she turned around and ran back into the white madness.

Just as Kira had reached a safe distance from the action, she stopped. Snow had frozen to her, but she felt an urge to look back.

There, standing at the edge of the town, looking right at her was one of the warriors. He was standing there motionless, axes in both hands, his eyes filled with rage. As their eyes met, and they stared at each other for just a brief moment, the warrior softened. He gave her a slow nod with his head, almost a thank you of sorts.

Kira nodded back, turned around, and went on her way. Inside, she felt like a million bucks. Who cared about this gene in her backpack when she was able to do some real tangible good for once? It was the kind of good that she could feel in her bones and deep down in her core. She had helped save a few lives and, in return, she had been given thanks. It was something she had never been given before.

She started to see the runway, still amazed at how it was kept clear. The plane was parked at the end and, in a few moments, she would be on her way home to warmer weather.

For future reference, bring better shoes and clothing for extreme and shitty terrains.

Her shoes, although perfect for being nimble and agile, sucked for walking in the snow. They offered almost no resistance to the surface tension of the snow, and she sunk to her knees with every step. Step by step, she had to work just as hard to get back to the plane as she had to retrieve the gene.

Having reached the plane, she offered the pilot a tired smirk and boarded. This time, there was no sightseeing on the way back, Kira was too busy counting sheep.

There was a slight jerk of friction as the tires hit the runway and woke her up. They were home.

Still in a state of exhaustion and zombie-like state, Kira had appeared at her front door without really knowing how she got there. As she turned the key to her apartment, she heard something.

It was a whimper.

Holy shit! Tank!

Kira felt a knot in the pit of her stomach.

She stepped inside and he was sitting, tongue out, nub-tail wagging, and it made her feel even worse.

“I’m back, I’m back! I hope I left you enough food and water. Let’s go get you some more, just in case.”

She ran over to the refrigerator and pulled out a big T-bone steak. She slapped it on the ground and filled up his bowl with water.

He started to consume the meat without taking a breath, like a four-legged vacuum.

"Tank, breathe. You're going to throw that shit back up. I don't want to clean it.”

She saw his ears go back at the sound of her voice, but he didn't stop eating.

A few seconds later, all that remained was the uncooked bone. He slurped down the water for twenty seconds, grabbed the bone and went down to claim his spot at the bottom of the couch. He chewed on it ever so slightly as his eyes began to close.

She set up her things on the kitchen table, the camera and vials. She had the lace DNA in the sequence genome. It was time to isolate it and ship it off.

The process for a plant required slightly different enzymes, but otherwise it was pretty straightforward. In just a few hours, she had the gene isolated and normalized.

She stepped outside, and again was welcomed by a warm and soothing sun. There's no place like home, she thought.

She took the gene inside the abandoned post office box, and left.

I wonder what kind of payment this will be
, she thought. She didn't care if it was two dollars at that point – what she had done for those people was worth the trip alone. As much as she resented her job helping greedy corporations, the occasional family in need or incidental help she could offer, helped her justify continuing her work. Besides, she didn't know how to do anything else.

She made her way back, grabbed a few protein bars, and went over to the couch.

She turned on the TV, for no other reason than to have some background noise as she closed her eyes. The sleep on the plane was clearly not enough.

She lay down on the couch, let her arms fall off the side and landing on Tank’s back, this big old bear who wanted nothing than to spend time with her. As she pet him slowly, helping him fall asleep, she slipped under as well.

There they lay, Tank and Kira, safe and full, in limbo until the next mission was received.

Tank jumped up and barked. The bass in his voice startled Kira. She shot up, and looked towards the door. Nothing.

"What is it Tank? What do you hear?"

Tank walked over to the window and started barking at it. Kira used two fingers to push up a single blind. There was a cat outside, walking along the edge of the windowsill.

She smiled as the cat made its way across, reminding her of herself. She turned around and looked at the big brute trying to get at what was outside.

She started to stroke his fat head and said, "It's okay, boy."

He sat back down, his little nub of a tail wagging back and forth.

She looked up and saw that the projector was beeping. She had a message.

As she approached it, her bank account sprung up. Graphically projected into thin air, her receipt for the work was being shown. It was one of the biggest payouts she had received to date. It made her sick. Over time, she had come to think that the biggest payouts came from the dirtiest people. More often than not, she was actually hoping for smaller payments, as it allowed her to tell herself she was doing genuine good in the world.

With the payout this big, with that many digits, there was no question that she had just helped some big conglomerate. If she really cared enough, she could watch the pharmaceutical market and see some pain relieving drugs appear in a year or two, maybe less if they rushed it. It depended on how much they wanted to pay the regulatory and compliance offices.

She sat down on the chair next to the projector, tilted her head back, closed her eyes and put her hand to her face. She wasn't physically exhausted, but she was emotionally and mentally exhausted. She was not sure how long she could keep this up.

She looked over, and Tank was laying on the ground with the remnants of a bone. He dropped the bone, opened up his mouth, and gave what looked to be a smile. She couldn't help but smile back.

In just a day or two, Tank had managed to steal her heart. He had created a soft spot, where she thought there was only ice.

In a hopeless situation, with a hopeless job, at least Tank offered some happiness and something to look forward to.

“Hey Tank, shall we go for a walk?" Something about her voice must have tipped him off, because there was no way he understood her. He shot up and ran over to her.

She took out two shoelaces and tied them together, and tied a knot around his neck, and headed for the door.

She looked back at the projector, at the account and the balance, and shook her head.

I don't know how much longer I can keep this up.

She looked down at the dog, his big eyes looking back up at her. It was at this moment that she realized how dependent he was on her. She was his lifeblood, whether she liked it or not.

Then, he started to fade, along with the rest of the room.

On no, not again.

This time it happened in the blink of an eye. She was teleported back to the little girl and her mother.

"Can I, can I?"

"Baby, I just don't think now is the right time. Your father and I don't think it's right to have a puppy running around the house while your sister is sick in bed. It would be torture for her not to be able to play with it."

The little girl was fiddling with her hair, as she knew her mother was right, but didn't want to accept it. She looked up at her mom, with her big eyes as they watered, and said, "Okay. I know it wouldn't be fair. I just saw a big dog, and I thought how nice it would be to hug him and kiss him."

"One day sweetie, I promise. We'll get you that big dog that you always wanted."

Kira blinked, and she was back in her apartment. Standing in the doorway with her keys in her hand, and Tank sitting staring at her.

Are you that big dog? The one in my memories?

She never knew if the little girl was her, her sister, and was her mother the woman? Or were these just random images, figments of her imagination, creating a semblance of childhood that had been lacking for all those years. A believable identity to hold on to and claim.

The fact that the memory of the dog came after Tank, made it all the more confusing. Which came first, the memory or the desire to have a big dog?

These haunting memories were getting more and more vivid, and more and more disturbing. She didn't know what to do with them, and lately they were becoming more frequent and unrelenting.

She was unable to tell if it was her brain rewiring itself and making sense of the madness that was her life, or if the neuron bridges were being strengthened, somehow making memories accessible once again. The missions alone drained Kira to exhaustion, and now if she added Tank to the mix, things were going to be more trying than ever. Kira hated the fact that these missions always managed to slap her in the face, an undeniable reminder to her that she has no past and no identity.