oOo

The closer she got to the vat floor, the less the place looked, felt, and smelled like an ordinary vat house. For one thing, the air was steamy wet, its warm touch welcoming to her skin. She stripped off her tunic and bodysuit, to feel it better. Once she was out of the hallway there were plants everywhere, hanging from the balcony ringing the room and standing in pots on disused instrument stands and casings. And the light was different too. Somewhere they had found purple-hued grow lights and installed them in all the fixtures.

From above her, shielded and distorted by the tall curving walls of the two vats, she heard soft splashing noises, and... singing? Or was that voice inside her, awakening now to these sights and smells, to the air that was nearly water itself? She rested her hands on the metal ladder that climbed the side of the vat and looked up, gripped by a joyous rage which overwhelmed her rational fear. For among the redolent odors of the waters was the smell of one whose call she would do anything, kill or die, to answer. oOo

Benny hauled Chango up off the floor by the scruff of her neck and pushed her into the elevator wall. He had a gun, and he poked it in her back. “Funny little Chango.” he whispered in her ear, “It’s been a real riot, watching you sniff all around the truth these past five years, but now I guess you finally found something, huh? Where did you think you were going with these, anyway?” The tanks scraped across the floor as he dragged them closer with his foot.

Chango hung in his grasp unable to answer, suddenly limp with the realization that though he was acting in ways she would have thought impossible for him, this was Benny. It was still Benny and all Benny; the person she’d thought she’d known, and this.

In the scramble since she got out of jail she’d forgotten it. She’d accepted the comforting idea that this Benny, the murderer spy, was someone new and distinct from her trusted friend. Now, pressed face first against the wall, his breath in her ear, she realized that it had been him, all along. The elevator stopped. He kept the gun in her back as he reached down and slung the tanks over his shoulders. Its muzzle bore into her vertebrae as the door opened and he pushed her out ahead of him. With his other hand on her shoulder he guided her down the hall, walking swiftly. Chango pretended to trip, and rolled towards him, striking his shins with her body. With the tanks on his back, Benny over balanced and went down. Chango scrambled up and ran back towards the elevators. There was a gun shot, and a bullet carved a deep furrow in the brass doors to her right. She swerved to the other side of the hall and grappled open the door to the stairs. She took them up, her footsteps hastened by the crash of the door as Benny threw it open. She turned the corner to the next flight of stairs just ahead of his next bullet. At the top of this flight was another door, with a trash can beside it. She sent the trash can down the stairs, and slipped through the door.

This hallway was much like the one a floor below. Grey carpeting and beige plaint utilitarian in comparison to the splendor of the ground floor. She scurried down the hall, trying doors. The fifth one was unlocked, and she darted inside.

Clean cut men and women in sylk suits turned to stare at her with wide eyes. They were sitting at a table above which glowed a holographic chart. She stood beside the door, panting.

“Can I help you? One of the men stood and took a step towards her. The door burst inward and Benny came through, brandishing his gun. Several of the suits screamed. Chango fled her spot by the wall, and Benny chased her around the table. One woman jumped out of her chair in a misguided effort to get out of the way, effectively placing herself in Chango’s path. Chango ducked under the table, squirming among the legs of chairs and people, finally breaking free to find Benny still entangled in the suits around the table. She heard their shouts as she dashed for the door, and just as she reached it, a shot and a scream. She didn’t look back. She was running again.

At the end of the hall was a narrow wooden door that read “maintenance only” in faded black stenciled letters. She tried the handle. It was locked, but there was a ventilation grating at the base of the door. A small, old square of metal covered with several layers of beige plaint. And one corner was loose. Chango worked her fingers underneath it and pried it from the door. The three remaining screws popped out. She gathered them up and pushed the grating edgewise through the hole to hide it from her pursuer. If he ever got free of the suits; she still heard noises from the office down the hall. Her shoulders barely fit through the square opening, and it took her precious seconds to wriggle her hips through. She was in a small grey stairwell threaded with wires, pipes and ventilation shafts.

Helix stood on the diving platform and looked down into the vat where she lay floating in the waters, her long dark hair streaming around her, dreaming, and opened her eyes. For a moment everything ceased. Nothing existed except for those bright blue eyes that were her eyes, that face that was her face, and then, with a scream, Helix leapt into the vat.

She plunged deep down into the emerald green spaces and rolled over, looking up at the surface like a sky quickly clouding as her sisters scrambled into the waters, creating turbulence with their limbs. They were swimming towards the queen. Several of them spotted her and broke off from the wave, diving below the surface to converge with her as she sought what they all sought, their mother, who was turning now and swimming to meet her.

Her sisters clamored between them, filling the waters with their bodies, congealing into two knots, one around her, the other around Lilith. As they surrounded and grappled her, Helix felt their panic. One of them wrapped her arms around Helix’s neck and hung on. Her face swam through Helix’s field of vision, a face like her own, but with more delicate features. Helix saw the terror in those blue eyes and felt, with no need for words, her message, “If you kill each other we will all die.”

It was true, but still Helix struggled and thrashed against the restraining arms all around her. She didn’t want to hurt them, she just wanted to get past them, but as they tightened their holds on her she bit and clawed to break free. A hand she had savaged let go of her upper right arm, and Helix reared back and butted the creature directly before her with her forehead. Doggedly, Helix pulled herself through the small wedge in the living wall around her and reached out with stiffened fingers to poke the next available sister in the throat.

The closer Helix and Lilith managed to claw towards each other, the more the others pushed them together in their frantic efforts to get back in between them. Soft, dark tendrils of her mother’s hair drifted past her face and Helix twined her fingers in it, pulling her closer. Lilith came readily enough, mouth wide and hands outstretched. She grabbed Helix by the head and pulled her face to hers, laying open Helix’s cheek with the sweep of a fang.

Helix felt her blood that was not really blood flow into the waters; felt the waters flow into her. She almost relished being cut again, it would bring her that much closer to the depths. But this language of touch, which she could not help hearing though she felt it through violence, had not yet robbed her of all sense of self-preservation. She ducked and angled under Lilith, grabbing her by her upper armpits as she went. With her forearms Helix forced Lilith’s lower arms against the shoulder joint, and they rolled together in a stately somersault, ringed now by her sisters who gave them room and waited, watching. In a small corner of her mind, Helix realized she had not breathed since she dived from the platform, but it didn’t seem important, because everywhere else, she was talking to her mother.