Episode 8 - Symbiosis

  Chapter 78 - Just How Far?

  Captain Moreau lets out a low grunt of disbelief, twisting his ears away from me to listen back at the trailers behind us. His grumbles sound so familiar. “You would have me put the life of my crew in your hands? When you have hidden your identity and symbiont from me?” he barks. His pointed teeth crack together with the words. His jaw and lips do not quite make the right shapes when he speaks, like security video out of sync with the audio.

  “I already said I’m no Equus,” I confirm as I step away from him to give myself some space, reaching my arm above me as a perch for Pooka. Pooka gives a high-pitched scream one last time and snaps his wings shut, diving for me with complete trust. Plasma cracks across the sky above us again. “And you know what Regina had placed in my back.”

  This is it. This is the moment I make up for all my sins. Out here, in these wide open spaces, we can unravel without fear of the people and buildings we will draw into our calamity. We were never made to live with humans. We’re too wild, too powerful. No matter how hard we try, we will hurt them eventually. We were made to stand apart. A conduit for the energy that humans were never meant to touch, given only willingly by those who can invite, by those who remember and are born anew. I have always been incapable of ‘settling down’.

  “Aye,” confirms Moreau, narrowing his eyes as he studies me while I walk away from him. Behind me, back towards the ruined city, buildings rumble and roar as they tip over, crashing together as the wakened lichens begin to roam and seek anything new that the rains uncover. The rising tide seems to accelerate, gathering around my lower calves. It churns dark and opaque from windows and doorways, washing away the soil that has built high around the bones of Baise and exposing more of the city.

  Pooka drops onto my arm, wings opening at the last moment. His talons grip me with surprising delicacy as he wraps his feet around my wrist and the back of my hand. His eyes gleam with red fire, and he clicks his beak with anticipation. He can feel my intent.

  “I think you’ll confirm your theory when I’m done. Go save your crew, get out of the way. I’ll hold the water back.”

  “What theory?” Moreau grumbles, but I can see him turn to look back at the trailers. His ankle twists, one great pawed foot turning in preparation to lope back to his crew. Just like his son, he cares about his own first. He’d turn no matter what I did or said. He’ll abandon me before his own crew regardless of whether he believes the words coming out of my mouth, just like he took Addie first. Maybe… I’m too harsh. He came back for me. Maybe he'll trust another cryptid.

  I don’t care. It’s the right decision for him to make. And this one is mine. I reply with a growing grin, “that Regina definitely bit off more than she could chew.”

  Ice instantly responds to our call. Not snow or frost, but sub-zero ice that is distinctly inorganic in its sharp angles. Pooka keeps the drain of energy at a safe distance from my body, leaving a small pool of water around my feet and a column of air above my head that does not instantly desiccate as all moisture is snapped frozen. I step upwards and onto the platform that has formed around us. As I lift my second foot, the pool closes beneath me with perfect control, leaving me standing on a circular stage. As the rain continues to fall, it freezes on touch, adding to the mass and beginning to round the platform's shape into something more natural.

  Moreau’s eyes widen, but he contains his shock with the control of a man who has seen many unusual things, and probably come to expect most of them. He turns away from me, gathering his hind limbs beneath his body. “You’re on your own then, scout.” The words are a command, not a goodbye. Then he leaps, jumping far further than any human could, and lands bounding on all fours to gallop back through the flooding to the habitats where crew are still trying to pull the stuck trailers free.

  I’m alone. I don’t need to worry about anything except holobionts getting in my way. And I don’t really care what happens to them. Pooka stretches his neck, wings tented on either side of his body. My arm does not grow tired supporting his weight. He is ethereal as smoke.

  He snaps his wings straight to either side. In unison, we cut the water.

  A fissure splits the rising tide on either side of us, dividing the water behind and in front of us into two. The soil in the gap is moist, but only on the surface. The flood has barely begun to seep deeper into the earth.

  The side closer to Baise begins to rise as the flood continues to rush in, but the side back where the crews are fleeing grows no more. As the water stills at our command, the silt and churning debris begin to settle, the surface gleaming with the white crystals that propagate from our frozen stage.

  I look down the line we have cut, it goes as far as I can see. The water responds perfectly to our call. The air and churning energies of the storm are more difficult. Purity of composition matters for Pooka’s certainty, and clarity of understanding about what something is and is not creates the finer details of his control.

  The storm above our heads is whipping elements and dust, both organic and inorganic, churning temperature gradients and grinding static. He can carve a focused path through the madness, but not quite tame the whole. His shapeshifting captures the nature of his abilities; any vertebrate form he could take - their powers are his command, with the full force of his vast cryptid certainty. But anything that would be beyond the power of a vertebrate - powers that are the works of invertebrates or other cryptids - seems to be beyond him.

  We are just biologically incapable of certain things. He could never speak as the jackalope could. He could never wrap himself around me and become one as the Captain’s Lupus can. He could never be a vast golden Garuda. Some skills are the realms of others. Mastery of an entire storm, it seems, is not for us.

  So, I imagine instead commands I know Pooka has performed before.

  The water surges skyward in front of us. We draw the water behind to us, draining the flooded plains. From within the water ahead of us, we begin to untangle rebar and rusted wires, amassing the metals in a hovering, growing tangle of black iron, copper and aluminium. Rust is stripped away as we refine, peeling back the oxides to be washed with the rain. Soon, gleaming polished steel flashes brightly with each crack of lightning above our heads, slowly turning as we draw more material into it.

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  Outwards we weave the metal fibres behind our growing shield of water. We spin them thin and round, throw them back and double them again in a growing warp and weft that stretches down the wall of control we hold. As the net forms and comes down, we wrap the lichens, forming stakes from other scraps we summon up from the rubble to pin the structure and secure the creatures into position so they will be no threat to the crews. The flood behind us continues to drain, rocks rolling along the ground now as the force of our suction draws them in too. Soon, it will be moist only from the fresh rain that still falls. The platform of ice around us only grows, consuming energy for our workings from its edges far from where the cold will accidentally sap my heat. As the rain falls close to us, it condenses to snowflakes that whisk away on the wild winds far too quickly for me to watch them fall.

  I can sense how vast our will is, stretched out across the city while we unroll our improvised netting. There is only one place we falter. A single place where our senses and commands scatter. It feels dark and heavy, streaked with red. And it goes deep. Deep, deep. Deeper than I can imagine, into the earth. Hard, ancient iron, cracked and splintered down its entire length that draws darkly below. A black place, where consciousness fades and self dissolves. Ghosts call, voices from the pitch. The empty and the hollow…

  Pooka clicks his beak, and my mind shrinks back along our work. Do not let the hollow call to you. Today we live.

  One red eye watches me over the ridge of his shoulder at the end of my arm, the very tips of his feathers trembling as he exerts unerring, concentrated control to manifest my vision. He is fully sublimated to my will; no rage or sadness exists in this moment as he gives everything to the pure act of commanding reality. His personality even seems distant, fully giving himself to the powers he controls. Maybe this is how all other symbionts are? Voices on the tips of tongues, just misheard by their masters.

  The webbing I’ve woven has settled across the city now, as far as I can see. It pins the holobionts in place while they churn and writhe. No harm will come to them long term. When the rain stops and the sun rises, they will slowly desiccate and return to their dormancy. As they dry, they will stretch their fruiting bodies into the air again and spill their spores into the wind.

  I wonder if I could take my mask off in the rain? The air might never be as clear of their spores as it is now.

  I let the thought pass as Pooka stirs and the last of our magic unravels. The last piece we hold command over is the wall of water before us, stretching now so high I can see the very top foaming and rolling where it disappears into the grey clouds above.

  With our mind, I pull a piece of rubble from the flooding. It floats towards me, held aloft by a curl of water. The second plank of wood that Addie wanted. My fingers feel cold and stiff as I extend my hand and pluck it from the air.

  I look backwards. The trailers are distant. I don’t know how long we’ve been working. I’m aware suddenly that I’m soaked, the water seeping beneath my environmental suit where I'd unzipped it to get my lighter. I feel cold, and exhausted. I lean on the wooden plank to keep myself on my feet as if it is a cane. Maybe they will leave me. Pooka takes wing as I collapse, only to hop to the ground at my side and look at me with burning red eyes, and a twist of concern in their depths. I curl my hands and realize I’m trembling beneath my layers. My teeth suddenly chatter as the shivering quickly becomes uncontrollable.

  Fuck.

  The wall of water crashes downwards like a waterfall as our grip slips. I’m protected by the walls of the ice we built, gathering our energy, but it splashes upwards around us at the edge, blocking my view towards the ruins. The rubble and rocks that were slowly suctioned towards us spill outwards with the force of thousands of tonnes of water releasing.

  Pooka’s taloned feet splay as he hops towards me, a thin cry coming from his beak as he cocks his head. The trembling feels like it originates right at my core, my stretched nerves firing indiscriminately. My muscles paradoxically feel like they seize with each fluttering wave of scattered command over my body. I can’t stop it. I’ve neglected my body for too long in the wet and cold, my mind ranging outwards to enact my will.

  Fuck. I can’t move.

  Pooka sits on my shoulder and butts me with his head, and he nibbles at my wet silvery hair that has fallen plastered across my face shield. I feel him chew on the lobe of my ear, clicking his tongue in my ear. He tugs my hood with his beak insistently. Rise, you’ve roamed too far for too long. Rise my love. But, I can’t find the strength to move..

  Then, from the dark storm above us… a golden bird descends. The Garuda’s wings are so wide they block out the cracking lightning above our heads, flashing black with shadow each time the sky illuminates behind the magnificent creature. The gondola is clenched between its massive talons, and I can see tiny figures hanging from the side with ropes flapping in the gusts. Pooka screams over his shoulder at his brother, flapping his wings and taking flight. I watch him disappear into the sky and grow small and insignificant as he wings closer and closer to the Garuda’s head, a mere speck before its vast size.

  Above my head, the gondola comes to a stop as the Garuda begins a hover, the rain suddenly ceasing as he blocks out the sky above me. Two humans drop on their ropes, rappelling to my ice stage on either side. They break just before touching the ground, then slowly drop the final few feet.

  “Get her harnessed, Patrick. Quick,” barks a commanding voice that feels distantly familiar, muffled by a respirator and half lost in the rushing wind.

  Hands grab me roughly, pulling something over my head, buckling and tightening something around my torso. All gentle care is forgotten in the rush to get me secure, I don’t fight any of my handling. They can surely feel my tremors. One human helps hold me up, bracing me while the second works to attach me to his harness, slipping carabiners between us and securing me.

  “You got her?” asks the second voice, adjusting a few buckles under and around my thighs.

  “Hmm, yeah.” The first voice wraps my arms around their shoulders and roughly adjusts the position of the rope threading between us.

  “She’s shaking real bad. Fucking never seen anything like it. Drained herself.”

  “She’s on. Pull us in.”

  “The wood. Please, the wooden plank,” I whisper into the ear of the human who holds me strapped to their body.

  “Do what she wants, Patrick.”

  “What about her symbiont, we can’t leave it down here?”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’ll follow.”

  The second voice pulls away first. The first wraps arms around me. The harness tightens around my hips, and suddenly I can’t feel the ground beneath my feet. My stomach lurches as we swing in the wind, but the person who has grabbed me holds me tightly against their frame.