Zodiac Story

Brown Vines, Shield Me From The Abyss Part 2

Good job at remembering. Now keep your chin up. I'm going to get some explosives.

"No!" Amalia cupped her mouth. Explosives would draw attention in any escape attempt. A subtler method must be found, something that would be unnoticeable and couldn't be detected for a long period of time. Something like...plants. If she utilised the chlorokinetic capabilities of the amulet, she may be able to severely weaken the structure of the wall behind her.

That's a smart plan, probably better than mine.

She mentally nodded.

That's awfully convenient, but what works in our favour, am I right? Let me do something quickly. It's better to have redundancies than to be unprepared, right? You thought of this just now.

Are you sure this will work?

Yes, I'm confident.

If anything happens to you, I will smash into the building with this van.

The plant that must be chosen for the job would have to be small and unnoticeable. That removed the majority of flowering plants. It would have to be a climbing plant, so she narrowed down her list. This climbing plant would have to be destructive to any wall. Running through her mental list again, she selected Parthenocissus quinquefolia. That would be suitable.

Now, she needed to make a large enough hole in order to grow P. quinquefolia and to find seeds of P. quinquefolia. Something crackled inside her left hand. Opening it revealed at least forty small black seeds of P. quinquefolia. All that was needed now is for—

Her door opened, and the guard entered. The guard stared at her, and her dark green uniform. Neither of them said a word.

The guard broke the awkward silence, their messy black hair slightly out of place in comparison to their bun. "Amalia Wald, based on your good behaviour, you have been granted certain privileges. You now have the privilege to be outside of your space, but you must be accompanied by me at all times."

Amalia couldn't find a good response. "Uh...uh sure? Can I...go outside now? And...can I put a coat on?" In typical circumstances, she would remove all personal protective equipment before leaving a laboratory, but this was not under typical circumstances.

The guard had no response. Amalia quickly put on a lab coat, long enough to cover the lace-like decorations and the hard boots, and stuffed the P. quinquefolia seeds inside the pockets. She took off the wispy veil as well. Better to not attract attention. Once she was done, the guard took her arm and typed in a keycode. Unfortunately, they blocked the exact sequence with their arm. Outside of her automatically closing door, she discovered that there was a second door. Cold mist began pouring out of unseen vents, filling up the entire space. After it dissipated, Amalia was yanked by the guard past the door.

Bright light flooded into her eyes, and she reflexively covered them. Beneath her was cold stone with no trace of any plant life. The light was too bright, and she wanted to run over and turn down the intensity. The prod of a muzzle stopped her though. Slowly she adjusted her vision. The source of the blinding light was a flood light mounted high above a small plastic structure and directly facing the entrance of her prison. It was small, she thought, and she was surprised that everything fit inside it. There were guards milling about, all dressed identically in black. In some of the plastic structures, the faint outlines of various cereal crops could be seen.

At another structure next to Amalia's cell, she found Ada being pushed out of the entrance by another guard. Ada noticed Amalia, and wrangled herself free of her guard's grip.