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Ninth leaf (2)
Yuu-chan 2025.03.26. 01:38
A lot of them. They were approaching fast, from every direction. Lu Feng’s legs were numb, and he heard the Arbiter calling his name louder and louder, and grabbing him, trying to help him stay on his feet until his communicator rang out.
“Yes?”
“Colonel An.” A hurried voice answered; Lu Feng could hear it with his muffled ears because the person talked very loudly. “We detected a huge swarm of insects around the Outer City. They are coming from the Southwest and East. It seems like they are ignoring the ultrasonic dispersers. We also lost contact with District 1, the Dispersion Center, and District 5, the City Defence Agency…”
Lu Feng straightened up, and saw the Arbiter’s calm, but serious expression in the dim white light.
“How fast? How much time do we have? How many of them?”
“We only have… about ten minutes left, according to our calculations. The detectors are on the highest alerts; it must be more than a thousand monsters… probably flying-class as well.”
“Follow their movements closely, and keep me updated. Prepare for evacuation… Someone call District 8, if the shelters are in good enough condition to take the residents. I will go and check the Dispersion Center, someone try contacting Colonel Howard. If needed, send a troop to the City Defence Agency. Do you have any info on why the communication broke?”
“They didn’t submit any report or state an emergency. But maybe something happened in the Dispersion Center…”
“I understood. Start the evacuation immediately. I’ll contact you soon. I’ll also send a notice to the Main City.”
“Roger, doctor.”
Lu Feng slowly overcame his weakness. He still felt uncomfortable. The Arbiter changed a look with him.
“Lieutenant Lu… are you feeling better?” His voice didn’t lose its kindness, even in a situation like this.
“I’m alright. You can go, Colonel An.” He didn’t know if he was really alright, but there was no time to think about it.
“I exempt you from prohibition, Lieutenant Lu. You can go, meet up with the military, and help with the evacuation. Let’s stay in touch on the communicator… And let’s meet up as soon as possible. Don’t do anything unnecessary though. First and foremost, we need our heroes to stay alive.”
His words drowned in a sudden screeching noise that cut through the night; one of the alarm towers went off nearby. It was extremely loud, and Lu Feng was already overstimulated, he couldn’t help but hunch down for a second.
The Arbiter saw him bending down again, but when he reached out for him, Lu Feng shoved his arm away.
“I’m not important, Colonel An.” He said, trying to squeeze out all the coldness from him with those words. “Go now, and save the city. Do your job.”
His rank was higher than the Arbiter’s, so the young man couldn’t protest against him. Reluctant, he slowly stepped back before turning away, then rushed off the wall, and when Lu Feng peeked down, he saw him talking to a group of Judges. They all left in the same direction.
Lu Feng stayed up there for a few more minutes to compose himself. He looked out, and for a while, he couldn’t see any insect swarms, but the ground began slightly shaking.
He had to decide quickly what to do.
This was not his war.
Although the amount of insects overwhelmed him, they didn’t come for him but for the humans. Therefore, he should be able to get out of the base untouched by them, and just leave everything behind. The seeds were in his pocket – if he slips out of the gate, he can go pretty far, and no one would have the time to come and look for him. This was actually a better chance for escaping. He can leave the rose-family in the Main City, they were loved in that garden, and just create his own garden in the wilderness. He could even say he was lucky for this commotion.
…But he wasn’t exactly happy with this outcome.
His heart was racing, and he was tense.
Humans weren’t particularly good. Many of them didn’t care for nature, and even the ones who did, did not care enough.
Madam Lu still cut the roses when she wanted to decorate her room. But she wasn’t inherently bad person, nurturing them for so long, singing and caressing them like her own buds.
Dr Ji was loud and chatty, invasive like ivy. But he also wasn’t inherently bad person, looking after his friends, and helping humanity with his mind.
And the Arbiter…
He was a good person. Despite how many people hated him, he protected everyone to the best of his ability. He might have faked his smile, and people misunderstood him, but he… was the same as the rose. He didn’t want to hurt his own kind, but he had to make sure, they survived.
Lu Feng looked down, beyond the range of the reflectors, to the place, where the tyrant darkness enveloped the plains, where his home lay.
He heard a faint buzz from that place, increasing gradually.
If he goes out now, he still can avoid being seen by the swarms, and just lay low until the night ends before he chooses his new home.
He wanted to go.
Yet, he kept looking back to the small, open area around the gates. It was like a disturbed anthill, people rushing from one machine to another, carrying guns, shouting into their communicators. The Arbiter was long gone, and everyone in all troops had something to do.
These soldiers weren’t his own, since human Lu Feng was the only “survivor” of his last mission – but when he went down with the elevator, everyone near him came to his side.
Lu Feng saw their fear under the blank expression they tried to force on themselves, while they looked at him eagerly. They all waited for his orders, despite him not being their direct superior.
“Is everyone evacuated yet?” He asked.
“Sir, we sent away the last citizens a minute ago.”
“Good, then check your ammunition, and take your position. Make sure you don’t engage in a fight before you have permission for that unless you’re forced to protect yourself. Once the civilians are evacuated from all the districts, the reinforcement will come. You only have to hold on, and protect yourself. If you have to leave your position, try to join other groups, and go closer to the evacuation site, to protect the shelters. If you get different orders in the meantime, follow it.”
Everyone answered with an enthusiastic “Roger, sir!”, and scattered around. Lu Feng stood still for a moment, and felt relief to be alone again.
Although his ancestor was a distant person, he hadn’t been promoted to Lieutenant for nothing. He was a leader among soldiers, one of the highest-ranked ones at that. The rose had no idea about battle positions and protocol, but Lu Feng did. The words came out of him so naturally as if he was still the human inside too. But he felt an uneasy tightness in his chest. This was the first time he had to help someone, and the responsibilities of his rank suddenly weighted his shoulders.
But strangely… He still kept going in the opposite direction with the gates, making sure there wasn’t anyone clueless about the next step. He saw some very young soldiers; their faces still round and soft, their eyes not as cold and blank as other people’s…
Everything happened fast. The swarms reached the base. The first gunshots rang out when a flying shadow landed on the top of the wall. Lu Feng looked up, and froze; he didn’t see anything else, but a thick, black blanket covering the sight of the aurora, flooding above them like a wave in the ocean that washes the shores. The buzzing sound was so loud, he couldn’t hear people’s voices.
The tide above his head gradually slowed down, and started descending over the open area. The laser cannons on the walls were pointed at the sky, shooting continuously, the explosions took down some insects, which had fallen on the ground afterwards. The swarm seemed to take a turn, and instead of going forward to the districts, they returned to the small groups of soldiers at the gates. Maybe they were triggered by the fire and flashes of lights – bugs were attracted to lights, just like how they were attracted to pollen.
Lu Feng looked at them standing still in a weird shock until someone suddenly grabbed him. He was dragged inside a building. Once he was able to turn back, he saw a few soldiers standing in a small room – it was the interrogation room, where he spent his first day in the base. The soldiers had their weapons at hand.
“Lieutenant, you shouldn’t be out there now. Please, evacuate back to District 8 until the reinforcements come. I’ll prepare you an armored car.”
Lu Feng paused, but before he could say anything, the soldier went out to the war-zone. The gunshots became louder when he opened the door, and the buzzing of the million wings was dizzying.
The rose knew he couldn’t protect every single human here, not alone for sure, but he didn’t want to leave – and he couldn’t, anyway. His only option would be to go on foot. But he couldn’t admit this to these people.
His communicator started vibrating, right after the door slammed behind the soldier. It was the Arbiter.
“Lieutenant Lu… where are you?”
“I’m at the gates.” He answered calmly; he didn’t let his voice tremble, not even once in the last fifteen minutes. “The infected swarms arrived. I think we need reinforcement.”
“I know, I’ve already asked Colonel Howard to send his people out there. As soon as the evacuation finishes, we can focus on the fight. It looks like the swarms stopped around the gates, and not planning to come closer to the residential districts just yet. You should come here too. You don’t need to be on the battlefield tonight. I talked with the General, he wants you to go back to the Main City, as soon as possible.”
Lu Feng was torn for a moment before he asked.
“What about you?”
“I have to stay here. Once the fight is over… I will have to do my job.”
“Will people be infected?”
“It’s a possibility. Please, take a car, and come here.”
Just as he finished speaking, the soldier from earlier fell into the room, kicking the door open, screaming.
“Lieutenant Lu, please, hurry! We cover you!”
Because everyone wanted him to leave, and he gave up on the idea of escaping from the base, Lu Feng finally accepted his fate. An armored car parked right outside this small building, and like a flash, he was dragged and pushed towards it, while the soldiers from the small room endlessly shot into the sky above them. Lu Feng didn’t see a single thing, until he was in the car, and the door closed behind him.
He sat high from the ground. The wide windscreen gave him good scenery, with the help of the reflectors.
Liquid covered the open area – red, black, white, brown, many colours mixed there, blood from different species. Bugs’ carcasses and human bodies also lay there, so many, that they actually changed the flat landscape, creating small mounds. The cannons at the top of the walls were silenced already – if it was because people needed to leave their posts, or because the insects killed them, he couldn’t tell.
The soldiers, who helped him, didn’t go back to the interrogation room. They marched forward, and joined with another group, that hid behind a large searchlight. The lamp had wheels under it; it seemed like a portable light source. It gave a good hiding spot while helping their vision.
The noises were muffled in the car, and Lu Feng heard his own fast-beating heart.
He looked at the control panel, and pressed his lips together. His hands were a bit cold.
From the so many buttons and sliders, he tried to push some. He also knew about the pedals, but nothing changed, even after he put his feet on them, and pushed them down. The car remained silent.
There were many things he could lie about; he could pretend to be a leader, he could stay calm outside, he could act like a human, he could nod when he didn’t understand something, and get away with it.
But now, looking at the dashboard, he realised he cannot pretend and lie about driving. He was still clueless about how this machine worked. He wasn’t sure about the exact reason – it seemed like Lu Feng had a car before, and people around him also assumed, he can drive. It was probably a basic thing for a Lieutenant. But while his body and memories let him give reliable orders earlier, they betrayed him now.
When another huge explosion shook the ground and the vehicle under him, the rose made his decision. He reached for his communicator, and with slightly icy fingers, he dialled the last number he was talking to.
The Arbiter picked it up after just one ring.
“Yes?... Lu Feng?”
“I can’t make it there.” Lu Feng’s mouth was a bit dry, and his voice hoarse. Before the Arbiter could answer, he added. “I don’t know how to drive.”
There was silence on the other side of the line. Lu Feng stared at the window, watching the slaughter his pollinators brought to the human base, and noticed that the remaining teams slowly retreated, and the bugs came closer to the small corner he was waiting in.
“Is there any place you can use as shelter?”
Lu Feng automatically turned his eyes to the interrogation room, just to realise that the door was broken, hanging on its one hinge, and blood was coming out of the room. He didn’t see when and what exactly happened there, and his face went cold.
“I don’t think so.”
“…How much ammunition do you have left?”
Lu Feng only had one gun on his side, and when he checked it, he had a full magazine, but that was all.
“It can be enough.” The Arbiter murmured, after hearing the reply from Lu Feng. “The workers usually park their cars at the side of the gates. Right next to the supply depot’s building, there is a passage. You can use your ID to get inside the parking lot. It’s pretty remote and should be empty now. Without people, the insects should leave that place alone. We evacuated everyone on military vehicles, so their cars should still be there. I can’t teach you how to drive a military vehicle by phone, but I can try to navigate you with a simple car, it is much easier to handle. If you can get inside the parking lot, I will lead you out, and you can drive through the buffer zone. District 8 is right next to the gates. You only have to drive and survive for a few minutes. Once you reach the edge of the district, I’ll be there. But you have to stay on line with me.”
The young man came up with this plan on the run, and kept his voice calm and supportive. Lu Feng’s tenseness eased, and he understood his task. Encouraged, he agreed to this plan, and once he checked the outside situation, he got out of the car.
He couldn’t see people anymore. They were there somewhere, shouting and shooting, but scattered around the area, inside the buildings, or behind them. The open space right in front of the two huge gates was lifeless; the dead bodies piled up even more since then. Most of the reflectors on the top of the wall shut down, but there was still one in the distance that gave him enough light. Sometimes it flickered unevenly, and when Lu Feng looked up to see, he saw an abdomen hanging down from the top of the searchlight; the light was blocked by it, but it radiated through the brownish body. When the insect crawled up, the light came back, but it disappeared again, this time from a head.
The swarm didn’t cover the whole sky anymore, however, the bugs sat on the top of the wall and the buildings around here, some of them came down and feasted on the dead bodies, and some other ones crawled around and mapped the place with their never-stopping antennas.
Lu Feng paused, hiding in the corner.
He wasn’t a human, but currently, he did have human flesh and blood. He had to go through the open space to reach the section the Arbiter mentioned.
He was a tall man, even when he hunched down. However… if he would turn into his rose form, it wouldn’t be much easier. The rose would attract the bugs too, although, he wouldn’t be seen so easily, being so small. But then, as a rose, he couldn’t really move as fast as the long-legged Lu Feng. And… if anybody… just one person would notice him from the fighting soldiers…
The Arbiter didn’t say a thing, but their line was still connected, he heard some noises from his communicator from time to time, as people were working in the background. Lu Feng clenched his fist around the device, and decided.
He turned half of his body into tendrils. His fingers became vines, his head lowered, and using the last boost of the human legs, he jumped right inside the open space.
He caught on the carcasses with his vines, and pulled himself through. He left his human legs to give him other boosts occasionally, but the rest of his body was just his tendrils. He lost his vision for a moment, but he moved from memory: he was able to remember the scene and the pathway between the mounds, where there weren’t any living bugs.
At some point, he had to turn back into human form. He squatted down immediately, hiding behind a pile, and looked around carefully.
It seemed like his movements went unnoticed by the scout insects. Just when he turned back, he also smelled the odour of the blood and the insects – it was a suffocating stench, but it helped him to cover his own human-blood and flower fragrance. With increasing confidence, he did the previous attraction again, and when he obtained his human form for the second time, he was at the corner of the supply depot.
Relieved, he went inside the parking lot. He didn’t have to shoot anything or anyone to escape, which was an achievement. He still felt uneasy about leaving those people here. He didn’t see the whole situation of the teams, and the gunshots never stopped, so they were still alive somewhere, but he hoped, the reinforcement would come quickly, and they wouldn’t be outnumbered by the swarms.
He found the vehicles. They were similar to the Arbiter’s black car, which Lu Feng was more familiar with. For the advice of the Arbiter, he broke one of the windows with the handle of his gun, and opened the lock to get inside.
“If there is no key beside the wheel, you can find an ID scanner on the other side, a long, slim gap, put your ID there, and the car will start.”
Lu Feng found the said place, and tugged out his ID card. As soon as he slid it in the gap, the ID scanner flashed red, and after a few seconds, the light turned green, and the machine suddenly started growling under him.
He was able to find the seatbelt, the gas and the break, and while the Arbiter’s calm voice directed him, he successfully carried out his first driving – he was moving like an old, wide turtle, but he was moving. Once he got comfortable with the controls, he stepped on the gas a bit harder, and only in a minute, he found his way out of the parking lot. As the Arbiter promised, he was driving on the flat, empty plain: the buffer zone. There were lamps in the distant sky that lit up the zone. He could see from the mirror that the insect swarms still circled the entrance of the Outer City as if they were happy to invade the base only this far. A few earthbound types, maybe cockroaches, started running towards other districts in the distance, but they stopped eventually, and turned back as if they changed their minds.
They probably couldn’t see Lu Feng’s car, or weren’t interested in him, he wasn’t sure. After all, the explosions were as vivid as lightning, calling them back.
He saw District 8’s walls and buildings already, and when he was about to enter their territory, he noticed a tiny, lone figure at the edge of the buffer zone. He recognised him immediately, and an unexpected wave of joy sparked in his soul.
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