Chapter 56

Tamara and Daniel turned to face the corner. She had a light globe up as usual, which let them see perfectly in the corridor that looked like it belonged in a land of magic. They stood in a slightly cramped surrounding surrounded by a living wall.

Part of which was apparently hostile. Daniel shot an annoyed glance at the purple infection and then his eyes snapped back as they slowly came around the corner.

The victors, or, more accurately, the survivors. There was no triumph in their steps. Just exhausted souls sick of loss.

Luke shuffled along with Phil one of the cores tanks physically supporting him. Luke, while mended was a broken man lacking the energy to even walk.

Then the pall bearers emerged. Two groups, each carrying a body gently.

Daniel flinched away.

Everyone seemed restless and unsure of what to do. No one was willing to make eye contact with anyone else. They were all lost in their own worlds. Thanking the gods they survived or maybe cursing them for being responsible for what they faced.

Alex cleared his throat. “I know it feels like we got sucker punched. But we won.” There was a pause as he looking around, forcing people including Daniel to make eye contact with him. Daniel was relieved when Alex’s gaze continued on to others. “What do we do now?”

“Drink.”

“Continue.”

“Have a funeral,” Rosica said clearly.

Phil sighed. “I need a break. I can’t keep doing this.”

Daniel thought about it for a moment. “We need to keep pushing down.”

“Why would we do that?” Rosica asked. “I’ve been fighting constantly for days. We won.” She spat the words out. “The bloody thing’s dead. We can have peace for a moment. Screw fighting for a day. We’re not machines. We can’t keep pushing every waking moment.”

“Because we’re not machines, we have to push. Human’s are dying outside.” Daniel told her quietly. “We need to give them safety.” Rosica looked like she wanted to spit in anger. “Get you head out of your arse.” Daniel snapped at her. “I lost a friend, too. Don’t you think I want to turtle and have beers to commiserate. But it’s not the right choice. We need to clear the building and then declare that we’re safe. Throw up signs. Come here for safety. We have a monster free area.”

“I agree, son,” Alex said quietly. “What will you have us do? And are you sure that’s dead?” He pointed at the purple plant.

Not for the first time since it happened. Daniel’s hand reached out and tapped the green and purple tainted plant matter that covered the walls. His mind immediately delved into the plant. Derick’s consciousness greeted him enthusiastically.

He had half forgotten about the intelligence that he had created and by far the most efficient way of countering any threat from the parasite was to get Derick on board.

The details of what had happened flowed between the two of them. Derrick reacted with surprise, annoyance, and then anger. It didn’t know what to do. It hadn’t even felt the invasion and losing a significant proportion of its body. Without their intervention in killing the monster plant, Derick would have died and never even comprehended the danger. His very mind structure sucked away like leeches on steroids, draining away all the life-giving blood of their victim.

Defence, Daniel told the plant. First thing is to make sure things didn’t get worse. That strange power that let him communicate and transfer vast quantities of information flowed from him and into the plant.

His mind rushed through answers. There were two issues to address. The first is that Derick had lost processing crystals without even noticing it. That was like being oblivious to the part of the brain being torn away. Humans had pain sensors to prevent that happened. The second was an inability to scout regularly because any sort of discipline in that space would have picked this up. Daniel decided to address both problems.

First, there was the lack of nerves. He ummed and ahhed about the best way to assess this. The obvious solution was to borrow from biology and create sensors, but Derick was a distributed processing intelligence. That was something that Daniel felt could be used to his advantage. In theory, every processing crystal was in continual communication with the rest. Losing even one of them should stand out. Daniel’s mind envisaged a change in the code that would allow each of the micro-processing crystals to be tracked. It was so simply that he could envisage the solution directly without help from his processing crystals. All the micro-processors between one instant and the next became numbered, with a persistent handshake was set up. Basically, they all dialled home every micro second or so to confirm that nothing had happened. Then, In addition, that bit of consciousness would dedicate a proportion of its calculations to a local area search for any parasite with instruction to set off the alarm if it found anything.

With a slight up-swell, in the volume of information being continuously shared within the plant the new functionally switched in. Silent losses of micro-crystals were no longer possible.

Even breaking off a leaf would register, which Daniel knew would happen, but it had to be monitored in case it was the infection taking hold again.

The changes went live and Daniel hesitated, dreading the worse. He was terrified that the parasite would be passively spreading.

Derick? He thought, sending over his thoughts and concerns. Emphasising what it would feel like if it was losing micro crystals. Any

There was no response for a number of long seconds while it monitored the situation.

Nothing

Internally, Daniel sagged in relief. They were not expanding. If they were given how small, they were and the volumes they were talking about at least one would have vanished over those three or four seconds.

Then it was time for the stage to which was to make sure there was no opposing consciousness anywhere in the peripheral network the plant was attached to. In basic terms, this was the bits of plan infected with the parasite. Derrick could act in these spaces but couldn’t take them over till the parasite was burnt out. For now it was separate, but in Daniel’s plan Derick would control all of it. A willing ally that was powerful enough to kill pretty much anything outside of the lizard. That was well worth taking a few minutes now.

Daniel taught it to do quick sweeps. The point was not to change anything it was to make sure that an enemy intelligence was not hiding. There was no way to be sure, but if the sweeps were continuous, then it was only a matter of time until it made a mistake.

Then the last change was to focus on expanding its own power by purifying the animal parasite directly. Daniel struggled to teach this process. What was intuitive to him was antithesis to Derick.

Daniel used what was available.

Together with Derick, he took that consciousness over to a bit of the purple vine. Then he showed the plant exactly how to burn out the parasite. Over and over again he demonstrated. Visibly, they got to know where progressing only millimetres in a time that he could have converted metres. Daniel suppressed the frustration and restricted his power. Once more, explaining what he wanted to be done.

Millimetres by millimetre, he crept forward till he passed one of the tiny bits of computational material that was embedded within the plant. Then with immense delicacy, with the plant following every slow step he executed he incorporated that into the plant’s consciousness. They took a new number and added to the collective processing power.

You do?

He thought at it while mentally conveying far more information to help it comply.

This time instead of him burning out the corruption as he liked to think of it. The plant did the honours. It couldn’t do it as cleanly as Daniel had learnt to do. Daniel’s process was akin to plucking a week and throwing it away. Derick couldn’t do that, rather the intelligent plant cut each little piece of animal using the tiniest of razor blades. While it took Daniel a single motion to remove one of the parasitic spots, it took Derick hundreds of cuts.

And it showed in the speed that Derick could progress.

It was not an efficient process and when he watched, the green crept outward only slightly faster than watching grass grow.

They passed another computation of grain and Daniel once more showed what he wanted done. Derrick complied and then Daniel quickly burned a section away to reveal another grain. This time, the plant incorporated it by itself.

Satisfied that Derick knew what to do and could continue the progress. Daniel swept through the monster’s body, searching for any signs of consciousness. While Derick would do the same, and far more frequently. A fresh set of eyes could only help, so Daniel maintained his concentration the whole time. Both praying he wouldn’t spot anything and that he would because then they could counter it. That was none of that, not even a glimmer. What had once been a fearsome single entity was now just a huge, giant, dumb chunk of vegetation that would grow like normal plants did and be eaten by all the insects out there without the capacity to respond.

Daniel’s hand dropped away, and everyone was looking at him.

“Mate, it looked like you’re fighting it.”

“I was teaching the good plant.” He tapped the wall. “To eat the bad plant.” He pointed to where one of the purple vines was slowly turning green.

“It looks like it’s going to take a while.” Alex quipped.

“I imagine, like everything else it’ll get more efficient as it goes.” At the very least, as it grew its processing power Daniel knew it would begin to use multitasking to speed the process up. That would create faster progress even if the method of defeating the parasite remained unaltered.

With the plan dead, it was time to finish clearing the tower.

Animal sense flared out.

Spiders.

He had already known that, but the variety was breathtaking. Apparently, pre-event, the lower floors had suffered a hidden arachnid problem. Then again, maybe not. There was a difference between a spider smaller than a Tic Tac in the corner of that room and that same animal now being cat sized. One was invisible and the other one needed a four-person team to corner it and kill it.

Daniel absorbed the information.

Priscilla was a no go. There were several fast spiders and even one was too much to risk her. Beyond that, there was a massive variety of different types. It was like every example of the spider kingdom had been sucked in, yet at least on the closest floors there were no strong ones.

“Spiders.” Daniel told the others. “We can take them. I think the weakest team could clear all the floors safely.”

Alex smiled grimly. “Open the way. And we’ll slaughter them.”

“We’ve been fighting all day. I think we should do a vote.” Rosica suggested. “Like we’re safe now. We were trying to fight the plant to get away from the ferals. Now that they’re dead and the plant too, there’s no rush.”

Daniel ignored her and kept walking.

“Rosica is it?” He heard Tamara say. “Daniel, just saved your life in the same way he saved everyone else lives by putting by fighting.”

“He’s not my boss.”

“He also reminded us less than a minute ago why we need to keep pushing. You’re alive because he has taken risks the whole way through but it’s prioritised people. The rest of us are going to pay it forward.”

“He didn’t save our lives,” Rosica protested. “Yes, I was worried about the ferals above, but we weren’t in any immediate danger.”

Daniel heard Tamara scoff. “And if that plant had treated you seriously. Could you have contended with any of its counters? When it truly came after you, did you have a chance?”

“Leave her,” Alex said urgently. “It’s not worth it.”

“It is.” Tamara yelled. “Karolina’s dead. We need to make it mean something.”

Rosica stormed away.

“She’ll come around.” Alex promised.

Daniel was annoyed that she was not doing her job, but he wasn’t going to push it, especially since most of her people had stayed back and were planning on continuing the fight. If they lost one person, even a grumpy ex-boss, he could live with that.

In the stairwell on the way down it was a small amount of green and then all purple. He’s power flared out and the purple colour drained away and then massive vegetation split and he walked down, ignoring floor six which was owned completely by the plant and exited on floor five which was only mostly plant.

When he looked back, the stairwell had room for only one person at a time. Given that they had witnessed numerous people get crushed by similar vegetation, Daniel knew it had to be nerve-wracking for them. They all followed him. Faces grim and weapons, ready and trusting that it was as safe as he had assured them.

Animal sense flared out.

There was only one truly dangerous animal left in the building and that was on the ground floor. Together, they could do this.

Happy Daniel pushed the door open, and they were no longer in the residential space of the hotel.

He flinched in surprise. Directly in front of him was a door labelled pool. He shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, he had used this pool before all this started. Mind you, its appearance was very different now. Back then it had been boring and slightly run down. Now it looked like the setting of a horror film.

He glanced to his right and what used to be a row of glass window panes, most of which were shattered separated him from a lot of exercise equipment.

The gym.

It had only been a week, but it felt like months since he had used it.

The equipment was mostly rusted, aged heaps of junk and on one side it was covered by webs and the other by purple tendrils.

Instincts almost made him stop and triple check there were no enemies, but he had used his spell and he knew the area. He forced himself to walk forward to clear space for the others and they all clattered out of the staircase and filled into ordered groupings behind him.

They had nothing to be scared. He was the more dangerous thing on the floor..

There are sounds of scurrying from the gym room.

“When you get identification, call them out.” Alex started yelling. “Standard positions.”

When Daniel looked back, standard positions were messy. It looked like despite Rosica protestations she had returned and had shoved to the front, accidentally disrupting the neat lines that had been forming. The rest of the new recruits from floor nine were not much better.

“Order is tank then melee, then ranged with heelers in the centre.” Alex called out as he walked forward to make more room. “Daniel, how do we need to play this? Together? Or split into teams?”

“Splitting’s fine.”

Alex immediately retreated to Rosica, and he could see the harsh conversation they were having. Lots of abrupt pointed gestures.

“Ok,” Alex said finally. “We’re using our standard fighting teams. Rosica is going to distribute one or two people to each team. Daniel, you’re joining team one.”

To replace Luke was the unspoken reason because he had not made it downstairs. Instead, his wife and Carly had taken the crying man upstairs. Daniel was happy with the assignment. This way, he could fight with Tamara.

“And you’re team captain.”

Daniel raised his hands to stop that. “Nope. I haven’t done enough with him, don’t know their temperaments or abilities. Give it to someone else.”

“Ingrid, you’re in charge.” Alex called out immediately.

Systematically, they went through the floor in small teams and destroyed each and every spider. There were injuries. People got webbed and other people bitten. With the spiders so large, it was hard to tell if any of the deadly Australian varieties were involved, but Daniel did not see any. He really didn’t want to have to fight a metre tall red back.

Fifteen minutes later the floor was cleared.

“Are they all going to be like that?” Alex asked him.

Animal sense.

His mind assessed the next four floors, and then he shook his head. “Next two floors are harmless, but after that the ground and floor one are dominated by a single massive spider.”

“I don’t like spiders,” Daniel heard someone protest. “How big is huge? The ones we just fought were bad enough.”

There were a few nervous chuckles.

Daniel wiped the sweat off his brow. “Big, but we’ll strategize once we’ve cleared the next two floors to lower the risk.”

They swept through the two floors with the same level of brutal efficiency. After ultra’s and a super, followed by the plant monster that was as big as most buildings the individual separate and weak spider were only a minor challenge.

They crept down to the second floor and stood together, looking down an escalator. The metal stairs with signs of rust and frozen in place by the lack of electricity. Once upon a time, they had connected the lobby to the more exclusive restaurants that existed on level two.

“We want to fight it here if we can.” Daniel whispered.

It was late afternoon. The sun had not set yet, so with all the windows there should have been a lot of light, but every single window was covered by purple leaves that made it feel like the entire level was in perpetual twilight. Daniel could only imagine how powerful that stupid plant would have become with an extra couple of weeks of growth.

The dark shadows theoretically should have suited the spiders more than the humans, but they had so many magic users that had launched light globes around that every room they fought in ended up as bright as they would have been pre-event. “If we can lure it here, the lack of space will delay it and let us get some cheap hits in.”

“Delay?” Alex asked while he looked downwards. They were standing on a balcony looking downward onto the marble floor of the lobby through a gap the size of a large backyard pool.

“Yeah delay.” Daniel agreed. “It’s too big to get through the gap.”

Alex’s eyes widened.

“But I imagine it’ll create a hole soon enough.” Daniel pointed. Across from them, they could see the thin concrete that separated the floor they were on from the lobby. If something was powerful enough, it could tear that down to make space.

“And we can kill this?”

Daniel shrugged. “We’ve got a line of retreat. We only need to reach the service stairs. It’s not following us up there.”

Alex nodded at that. “Fight hard, but be ready to run.”

“We’re going to miss Luke.” Tamara said.

“That’s a good point, Daniel. Who’s on point?” Alex asked.

“I was assuming you.”

“Seconded,” Tamara said quickly.

He glanced around, but there were no objections, not even from Rosica.

“Okay everyone. I want a circle here. Ranged in front initially tanks and melee specialists ready to move forward when it opens a hole. On the count of three, everyone makes some noise.”

He counted down.

They started banging the walls and yelling.