“Ribcage crushed from behind. Spinal breakage. Organs are crushed.”

The head mortician paused. Organs missing a small portion. Arthritis in the spine…and ribs? Or scraping of the metal foot mentioned in the incident report?

No, the sections missing had no evidence of scraping or progression of arthritis. A physical anomaly? But the stomach….

______

Lilly sat on a soft sofa chair in the lounging section of her home. The man named Nathan was there and one of the street spies was talking to him.

“How could you tell her!?” He flicked Nathan’s forehead. Nathan flinched but retorted, “Children do better when they know. This one’s too smart. She wouldn’t trust anyone if we withheld the truth from her. Plus the evidence is right there in the stuffy and her own body!”

The spy scribbled down in a portable notebook.

“Don’t worry uh…” He checked the insignia on the spy’s coat. ‘Kleth. I know I'm low on moral support in the city. I’ll be gone by the second moon tomorrow before I run out. Come back one day to redeem the few moral credits I’ve got left .”

“She’s in city custody now. The chilton too.”

“Along with her mother’s corpse?”

“Well yes of course. Naturally.”

Lilly hugged her chilton closer and put her knees up.

Mama, she thought. Papa was always stopping people from dying. Why didn’t it work? Where was Mama? Where was Papa? Papa was fighting but he promised he wouldn't die. Mama doesn’t die either. See? Chila got hurt too, but she’s still here. 

_______

Rhe ran and ran through the city. The screams and red death were distant. The killers were staying close to the park district. She had to slow down every block to gather her strength.She held her hand up to a wall to breathe. Her pants were dirty and the pockets bulged. What? Oh all her tidbits. What did it matter if she died?

Suddenly the door fell away and she nearly stumbled.

“Ah!” A lady with pants and a shirt that hugged her many fatty curves shot her fist out where Rhe had just fallen from. In her hand was a corkscrew poking out between her fingers.

Rhe looked up at the lady. “What? Your plan was to screw a burglar to death?”

“More like perverts these nights.” She eyed Rhe as if she were one of the perverts crouched right before her eyes. “And what are you doing at my back entrance mechanic?”

Reality hit her reality like a brick to the skull. "Dead, People are dead."

  "Dead to the world? It's getting late. Is why I'm about to open.”

"No! Don't open. Someone's killing people with a plasma rod.”

"What? Are you already deep in the pond?”

"No! She didn't usually get angry but she'd never run for her life before. Footsteps came by; men and women and zeman in city militancy uniforms. They carried plasma rods and runed chest-vests. One of the zeman ran closer to them.

"Lock your doors! Don't let anyone in!" Zhe looked around "And your windows if you have any."

"Dear Elements.” The lady dragged Rhe in through the wide back entrance. She locked the panel door. There were no windows.

The room was dim and welcoming. Sofas and lounging pads were arranged in intimate spaces. A set-aside section to the left was all wood and stocked full of bottles and cups. fancy cups and practical cups. Nothing that could help them stay alive. 

“Wh-wha-uh. What. Do you have any weapons?”

“No! of course not. Nobody has any weapons ‘cept the Militants.”

Rhe skipped around behind the narrow counter. There might be a fork or something. She found a knife there resting in a block of wood. She pulled it out. The knife was stunning. And very sharp. A weapon.

“Don’t touch that! It’s for feeding people, not killing them!”

“What? Isn't this a Lounge? Alcohol and stuff?”

“We serve Slesh’ta too. Raw fish.”

“It’s not close enough to the ocean for that.”

“Well a recent graduate designed an ice preserver. So yeah we can get raw fish about twice a year.”

“Okay okay wait. We need a plan! What do we do? This is supposed to be a safe place. I'm so mad!”

“Well isn't this why we have the militancy? They’ll stop those killers. They won't make it past the campus property - you know at the park sextet.”

“I hope not, but that’s where they were already when I saw them killing. If anything stopped them it was me. I wish this city had a plan for this. Hmm the Militants are going around. Do you think they’ll stop people from going out?”

“I don’t know. Based on how they addressed us without context, people will probably get curious” She gently eased the knife out of Rhe’s hands. “Why don't you sit down and have a rest. What are you going to do? Are you sure the men killed people? They’re not testing a new plasma rod for the Militants are they? That’s common in Droon.”

“They were. They are testing - on people!”

“We’ll stay here. I’ll send a friend of mine to see what’s going on.”

A friend? Rhe thought.

Out of the wood of the bar came off a creature so strange. It splintered off as if pulled out with a wedge. Then uncountable legs popped out and the splinter raced away down into the shadows under the bar.

What!? Rhe was so stunned she stopped thinking about dying again and merely stared.

“I don’t know what it is, but it likes to spy for me. Then it comes back here. It tells me what it saw.  It chews out a shape in any wood and takes its place.”

“Took me so long to understand it. Pictograms! It likes to draw. And keeps getting better. I read in an elven book about creatures like it. They seem to call them Adjia.”

“Did you forget that people are dying out there? Everyone’s in real life-threatening danger!”

“Yes… well you say so. And I was going to have a boring night with only a couple patrons. Well this will help you know what is going on. I mean what you don’t know can still hurt you so better to know.”

“So where did it go?”

“Oh it will follow its own instincts. I'm sure it will get there. Maybe it's all over now. Then I can still open my lounge!”

Later that night Rhe saw papers on the outer walls of buildings and one of the short tunnels that marked a sort of metaphorical portal between the university and residential sections of the city. The tunnel did not go far but the top of it rose two floors above her head. At her eye level the page reported fatalities in one of the parks. The deaths were reported as accidental collateral damage from a new invention being tested in unapproved neighborhoods. 

That wasn’t an accident. It was murder! “The militancy. They don’t usually hide the truth.”

Something is wrong. So wrong, she thought. People were starting to notice her reading in the middle of the tunnel and they too stopped around her and read the report. 

“This is the city of invention. They WANT us to know the truth so they can benefit from it.”

“We can’t let this stay hidden. Ugh sometimes I wish I wasn't human. We’re so smart but so selfish! So afraid to risk ourselves so we let others suffer and suffer and suffer. Things that could change RIGHT NOW don't because of stubborn HUMANS!”

Now people were chatting and staring at her. She walked through a gap between them and tried to re-entered the Lounge from the front. The door was locked. She knocked and waited. The door opened. Rhe addressed the proprietor immediately.

“I'm going. Bye. Gotta tell people the truth.”

Behind the woman Rhe noticed the splinter adjia reappear from the same shadows and settled into its gap on the bar. Rhe stopped. “What did it find out?”

The proprietor noticed her eyes look beyond her. She did not turn to look. Instead she leaned in to whisper. “Hmm, it's a big deal. It was out there so long it got exhausted. We'll have to wait until it wakes up again. Probably tomorrow morning.”  

“Then I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

She walked out toward her room at the university. 

Rhe went to her classes. She tried to get to her workshop. The workshops were closed. Otherwise the day was too normal. The whole city should have been gathering. She spoke with Neth who took her seriously. They went to the Professors’ octet. Their concern was heard. She still felt like none of that mattered. After the blur of adrenaline, Neth split up with her to go to class.

On the way back to the student building, Rhe saw a bush shake. More like shiver. The roots pulled up and eyes opened. It had trouble staying together. Branches fell. What she thought were fruit were actually eyes. One of the four fell off. The creature was able to put itself back together. Was that an adjia too?  

The tree monster followed her up to her room. This was not good. Now people were noticing her. Well they were noticing her tree stalker.

It was able to shift and adjust where its branches were attached. They probably thought it was some sort of autotoy. Many students had strange side hobbies. Couldn’t they tell it was organic though? Some of the students that stared at them must have realized.

The maybe-an-adjia stared at her while she changed. She’d knocked it over and hid it in the closet, but it broke out. She’d covered it with a blanket which it took off. She had even smacked it. Nothing stopped it from staring. Neth would have to get used to that too. She was going to dump this stalker on him. Then she could get back to telling the city the truth. She’d do that through the school’s catalogue. She knew that people followed the latest catalogue more than they followed the latest city reports. She’d figure out the details while she tried to fall asleep on her sleeping mat.