Carminite Girl

Deliverance

"It may be smaller than the last, but it's more heavily guarded since it stores her more valuable shipments." Columbia handed over a slip of folded paper to a man in a silky white suit. He unfolded it, scanned the address, then threw it out onto the street below them. "Thank you again," he purred. "You're assistance in this enterprise will not go unappreciated."

"It is your assistance in my enterprise." She snapped. "Be careful you don't forget that." She looked away, down into the roaring street, but the man kept his eyes on her, as if waiting for more reaction. "Callida has been getting nervous," he continued. "Her actions have grown bolder since our recent attacks."

"What makes you say that?"

"Her people raided a ship-port this morning, just north of the Starlight District. Grabbed some girl before she could board her own ship and made off with her." He shrugged. "So irrational, so seemingly without purpose. Very unlike Mama Callida."

Columbia stared at him, eyes wide with fear, her pulse throbbing. "Who was it?" Her fist wrapped around his lapel and pulled him towards her. "Who'd they take?!"

The man grinned a tiger's grin. "Her face was hidden. She wore scrapper's clothes: goggles, scarf, hood. No way to know who."

His back hit the ground as Columbia turned and ran, down through the length of the building out and into dark, towering alleys. She skidded around sharp corners, across pavement wet with rain, coming to a tunnel entrance, a set of steep stairs that led down to the underground metro. Her feet flew down them, two at a time, then through a maze of tunnels into the subbasement, down and down, deeper and deeper. It had to be underground, deep and cold and dark. The garden liked the dark.

She came at last to a rusted iron door and burst through into a stone-walled dome, maybe twenty feet across, lit by a single lamp at the top of the arch. A raised stone path led to the room's center, through a thick carpet of tulips, gently swaying in an absent breeze, red petals gleaming a metallic gleam. Mama Callida stood at the center of the room, hands rested atop a wooden cane, with Unity rested at her feet, on her hands and knees, listing as if in a drug-induced daze.

"Hello Mia," her mother greeted. "It is good to see you so soon again."

"Don't you call me that," Columbia growled. "Don't you dare call me that."

"Oh? Is it only for your lovers to use?" A smile split her fishy lips as she leaned forward. "Does that mean just her, or do your customers count as well?"

Columbia snarled and started to lunge, but two hands came from behind her, landing on her shoulder and pushing her hard to her knees. "Let her go!" she screamed, struggling to break free. "Let her go now!"

"Oh if only I could," she pouted, "you seemed like such a sweet couple." She shrugged. "But this is your own fault if anyone's dearest. She simply knows to much about me now. And you of all people should understand what happens to people who know to much about me."

With one foot she kicked Unity off the plinth and into the flowerbed. At first nothing happened; then the flowers rose on their spindly stems and wrapped around her body, petals against pressing her skin. Unity's eyes widened as they slid out little needles that pierced into her flesh. They lifted her up into the air, feet raised above her head, to increase the blood flow to her brain.

"Stop it!" cried Columbia, "Stop it now please!"

"Do you know how the Garden responds?" said Mama Callida, her tone deadly quiet. "It responds to power. I cannot claim to understand specifics, but I know that it knows the most powerful person in the room, and obeys." She looked at Columbia. "And now it responds to me. I have the power, dear daughter. No matter how much you try to overthrow me, always I will have power over you."

"Just stop it! Just let her go, stop it please!"

"Mia?"

She looked up to meet Unity's gaze. Her eyes were wide with terror, her body was trembling, but there was the slightest hint of determination about her. "I'm not getting out of this," she murmured. "There's no way."

Columbia stared at her with tear-filled eyes, then shut them and shook her head. "Fuck that!" She looked up at Mama Callida. "Take me! Take me instead of her please!"

"Now what kind of mother would I be to do such a thing to my own daughter?" she answered, then nodded towards the flowerbed.

Columbia didn't need to watch. She knew what was happening. A single tulip rose from the bed and sunk a needle through Unity's skull. The wiry stems pulsed with green light as they sucked out knowledge, of her memories, every scrap of self that had made her, and digitized it for Mama Callida's data banks. Unity's body spasmed, and her eyes grew steadily blanker and paler.

Then suddenly the flowers went limp, and her body fell to the ground with a thud.

Mama Callida blinked, confused. "What?" she looked around at the motionless garden. "What happened?"

Columbia took the watch from behind her back and stared at its crystal face. "Seventy six." She raised the watch to show her mother. "Seventy-six people that you've killed here, taken all of their knowledge, all of the information they had about you, and put it all in one place." She snapped the watch shut. "And now all of it is here. With a single push of a button all of that information will be sent to the police, the White Tigers, the other cartels, every enemy you could think of." She stood up, her brothers' grips suddenly weak, and wiped the tears from her face. "The Garden responds to power, does it? I think it just stopped listening to you."

Mama Callida simply stood, shocked, and Columbia motioned for her brothers to grab her. "Take her somewhere she'll be alone." They crossed the stone path to her, their hands landed her shoulders, and her face contorted into an expression of grotesque rage, "You poisonous bitch of a daughter! Listen to me, girl, I'll come back for you, and I will end you. No more playing nice; I will leave you in the fucking gutter! You hear me!"

"Tell it to the damned." She nodded to her brother's, then stepped aside to let them pass, mother screaming as they dragged her down the hall.

Columbia stood alone in the garden, breathing heavily, a heavy weight in her chest. She turned and looked at Unity, lying empty-eyed in the flowers, and a sob caught in her throat, her eye's threatening to pour tears again. Then she frowned, looked down at the watch in her hand, then back at the flowers.

"You know," she said, to no one in particular, "I've always wondered just what the garden could do. If maybe it could..." she stopped, not daring to say it allowed.

A single flower rose from the garden and pointed towards her, as if staring, waiting.

And Columbia smiled.