A Different Lighthouse

Chapter 8

Ben nearly slipped and broke his neck stepping into Langford's office, the floor littered with soiled papers and puddles of standing water. Most of the lights seemed to be out, a few bulbs still remaining and dimly lighting his way past the front desk.

"In the back," said Langford impatiently over his radio. The thing was worryingly easy to patch into, it seemed. "Hurry up, and close the door behind you."

He glanced over his shoulder, ensuring that the bulkhead door had indeed shut completely, before making his way toward the back of the lab. In it's prime, it seemed that the place had employed a small team, at least five desks situated in the room past the entrance and the walls lined with bookshelves and tables housing various containers and soggy boxes of files. He nearly had a heart attack when he rounded a corner and came face to face with a turret, but it didn't fire. He slipped past it carefully. In the farthest, darkest corner of the lab he finally found Langford, locked behind another bulkhead door inside a small room and visible through a grimy window. Ben approached it and, when she didn't appear to notice him, too busy poring over the papers in her hands, he knocked a couple of times. She looked up, stared at him for a moment, before dropping the papers to the table and walking over to unlock the door.

"Get in," she said curtly, nodding inside of the room. Ben slipped inside as quickly as he could, sensing that she was not a patient woman.

Inside was a room absolutely covered with plants, some potted and some seeming to be growing out of the filing cabinets against the walls. To the left was a large window, an expansive view of dead Arcadia beyond it and a machine Ben couldn't place on the ground in front of it. Langford closed and locked the door behind them, then reached and snatched Ben's radio off of his belt.

"Hey," he protested, frowning at her as she turned it off and set it on the table where she'd dropped her papers.

"I don't want that rabble rouser listening in," Langford sniffed. "I hope you know what you're doing, getting mixed up with his type."

"From what I've seen, desirable types are hard to come by down here," said Ben, his eyes roaming around the room as he tried to take in the haphazard details.

"Mm. On that, we can agree. Now, I need you to do something for me."

Ben lifted an eyebrow at her. "Me? I'm not a scientist."

"Clearly not," she scoffed. "The task is simple, though. I need a sample of Rosa Gallica from the grotto on the lower level of Arcadia. I can use it to synthesize a cure for Arcadia's ailment, but I don't have time to go and fetch it myself. We have very limited time, and I must keep working."

"How will I know I've found it?" Ben asked, blinking as she nudged him straight back out the door.

"It's a rose. You've seen a rose before, haven't you?"

Ben opened his mouth, but he frowned deeply as the words got caught in his throat. Try as he might, he couldn't quite conjure up the image of a rose. "I...I'm not sure."

Langford peered at him over the rims of her glasses, one dark eyebrow quirked. "Well. Take that Armitage Hux with you. If nothing else, he's good for clearing a path through Splicers. With any luck, the two of you together might just manage to find a rose."

Ben stumbled as she edged him the rest of the way out, feeling dazed as his feet carried him back out to where his companions were waiting. What an odd thing. Surely, he must have seen a rose before. It felt like he must have, anyway. Perhaps the darkness and tension was getting to him... clouding his memory...