When Neta arrived at the clinic and saw the time, she realized she was 5 minutes late. Only 5 minutes. But to a girl like Neta, who did not want to cause trouble for anyone, 5 minutes seemed like an hour.
"Doctor, I'm very sorry I'm late! But... I'm here now! It won't happen again," Neta apologized nervously.
"No, it won't..." Dr. Lind replied ominously, closing the door behind her. "Come, have a seat, child." There were three people in the room now: Neta, the doctor, and an imposing, knightly man with long, dark purple hair. The young woman did as she was told and sat in the only free chair, directly facing the large man.
"Neta..." the knight began. There was a smirk on his face, and he eyed her like a predator poised to tear its prey limb from limb. "...I do hope you slept well last night. Though I must say, you reek."
Instantly uncomfortable, Neta felt a chill down her spine. Who was this man, and how did he know her name? The silence of the room only made his gaze sharper and his presence darker.
"It's been a long time, Neta. But I'd like to thank you for the work you've done at this clinic... and for the kingdom of Pless," the mysterious man continued. "Pay no mind to the horrible things the children said about you last night. Your unorthodox medical procedures that saved their lives were done without consent, but consent and free will are the very things we seek to eliminate."
How did this man know about the children? How did he know what had happened to her last night? Why... did he address her as if they'd met before? Neta shifted uncomfortably in her seat and turned to Dr. Lind with a look of bewilderment on her face, as if the old doctor was her last hope. "Dr. Lind... what's going on?"
"Your fate is no longer in my hands, child. This is over my head," the doctor replied in his gravelly voice, not even looking back to assure the puzzled Neta. "From now on, you are no longer employed at this clinic. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have several patients to see."
"Doctor, p-please wait. If this is about my tardiness-" Lind opened the door and left her alone with the strange man, letting the eerie silence reclaim the room.
When Neta resigned herself to the fact that no one was coming back for her, the knight stood and paced about the room, before addressing her once more. "Plant X, the renowned Dr. Adrian Briarwood's final work, which was oddly missing when his residence burned to the ground fourteen years ago. To think that he'd hidden it inside a ring and given it to his own daughter..."
She swallowed. "You... know about X. And about my father. But how? I don't think we've met..."
"No, we've never met face to face, but I work for the kingdom," the man told her, then smiled wickedly. "In fact, I captained the unit that seized the Briarwood house and apprehended the Aberrant living there..."
He stared a hole right through her chest with that sinister expression, but it missed her heart, which had already sunk out of the way. "You... you killed my father! And you burned down our home! You've come... to kill me, haven't you?"
"Silly girl! We didn't kill your father! If you care to know the fate of that fool... he starved himself to death and rotted in his jail cell, though we tried force-feeding him daily. How powerful the reports made him out to be! An Aberrant who cloaked his hands in blue and took down three men armed with knives simply by touching them from behind! Yet how starved and pathetic he looked when he died!" the knight boasted.
Neta was tearing up and looking away. "Stop... please..."
"Oh, don't cry, Neta! We didn't set your house on fire. We planned to do a thorough investigation of the residence as soon as we'd taken the Aberrant and his family into custody, but I can only guess that Briarwood himself started the fire to protect his work from prying eyes. He was hiding something," the man continued. "If you think I've come to kill you, you are wrong again. I am taking you alive, but from this point on you have no free will. Because, Neta..."
He paused, taking great pleasure in tormenting the young woman with this information, but knowing full well that she wanted to hear more. "Because, Neta, you can create Aberrants with your power. Like those children from last night. Each of them was born with the ability to control one of X's 15 plant species: vines, Etherflowers, Antiflowers, pitcher plants, cactuses, maple seeds, and many more. But, of the 15 children I sent to capture you, only 11 of them have unique powers," he explained, "which leaves four plants that they don't possess. Three of these are known species."
"Those children from last night, you sent-"
"I did. There are 15 of them in our care, though were 30 predicted stillbirths at this clinic that developed into healthy babies. Perhaps the others died on the streets or are still in hiding. But why don't we focus on what's important? Of the 15 plants that were crossed to create Plant X, there is one that we do not know. We salvaged Briarwood's notes from the ashes, but many of the pages were burnt and told us nothing. As for the 14 known species, none of their juices when injected into the womb produce Aberrant children," the knight interrupted. "There is a fifteenth plant out there, a species unknown even to the kingdom, from which Plant X derived that ability."
"Are you proud, Neta?! Your father was truly a brilliant man! He figured it out! The secret of the Aberrants! Where their powers come from! A question that has puzzled the kingdom for these past 60 years!" This man's emotions changed so suddenly that he seemed mentally unstable.
"60 years? But the first Aberrants, I thought, appeared 50-"
"You thought that they appeared 50 years ago. Within our territories, yes. But Pless first encountered the Aberrants ten years prior to that, when the kingdom fought a great war with the neighboring Calderon. A Plessian victory was on the horizon, until we suffered massive casualties on the front lines in the final days of the conflict. Calderon had hired foreign mercenaries that decimated our forces. They looked to be simple tribal folk, but they possessed the power to raise oceans from the ground and kill our soldiers by the thousands. Our sheer numbers eventually drew the war to a stalemate. You may know basic history, Neta, but this much you do not know," the knight continued. "The kingdom chose to keep its knowledge of powered humans from the public. Gag orders were issued to the few survivors of the front lines. But when Aberrants began appearing in Pless itself ten years after the war, their existence could not be concealed for long. They were called many things: demonkin by the Plessian Church, the wicked ones, Obscrians, Kotonaru, Elementals... At first, the kingdom captured and executed them as Calderonian spies."
"But soon, even loyal Plessians developed Aberrant powers. So the kingdom's goal for the next few decades was to study them, cut them open and discover the biological basis for their abilities, to no avail. Today, Neta, our true goal is..." the man paused, prepared to reveal sensitive information to the young woman, "...to mass-produce Aberrants and use them as tools of destruction and justice. If we harness their power, the kingdom's expansionist appetites will be satisfied. We can use them to quell unrest within Pless and subdue the people to our whims, if the need should arise."
"You want to use my power! To create Aberrants…"
"Yes! Exactly! When your father discovered the whereabouts of the mystery plant, crossed it into Plant X, and had you wear the ring, your fate was sealed. Now, you will come with me and serve your country. You'll work in a lab, and we'll summon pregnant women to your doors daily. You will give their children powers. Don't worry, we'll send you poor women who contribute nothing to society and whose children don't deserve to live anyway!" the knight laughed, with unabashed disregard for human life. "Your codename is... the Seed. You create Aberrants."
"I won't do it! I can't! Those children suffered because of me!" Neta screamed. She was crying now.
"Those children won't know what suffering is. We'll deprive them of free will so that they serve the kingdom and the kingdom only. I am looking for one who has the power to do this. We call this hypothetical Aberrant the Stargazer," the knight finished. "...But no such Aberrant exists. So we'll raise the children to be killing machines ourselves, with no friends or family. That's the problem with Aberrants as they are now, why we want the ones running the streets dead. They are mere tools and don't deserve to live among people. I am one of them, but I've pledged my loyalty to the government."
At this point, Neta stood up and tried to run, but a soldier appeared in the doorway and blocked her passage. "This is evil! I promised myself that I would never do something like this again!"
"Escape is pointless. We found you by taking in the Aberrant children you created and looking over their medical records, finding that they all had one thing in common: a predicted stillbirth. And the clinic where they were examined, we asked their parents? Dr. Lind's, where I found a certain Neta Briarwood. And now we know what you look like, so we'll have a wanted poster out for you soon. It'll be a special one. After all, you're more dangerous and important to us than any Aberrant is," the knight told Neta, doing little to stop her himself and watching in amusement as she tried to run. "You may call me Claro Gath. I will be the one to take you in."
Neta had to get out of there. She tapped her ring and shoved the soldier out of the way with a vine. The relative peacefulness of the clinic outside that tense room came as a surprise, but the tears streaming down her face were not suddenly tears of joy. Even if they had been, they'd have stopped as soon as she made it outside, where several soldiers awaited her. Neta shot her vine out and grabbed onto a chimney across the street, pulling herself onto a roof. People gasped as they witnessed her powers in use, afraid of the witch, but she was terrified herself and used whatever means she could to flee. Plant X burned as she blocked the flaming arrows that the Plessian archers shot at her. The large vine retreated into the dirt but not before buying Neta just enough time to escape. It would take X some time to recover, but the plant's regenerative capabilities were unparalleled among flora. She ran toward the one place left where she truly belonged: the inn.
"Sir, she's escaped," a soldier informed Claro as he stepped out of the clinic, taking his sweet time.
"That's no problem. Let her tire herself out. I'll find where she lives and burn her new home to the ground myself, this time," the knight responded, then addressed Neta as if she were still there. "Then I'll kill everyone you hold dear, until you have no one left in this world and are devoid of the will to live. You'll come to me yourself, because your life at that point will have no other purpose than the one I've laid out for you. And if you refuse... I'll cut off your finger. Let Plant X suck it dry, until it removes its roots from what's left of you in search of a new host body. The plan will succeed with or without you, Neta. But right now you are very important to us, so go on, tell your friends everything I've told you. We'll kill them later."
Claro was pleased that he'd finally made progress on the Briarwood case. His comrades in the Blood Knight were so focused on other, stronger Aberrants that they'd lost sight of the kingdom's true objectives.
