Tweak

Huffing and puffing, Shin stopped on a rocky outcrop. The ring buzzed against his finger.

“We have to keep moving,” Ash said calmly.

The tweaker had the stamina of ten men, Shin noted bitterly as he straightened. He knew they had to keep moving, he was quickly coming to realise that the ring buzzed every time he was in a dangerous situation. It would also protect him, the creeping vine that had tried to eat him as he napped had shrivelled up and died the moment it touched his hand. Which was good, because Shin didn’t want to be fertilizer for some man eating plant.

“I know.” Shin said, looking around him as he caught his breath.

It wasn’t so much that Shin was afraid for his own life, but that Ash didn’t receive the same protection as Shin did. There was only one ring and useless as it seemed, it at least kept Shin alive. Keeping Ash alive just seemed like the right thing to do, get them both back to civilization and then talk about their feelings and about what had happened.

Every time Shin tried to bring it up, Ash kept handing him food. Shin’s stomach seemed to be constantly empty, so he wasn’t going to turn down the food that was offered to him. He’d eat and then forget what they were talking about.

Shin straightened.

On the wind something was coming towards him. Or perhaps it wasn’t on the wind, perhaps it was flowing beneath the ground. Or traveling with the power that was oozing out of the wilds.

Wait. Power was oozing out of the wilds?

Shin closed his eyes and let his senses flow over the forest. They had been walking north all day and still hadn’t come across any tameable land. There had been no place for them to sleep or rest for more than a few minutes. Ash had three marks running down his arm from where a howler had attacked him. Or, what they were calling a howler. It had screamed and slashed at Ash with long claws but hadn’t exactly attempted to hump everything in sight.

Which meant it had likely been an upset monkey.

This was a lure that went out across the forest, a quiet little voice that meekly asked for attention and then retreated. Only to peep its head out a few minutes later and ask very politely if there was anyone out there that could hear it. Shin caught the general direction. Not quite north but not far off of their decided path.

“This way,” Shin murmured, stepping off the rocky outcrop.

Ash frowned as the outcrop shifted. The male leapt from where he was, to the hard packed ground of the game trail they had been following. With a creak and a groan, the outcrop pulled away from the ground and turned to inspect the insects that had been standing on it. A behemoth of an animal, what Shin had thought was an outcrop had been the top of its head. It had been lazing along the side of the canyon, probably waiting for prey to fly by. Black eyes, larger than Shin was tall, watched Ash and Shin for a moment before the creature seemed to shrug and lay back against the canyon wall.

Ash and Shin bent low, waited for the tremors to pass. Once the ground stopped moving, Ash shook himself and straightened.

“You were saying,” he murmured.

“What was that?”

Ash glanced at the outcrop and then back at Shin, “your guess is as good as mine. Two legged fellow, had hands there. Outcrop, I’d say, is where a horn is supposed to be. Mean’s he’s lost a fight recently, could be on his deathbed. Or could have torn the horn off himself and uses his head as a landing pad for great birds. Seems they’re the only creature large enough to feed him. Didn’t open his mouth, so don’t know what he eats. All we know is, he doesn’t eat us.”

“That one’s not been documented before.”

“Probably melds right into his surroundings,” Ash said, motioning to the path, “perhaps we should move on before he decides to swat the buzzing bugs?”

Shin nodded and stepped onto the path. As soon as he did, he heard it again. A voice rising in praise, a hymn being sung in dawn light.

“Shin.”

“Sorry,” Shin gave himself a shake, “this way.”

He moved down the path and back into the woods. Out of the woods they had to worry about birds of prey. The birds didn’t bother much with people, too boney, Shin supposed, but they didn’t have any qualms about, say, scooping two adorable teddy bear like creatures off of a plain as Shin tried to pet one.

When he said adorable teddy bear like creatures, he meant it. The kind of creature that one would find made into a stuffed animal that some little girl would hug and love and cuddle. Temperament of one of those bears as well.

In the woods it was the plants, the spiders, the monkeys and howlers and the people.

Oh yeah, history books forgot to mention that there were tribes in the wilds. Ash and Shin had heard the drum beat and made a run for it. They didn’t want to find out if that was a friendly drum beat, a come play drum beat or an eat the bastard infidel intruders drum beat. The tribe hadn’t tried to follow Shin and Ash, but the pair had accidentally stumbled on the women as they washed something in the water.

The tribe was way shorter than Shin was. Four foot ten, the tallest woman was. Their men were five foot three or so, all covered in hair. Knew how to make spears and throw them too. After they had stumbled through the forest blindly for an hour or so, Ash had quietly informed Shin that those were not the people who had left the wood and fish. Those other people were like the pair of them, tall, lean.

Altered.

Shin had snapped some answer back, which had apparently been a very bad idea. For the reaction had been just loud enough to set the plemmers off. Adorable little creatures. With power.

Who were apparently in some sort of symbiotic relationship with gorillas.

With power.

The silverback male had chased them out of the forest and onto the outcropping. Paced the forest’s edge for a moment before he had approached the outcrop. A sniff at the rock and the silverback was gone, bolting for the forest. Which really should have been their first clue about the rock outcrop.

While it was generally safer to travel in the open, they had both agreed that, given the predominance of the birds of prey, it was actually safer to travel through the forest. At least in the forest, the things that tried to kill them were either their size or smaller than they were. There was none of this, behemoth creature with no name, giant bird of prey, fish twice their size with legs trying to eat them business.

Under the canopy a voice rose in song. It was in a language that Shin had never heard before, one that had sounds that he had never spoken before. A gutteral, harsh language that, in the process of being sung was softened and made beautiful. The female voice that sung the notes seemed to be everywhere and yet no where at the same time.

“Shin,” Ash growled, prodding him.

“What?” Shin looked at Ash.

“You’ve not moved in over a minute. Are you hungry again?” Shin shook his head to Ash’s question, “maybe it was something you ate.”

“Maybe, this way.”

“That’s off the path,” Ash said.

“So? It’s this way, we’re on a game trail,” Shin turned back to Ash and waved a hand by his ear to get rid of a nattering bug, “logic dictates that game trails are used by animals, therefore if you want to meet fewer animals and fewer predators, who hunt the game trails, you step off the game trail.”

“We’ll get lost.”

“More lost than we already are?”

Ash considered this for a moment, then sighed, “point made. Lead on. But if we get eaten-”

“If you get eaten,” Shin muttered, pushing through the underbrush.

“If we get eaten, I’m telling Layaent it was your fault.”

“To what end?” Shin asked, “to say nothing of the lacking the lungs and the vocal cords to be able to say such a thing, you have to remember that we have just been hypothetically eaten. There wouldn’t be enough of us left in the animal’s feces to clone, let alone yell at.”

“Did you just say feces?”

“Yes.”

“Who the hell says feces? It’s shit.”

“Fecal matter, that’s the scientific term for it.”

“So?” Ash said, “scientists only say feces when they’re dealing with intellectual types. You can’t tell me that in the genetics fabrication rooms they listen to classical music and speak in long winded sentences that involve the highest level of semantics.”

Shin pulled to a stop and stiffened.

“What?” Ash growled.

The music got louder for a moment, then dimmed down, bringing Shin’s attention to a new direction. Sadly, that wasn’t what had stopped him, he hadn’t stopped because of the music. He had stopped because of what Ash had said. It was like. Like the tooth faerie. He had believed that the people responsible for genetic alterations and apply genetic alterations were creative geniuses who did listen to classical music and speak in full sentences.

“I…” Shin sighed, “I thought that maybe that was what happened.”

“They don’t,” Ash said, pushing past Shin, “I’ve been there once, my mother got implanted when I was ten. I went in with her. It’s like the fast food joint of the new century. Any idiot can man the machines. Rock music and junk food wrappers everywhere. Poor bodily hygiene.”

Shin was horrified, “poor bodily hygiene? They’re handling your unborn child and they have poor bodily hygiene? And junk food everywhere? Are you insane? That’s a class five felony.”

“A what?”

“A class five felony, dirty surroundings put the genetic material at risk. Places like that show a higher level of cases of nature of the obscure and disastrous kind.”

Ash stopped, so Shin walked around him and changed the direction, taking a lesser used path that cut through the woods. Shin walked on for a bit before he realised that Ash wasn’t following any longer. He turned and looked back at the male.

“A what?”

Shin sighed, “a class five felony, tampering with genetic material not your own and outside the due processes of biological standard or customer ordered. It’s punishable by infertalization and twenty years in prison. For the entire chain of command. The place would then be burned to the ground with all unwanted foetuses scrapped upon closure of the plant.”

“Burnt to the ground? Isn’t that going a bit far?”

“Meshnan wanted us to set an atomic bomb off inside the plants with the chain of command and their families locked inside,” Shin said quickly, “father seemed to think the compromise was a good one. Meshnan didn’t push to get people blown up and the council of six would lend over two favours to her.”

“The council of six gives out favours now?”

“To someone twice their age and still able to bend them over her knee? Yes, apparently they do. Sun’s setting, we have to find someplace to rest for the night. Preferably someplace that doesn’t have creeping vines of vicious animals pacing about under it.”

***

Ash didn’t believe that being unhygienic could be a felony, not in the least way or form. But then, had he been asked the day before if he believed things like plemmers having a symbiotic relationship with gorillas or a creature so large that its head could pass for a rock, Ash would have said those were impossible as well.

He wasn’t paying attention to where they were going. Ash let Shin lead the way and didn’t ask questions.

Maybe the genetics’ alteration rooms were cleaner, maybe there were stricter laws because the genetics had the money to make peoples’ lives miserable. But Ash’s family had never been afforded the comforts and protection that the genetics portrayed to the people. The tweakers were no more free to come and go than the genetics. Every tweaker had to be accounted for at all times. Even getting permission for him to work in another city had been pushing the limits of what tweakers were and were not allowed to do. Especially untried tweakers with ‘questionable’ loyalty. Ash had only managed to move to another city because Bri had been his mentor.

Ash nearly tripped over Shin. The young man had pulled to a stop. Ash’s first thought was to look down and check the ground. There was nothing but …

It looked like tameable land.

Ash couldn’t help but admire the well constructed ankle that peaked out from Shin’s pants. Whatever the hell the pants were made of, they had managed to shrink during the walk through the forest. Ash’s pants hadn’t exactly faired well, but they also hadn’t shrunk.

His next thought was to look up. Canopy over head, a river running along one side and a waterfall. The canopy of leaves and branches overhead seemed to trace back to a single tree. Its trunk was large, it was taller than a skyscraper, surely. Not quite as high as the waterfall, but then the waterfall was high, as most of the cliffs were.

“Why’d you stop,” Ash asked, stepping up beside Shin.

It was tameable land, covered almost entirely by the one tree.

“We can sleep here,” Shin murmured.

With something else in his voice, something entirely not Shin. Ash caught the briefest sound, a child’s music box pinging away for several notes. Distorted, hurt, damaged.

Ash looked over the ground and found the source of the bad notes. An iron axe driven into a root that had pushed out of the ground. He approached the axe and inspected it, then looked up at the tree. The tree that was there, but not there, it kept skipping out of the senses his power created. Which meant, likely, that the tree had some sort of inherent power, something that it used to protect itself from predators with power, from predators in general. There was nothing malicious about the tree, growing up the way it was. It, the tree, reminded Ash of his own capability to repel creatures.

Only Ash’s capabilities didn’t work when he wasn’t well rested or in desperate need.

He laid his hands on the handle of the axe. Made of metal, this axe wasn’t as old as it looked, it had been made old by the tree, as the tree tried to free itself of the poison seeping into it. It stretched far underground and far over head, was lord of its domain but it couldn’t get out one little splinter.

Which was what Ash was for. He pried the axe out of the root, using muscles that strained and protested as he moved. The root had tried to grow up the sides of the axe so he had to work to get the blade out, but out it came. Turning the freed axe over in his hands, Ash inspected the blade. It was all metal alloy of some sort, not a simple iron as he first thought. On the bottom of the handle were two letters GG and a little trademark symbol.

Gomesh Genetics.

Genetic companies harvested creatures from the wilds to use in their experimentations. They also very clearly marked what creatures they had found and where. Companies who discovered tameable land then had the rights to sell the locations to the genetics or anyone rich enough to pay the king’s ransom for the land. Gomesh Genetics was no exception to the rule.

“Ever hear of Gomesh?” Ash asked Shin.

He looked over at the runt. The young man was sitting down, massaging his legs and hardly paying attention. Shin’s pants looked far too short to be the ones he had been wearing before.

“Shin?” Ash set the axe on the ground and approached Shin cautiously.

“My legs hurt,” Shin whimpered, rubbing furiously at his legs.

“What, you walk all the time,” Ash moved to Shin’s side and place a hand on Shin’s shoulder, placing the other on the young man’s bare leg.

Shin was boiling hot and his leg didn’t feel right, it felt like muscles were pulled too tight. Ash sat back and actually looked Shin up and down. There was something off about Shin, entirely and utterly. He pulled the runt to his feet, ignoring the protests. Shin hunched over just slightly and whined loudly when Ash made him stand straight. Ash studied Shin and growled his annoyance.

Shin was four inches taller.

Genetics were not meant to grow like that. A tweaker or two had and standard operating procedures had been created for tweakers who grew too quickly. Get them off their feet and move them as little as possible during the growth spurts. Ash pulled Shin to his feet and the pair of them hobbled to the trunk of the tree.

“Have to get up there,” Shin grumbled, “not safe on the ground.”

Ash wasn’t going to spend the time asking how Shin knew. The ring seemed to keep Shin alive, thus going up would stop Shin in his tracks. Shin groaned and pulled himself up and off the ground. Up and up Shin climbed, with Ash right behind him. At the first branch, Shin climbed onto it and rested, panting heavily. Ash pulled himself up beside Shin.

“It hurts to move,” Shin whined.

From the first branch, it was a leap, bound and hop to the center of the tree. Where they were, any largish creature could reach them. Ash forced Shin upward and the pair of them made their way to each branch and finally to the large flat surface that was the trunk of the tree. There Ash paused and caught his breath. Shin curled into a miserable ball.

Curling would take the pressure off of his muscles and bones, but if he stayed in that shape, his muscles wouldn’t catch up with his bones, ever. Bones grew first, then the muscles adjusted and grew around the bones. Food, that was the first sign, a raised metabolism that was far beyond what one going through second growth would experience.

“Shin,” Ash prodded Shin with his foot.

Shin groaned and rolled over, so Ash repeated the motion until Shin tried to bat him away. Ash grabbed Shin’s arm and pulled it straight, held it there to the count of eight, despite Shin’s crying and bawling, and then let it go.

“If you don’t do that, and do it often,” Ash snapped at Shin, “you’ll be a cripple your entire life, if second growth doesn’t kill you first.”

That got Shin’s attention. Genetic or not, Shin had no idea what to actually expect from the second growth. Thankfully Shin was not one of those genetics who argued with Ash at every turn. He allowed Ash to pull his limbs to their full extent and explain how to stretch properly. Having explained all this, and reminded Shin again the harm that would come to him if he didn’t stretch every few minutes, Ash excused himself to go find food.

Getting to the ground wasn’t as easy as getting up. Ash wasn’t familiar enough with the distances between branches to leap blindly and in the dusk light his eyes did no good. The tree gave off too many shadows, played tricks on the eyes. By the time he reached the ground, Ash couldn’t see Shin. Even though he knew exactly where the runt was, knew where Shin would be looking over and onto the ground, Ash couldn’t see him.

Ash moved into the untameable land and searched. There were no fruits, just leaves and branches. A few frond like things caught Ash’s eye. He pulled up and brought almost white carrots up out of the ground. Collecting as many as he could, Ash plucked up some of the long grass and tied the fronds together. Climbing back up the side of the tree was easier the second time. He knew the footholds and the distances better.

At the top, Shin was in the middle of stretching, wincing and whimpering and going on. Ash dropped the carrots at Shin’s feet. He took a moment to adjust Shin’s stretching just slightly.

“When I get to the bottom,” Ash said, “try calling out to me.”

“Why?”

“Could you see me looking up?”

“Of course,” Shin said, biting into one of the carrots and munching on it as he spoke, “you looked right at me. I even waved at you and then you turned away.”

“I couldn’t see you at all.”

“It was hard to see you, but I could,” Shin muttered, stuffing the back end of the carrot into his mouth, “that spotting on your head is like camouflage. If you tanned up a bit, I would think you were some sort of rock down there.”

“Odd,” Ash muttered, watching as Shin devoured the last carrot, “how much food do you think you’ll need?”

“A good deal more than a few carrots,” Shin groaned, frowning, “you hear,” a hand spun by his ear, then faltered and tapped a beat.

Ash cocked his head listened. A steady beat was working its way through the forest. Either something big was coming, or drums were echoing off of the walls of the cliffs around them. He and Shin hunkered down and peaked over the edge, not wanting to look too much or to be too obvious. Shin made a small sound and slid close enough to Ash that their bodies touched.

Laying against the wood was oddly warm in the cool dusk. The canopy held in the heat of the day, even as the sun set. As the sun set, the drumming grew louder. Ash probably would have had enough time to go out into the forest and back again, he could have gotten food for both of them and been back to safety.

It was full dark before the drummers came into sight. A line of people, the short kind of people, travelled out of the wilds and stopped in front of the tree. The drumming continued until they were all convened before the tree, then it stopped. From the little tribe a young female stepped forward, heavy with child. Hardly a child herself, her voice barely reached Ash’s keen ears at the top of the tree.

She spoke for a time, then turned towards the tree and raised her voice in song.

They were worshiping the tree.

As the female sang, others behind her brought forward hide bags and deposited them at the base of the tree. From there, the tallest male pulled something from amongst the roots and brought it to the female. She took it in her hands and ceased her singing. Her tone, as she spoke, implied that she was thanking something great and beyond her.

She kept repeating a word over and over. Ash couldn’t quite hear what it was, but it almost sounded like ‘Meeshnashya’ which was often, but not always, accompanied by a sound that Ash was certain his throat couldn’t make.

The offering made, the drummers took up their beat once more and returned to the wilds. Once the people were out of sight, once their torches were gone. Ash let out a sigh.

“They worship the tree,” Shin muttered, “that is illogical.”

“Maybe not,” Ash responded, “what made you walk this way? What brought you here, Shin? The tree could be sentient. It certainly has power.”

“They’re making a lot of noise,” Shin growled, “going to bring the beasts down on us. Then will their precious tree save them?”

“No, but if those drums are made from wood of fallen branches, the tree is keeping them alive in some ways,” Ash murmured, “I thought it was a beast coming towards us until one of their beats faltered. The drums we heard earlier weren’t them calling out their intent, they were trying to fool the forest into believing that they are a good deal bigger than they actually are.”

“The dog’s hackles rising and cats poofing to twice their size,” Shin asked.

“Basically…” Ash looked down and spotted something moving, he motioned for Shin to duck down low.

The short people came from one side, the tall ones from the other. They were long in leg and arm, tall as Ash and Shin. This group was either altered or descendants of altered people. Genetics and tweakers, given the odd, otter-like shape of one of the females. Amongst their ranks was the male Ash had seen in the morning.

This male stopped the group some distance from the tree and approached by himself. He riffled through the bags and pulled some food bits out. Heavy with grease, a container smelled all too edible to Ash, even from his vantage point so far up. The male returned with all but one of the bags. He then carried on a conversation with the others, who seemed to argue with him about leaving the one bag. The male, in turn, slammed the one who was arguing with him into the ground and let out an animalistic sound that couldn’t possibly have come from a civilized throat.

This male was dominant, he was alpha and he said to leave the bag.

Stranger the male sent back at Ash.

We’ll leave in the morning! Ash protested, knowing full well that he couldn’t take on a male that size.

What might have been a laugh and then You’ll be back.

Ash waited until he was absolutely certain that the tall people were gone before he slid out of the tree. He caught all but the last branch on his way down. Missing that didn’t break him, but it wasn’t comfortable to hit the ground going that speed. He grabbed the bag that was left and took it up and into the tree.

There was enough food to last days, but with Shin going through growth, Ash had to wonder if it would last more than ten minutes.

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