Jazz woke up in a sweat.
She sat up, pushed the single comforter off her dark skin, and rolled her feet out of bed and onto the cold ground.
She grabbed a piece of twine from her bedside table and put her hair up. It's been months since she left Fallen Sky, needless to say, she's in desperate need of a haircut.
Standing up, her long box braids kissed the dimples just above her butt. She grabbed a coat before walking out of her new home; a mud square constructed by one of the military brutes.
As she left, she noticed a handful of others leaving alongside her. To her left, a man nearing the end of his days. He wore long, baggy pants, a button up shirt, and was topped with a bushy head of silver hair.
On her other side, another man exited his home: he was equipped with the same coat as Jazz, but his dome lacked hair of any sort.
The bald man, after catching sight of Jazz, hurriedly skipped alongside her.
"Good morning —" he said whilst taking a large inhale, "I feel really good about today, I think we're finally going to see some results from the bacteria we found in the water sample."
"Weren't there only two specimens?" Jazz asked.
She pulled a small wooden box from one of her coat's pockets. Pulling its lid open revealed a tidy row of identical cigarettes. Popping one in her mouth, she inhaled the sweet and slightly spicy smoke before continuing:
"How have you guys managed to keep those little things alive?"
The bald man grabbed one of Jazz's cigarettes from her outstretched offer, after lighting its tip ablaze he responded:
"One actually died last night — little f***** — but this remaining specimen is extraordinarily persistent. For the longest time we've been afraid of taking them out of the water, believing it was the water that's been keeping them alive for so long, but last night we extracted them. We've run every other test imaginable, it's the final, unavoidable step, and one survived."
"And what are you doing next? What's today's plan?" Jazz asked.
"We're going to stimulate it."
"Stimulate it? How?" Jazz followed up.
"We're going to inject it with essence," the bald man heaved a sigh of helplessness, "it's not what we want to do, but myself and the others took a vote. The decision was made by one."
"Why don't you want to inject it with essence?" Jazz asked.
She stepped up a step onto a new level, the labs had to be built on a flat surface so the builders leveled the area and solidified it for them. The result, a pitch of stone elevated about a foot high that housed all the various laboratories.
Jazz worked alone. She was the only alchemist specialized in living things, plants specifically. As a result, she was assigned to work on the seed and sap Spright's cohort had brought back earlier.
The bald man, however, was assigned to the water and the living creatures within. Due to the nature of the current world, the only "living" things alchemists could get their hands on were beasts.
Hence, the vast majority of alchemists specialized in some form of animal science; whether it be mutation, enhancement, viruses and diseases, those alchemists were given the bacteria and larvae.
From them, the alchemists were split into two teams. One team studied the bacteria while the other researched the larvae, the bald man was the former.
"I don't know how to explain it —" the bald man stopped just before the pitch in the road, he put his fingers to his chin in thought, "there's something unnerving about this particular bacteria, like it's responding to us, more than just the tests, like it's listening."
"Bacteria don't have auditory senses, you know that," Jazz replied.
"Yes, I know I know. Like I said, it's hard to explain."
"Well good luck —" Jazz entered the long stretch of hallway that led to their separate lab rooms, "let me know how it goes at lunch!"
"Will do!"
***
Jazz pulled a stool from the corner of her lab and placed it in front of her workspace. For the last two months or so she's done nothing but stare at a pot of dirt.
At first she tried inspecting the seed. She peeled a micro flake of its surface off to inspect under greater observation, but it just looked like a seed.
She tried placing it in a cup of water for awhile, hoping it would sprout, but that never happened. She even tried feeding it essence, that was actually one of the first things she did, but that too led to a deadend.
With no better option presenting itself, she ultimately decided to plant it normally. She passed into the crimson fog for less than ten minutes to collect some soil before burying the seed within and for the past few weeks she's just been watering it like normal.
Today she decided she would uproot it. Either the seed took hold and germinated or it didn't, due to the progress of the other laboratories she wasn't particularly concerned with her personal accomplishments during this assignment.
First, she opened a container filled with gloves and put on a pair. Then, she picked up the filled pot and flipped it over, dumping its contents on the table before her.
From there, she ran her fingers through the dirt and, to her disappointment, she didn't feel any roots or strands of any kind.
Digging a little deeper, she wrapped her fingers around the penny sized seed and brought it to light.
As she flipped over the seed, she heard the quick-paced clamoring of feet from the hallway and the echoes of shouting voices.
The voices grew louder and more distinct, but before she could make out any of the words, more and more voices drowned the others out until only harrowing highs and depressing lows remained.
"Miss Jasmine!" The bald man burst into her lab.
His clean coat from just this morning was covered in some black substance and his eyes were opened to their maximum leaving him with bright red, dry, and bloodshot eyes.
He pointed down the hall as he opened his mouth:
"The bacteria!" He screamed, "It — it…"
Then a black mass larger than the man's whole body slammed into him. Instantly, he disappeared from where he stood and the normally peaceful and serene hallway returned to its old ways.
Jazz stood still in shock. The seed slipped out of her fingers and fell to the ground.
Before she could figure out what to do, a loud belch reverberated through the hall as a uniquely disgusting stench invaded her nostrils.
She put her hand to her side and opened her palm. Beneath the table, white sparks spewed from her palm and danced around her wrist.