Greenhaus Part 1: A Storm Brews (8 page)

A roar erupted from the small crowd, whose numbers were down from over a hundred
to under sixty. The crowd slowly dissipated and returned to their respective minicamps. For some camps, the haul was just an hour, for others it was closer to four, but all were vacating the premises, including the newly named Ella Storm.

As they filed out
to return to the various minicamps, a member of the Cloud camp approached Ella. His cutoff sleeves revealed muscular arms and the biggest forearms Ella had ever seen, covered in grease and oil. “I was asked by Elder Cloud to hold this; he was worried something like this might happen. He never trusted Elders Fire or Sky,” he explained in his deep voice as he handed Ella an envelope.

“
What is it?”

“
Not sure exactly, but before we left to find more camps to join us, the five Elders had a heated debate about its contents,” he informed her. “I overheard the shouting match from the outside of the tent, but couldn’t make out specifics.”

Ella opened the manila envelope, undoing its clasp and unfolding the flap, before removing its contents. It was a sheet of paper
with a bunch of words, most the same size, but larger bold letters centered at the top with some sort of emblazoned seal in the upper right hand corner.

“
Anyone know what it says?” she asked.

“
None of us Cloud’s can read, ‘cept for Elder Philip, who did not survive.”

“
A lot of good it does us, none of the Stone’s err.., Storm’s can read either, I will check the other camps when we return here in two days.” Ella started to hand the envelope and its contents back to the Cloud camper, who refused to accept possession.

“
You keep it,” he said. “Elder Cloud said it was of the utmost importance and that if something like today ever happened, to let the dust settle and present it to whoever made Elder next. Not sure who that is gonna be, but it won’t be any of us Cloud’s that for sure.”

He was right, they had no one suitable to be the next Elder, and neither did the Storm camp. Most camps wouldn
’t, because when someone came of age or ability, they started their own camp. Naming an Elder was one of the million things running through her mind, as was this new found doubt concerning the mission of the Masked and whether they should be attacking anyone on either side of the glass.

The contents of the letter were just another thing to add to the list. A tired Ella joined the remnants from the old Stone camp in the procession to a place they once called home. After the long walk back to the former Stone
minicamp, she scanned the document again, paying special attention to the seal in the upper right hand corner. The striking similarity to the gold star that adorned the chest of her sworn enemies did not slip by Ella. She focused on the letters at the top, bigger and darker than the rest of the words on the page, though she could not identify any of them or the words they formed.

A long, hectic day was ending. A day filled with multiple sirens. A compassionate encounter through the glass. A harrowing escap
e from that encounter. A dastardly betrayal that led to a quick, but deadly firefight that ended with Ella exacting a small measure of revenge for the betrayal by killing those who perpetrated the double cross.

She was exhausted, not only from lack of sle
ep, physical exertion, and the normal malnutrition of her kind, but also from the emotional gamut she had run through that day. She wanted to go back to that place, where things were… better, and lock eyes with Stranger Friend, but deep down, she knew that would never happen again. They would never meet through the glass or anywhere else for that matter. She would forever long for him and the spell his eyes cast upon her.
One brown eye, one blue,
it was a gaze she would never forget.

This brought the rage r
ushing back, and became part of a growing list of things that could trigger it. She tried to shut her eyes and get some much needed rest. Hoping that when she did, she would see him in her dreams and the compassionate look in his eyes would remove her anger as he had done earlier in the day. But, when she drifted off to sleep, all she saw was a toppled city of glass and mangled steel. Burning. And her dreams were not filled with desire or wasted chasing some Stranger Friend through the glass; they were spent figuring out a way to achieve that destructive end. Even if her conscious state had started to break and soften, her subconscious would remain hardened and forever loyal to the mission of the Masked.

Everywhere Jacob looked
, blood. Splattered on the walls and pooled on the floor beneath Jasper’s chair, which was also covered. Jacob had a bad feeling that something had gone terribly wrong, but given the evidence he now had, doubted it was an accident. Jasper’s empty chair, normally white and shiny like the rest of the seats in the transfusion chamber of decon, was now a deep red.
So fresh it’s probably still warm.
Jacob wanted to reach out and touch it, just to check, but given what Jasper had told him earlier in the day, he thought it wiser to remain still and keep calm. The pool of the dark liquid gathered beneath the chair and began to trickle away toward the drain, the story behind how it got there likely to go forever untold.

Jacob was sure Jasper was already dead. Stunn
ed from shock, he could not even begin to figure the who or the why yet.
Was it coincidence that it happened on the same day they talked about so much? Not a chance.
From suspicions about Harvard’s death, to waste, corruption, conspiracies involving departments any of these topics could have gotten them in trouble if heard by the wrong set of ears.
But we were alone.

And Jacob couldn
’t shake that fact. Nothing about this whole situation was more puzzling. Nobody else, except the glassmen, were near enough to hear them and only then if they were shouting. Even in their relative close proximity, the glassys were too far away to hear their conversations over the auditory clutter of the annex worksite, especially in Jasper’s hushed tones
.
None of this made any sense, so Jacob decided to play it cool when Medical arrived with his clean blood.

He watched a group from Medical clean up the blood, which Jacob presumed to be Jasper
’s. Jacob did not wait for the elephant in the room to squash him, instead he attacked it. “Crazy old man Jasper, looks like he lost a lot of blood,” Jacob observed to the random Medic assigned to attend to him that day.

“
Yeah, they said he removed his needle and stuck himself four times in the neck before he could be subdued,” said the Med Tech. “He was screaming some incoherent nonsense about not wanting to live anymore, saying, ‘It will all be better if I’m dead.’”

Jacob knew this was a crock of crap, Jasper seemed more alive than ever today, like all the talking was an elixir that cured
some hidden terminal disease. Jacob could not tell whether this particular Medic was lying or simply relaying the information he was given, but either way, all were to be held in the same suspicion in Jacob’s eyes.
The paranoia is growing in me.

Jacob re
cognized some faces in decon, at least, he thought he did, but couldn’t name a single person in the room. Now that he was seeing things more clearly, or possibly insanely, this seemed odd, given that he had encounters with several Medics daily, over the course of years.

The five
shop tenders he passed each day between his apartment and the stairs that took him to ground level were the same, Sal, Gabe, Sierra, Armstrong, and Winnie. Rangers Bragg and Wells stood on daily patrol near Annex 23 guarding the entrance. Wipers sentenced to clean the windows, were all stationed in the same places day after day. He knew them by name and face and they knew him. And now, when he passed the Wipers instead of asking himself
What did they do?,
he would instead say,
Maybe they did nothing more than talk too much, like Jasper.
And then he thought,
Maybe I will pass
him
cleaning windows one day.

With his newfound suspicion, Jacob eyed the Medic next to him closely, starting with his haircut. His black hair was a short croppe
d buzz cut, something that did nothing to make him stand out from any other Med Tech; it was like they all had the same barber. He wore the same lab coat over the top of the all white Nu-Skin every other Med Tech wore. The brightness of its white was only interrupted by the big red cross on the back and their badge in the front. Jacob leaned in and it read ‘Med Tech Rogers’. Other than a different hair color, the name was all that distinguished Med Tech Rogers from the rest of the Medics Jacob could remember. 

Jacob played along with the story, “
Doesn’t surprise me one bit. He blabbered all morning long about some gibberish and seemed very disturbed.” Jacob was not lying, except for calling it gibberish. Jasper did all of the talking, Jacob just listened. “Swear I was tempted to push him off the beam or cut his harness. The old man hadn’t said as much as ten words to me in a given day in all the years we worked together.” Jacob was being truthful about how little Jasper spoke before today, but he was laying it on thick about doing Jasper any harm, hoping all the while the skinny Med Tech was listening and that he was buying the act.

Med Tech Rogers did not immediately respond, but instead silently went about unpacking his shiny metal brief case containing the
bags, needles, and other assorted instruments needed to extract his blood and replace it with fresh and clean, nutrient rich blood.

“
Well Mr. Niles, we certainly don’t need any crazies running around the place, so maybe it’s for the better,” agreed Med Tech Rogers. “Even still, I am sorry to hear about your friend. Medics are doing their best to stabilize him.”

“
My father’s friend,” Jacob snapped. It was another lie, but one with a purpose Jasper of all people would understand. Besides it didn’t take a Medic to know that Jasper was already gone, the amount of blood being cleaned up told Jacob as much.

“
Come again?” quipped Med Tech Rogers.

“
My father’s friend,” Jacob coldly replied. “Jasper was my father’s friend. We were just co-workers.”

“
Hmmm, and didn’t your father pass from some strange incident as well,” replied Med Tech Rogers. “Seems like everyone around you finds themselves the victims of unfortunate events.”

Med Tech Rogers was correct. These were incidents,
not
accidents. Unfortunate events true enough, but planned and coldly calculated by some unseen force. Jacob also noted that both his father and Jasper had similar thoughts about the ‘Haus, thoughts he too started developing when he walked into this mess. Thoughts they kept secret from everyone they knew, which he also planned to do. Thoughts that when finally expressed, cost them their lives.

Jacob had no plans of joining his father or Jasper on the other side any time soon. Inside he was crumbling, and had s
o many questions that would now go forever unanswered. He wanted to break down and give way to proper grieving, having lost a close family friend and mentor, someone he knew longer than anyone except his mother. A man Jacob worked side by side with for five years, and planned to continue working next to until Jasper retired, but one he had to pretend to barely know right now.

Jacob worried that he was walking the thin line between reality and uncertainty. Perhaps Jasper and his father crossed far over that
line into a realm of insanity, conjuring up conspiracies until it drove them crazy and they took their own lives.
What if Jasper did kill himself, my father too, he could have cut his own harness.

He refused to believe either could have done such a thing.
In his mind, they were onto something. They were completely sane. And he felt someone was watching him now. Or listening. Waiting for Jacob to slip up and give them a reason to eliminate him too.
Paranoia, I can’t shake it. Was my whole life one big lie?

Jacob flashed back to his schooling, specifically his Constitution recital. He replayed Article III over and over in his head.
No citizen shall take up arms in a dispute against another.
Someone had broken that law.

But who? And how? Why? Will anyone repor
t it or better yet will anyone get punished? What was the gain to be had?
The questions flowed like water from a faucet, but the answers were nowhere to be found. Nothing added up, no matter how many times he tried to sort it all out. Med Tech Rogers stopped his train of thought, “Mr. Niles, this will hurt a little.”

I pray to Mother Earth that it
’s only a little, that I don’t end up like Jasper.
Med Tech Rogers proceeded to stick needles in each arm. One was connected to an empty bag, the other a large tank full of clean blood. Or so Jacob hoped, there was no telling. He was at the mercy of the Med Tech. Jacob could feel the blood loss, as the new blood did not enter him as quickly as the old left.

Light headed, but otherwise fine, Jacob
lay back and tried to relax, continuing his downplaying of Jasper’s death. He was not sure if Medical was involved with all of this, but for now he was assuming everyone was. He wasn’t even sure what ‘all of this’ was, whether it was real or just imagined nonsense of men who performed mundane tasks over and over, driving them past the point of sanity into a world of lunacy.

As he lost more and more blood, his head felt lighter and lighter and the lights became brighter and brighter. He tried in vain to fight the drowsiness.
As he started to lose consciousness, his true colors started to show as he lost control of his emotions and began blurting incoherent gibberish. Then Jacob felt a pillow pressed down with force upon his face before his whole world faded to black. Just before slipping into unconsciousness, he prayed to Mother Earth that it would not be for the last time.