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Marina enters the front foyer of her old workplace, gun in hand. This is not how she ever anticipated returning. In truth, she would have been happy to never come back here at all. “Mariah!” she calls out. When there is no immediate response, she tells Cleve that they need to check the downstairs lab. As they start down the steps, they notice pieces of burnt vine litter the way.
At the bottom of the steps, the swinging lab doors stand closed. Each has a small window, though, so Cleve and Marina carefully peer within. The scene of carnage inside is evidence that Marina is not the only one dissatisfied with time spent in Dr. Gupta’s lab. Bloody surgical equipment is scattered about, some on a side table, but other pieces have fallen to the floor. Small vines are also everywhere. A thin layer of white foam coats a number of surfaces, as though a fire extinguisher—or a fungicide spray—was used. Dr. Gupta is slumped motionless against the wall to the far right, near an overturned surgical bed. The briar beast is in the opposite corner, on the left. It is tearing through a cabinet.
“It’s trying to get its fix,” Marina whispers. As someone struggling with addiction herself, she recognizes the signs. Cleve reports no sign of Mariah, and Marina frowns to herself. She should’ve conducted more experiments with her bioscanner and Mariah. She’s never used it to try to pinpoint his location, but it probably could, particularly if he was actively manipulating resonance fields. Hopefully she’ll have a chance to try that out in the future. Hopefully they’re not already too late.
“Guess we’re going to have to fight this briar beast again,” Cleve says resignedly. The rampaging creature has possibly killed the person they need to question about the one clue they have, the vial that Bella found. And if Dr. Gupta isn’t dead yet, then she certainly needs medical help. Cleve shakes his head at the implications of this mess. If briar beasts are rampaging into buildings then the Garden of Chiron is even less safe than he thought. He hefts his rifle, signaling to Marina that they should make their move. It looks like the briar beast has just found whatever it was looking for in that cabinet. “Okay, we battle. The plan is, we shoot it,” he says simply.
They push through the double doors at the same time, guns up. The briar beast detects the motion and slaps tendrils their way. A cluster slams against the nearer door, swatting it forcefully into Marina, who stumbles backwards. Cleve, meanwhile, shoulders through the right-hand door. As soon as it is open more than a crack, he has clear line of sight on the target and aims at the core node. It’s a solid hit. The briar beast spasms wildly in its death throes, tendrils flinging out in all directions. More medical equipment shatters, and a conduit of wiring gets torn from a metal box mounted on the wall.
When the briar beast finally goes still, Cleve says to Dr. Citali, “You want to go check on her? I’ll look for Mariah.” He enters the room fully now, rifle still ready, and does a thorough sweep. None of Mariah’s things are here, nor the man himself. Just a mess of miscellaneous medical tools and a lot of unlabeled liquids. There are no hiding places, no cabinets large enough to stash a body in. But there is a sheaf of notes, and some of them have Mariah’s name on them, indicating that this hasn’t all just been a wild goose chase.
Marina moves swiftly through the wreckage over to Dr. Gupta. The surgical table overturned near her has fresh blood on it, as do parts of the floor and walls. Those don’t look like spray patterns to Marina—it could be Mariah’s blood rather than Yerin’s. And all those vials of blood over on the rolling cart, those definitely do not hold Dr. Gupta’s. Marina crouches down in front of her former mentor and searches for a pulse. There’s a weak one. Before Marina can decide what to do—or not do—about it, Yerin’s eyes crack open.
Through the barest of slits, Dr. Gupta regards Dr. Citali. “Marina?” She shifts a bit and groans. “What are you doing here?” she gasps out. One arm is limp and battered, but with the other, she reaches out and clutches weakly at Marina’s sleeve. “The briar beasts are… are loose. They haven’t gotten their dose.” Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth.
“What did you do with Mariah?” Marina asks urgently, convinced that he was here at some point.
“Mariah? He… he can save us,” Dr. Gupta wheezes. Yerin heard the rumors from the cultists, but she wasn’t sure whether to believe them. Even with what she had seen up until Mariah awoke, she still wasn’t expecting the level of activity she witnessed. For one, the amount of resistance; he was definitely not as subdued as she had thought he was. But also the feedback, the glow. “He’s the key,” she insists.
“Where is he? What did you do to him?” Marina demands more forcefully.
Yerin sighs. “I set him free,” she says magnanimously.
Marina gasps, immediately assuming the worst about how those words could be interpreted. Dr. Gupta might be a scientific genius, but she has no qualms, no qualms at all. Harnoor is dead because of her, wasted away from miasma poisoning. Marina has already lost a sibling to this woman, has she now lost a friend—or someone who could have been more—as well? “What do you mean?” she cries, shaking Yerin.
Jostled to more alertness, Dr. Gupta sits up a bit straighter. “What? Mariah? No, no, he gave me so many good samples. But he’s not here now. I let him go.”
Cleve does not like the sound of that. “You had him restrained?” he asks, coming over to join the scientists.
Dr. Gupta coughs a few times and then cranes her head back to look at the man looming behind Marina. “Of course. There’s no telling what might have happened. We’re in uncharted territory.”
“Did you kidnap him?” Cleve demands.
“It was too important to leave to him. He didn’t know how important he was. It was of utmost importance to do this as soon as possible,” Dr. Gupta says, using her mantra of importance to justify her actions. Cleve shakes his head. He suspects she didn’t even try to get Mariah onboard first. You can get him to do anything! he thinks.
Through more coughs, Dr. Gupta continues, “I’ve had problems in the past with people not realizing their potential.” Her eyes drift down to Dr. Citali.
Cleve’s heard everything he needs to on that front. “How many briar beasts are there?”
“Briar beasts?” Dr. Gupta echoes, momentarily sounding confused. “Oh! Oh, gosh, the briar beasts are wild right now. You need to be careful!”
“How. Many.”
“There are six briar beasts that I maintain in the lab. They’re probably roaming the city right now. Well, except for…” She leans to the side, looking past her interrogators. “How did that one die?”
Cleve doesn’t bother giving that a response, looking instead to Marina for what they should do now. She’s torn. They need to protect the city from briar beasts, yes, but they also still need to find Mariah. Dr. Citali stands up abruptly and goes over to the cart covered in vials. Other sample containers are scattered on the floor, having been knocked around in the briar beast fight but fortunately not shattered. She scoops up a few of them to examine. Although not labeled with words, she recognizes the codes from having worked in the lab herself. Cerebrospinal fluid from the lumbar region, bile from the gallbladder, peritoneal fluid from the abdomen, pleural fluid from the lungs, lymph from who knows which node, and blood—so much blood. She runs some quick computations. Mariah’s tall and well-muscled, but if he’s lost this much…
“How do we sound an alarm?” Cleve asks.
“There’s a phone in my office,” Dr. Gupta says weakly. “You should probably call it in.”
“Mariah’s going to be dizzy and barely walking. There’s no way he could have gotten up the stairs,” Marina reports to Cleve. Turning to Dr. Gupta, she demands once more, voiced laced with anger, “Where is he?”
Yerin actually starts laughing. “He can control the briar beasts! He can emit his own pheromones!” With coughs wracking her body, she gasps out, “Maybe the cultists were right. Maybe he is the Child of Chiron.” Coughing and laughter intermingle, and tremors run through her. She’s insane, Cleve thinks, but to his surprise, Dr. Gupta pulls herself up to her feet.
Yerin wobbles for a moment, but she pushes through her mortal injuries long enough to stumble to her stack of notebooks. Grabbing them from the counter, she thrusts them at Marina with one hand while clutching at the sleeve of her former protégée with the other. “Marina! Marina! You have to take my notes. You have to publish them posthumously for me. People have to know! They have to know about my work on this! These blood transfusions—that’s the obvious thing, but there’s so much more. You have to do this for me.” She slaps the notebooks against the younger woman, demanding attention. “Marina! Marina! Will you do this for me?”
Marina is silent for a moment but then settles on the only revenge available to her. “No. Your name will never be attached to this work,” she whispers back fiercely. Will she take the research? Yes, of course she will. She and Mariah were planning to consult with experts in the Garden of Chiron—that was always their intention, and Yerin wouldn’t be at death’s door right now if she’d just let them come to her in their own time.
“I’m heading upstairs to call in the alarm,” Cleve announces. The drama here is irrelevant to the active threats demanding his attention. “But I want all the samples and research gathered up for Mariah,” he adds sternly. “It’s all his.” He departs.
“I’ll publish this, but it won’t be in your name, and it will be in memory of Harnoor,” Marina tells Yerin, grabbing the notebooks and stepping back away from the unsteady scientist.
“What? No! You have to—” Dr. Gupta collapses. The strain of having her dream crushed, just as she thought she had obtained it, is too much for her. To be adapted to Chiron, to be known as the one who made the planet livable for all… these things will never be hers.
Marina looks down at the dead scientist grimly. Would she ever have killed Dr. Gupta, even knowing what she did to Harnoor and Mariah? No. But does she have any qualms over letting her die? No.
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