“What’s going on?” Shan asked, taking a step further into the room, looking around. For a moment, all he noticed were the eyes. Aden’s, terrified and pleading. Konki and Akaru’s, dull and cloudy. And most of all, Elora’s, blue and sharp and…
Elora waved at Aden. “Gag him,” she ordered casually. Konki immediately moved to obey.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Shan argued, moving to get in the way. “I asked you a question. What’s going on? And Aden… Why are you-“
Elora was in his way then, smiling up at him, somehow still smaller even though now she was so much older. He frowned, looking down at her. “Elora, you’re-“
“Shan,” she breathed, looking happy to see him. “I’m so glad you came! I was really worried you had left, and that you weren’t going to get to join us.”
“Join you? For what?”
She smiled.
There was… a heavy scent in the room now. Like flowers, or maybe perfume. Shan couldn’t quite place it, but it was distracting. Nauseatingly sweet.
“Shan…” Gently, she reached up, putting her hands on his shoulders, pulling him back to face her when he tried to look around her to check on Aden. “It’s really a simple explanation-“
“Then start explaining.”
She laughed, completely unbothered. “Have you ever heard of the pitcher plant? You probably haven’t. It’s this old plant that went extinct during the Desolation a few centuries ago-“
Her hands tightened around his shoulders. And suddenly a rush of tenseness was running through him, as though he were in danger. He stiffened at the sudden unwarranted motion, looking around. What was… where-
She frowned, looking like he hadn’t acted how she wanted him to. “Anyways. This pitcher plant. Most plants get their food through sunlight, right? And water, and soil. But not the pitcher plant. Oh sure, it used all those things, but secretly… The plant was a carnivore. Interesting, isn’t it? Most of the time, animals ate plants. But this time, it was a plant that ate animals! How funny!” She giggled.
The scent was getting stronger, or at least, it seemed that way. Shan blinked to clear his head, pushing her away gently, looking down at her. “Were you always this smart?” She had always acted so vapid until now. “Actually… you’re older again, aren’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she grabbed his wrist. He gasped as a rush of anger passed through him for a moment. Where had that come from? The smells were making it hard to think- he had to get some distance, had to-
“I still haven’t told you how the pitcher plant caught its food, Shanny!” Elora gave a forced laugh, eyes watching him with growing suspicion. “It gets confused with the Venus Flytrap a lot because-“
“Flytrap…” There was… something he was supposed to be remembering. Why did that sound famil-
“Because it caught insects too, but the methods were completely different! What the pitcher did was a lot smarter. It didn’t just wait for insects to come for it. It gave them a reason to. You see, it filled itself with this delicious nectar, something that made the insects really happy. And the insects wanted it, really, really badly.”
Her hands were gripping his wrists so tightly now. It didn’t hurt, not to Shan, but when had she become so strong?
“So, time after time, the insects would come, and would go deep down inside of it to drink the nectar. They would drink and drink, and would like it so much that they found they just couldn’t stop, that they didn’t want to stop. So they’d go deeper and deeper, until they got stuck, and then…” She giggled again. “They’d drown.”
Her hand crept further up his arm… Then hesitated as his watch suddenly vibrated. Leon-
Leon! Leon had… said something. Shan forced his eyes open against the intoxicating smell, trying to remember, Leon’s voice filling his head. Gifted, and… girl, who was… flytrap? Flytrap…
“Don’t you think the flies were happy, though, Shanny?” Elora said, voice low as she leaned up to whisper in his ear, a thousand incorrect emotions toying with him. “They died, but they must have died so happy, to be surrounded by something they loved so much. If they were just going to die eventually anyways… Don’t you think… that was a good way to go?”
…
“Shanny?”
…
…He got it.
He opened his eyes, looking down at the violently, impossibly beautiful woman gripping his wrists, looking up at him, her face closer to his than it should have been. Suddenly… “It’s you, isn’t it?”
Confusion creased her face.
“It wasn’t Null that Leon was talking about. The Venus Flytrap… It wasn’t her at all. It was…” He stared at her in dawning understanding.
Her beautiful face twisted in a sudden vicious snarl.
~~~
The Cat Lady frowned, standing over the sick bed, staring down at the woman who had been sleeping for almost sixteen hours now. “I don’t like this, lovelies,” she said to the two cats sitting next to her, looking bored and impatient for food. “She ain’t that sick, is she? Shouldn’t be- she was healing just fine last I saw. Unless…” She bent down, frowning accusingly at a black cat rubbing luxuriously against the leg of the bed. “Aristotle, you haven’t been getting lazy, have you? Such a terrible nurse you make!”
The cat opened its mouth, mewling loudly.
She clucked disapprovingly, picking up a load of dirty laundry and turning to leave.
Quiet, pain-filled cries met her ears. She paused, glancing at the corner where it was coming from. “Dearies? Who’s back there?”
“…miu…miu…”
“Speaking in meows… You must really not be feeling well.” The old woman frowned, setting the linens down, walking slowly to the corner bed. “Poor dears. Which one of you is that? Thoreau? That sounds like Thoreau back there.”
They didn’t come out. Worried, the old woman reached for the bedpost, and strained to pull the small bed away from the wall. She reached for her glasses, adjusting them on her face as she leaned forward to peer into the dark corner.
She gasped in horror. “My poor little kittehs! What happened to you?! Poor loves…” She reached down, slowly scooping them up, one by one. Cats that had been completely healthy only days before, were now weak bags of bone and loose skin, with sunken eyes and weak muscles, looking as though they hadn’t eaten in over a month. They were incredibly weak, barely clinging to life. She held them all in her arms, felt their weak mewls and pawing as they curled, shivering, against her. What had done this to them? What could have possibly…?
…The… flower hoomin…
The woman frowned, staring down at the half-dead cats in her arms, then looking curiously at Null.
~~~
Leon shifted back and forth in the frigid morning air, still crouched in the tall grasses a safe distance away from the house. What was taking that blasted Gifted so long?! He fought down rising anger by focusing on the cold seeping through his clothes and skin, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t letting himself get double-crossed, not waiting to fall into a trap by waiting here. Every nerve and sense he had was alerting him of approaching danger…
“Mr. Leon?”
He sighed in aggravation. “What is it?”
Dextera watched him worriedly. “You seem upset. Is this not going well?”
Leon checked his watch for the fifth time that minute, watching the time since Shan had gone into the house grow longer and longer. “…No. I don’t think it is.” He exhaled, releasing white steam into the air. “If I could just figure out what was going on in there…”
Dextera brightened. “What if I go look? Some of those windows are really low- I can just peer in real quick and try to see what’s happening!”
He hesitated, looking at the house. Shan had seemed repelled by the sight of Dextera, for some reason. He wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the Gifteds didn’t like her for whatever reason, either- she was kind of a traitor, someone just like them working for the opposite side. So if they hated her, it made sense…
…Well, forget them! They were the ones making him wait out here in the cold for half an hour- if they wanted privacy, they should have hurried it up. Besides, they were going to have to deal with her sooner or later.
However bad Dextera was, the monster inside those walls was a hundred times worse.
“Be careful you’re not seen, okay?”
“Okay! I’ll be right back.” She got up, and was soon running across the grass, braids flying in the wind.
He watched her go, musing for a minute, remembering how Noel had once looked just like that, when she was younger with longer hair in pigtails, running in their backyard. He sighed and turned away-
A half-thought-out instinct clicked in the back of his mind, a mechanical warning going off, and he sprang to the side without really knowing why. The ground where he had been standing moments before exploded suddenly in a shower of wet grass and dirt.
He rolled, before coming up in a kneeling crouch, eyes wild. An Agent was standing up in the grass, watching him through dark glasses, cocking his handgun for a second shot. Leon snarled and fumbled for his own weapon, determined to destroy him first, sure that no idiot was going to get in his way now that he was so close to his goal-
“Leon!”
A chill ran through him as he looked to his left, where Kate was slowly standing from the cover of the grass, raising a weapon of her own. Semiautomatic- no dodging that one. Her eyes narrowed, watching him in hatred. “No running this time. This time, you’re mine!”
He watched in growing anger as row after row of agents began to stand in the grass all around him, cutting him off, leaving his back to the house and the cliffside over the sea.
