Smoke and Shadow: The Fireweaver, Book 1

Chapter 26. LOST GARDEN

CHAPTER 26. LOST GARDEN

They say don't look down. But Dimarrah did anyway. Not the best idea when you're eighty feet in the air and especially not when you've almost reached the top and you're not quite sure where your next handhold will be. And you realize not all of your strength is back. Still, she was better off than Rhoke, who looked a bit like a clumsy orangutan, clinging to a branch below her. It would have been comical if not for the look of sheer terror on his face.

"Can't you keep up?" Dimarrah teased, almost regretting it when she saw his face again. She went back to finding her next handhold, sweat on her forehead, the leaves rustling against her cheeks. Two more branches and she reached the top. 

She pressed her wristscreen over it while Vane verified what she'd known just by touching it. 

Entirely hollow. But there was something else. 

"I'm getting some conflicting readings on what the makeup of the air flow is in there..." Vane said, now on audio, and paused. "Toxins," he said finally, confusion in his voice.

The escape of the toxins, from the exotic gardens, right up through the top of the dome. Out into the world. Now, only inches away from it, the truth hit her.

They are pumping poison into the atmosphere.

And then, Why?

Vane double-checked the readings. Whatever was flowing out of the tree was not the oxygen they boasted. 

The subliminal messages from her childhood living in the city came rushing at her all at once, the brainwashing of so many generations.

Our city gardens are the new lungs of our Earth. We must, at all costs, keep our city centers thriving, and our gardens will breathe life and beauty back into the world. We can rebuild this world for our children, and our children's children...

All of it, bullshit propaganda. Bastards. She wondered how many trees and tunnels throughout the center were positioned to spew out the city's toxins. It could be hundreds. Thousands. All under the guise of healing. Dimarrah felt the heat of anger rising in her body, felt it spread, surge to her palms.

Save your revolutions for another day. Rhoke called up into her mind, impatient. What do you see?

Dimarrah peered down at him through the waxy, synthetic leaves. The trunk shoots out the top, she said, stating the obvious. We'll have to cut through whatever this connecting material is. Seems to be some sort of flexible plastic... Like nanofabrics.

She swiveled her screen so Vane could see the material too. She noticed three nodules buried within the bark. Synthetic bark.

"Don't cut through anything yet," Vane blurted. "Those'll have sensors." Dimarrah almost jumped back in a panic. They hadn't gotten their face masks on yet.

"Not cameras," he said "Sensors to detect a breach in the material. Give me a minute. I'm tapping into the main system's controls. And bingo," said Vane, "The ventilation is on a predictable cycle, as I thought."

If they timed their entry just right, no poisons would seep into the dome. If they didn't time it right, the sensors might detect toxins, the dome alarms would sound, and all entrances would seal shut, effectively locking them in.

While they waited, Rhoke joined Dimarrah on an adjacent branch, tentatively, as though he wasn't sure it would hold his weight.

"You know," he said, adjusting his grip on a branch above them, sort of framing her, "technically, this is our first 'date' night."