When he was a kid, he loved the ocean. His mother and his father didn’t get along, but whenever they took a family trip to the beach-- got on the train, brought everything with them, got off and stayed with relatives, set up a fully prepared sunshade and perfect sandcastle materials--

  For all of that time, they acted like a TV family.

  For a whole week, every year, he lived in a different, better world. And it wasn’t just different and better. It was the world that all the other kids his age had access to, and with one train ride, he had it in all of its glossy magazine cover glory.

  The ocean was the happiest place on earth.

  The train ride home was, then, the most wretched.

  His mother didn’t like his younger sister for reasons he hadn’t understood until much later, and his father hated his youngest sister.

  And both of his parents hated it when he spoke up to defend one, so in the end he was a shield made of paper for both of his sisters.

  His mother would have a list of every slight she’d noticed during the beach trip but hadn’t brought up until now. His father would fight back with his own complaints, how he didn’t like visiting her relatives, that he couldn’t even drink in front of them without them looking at him with disdain.

  And the city where they lived was hours from the ocean, and everyone else on the train would awkwardly pretend they couldn’t hear even though they absolutely could.

  But that wasn’t the ocean’s fault. That was the train’s fault, being so slow and cramped.

  And then it was his fault, because when he got into a college in a different city he discovered that he couldn’t take the train.

  The walls pressing in on him, every comment and whisper of the other passengers twisted and magnified-- he couldn’t do it. He’d run out of breath. He was going to die.

  His dad drove him to college, so he hadn’t found out until he couldn’t come back.

  And then--

  And then the years passed, and he graduated, and he’d never been to either of their new homes, and he’d met neither of their new families.

  It’s not like not being able to take a train is a dead end. Once he’d gotten a job in college, he had his own money, and he could spend it all on renting a car, or buying a flight. That’s how he got back here, after all. He took a job back in his home city. A good job. Well paying, for someone with a degree in graphic design.

  But despite now being in the same city as his parents, he just--

  Last year he’d been tasked with creating a new brand logo for a company that sold plastic plants for businesses to set out in their lobbies. If you paid them a lot of money they would do whole plastic flower installations, walls and gardens of fake shiny leaves and flowers always in bloom.

  The name was Artifloral.

  As part of their brief, they showed him a tropical set up, a fake palm tree and a spray of fake jungle greenery surrounding but not disturbing a tourist reclining in a white beach chair.

  The specific niche was ‘vacation’. They could make your workplace feel just like going far, far away on vacation.

  He’d had some ideas right away.

  The letter ‘A’ with one of the diagonals replaced with a palm leaf. A hibiscus flower blooming in the center of the letter ‘A’. For something even more abstract, a palm tree cutout in the center of the A, with a setting sun over water seen through the cutout.

  He submitted his designs. They picked the third concept. Vivid, innovative, fresh. Authentic, real. They loved it. They just wanted a couple of small changes. Shouldn’t it be more obvious that the water is an ocean? Maybe scatter in some sand at the base of the A. It’s like we’re right there, except in the privacy of your office floor.

  Wei Shengyuan could not draw it. He got sick. He threw up. He had to use up all his sick leave. He thought he could hear the rushing of the train even in the privacy of his own home, and he started looking around desperately but couldn’t even get out of bed.

  Then he went back to work when his sick days ran out. They’d given the project to someone else, promoted someone else, and everything was back to normal.

  But not him.

  He started planning ways to escape his own apartment. He was looking for ways out. Hiking. Bars. He couldn’t be in there.

  Then, suddenly, he fell one day, and he was there until the world ended.

  It’s difficult to describe the memory of falling and never getting back up.

  Wei Shengyuan laughs, the sound muffled and difficult to get out as a root has grown over his mouth.

  It’s actually liberating, this whole thing being his own fault. At least it’s not some brutal accident, dropped on him like an anvil out of a clear sky. He went out into the corridor. He did that.

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  And if he dies because Zan Xinyi is going to wait three hours to rescue him, then that’s how it is when you’re someone who gets sick from drawing sand. God, getting rescued is embarrassing, and she’s already done it once. He’s better than that now. He’s got powers, powers far more combat effective than Zan Xinyi’s tech-magic talismans.

  She needs him.

  He should be the one doing the rescuing. He was going to be the one doing the rescuing, because he heard something.

  He did hear something. He’ll swear it on his own grave.

  He rations his arguments now, as if Zan Xinyi is there to shake her head and scowl.

  It was a woman, and she was crying. She was crying and looking for her kids. Even though Jiang Jin hadn’t been able to hear anything, he’d known it was real.

  There was this...sense. She’d been trapped, and she couldn’t get out, couldn’t find what should be there, couldn’t find anything.

  And then the plant had found him. Clung to him as if he were its missing piece.

  He’d opened his mouth to argue, and vines and roots bound his mouth. Tried to fight and the plant grew from the water in his blades, drinking it in like fresh morning dew. The vines grew through the spokes of his wheels, bound his arms to the armrests. Imprisoned in the wheelchair as always.

  When he’d bought the thing he’d bought the cheapest one available. Not because he couldn’t afford a better one, but because he couldn’t stand putting his hard earned money down the drain of his present circumstances. His own body the enemy that he had to deny resources from or else it’d think it had won.

  He’s lucky that he can pull in water to his neck and breathe it in through his gills, because if he was only relying on his mouth and nose, he’d already be dead.

  Lucky to have gills.

  It’s a poor joke.

  An even poorer joke than relying on Zan Xinyi for aid.

  There was a question she hadn’t asked, back when she started yelling down the hall and for a second he felt hopeful.

  How fast are you mutating?

  Instead of that question, she’d just asked how fast he was dying, and then the music had started.

  The worst, most awful music ever composed. First, the suona. The loudest, most high pitched horn he’s ever heard. And the last time he’d heard one was the music played at his grandmother’s funeral.

  Second, the zither.

  Each pluck vibrates through the air around him, and the plant hates it. Clutches at him, writhes, groans.

  He’d been confused when she asked in terms of hours until the music started.

  Then, it became obvious.

  He’d already completed his parts of the first game level. So there was no need to come and get him. If he’d been slower, if one of his parts of the game had broken--

  Wouldn’t she already be out here?

  Three hours.

  He can live for three hours, but can he be human in three hours?

  He feels a tickle on his skin as the roots try and dig into his scales and fail. His scales have been hardening over time, becoming stronger and tougher and brighter.

  And he can feel more scales crawling up the back of his spine.

  He’d thought Zan Xinyi was completely ignoring it, but the more he thinks about it, the more he thinks she simply can’t feel it. To her, the green mist is purely aesthetic. Annoying only in how it restricts visibility, how it strengthens the mutants. How it drives the zombies berserk.

  Zan Xinyi, don’t you live with two mutants? Don’t you listen to the military radio that blares out its warning about the mutated humans? 50%, shoot on sight.

  He’s been more than 50% since he needed to transfer to the first floor apartment.

  The body doesn’t turn, and then the mind goes crazy. No. The two go hand and hand, wound together as the evil eye winds through flesh.

  The zombies are so hungry.

  Well, guess what.

  He’s hungry, too. When he was propelling the boat through the river, he would eat the fish underneath the boat. Rip at them with teeth that felt sharp. Spit out the bones.

  The water from Zan Xinyi’s fridge is pure and cold. Her snacks are always crispy and fresh, existing outside of the time that demands they turn old and stale. The canned food and the meat she’s taken from other pantries and fridges in the building and crammed into hers doesn’t maintain that magical level of preservation, but it’s more than enough to feed three people.

  One night he awoke on the couch and saw Jiang Jin staring out the window and thought that he’d love to eat a bird with that much meat on its bones.

  She’s an innocent person, despite everything. Couldn’t he talk her straight into a cooking pot just by telling her she was taking a heated bath?

  His head would always clear as he moved towards the hallway. The way it always cleared, this whole time. The closer to the place he carved the zombie core out of a woman’s corpse, the purer the air.

  For a long time he’d dismissed it as being one of Zan Xinyi’s inexplicable magics, but no.

  Now, only able to breathe through gills, shrill horns echoing in his ears, his head is so clear.

  The plant is absorbing the pollution from the green mist, leaving behind only the power.

  Hadn’t it been weird that he could grow stronger and stronger even though he didn’t regularly eat zombie cores. Isn’t it odd that Jiang Jin’s abilities could expand by leaps and bounds?

  The mist is everywhere. Insanity is everywhere.

  Sitting on Zan Xinyi’s couch, drawing her stupid ideas, he’d found himself sketching out the palm tree cutout within an A.

  Isn’t he faker than those plastic leaves? Pretending like he’s the same person that Zan Xinyi knew in highschool.

  The music cuts off abruptly.

  He’s already been forced to use up the purification talisman she gave him. Just after their one trip. He’s not even hit her first deadline, and he’s already used up the advance.

  It might be better to lose his mind here than bear the indignity of begging her for another one.

  The ocean is calling him, shining off of glossy pages.

  Far away, where--

  “I Curse you!” Zan Xinyi yells, a triumphant edge grating in his ears as the door hits the wall with a ginormous thud. “You worthless plant, I’m going to grind you up and bury you somewhere without any sunlight! You’ll wish you were a rhubarb!”

  It's going to be a while before we get into an alternate pov again, since I only do them about once per arc and the arcs will just keep getting longer...