《Unforgiven Reciprocity》 WTF ¡°I¡­ loooooooove¡­ HIKING!!¡± Carey hollers between strained breaths, at the top of the tallest peak in all of Wyoming; ¡°Titanium¡± by David Guetta, that guided her to the summit, dancing in her ears. Echoes of her voice bouncing around the valley and back to her fade to only the whisper of the wind. Hot pink and teal glacier glasses block most of the light from below; not the beauty of chaotically crumpled velvet laid out for miles. A muffled ¡°wumph¡± from her pack dropping the rock, she eyes it disapprovingly, her wrinkled brow scowling over the thought of shouldering it again. Already laden with climbing rack and pieces on her harness, the pack only added to the challenge. Free from burden for a few moments, standing tall she spread her arms and legs wide stretching out the day¡¯s arduous route. She collapses her Go Pro selfie stick, tossing it to the growing pile of gear. ¡°In through the nose¡­ snnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiif.¡± ¡°Out through the mouth¡­ hhhhhhhhhhssssssssssssss.¡± ¡°Namaste.¡± The feeling of crisp cool mountain air filled her lungs, small goosebumps tickle her skin. ¡°Time for snacks and snaps¡±, she giggles to only herself over her personal soundtrack pumping out of her Beats portable Bluetooth speaker. Turning to rummage through the top compartment of her The North Face pack: finds her cell phone with pop-socket, finds her one-hundred calorie sweetened with Stevia snacks repackaged into Stasher bags, finds her purified bottled water repackaged to a sticker laden Nalgene bottle. Gracefully spinning on one heel, she sits down on her backpack. On her phone, she thumbs the various apps to get to InstaBook and open the selfie camera. Looking out across the valley thousands of feet below, she feels accomplished, strong, proud. Well above treeline, sunshine warms her as the constant breeze wicks away the sweat from the efforts of the climb. Thousands of feet below her in the valley the krummholz blends to deep green coniferous forest to the yellow of the drainage plants; fed water by numerous glaciers scattered throughout the range. At this height, there is only pure blue of sky with pure white of clouds busily streaking by the pure dark rock ridgeline. Her soundtrack begins playing ¡°Ain¡¯t No Mountain High Enough¡± by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. The perfect song for a great post. Her phone switched from airplane mode, she is locked in position. Chin up and slightly left, tightening the skin of her neck. Eyelids slide gently down, seductively obscuring the whites to enhance the hazel with flecks of gold in her irises. She gently purses her lips while waiting for the signal indicator in the upper corner of the screen. The no service flickers, then morphs into a single bar of service. ¡°Should be enough.¡± A smile dances across her cheeks, spreading up to the corners of her eyes. Marvin Gaye crescendos as she allows the emotion to play out through her body, a beautiful pink flush flowing over her face. Raising her eyes to the horizon to catch the light; feeling the warmth of the sun. ¡°ca-click¡±, from her phone. Her outstretched arm pressed the shutter button on her cell phone screen at the perfect moment, at the peak of her expressive pose. [Post] Elated with the sharing of her recent conquest, Carey began humming with anticipation of all the likes she will get; thumbs working the screen of her cell phone. ************************************************************************* Total Tour Search and Rescue found all of Carey¡¯s equipment on the summit of Gannett Peak; just as seen in her recent InstaBook post. Exactly as her shared picture, with no Carey. Her mother had called emergency services when she did not return that night. Within 10 hours, TTSR had begun retracing Carey¡¯s trip plan as provided to them by her mother. Only 20 hours later they make it to the peak, Gannett Peak usually takes a mountaineering crew 24 hours to reach it, the novice takes four to five days. TTSR knew they had to race if they had any chance to find her alive; they found only her gear. It was setup picture perfect still, just as posted. Carey had been an accomplished crew member for Total Tour Search and Rescue for over six years; they all knew she had the skills to solo summit Gannett. The team setup a lower camp to begin the next few days searching. They worked their way around the peak, climbing sections to get into rock falls, rappelling down into crevasses with lamps. With the technical sections of the mountain covered by humans, on day three the corpse dogs arrived. Crews of three people and one dog each were created with a total of four groups. Following search patterns and standard protocol, they worked up from the lower angle sections of the mountain. A few hours after the teams dispersed, team two that was sent to the north-west lake that forms at the base of a glacier, got a positive hit from their corpse dog. The dog pulled hard at the edge of the glacier where it melts off into the lake. Jerrod¡¯s heart began pounding in his throat. His feat struggling for purchase at a full sprint through the chunder, his grip shaking on the leash of his kite in a tornado pulling him towards Carey¡­¡¯s body. Dejected and confused, Jerrod packed up his gear at the search camp. His search group was stationed at tree line, just down from the ascent trail. They were tasked with retracing the original track, while the rest took the faster rappelling way down. The day before, his teammates Liz and Zach had followed the corpse dog to a body, just not Carey¡¯s body. Upon inspection, the team physician determined it was an elderly man; he must have been a tourist that come to cross Gannett off his bucket list, must have been frozen in the glacier for years. After six days of searching and with the addition of one body to carry out, the lead was calling the search. Jerrod had been seeing Carey on and off for a few years, both understood it was casual. Still, he felt obligated to call Pam, Carey¡¯s mom. It would be difficult to tell her of the team¡¯s failure. His cell phone was off and stowed in his basecamp bag as per policy. It took a few minutes to retrieve it deeply buried beneath the various tools kept in his one hundred-ten-liter mountain rescue bag. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. An unbelievably loud screech, sounding of a freight train¡¯s brakes in an emergency, metal tearing on metal in the wilderness. Throwing his cell phone into his tent before it can even be booted up, amplified screams slammed into Jarrod¡¯s brain. His hands jolt to either side of his head to block out the terror. Just at the edge of his vision by her tent Liz is yanked up at an impossible trajectory, pausing midair to thrust backwards into the trees. Her blue coveralls folding into the branches, splashing into the dark. ¡°Liz? Hello¡­hello¡­ hello Liz?¡± emitted from the cell phone lying on the ground next to her footprints in the dirt, only the faintest of dust settling on the screen. Fording the ground behind with all his strength, Jarrod races with his flashlight to where she was only a moment before. Thumbing the switch on, a blast of intense light beam cuts through the forest. The spot frantically searches for something to make sense of what he just saw. Movement of to his right steals his attention. A raccoon center stage under spotlight; its hands busily picking at a shoe. Slowly, smoothly, Jarrod approaches it. Flashlight almost too bright, high-fidelity shadows distorting the world. A heartbeat away, he sees the racoon burry its face into the shoe, retracting its jaw dripping with a dark fluid. Deciding to finally notice Jarrod, the racoon hisses and dropping the shoe with a wet ¡°thunk¡± darts past the sharp edges of light into the black. Focus of the flashlight frozen on the fallen, wet shoe Jarrod stretches his arm to pick it up. Left shoulder forward, left arm slowly extends, first finger and thumb reach the shoe as to pluck an overripe strawberry. Is Liz¡¯s shoe¡­red? ¡°What-tha-fuck!?¡± Death throes from behind him; Jarrod is immediately reminded of the sounds from a mixed martial art competition his father took him to as a kid. Frozen in confusion; staccato grunts, bones shattering, a wet splatter coming from above. Silence releasing his faculties, he whips his flashlight around, seemingly ahead of the beam. His eyes struggle for coherence. Zach¡¯s pack falls from the heavens slamming the earth torn straps tattered and akimbo, cell phone shattering and going dark. Zach¡¯s eyes focused with a dead stare directly at Jarrod, unblinking and without the rest of Zach attached to the head. From the darkness above, a crunching sound demands Jarrod¡¯s beacon of light skyward. In the boughs of the fir trees above his light finds the head that was attached to the body of Zach, shiny and sticky bark reflected dark, sticky red. ************************************************************************* The next morning when the rescue team did not call or answer satellite pings, the on-call dispatch at TTSR sounded ¡°code red¡±. Every employee, volunteer, and lawyer were directed to report in at command central. The sweltering room was packed with people standing with shoulders pinched against each other. People sitting on the regular faux leather padded board room chairs with additional folding chairs and bar stools pressed against the long meeting table; air conditioning not able to keep up with the building anticipation and worry. Sounds of muddled voices, whispering theories while people waited, shifted, and eyed the smartboard display at the head of the room. It displayed - CODE R.E.D. Everyone knew it was not good, it could not be good; R-E-D stood for Rescue Evacuation Disabled. Something had gone very wrong. ¡°Good morn¡¯n all,¡± Ralph McGowen¡¯s voice, director of operations for TTSR, commanded all eyes to him. He took a moment to nervously blot his brow with a weathered paisley handkerchief before clicking to the next slide of the PowerPoint. The next slide depicting a topographic map of Gannett Peak. ¡°ninety-six hours ago, we received a missing hiker report ¨C one of our own. Carey McGowen was reported late coming back from her ascent of Gannett Peak via the mountaineering route.¡± The words were acid in Ralph¡¯s throat. Even though his daughter worked for him; he saw her nearly every day. The call was the first time he heard his ex-wife¡¯s voice in six years. Ralph continued with a recap of the facts: his daughter called in lost, rescue team deploying, report back from the team they were calling off the search. Then, no report from the team. None of their cell phones were answered, although, the phones rang several times before going to voicemail. Neither of the three satellite phones issued to the three rescue teams were answered. ¡°We were able to fix a location based off of the satellite phone telemetry data¡±, Ralph clicks to the next slide. A red arrow pointing to the exact summit of Gannett Peak. ¡°Here, at the summit, all three of the sat-phones are relaying their current location. ¡°The exact same as Carey¡¯s last know location.¡± He clicks to the next slide displaying three yellow triangles. ¡°The yellow triangles represent the rescue team camps as of sunset yesterday evening when they reported they were calling¡­¡± his voice cracks ¡°¡­off the search.¡± His red paisley handkerchief finds it¡¯s way to his eyes before his brow. ¡°The team¡¯s egress route was NOT back to the peak. There was no reason for all three sat-phones to be there.¡± The room explodes with concerned, excited questions. ¡°Hold on people!!¡± Ralph throws up his hands, ¡°That is not all of the information!¡± He waits for everyone to settle down. ¡°I had the state police poll every cell phone from each person on the team for location. Every device came back being on the peak¡­¡± loud, overlapping questions from the room. ¡°PEOPLE!!!¡± Ralph waits for the room to compose itself. ¡°Every phone EXCEPT Jarrod¡¯s. His came back no signal, meaning it is off, out of power, or broken.¡± Every phone in the room called out for attention, screens lit up all with the same number; some displayed a name - Jarrod. The people who had saved Jarrod¡¯s number frantically answered, while others stared at the unknown number; the force of the chaos creating mental shutdown. The few who had their phones to their ears seemed frozen, listening in unison. Ralph did not want the distraction, and left his in his office stood still, the PowerPoint clicker in his hand, knuckles white, muscles in his forearm pulsing. After the unanswered phones went dim, ¡°What is he saying?¡± Demands Ralph. As if choreographed, every person with their phone to their ear collapsed to the floor, eyes fixed somewhere the living could not see. ¡°What ¨C Theee ¨C Fuck?¡± whispered Ralph. City Slickers Chapter 2 ¨C City Slickers ¡°Get off that damn Tic-Tok and take out the trash!¡± yelled her dad from the living room between sips of beer. ¡°Mmmmhhm.¡± You should get off your sorry ass and do it yourself. Monique complies, mumbled loudly from her perch at the bottom of the stairs of their urban row home. Busily scrolling her phone screen with her left hand she shuffles over to the waste can, fighting with the plastic can liner with her right. Freed from the can, she drags the garbage bag across the linoleum in the kitchen, the cans rattling a tune along their journey. Scroll, scroll, scroll. The door creaks as she bumps the tattered screen open with her knee, tugging the tear in the screen larger just a bit more. Trash bag lurching along the floor as she drags it over the threshold; slumping down on to the brick stoop following her to the sidewalk. From the chair in front of the television, ¡°And don¡¯t let the door¡­¡± ¡°SLAM! SLam, slam¡±¡­it bounces shut. She lives in a suburb of Chicago, near the Des Plains River, on the edge of town where the block row homes meet the concrete riverbank that was once part of the canal. Across the river as local children referred to it - more like a drainage ditch that never quite dries up - is a Nature Preserve. Its pristine overgrowth is guarded by an eight-foot hurricane face topped with razor wire and plastered with wind-blown fast food wrappers and cups. Monique releases the bag at the curb, it slouches into place alongside the battered galvanized trash bin, already overflowing with pigeon picked bags. Eyes plastered to her phone she stumbles down the concrete embankment on her side of the river, steps across a few bits of garbage laying moist in the trickle of putrid summer runoff laying in the middle, then up the grass tufted rock embankment on the other side. Shrouded by the electric night of the city, she squats down, back leaning against the fence with the glare from her screen illuminating her dour face. Scrolling through various videos, occasionally her expression twitching with appreciation of her social media feed. Pressing play on a short video, scantily clad dancers jump into camera and begin gyrating on screen: it dims a bit, returning then again, stepping down darker to near unviewable. ¡°Dang eye saving auto darkening setting¡±, but then it dims again to black, appearing dead. She sighs, swipes down to the brightness control setting intending to override the eye protection and bring up the brightness. The screen flickers on again to show the menu. The slider is full bright? ¡°Stupid piece of¡­¡± ¡°SMASH!¡± ¨C she slams her phone onto an unsuspecting nearby rock. Springing to her feet, her foot rains down on its flickering screen; following up with a soccer goal punt scoring points for her team into a stagnant puddle of trash and algae. Satisfied with her destruction, she spins on her heels towards home. A prick of obscene greenish-pink color pulls her attention to the fence line. Where she was seated leaned up against the forlorn wire fence thick tendrils of plant stalk formed a silhouette of her. As she watches them, they seem to twist leisurely outward. Buds rapidly forming, then popping into peculiar graceful flowers in a calliope of colors she does not know a name for. Her head cocked to the left slightly, she watches as a dozen more buds explode into reality. Gliding slowly forward, raising her outstretched fingers toward the obscenely beautiful flowers. They are each the size of her head and seem to be¡­ glowing? Illuminated flecks of pollen curl out from each, spiraling into the air and delivering a sweet scent to Monique¡¯s nose and an exciting, dizzying feeling to her mind. She moves closer, worshiping on bended knee as a finger of her left hand brushes the petals of one of the flowers encircling the shrine to her previous location. She remembers the creamy softness of the touch - before waking up in her bed. Monique flutters her eyes open, a slight headache creeps in from behind them. ¡°Unnngh.¡± How did I get here? ¡°What happened?¡± She mumbles, sitting up in her bed, noticing she somehow changed clothes to her night shirt. Rolling over to her window, squinting from the morning brightness blazing through open shades; she peers down to the river and across to the Nature Preserve. She can just make out her cell phone still laying in the muck and the place where she last remembers being. The wire fence line completely overgrown, no flowers. ¡°Monique!! Come get your breakfast now or you will be late for school!¡± Her father bellows up from the kitchen. The fog in her head slowing her down a bit as she throws on ragged jeans and a sweatshirt depicting a glittery kitten working a mixing table, DJ style with over the ear headphones on. Hopping to put on one shoe than the other as she makes her way down the stairs nearly falling with each hop. She struggles to pull on her left shoe. My finger tip is green! Examining her hand, fingers outstretched, flipping it over and over, rotating around the axis of a single green fingertip. Flexing her hand a few times; it seems to move properly. The first finger on her left hand appears hazy green, as if it had been stained by juice mix - she immediately about-faces back up. After wrapping her fingertip with a bandage; satisfied it looks perfectly plain, she is back on her way downstairs to breakfast. ¡°Hey honey, how did you sleep?¡± Asks her father as she grabs for a few slices of peanut butter toast. He places a glass of orange juice in her hand with the bandaged finger. ¡°Yea dad, just great.¡± ¡°What happened to your finger?¡± ¡°Oh¡­ I¡­ Um¡­ cut it¡­ on my cell phone screen.¡± Maybe. ¡°You broke your phone!?!? A-gain?¡± He turns to face her, exposing the look of disappointment. ¡°I gotta go to school.¡± She puts down her empty glass on the counter, puts the peanut butter toast in her mouth, and heads out the front door. ¡°And don¡¯t let the door¡­¡± ¡°SLAM! SLam, slam¡±¡­it bounces shut. ****************************************************************** ¡°What¡¯s with your creepy finger? Creep!¡± Sneered an older boy as she passes by in the lunchroom. His cronies seated around him join in with background laughter. Not able to hide her hand while carrying her lunch tray, he noticed it while she was passing by his table. She had been pretending to be right handed all day, left hand living in her pocket. The green haze had grown down her finger and spread halfway across her hand covering her thumb and middle finger completely. She graces her antagonists with a sneer of discontent, continuing on to a seat by herself with her left hand towards the wall to hide it. ¡°I bet it¡¯s hard to eat with the correct hand lefty!¡± The boys had made their way to her table, the lackies surround her; the red headed, pock faced leader sat directly across. Cornered. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. ¡°Leave me alone.¡± She responds quietly, eyes down, hands on her lap. Laughter. The boy snorts through his nose, guggles up through his throat, standing up from his bench seat, leans over her tray letting the regurgitated snot slowly descend onto her tepid lunch. She feels the anger well up from the pit of her stomach, her face going red, her left hand begins throbbing with pain. She jumps to her feet sending her bench seat flying backwards to slam into the window to the cafeteria shattering it. Her feet become heavy as she slams her fists into the table and growls at the boy, face only inches from hers she can smell his rancid breath as he mockingly laughs harder at her. ¡°What are you going to do? Loooooser!¡± She anchors her feet to the ground her muscles tense as she prepares for a fight. Her left hand whips up to jam an angry finger in his face. But all that is there is a polychromatic flower, colors pulsing with her enraged breathing. ¡°Nice magic trick, freak¡± the crowd that has gathered erupts into laughter, cell phones recording the exchange of infantile rhetoric. A throbbing pain wells up through the sinuous muscles of her arm. The energy reaches her hand erupting out into a barrage of barbed vines spreading in a starburst of plant matter. Each vine impaling first the boys in her immediate proximity, then each member of the camera crew of students before recoiling back to wrap around her. Students dropping to the ground, their blood amassing around them, Monique becoming mummified as each vine is satisfied with its mark, binding her in place, finger still extended with the ridiculous, beautiful flower blooming from point of first contact. ********************************************************* ¡°Breaking news tonight¡­ a West city middle school had a bizarre massacre by a topiary this afternoon.¡± The screen flashes from Diane¡¯s polished, made-up stern expression to a pasted together copy of the various live streams that were being broadcast during the incident. Clips changing just before showing the owner being brutally impaled. The final image is of a plant in the shape of a girl, single arm outstretched and pointing at nothing in particular. Roots from her legs pressed passed a pile of bodies through the concrete floor, breaking it to the substrate and spreading along its surface to drink up the offered crimson liquids. ¡°Thanks Diane. The police have issued a statement securing the school until further notice telling people to stay away while investigations are underway.¡± Frank grins at the camera. ¡°Looks like a nice long weekend for the kiddos!¡± At home audiences can almost hear the ¡°ding¡± off Frank¡¯s teeth as his wide smile breaches the orange-tan of his face. The two announcers look directly at each other, she mirrors his expression. ¡°That¡¯s right Frank, did you see the silly hat on top of the massive plant, it looks ridiculous!¡± ¡°Ha ha ha ha ha,¡± they laugh together. ****************************************************************** The few live stream videos went locally viral following the news report, hashtags enabled government to find and delete associated posts within the hour. Within an hour of the incident city police investigators called for federal intervention. The FBI arrived with a construction crew; they immediately erected a wall made of pre-fabricated, twelve foot high concrete sections around the building. The following day, Monique¡¯s father was visited by two non-descript people in grey business suits, he was told she was a victim and given a sizeable check for his troubles; he stopped drinking beer turning to whiskey. Media sources immediately lost interest and turned to memes of cats and dance battle videos. The public was never made aware of the biohazard containment unit erected behind the wall. The wall¡¯s outer surface was donated to the local outreach program where it was used to display the work local street artists. As the art display rapidly grew, nobody took notice of Ahmeed and his coworkers accessing the shadowed door on the North side of the complex. The simple looking rusty door with its thumb latch handle, mechanically powered to make the swing effortless actuated by the print reader hidden on the latch. It is backed with layers of ballistic steel opening inward, a book printed on thick steel instead of paper. It¡¯s frame, over fourteen inches thick accommodating multiple pages. It¡¯s action is as if dominoes fell over to the left allowing access, then set themselves back to make contact with the frame again, with a soft hiss followed by a gentle sucking pop. Past the vault door, Ahmeed births himself through the iris of the plastic barrier door sucking along his body, entering the first clean room. He drops off his wallet, keys, cell phone and all other personal items in the RFID secure locker assigned to him. Turning, he presses though the next plastic iris barrier wall. This chamber is filled with biohazard protection suits, complete with air recirculating umbilicus and waste disposal connections. Groaning at the thought of the invasive garments, he struggles his on anyway. The suits are mounted in the wall, he steps through the oval back of the suit into the legs, then ducks under the top of the oval head first so he may align the facilities located below the waist and then close the back. Free from lavatory concerns, Ahmeed opens the suit supply and return valves located across the chest of his suit and steps away from the wall into the observation chamber. Dragging the umbilicus behind him, he gingerly steps around the previously high school students to the workbench airlock to retrieve the sterile sampling tools. He waves to Kate on the other side of the glass. They have no voice communications. The previous scientists found out the hard way that the organism is reactive to electronics. Kate and Ahmeed have never met in person nor have the spoken, all information is passed via secure digital networks on approved devices prior to arrival at the facility. The volatile nature of this organism has made it necessary that all procedures are memorized precisely before personnel are instructed to access the facility. Ready to get to work, Ahmeed gives Kate the thumbs up and turns with a large step over a motionless clean suit filled with One of his dead predecessors who attempted to take photographs of the organism with an infra-red camera. She was the last scientist to die from electronics use. The theory was not quite clear as to how sensitive the organism was yet. Ahmeed passed the first scientist to die, laying face up to Ahmeed¡¯s left. This scientist had a cellular phone in his pocket, a huge breach of protocol for Top Secret space access. Shortly after his death, the RFID storage lockers showed up. The third to go was who Ahmeed directly replaced; his body was up ahead, still slumped over the organism¡¯s main body, suspended by what they have labeled as the ¡°stalk¡± which protrudes from the center body like an arm holding a single flower. The bodies have been able to be removed, concerns of contamination have been paramount; punctured clean suits are no longer clean. Ahmeed has been tasked with collecting samples of what appears to be an iridescent purple-teal mushroom sprouting from the top of the central body. Kate will then isolate the specimen into multiple sample plates made of laminated sheets of Lexan, much like riot proof glass. She must do all of this in clean chambers accessed by permanently mounted gloves. Kate has yet to receive a sample; not a single field scientist has been able to acquire one. Ahmeed has successfully navigated the carnage, he is within reach of the organism. His collection scalpel and receptacle in his hands hovering inches from the mushroom; body frozen in space, he looks back to Kate over his right arm. From the other side of the glass, she gives him two thumbs up and an encouraging smile. From the inside of his foggy face mask he breaths even harder, eyes bulging with fear he forces a crooked, nervous smile turning back to his task. He flinches slightly as the tip of his scalpel makes contact with the mushroom; expecting to die. Nothing. He draws the blade through the surface with the gentle tug of human skin, deeper into a Cr¨¨me Chantilly interior. A second cut to complete the ¡°V¡± releases the gooey section to fall firmly into the waiting collection receptacle. Inside of the mushroom appears electric blue veins pulsing sequentially within a dark green substratum, the cut away sample appears to hold the same characteristics despite being disconnected. Ahmeed finally exhales, he must have been holding his breath forever. Navigating his way to the sample drawer to pass the precious goods to Kate, he feels his body relax after an eternity of tension since he was assigned the final walk within this death house he has managed to escape.