Chapter 47

Daniel looked at her in surprise.

There had been people downstairs?

“Are they are alive? Can you get rid of all the plants to let me check?” Rosica stared back, as unyielding as ever. It took a certain personality to take a build that relied on purely on strength and that didn’t involve backing down or beating around the bush.

“I’ll look.”

Without hesitation, he seized the nearby plant tendril. It was green and when his mind entered it the annoying consciousness that had launched the attack on him was not present. He sped along the fibres that he had already converted. Every moment, Daniel was ready to react. While he had seized control of the area once, if he was the enemy plant, he would have taken Daniel’s removal from the network to seize territory back. Whether because it was being cautious or it was incapable of it the enemy consciousness had not tried to regain the real estate that it had lost. His mind flicked down and explored the corridor on floor seven and then came to a halt.

The situation had changed.

The tendrils that his power was rushing along ended. When previously they had extended onward, presumably to the central mind of the plant, those connections had been severed.

It was another reminder that what he was fighting was intelligent, or at worse, cunning. It had separated the network that it controlled from his one.

Smart.

Plant Sense flared out and he could see that the separation was physical. In brief time he had been out of the network talking to his team the plant had caused a twenty centimetre length of vine between their networks to rot away. There was putrid material filling the space that had dripped away to leave an air gap.

Smart and scared because it had got creative in its attempt to separate them.

For a moment, the different priorities wrestled within him. The war with the monster, his search and hopeful rescue of the people Rosica had lots and then finally the basics of defence. The monster had created this barrier to thwart him and it didn’t make sense that he wouldn’t give it the same credit? What should he do? Should he be setting up defences?

His mind recalled the offshoots of the plant that he had ignored when he had rushed down in attack. They were an active vulnerability and even if there wasn’t a way to create an active defence, he could burn out the known connections to his network. His mind swept back through the plant, searching for the animal parasite that co-existed with the mindless plant.

He hunted for a trace of it, exploring the areas he had already purged.

Clean.

Now what?

Search or defence?

His people not Rosica’s came first. He swept around level nine to confirm there was nothing up there. He was not terrified, but concerned that somehow it had a presence there and was preparing a surprise attack.

There was no secret conspiracy or at least none his method could sense. Floor nine was clear of the parasite’s influence. He dropped to explore eight. Immediately, it was obvious that this was a different story. The plants were spread further than upstairs and there were large stretches he had not touched.

Daniel went cautiously worried that a plant able to strategise might possess an unwelcome surprise. As he explored the new area, the animal parasite died and that opposing mind that he was dreading running into did not emerge. Almost a third of floor eight had been compromised, spreading out from the stairwell. But unprotected, he converted it all quickly. Without active resistance, it took very little mana to burn away the parasite, as rather than using his own mana he borrowed from the rest of the plant he controlled. It was a delicate operation that if he was opposed by the enemy consciousness, he would have failed dismally.

Luckily, the plant had been scared sufficiently to retreat.

Done.

He thought viciously.

Yay! Priscilla shouted along with images of him opening up chips to celebrate preferably ones she had not tasted before.

The entire plant network he had access to had been purified. In his mind, he imagined he was a paladin of god driving out the corruption. His golden light destroying the demonic hordes. The truth he knew logically was far grimmer just one biological entity gaining an advantage over another. A process that was carried out within nature a million times per second.

But it was a victory that the immediate plant was clean. The enemy driven off it meant he could use his other abilities without fear of it backfiring.

Now that he was sure it was safe, he rotated through floor eight and used his Plant Sense power to work out what had happened. He skipped along the tendrils that had expanded out through the lower floor. Body, body… his count rapidly breached nine and despair filled him.

Then life.

Daniel’s eyes snapped open as he kicked himself.

Animal Sense.

Power blossomed as he sensed downwards.

Four humans of which one was of mutated variety were almost directly below him.

The friendly plant he had converted while it occupied a large volume of space had very little actual power associated with it. Compared to a human the plant was mist vs human’s iron. The same could not be said about the plant monster that had almost killed him. It’s outer reaches were the same mist but the creature’s core space that was larger than a hotel room was styrofoam. There was no part of it that was as dense as a regular zombie let alone an elite but there was so much volume that it more than matched the power of the ultra. In total capacity, it probably rivalled the super.

Why couldn’t anything be easy!

He screamed in his head.

A sense of support radiated from both Priscilla and Finigan. We’re with you those emotions told him.

The two of us, Priscilla’s thoughts assured him. With the two of us, she was confident they could win, then another thought occurred to her… and maybe the dog, he could help, his teeth could be useful… Daniel could feel Priscilla continuing to think furiously and possibly Tamara her lights were pretty and they might get hungry mid battle… Possibly a tiny bit of help from everyone just in case things needed to be carried but mainly the two of them. Together, they would destroy it and then celebrate.

Yay!

She was shadow boxing once more on his shoulders.

The support helped.

They could definitely win.

Daniel knew it was optimistic. He understood things were never that easy and even after this issue was defeated there was still the problem of the lizard and whatever those small shapes the previous night had been.

She stopped pretending to fight on his shoulder.

Together.

There was an unshakable faith in that word. Together, they would make the world crumble.

Together Fix.

Fix the world was the context and not for the first time Daniel stopped thinking about the future and forced himself to focus on the present and past.

Those fucking scientist who had let their curiosity destroy the world had a lot to answer for.

Animal sense faded to nothing and before extending his power to save the people he internalised all the information, the ability had gathered. Volume wise, the enemy was significantly larger than what he had already converted and the power became more concentrated the closer they got to the centre of the creature. He knew where the heart of the plant was and that was where they ultimately had to attack. Not only had it been in the centre of everything it had also glowed the brightest.

To defeat the monster, they needed to destroy that. If he was a betting man, he was sure that’s where the creature’s core would be, if that was indeed how plants functioned.

His mind kept assessing what he had sensed. Facts were important. It had been five times the size of the plant he had already converted, assuming there were not secondary brains lower in the building that was the depths of the challenge he faced. But the energy difference between what he had purified, the outer reaches of the enemy and the core was stark. In the centre, every winding vine or hooking root had three or four times the energy of the neutral equivalent, which meant the plant was fifteen to twenty times more powerful than the bit that he had defeated.

Internally, Daniel shied away.

He definitely could not beat that sort of power in a straight up fight. A series of running battle might do it, but only if destroying the outer reaches of the plant reduced its strength. If he went that path, then it would be days before he would even know if that was successful or not and if the plant was smart, it would grow downward and present upwards with a hardened defence. It was possible that it could outgrow him with that strategy. If its growth exceeded the amount of damage that Daniel could put out then ultimately humans would lose.

It had felt weak when Daniel had engaged with it, but then they had been fighting close to him and a long way from it. As he got closer to its centre, that dynamic would reverse and it would end up stronger than him.

He shuddered.

There was no guarantee he could beat this.

Together. Hope and confidence filled her thoughts.

Despite the mouse’s support, that second thought had felt like it was true. He could prune the outsides, but ultimately he needed to get face to face with that central power and when he did, he would be terribly outmatched. By the time he reached the centre, it would be at least ten times more powerful than the consciousness he had fought a running battle with. Out this far, he had been stronger than it, but by nowhere near that much.

It was more powerful than him.

“What?” Tamara asked almost making him jump. “What are those facial expressions?”

“Facial what?” Luke asked.

“I–”

“My people?” Rosica interrupted.

Shit, Daniel’s mind flashed back down the plant. He must have sensed almost ten dead bodies, but some were clearly previously loses. She was after the survivors and this time he looked more carefully and knew where to look. “Three dead, four alive.” He told her.

“No.” Fury and helplessness flitted across her face. “Who? Where?”

“One dead on the stairs, the other two in a room downstairs.”

She started forward and Daniel let his power flow into the friendly plant. There was a rippling effect and like modern day machinery combined with lots of strings, all the vines, roots and plant parts were pulled sideways to create space to walk down the stairs, admittedly with so much mass to contend with the path was narrow.

Rosica hesitated.

It was intimidating.

“It’s safe.” Daniel assured.

With a big, shuddering breath, she jogged forward.

She sprinted down stairs and Daniel focused once more to continue to open the path through to the three trapped in the room and the one it in the corridor. As he passed bodies rather than burying them, he raised them to the surface.

“No!” they heard her scream.

Daniel’s eyes went to the other new fighters that had come up with Rosica. In the immediate space, there were almost as many newcomers as there were his fighters, but he could see what Rosica had meant in their earlier discussion. Most of them felt weak and while his identification skills were working overtime that was not what he wanted to focus on. Daniel looked at the emotions that were playing over their faces. He couldn’t read the facial expressions of the mutated humans, but the normal ones were apprehensive. They were men and women accustomed to loss, but they recognised Rosica’s scream as one of grief rather than fear. He could tell that there was a story there and while they dreaded the news that was bound to come they were not as invested in it as Rosica had been.

One of them, a mid-fifties woman’s who radiated the impression of scary competence, noticed his look. “Rosica is one of the few with surviving family. Her husband and mum and dad.”

She had screamed ‘No’.

He swallowed.

The woman gave a small nod to him. Acknowledging some of what he had worked out. Rosica had screamed no when passing the body on the stairs.

“Nothing we can do,” Alex snapped. Daniel wanted to strangle him in response to his callousness, but Alex was not that type of person. He was trying to do his bit to keep the mood up and it had been coming morose. “Let’s plan. Tell us what we’re facing?” Alex continued. “That thing grows plants faster than you do.”