no growing, just pain (part 2)

spilling out of camp and into the thick brush of wilderness, we are the perfect superorganism. a fresh batch of worker bees vibrating with excitement to leave the hive for the first time; bright-eyed young scouts foraying out of the classroom and into the field to unleash our barely-contained impatience, armed with just enough to preserve us for the next week. we are expected to spread our influence across the atoll, stamping out corruption before it stamps us out.
you are entrusted with the group's safety, their emergency flares in the dark, you've demonstrated responsibility and skill in the area. you are our antivenom, and you will be kept close. your loyalty is ensured, one way or another.

lunch settles uncomfortably inside you. the food offered here has never agreed with you, but it gets less digestible the more time you spend on the atoll. something about the combination of dry, preserved foods and cheap proteins makes you feel out of balance, like a tiny lump in your shoe gone unnoticed. along with coffee, you steadily sip on peppermint tea to stay barely settled. but you still can't move too fast, so you're left slightly behind. as usual, a fly on the wall. maybe even a liability. unless you can be useful.

the part it dreads most is when they stick something in its body. usually a long, stiff swab shoved into the back of its throat, halos boring into its brain through fried retinas, just for a second until it's left to choke. that one isn't too bad, but it's still bad. at least it's short.
sometimes they stick something in it to put their fluids in its body. synthesized from insect venoms and poisons; they didn't tell it at the time but it learned easily enough.
they leave the muscles aching for days, a shock to the system if one moves wrong, but they make one's body better. the catch is, they don't promise it, if something is missing from its body. they tried and tried, but it just didn't work the same.
you don't remember why they stopped trying.

staying just quick enough to keep an eye on your whole group, you focus on your task. you're in charge of collecting samples. you'll label them later; you sanitize your equipment - anti-Ahrimanic barriers of plastic embedded with fine crystal dust. they can only afford scraps for you. layers of plastic sheeting make it difficult and noisy to move, an irritating crinkling interrupting the woods' song. boys stick together in groups of 2 or 3, easy find your way back that way. as long as you can follow trail markers, even teens are smart enough not to ignore them. they leave little plastic flags on the sites you're supposed to sample.
you use a new scalpel every time, you cannot contaminate the samples. don't fuck up the results. your knees and wrists start to ache a few hours in. even your fingers cramp from writing.

the stray scout runs off to join the mass of its group, folding its notebook under its arm. it looks for a familiar face; it cannot stick by itself for too long, as per the RULE. big brown eyes flick from figure to figure, inner workings measuring out options. every body wears the same clothes; black shorts and white top with a ribbon (usually) around the neck. like this, it's nauseating how some can hardly be told apart. so it looks for one that sticks out. an outlier on the graph. taller than usual, shorter than usual, it matters little. it can find something here.

the research site is small enough to screen on foot. Shannon's brittle legs carry it to a clearing next to a pond, reeds and bushy grasses bursting from the edges where the water meets land. a grotesque display of life. it recognizes some of the local plants and scouts documenting them, not enough to remember their names. a couple bodies brush past it and it twists to the side in panic, waiting for a bit before skittering away.
a nervous movement catches its attention; a twitch or an itch and then nothing more. it scans the clearing, honing in on a hunched-over body examining a cluster of decaying plants - the white dress shirt sagging just barely under the arms and at the sides, clothing askew, except for the pink ribbon tied neatly around his throat shining like scar tissue. he turns around, for a moment looking somewhere between a lost puppy and a deer in headlights.

"do you want any help?" its voice is sharp, conjuring the image of glass shards in the boy's mind.

"I, I... um." caught at a bad time. "I don't kn- know? sure," he relents. weakly smiling. better not to be alone.
he assumes the other scout is older than he- that's the camp medic? noticing the differences in clothing. no ribbon. leather pouches fixed to the body.

Shannon shifts its eyes at the patch of ground next to the boy. something about his nervous demeanour slithers through flesh and twists in its gut, and there is a trace of recognition. a growth in the shed foliage; scarlet tendrils taking hold of bits of rotted fiber.
"look at those. they're like roots growing towards nutrients." red pigment in plants attracts insects. they catch the eyes of humans, too.

AUTHOR'S NOTE (nov. 1, 2024): i drew Shannon, the original character i made for this piece. i've put it here as well as my gallery for convenience!