A/N;

For some reason I really love listening to the movie Rosemary's Baby while working on these, haha. Oh god, I love that movie so much…

Sorry this took so long, Dit, haha... On a happy note, at least you were the only one actually waiting for an update on this, haha XD? Now wathc as I spend days waiting for reviews that won't come, XD

Resident Evil; The property of Capcom, not me.

The heat of the next room hit her like a ton of bricks. Shifting from excessive cold temperatures to startling heat could not be good for her body at all. The darkness itself seemed to disappear, replaced with the gleam of an invisible sun – There were no solid walls to block it, other than the one holding the door she had entered through, the whole room appeared to be constructed of glass.

"This certainly is a new one…" She muttered quietly, raising her hand in an attempt to shield her eyes from the light. Her hand shifted away from the doorknob, feeling it only gain heat, and staggered a few steps into the room.

She managed to adjust quite quickly, at least with the new lighting problem. The heat still put a fair bit of stress on her body, but she soon found the reasoning behind it.

Moving her hand away from her eyes, she was able to get a good glimpse at the large, rather cluttered area in front of her. Various tables were set forward, lined up evenly but in such close proximities that it made the area feel almost… Claustrophobic.

Although all seeming to be placed with care, assortments of all kind of garden pots and trays were stretched out from top to bottom of the tables. Each table appeared to be sorted out by some sort of category, whether it was by type or flowing, Jill couldn't tell – Plants had never really been her thing, she had always simply admired them from afar.

Various tubes and piping appeared to lead both to and from the plants, the ground under some of the connections as well as the tables soaked from leaks that had been sprung. She could see more than one plastic tube that was busted and was spewing a spectacular amount of water onto the leg of one of the tables.

Minding her step, Jill moved towards one of the tables, letting one of her hands light down on the edge. Her fingertips simply glided across it, the gloves she wore doing a considerably decent job of rejecting the water entry through the fabric.

But with this, she once again realised how scorching the weather was inside the greenhouse. Glancing upwards, she could see no ceilings, no a source of shade other than what little space was below the tables. Shaking her head and glancing back down, she raised her hands to her neck, stripping off the scarf she had yet to discard and dumping it on the side of the adjacent table.

Slipping off her gloves, she concluded that the last thing she needed was to suffer from a very avoidable case of heatstroke. Placing those onto of her scarf, she began walking once again whilst she unzipped her last jacket. She simply wore a long sleeved T-shirt underneath, not the best pick for such a place, but better than what she had entered with.

Slinging the jacket over her shoulder, she could finally concentrate on what was around her. She could recognize a number of plants, but she certainly couldn't name them or determine one from another with ease. Half of them looked like variation of Aloe Vera, and just looking at them was beginning to do her head in.

After her experiences in the police force she half expected to find less than legal plants. Many of the plants clearly put in efforts to reach up high or out past the edges off their potting arrangements. The plants themselves looked like they were healthy and thriving.

All except for one, it would seem. As Jill walked past each of the tables, surveying each inhabitant of the pots, a browning, wilted plant caught her eye. It stood out, quite clear against its vibrant brethren.

Gently, Jill raised her fingers to it, skimming them softly across the bottom of one of the leaves. It did not appear to like this in the slightest, practically crumbling into pieces. Drawing her fingertips back, she noticed the peculiar structure the poor thing, trying to imagine it in a far healthier state. The base had what would have been thorns, though were now far less than intimidating. Segments of it seemed nearly like vines, clinging desperately to the sides of the pot plant. Large, dying leaves reached upwards, flow bulbs hidden here and there between all sections. Just like many of the others, she couldn't quite place it.

"I just can't get the one to grow."

For the second time that night, a sudden, unwelcomed appearance caused Jill's heart to jump in her throat. Quickly she turned around, hands on either side holding onto the table behind her in an attempt to keep herself from collapsing.

Rather than a little girl greeting her, a middle aged man stood instead. He looked less than pleased with Jill's reaction, giving a glare once her hands had touched the table. Her initial shock allowed her more time to survey him, very similar to the way she had with the plants.

She did envy what he was able to wear in the heated room. Khaki shorts, white singlet shorts, a thick pair of gardening gloves… She couldn't find the will to look at his feet, though she would have only noticed dark coloured gumboots. She barely took any notice of the sunglasses perched on top of his head, somewhat hidden in his short, light brown hair. She hated simple things like sunglasses now because of that traitor…

"Be careful, don't you damn well knock that over!" He warned, snapping Jill from her surprised state and back into reality… If that was what she could refer to it as. She cleared her throat, and quickly apologized.

"I'm sorry, but you shouldn't sneak up on people like that." She explained dryly, yet staying on a cautious edge. He appeared normal enough, very true, but so had Zoey. The chance of her knowing whether he was alive or dead wasn't something easy to figure out. However, given the area, the latter seemed far more likely.

"You shouldn't be sneaking around someone's Greenhouse." He snapped, looking away from her. She did her best to hide her annoyance at this, rather trying to stay on track and get out of the dratted place as quickly as possible.

Taking a glance at the plant, and a glance back at the man, it didn't take a genius to work out what was expected of her. Or, at least she hoped – If she was wrong, she would feel like more of a moron than she had in some time.

"Listen, I'm sorry – Clearly this is not my place to intrude." She lowered her head somewhat, empathizing her point a fraction, "But while I'm here, what's the harm of letting me take a look at your plant with you?"

He eyed her suspiciously, the glance in his eyes sending a shiver down her spine. His eyes were somewhat hollow, ghostly – They seemed very fitting, and left her with no doubt that the fellow was a member of The Walking Dead Society.

"There is a lot of harm, little miss. I'm sorry, but you're not going to touch my plant…" He stated lowly, though Jill could tell from his voice that he had no guts to actually do anything to prevent her interference. She looked behind herself, noticing a small trolley, about the size of a small chair. Not being too picky, that was exactly what she used it for.

She setting down, resting her arms over her knees and waiting for the man to elaborate. Naturally, the statement was peculiar enough as it was – The object in question was a plant, not some sort of fragile artifact. Though, taking into consideration the state of the plant…

"Let me guess, you're trying to figure it out, huh?"

Jill simply nodded.

"That plant there," He gestured towards the wilted plant lazily with his hand, "I have no idea what it is."

"Why do you have it?"

He shrugged simply, glancing at the plants resting on the other tables before back to her. "All of these plants here… They're all every day garden plants. You can find them anywhere, there's nothing spectacular about them… They seed, they grow, they bloom, and they die. But this one over here…"

He slowly took steps over to the table, resting his hands just in front of the pot. It gave Jill a different angle of him, just the slightest more of a glance. She could have sworn she could see something out of place at the back of his neck, but couldn't see well enough.

"I don't know. I've just always felt like there was something different about it." He sighed, shaking his head. He stared intently at the plant, thinking things over in his mind that Jill wished she could hear. It would most likely answer so many questions about the current situation.

"If you don't know what it is, how the hell did you get your hands on it?" Jill asked curiously, standing up from her little perch. She saw him hesitate for a moment, very cautious about divulging his information about the dying life in front of him. He sighed lightly, once more shaking his head.

"I picked it up from this old plant seller down the street. It was meant to be an import, but I couldn't find any information about it when I looked up the name." He explained, taking the same bitter tone that Jill had been using often that night. Without warning, he slammed his fist on the table, making a few of the lighter objects resting on it jump up and come down quickly.

Jill raised her hands as a motion for him to calm down. The last thing she needed in this apartment was a pissed off ghost – She had no idea how to handle something like that. "Alright fella, what's wrong? It's a plant; there's gotta be a way around this."

He mumbled a few things under his breath, turning his back to her and walking down the aisle between the two tables.

And that gave Jill more than enough view to see what she had thought she saw earlier.

Sure enough, there were dark red bloodstains on both the back of the man's head and neck, trickling down his back and staining that once white shirt of his. While it seemed to fade as it went on, the source of it still remained dark and very simply deep. His hair was matted and dyed around the region, flattened and clumped around torn skin. Said skin looked like it had been severed and torn from a quick but powerful blow.

Of course, Jill couldn't exactly tell what could have done it from where she was – And something told her he wouldn't take kindly to being closely inspected from behind, having fingers poking and prodding at the opened wound. If she did go doing that, she was sure she would end up making contact with his exposed brain.

Jill took a glance at the plant once more, before back at the others. He had spoken the truth – It was certainly different. "Alright, fine. Tell me then, why didn't you just go about asking people if they knew about the plant? They might have been able to help."

The man paused, clenching his fist, shaking his head before laughing in a mocking way. "See? You just proved that you wouldn't get it!" He turned around, surveying her reaction. He received none, seeing her concentrating too intently on the plant, "That plant right there? No-one's seen anything like it!"

Jill glanced up at him, nodding slightly. "I get it now. You didn't want to tell anyone, because you didn't want them to take it. Correct?"

He mumbled something in a displeased tone, looking away from the young woman's gaze. Oddly enough, it was as if stepping on her toes would be the last thing he should do, even if he had much more knowledge than her thanks to passing years.

"Listen. You can pretty easily tell that I don't know the first thing about one plant to the next, except for knowing that this one looks fucked up compared the rest of them here." Jill began sternly, narrowing her brow to glare at the dead man. "So let me help."

His mouth gapped open to question her, but by the look of her stance and of how she had acted so far, it was a no brainer that such an attempt would be useless. She was as willing to back down as a starving panther from the leg of a dying animal.

Hm. Somehow such an analogy, although odd and feeling misplaced in ways, seemed to fit quite well with the young woman. Finally, he relented. In his own way, at least.

"Do whatever you want." He mumbled gruffly, turning away and walking off, "I've tried everything there is to try, and you aren't going to scare it back to health, that's for sure."

Jill huffed at the remarked, before turning back to the plant at hand. It had perked in no way since her last glance at it; however, it did not appear to have wilted any further. Dying was a long and arduous process for plants, it would seem, and she found herself pitying it. Scattered around it were bags and small pails of assorted things one would use to attend to a plant. Some were filled further than others, traces of the substances messily staining and lingering on the table.

From the corner of her eye she spotted a bag with rather bold text labeled across it – 'Blood and Bone'. She grimaced slightly. In truth, she had no idea whether such a thing was indeed made out of ground bones and blood, but she recalled an occasion where one of her neighbours in the apartment building copped a great deal of strife. It seemed the front lawn's care taker and put such 'Blood and Bones' down on the lawn the previous day to help the plants grow stronger, only to find that said neighbours dog had found the stuff delicious; proceeding to dig up all the flowers and scoff down what it could.

Suddenly she felt her heart sink. Very suddenly indeed, she felt homesick. A strange feeling – By her estimate, she had only been gone perhaps an hour. Maybe in the back of her mind she feared never getting out of this place.

She put it aside, slipping on an abandoned gardener's glove. The last thing she wanted was to contract some sort of disease or bacteria from any of the fertilizers - especially from that horrible-smelling Blood and Bones mix.

She slipped her hand into one of the pails, carelessly throwing the content onto the roots of the plants – At least the roots she could get to.

"Be careful with that!!"

She rolled her eyes, now tired of the deceased she was supposed to be helping. She did her best to mix it with the soil, giving up not too long after – Grabbing the contents of a bag adjacent the pail and throwing it in, much more carefully.

"I've already tried that!" The disgruntled voice called loudly, causing Jill to grunt in frustration.

"Listen, just back off and let me work!" She called, slamming a fist on the table. The action caused the tools and assortment of other objects spaced out across it to jump some distance into the air. This time man rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath.

She looked back to the plant, contemplating what she could possibly do. Staring at the rather hidden roots once more, she quickly came to the conclusion that she couldn't mix things particularly well. Not without an electric beater, at least. Perhaps that was why Chris was always first to kidnap the bowl of cake-mix when she was trying to cook during lunch break. She would get him back later for that.

She glanced at all of the utensils sprawled out – There were some small spades, a few of those odd fork tools Jill couldn't name, some sticks and… Blood, plenty of blood. She hadn't noticed it with the assorted pot mixes, but concentrating now, it was a rather disturbing image. She looked over her shoulder, seeing the ghost man tend to a different plant. How much had he bleed? … How much was he willing to have sacrificed for this plant?

Now was not the time to think about it. She would ponder later. She let her ungloved hand wonder idly towards the tools, to feel around for the correct thing to use.

She gave a sudden, high-pitched yelp, whipping back to see her hand before drawing it close to herself. She whined, inspecting a fresh cut on her hand – A single slither of wood poking out from it. She cursed loudly and glared at one of the mixing sticks, tugging the cause of pain from her wound. Not one to accept defeat, she gabbed the stick with her same hand, plunging it into the soil and stirring it around the areas where the roots hadn't overgrown. Not and easy task, and a soft trickle of blood dripped down from the cut, down the wood.

It finally dawned on her that helping this case would not be such an easy task. It would take weeks to even notice if the mixture was having any affect at all.

She winced again, her cut stinging a great deal. She raised hand and pressed her finger to her lips, sucking her skin gently. Damn, for such a small cut it was bleeding like a bitch. She was reminded why she had demanded all floors in her apartment be either carpeted or tiled.

"Hm?"

Something was different. Very, very different. Thought the green, on just the tip of one of the roots, was green. She paused, before quickly drawing her hand from her mouth.

"You've got to be kidding me…" She breathed. She swallowed hard, knowing that there was really only one way to find out. Cautiously, she grabbed one of the small spades – Its edge was sharpened, as if to help dig. Cautiously, and rather hesitantly, she brought it to the palm of her hand, digging the blade in rather deep and dragging it across her skin.

That was one of her problems – Jill was a real bleeder. Her blood never really wanted to clot in good time.

Yet amazingly enough, as the hot red liquid trickled down the leaves, so did the green slowly return to the plant. The colours, vibrant and alive, springing back to the dying plant. Slowly it curled upright, the small vines lashing towards Jill's hand.

She gave a startled gasp, quickly drawing her hand away and stepping back before it could hook onto her. She once more looked away towards the man, who appeared to have taken no notice.

"H-Hey!" Loudly, her call stretched across the large room to him. He looked over, and with her injured hand to her chest, she pointed her free hand towards the plant. Blatant, there was no other way she could inform him of her discovery. "Blood! That's what the fucker needs, blood!"

She was shoved out of the way before she could take a step away from the path – Narrowly avoiding a sharp corner protruding from the adjacent table. The man had shoved her rather hard, and she was quickly becoming tired of the 'ghosts can touch me' rule within the building.

The man had both hands firmly on the table, and was simply gawking at the plant. Nothing need to be said, and indeed, Jill said nothing. She turned on her heel, she walked to where she had put down her things earlier.

She muttered, grabbing her scarf and reaching for her jacket. How ungrateful this guy was, but she couldn't blame him. So much time and finally the answer, he must have been over the moon.

Her fingers just managed to tickle the fabric of her jacket before, abruptly, she felt her body grow weak, and became aware she was losing consciousness. As she hit the ground, all she managed to see was white.

And with that, she was out like a light.

The light slowly faded, and just like before, Jill awoke outside of the door. She could still see stars, a dazed feeling still lingering about her. Lying on her back, rather than painfully landing on her behind this time, she carefully pushed herself up. Rubbing the back of her head, she winced at the pain the contact caused. Quickly moving her hand in front of her eyes, she was thankful to see no blood.

Must have just been a bump.

She stood up, but soon staggered forward, suddenly feeling incredibly light-headed. Clenching her teeth, she rested on the door, her legs some quickly strengthening again. A few moments passed before the sensation left her head, and allowed her to move freely again.

"What was that about…?"

She could only mumble the words and wonder, lacking any form of clue to answer her inquiry. Soon after, that now familiar click rung out, echoing through the cold hallway. Looking off towards the previously unopened door, she could only be thankful that it was the last one she would have to tend to. She was cut short doing this, however, realizing something in the area had changed. It was now far darker than it had been when she had arrived, which was quite a feat. She could barely see in front of herself, the room only lit by stream of light seeping in from a higher, thin window.

She could only put the source down as moonlight, small images dancing through it. She had no time to inspect it, however. She had a mission to complete, and just one door away from getting a key. Or so she hoped.

Ah, was anyone else reminded of Little Shop of Horrors? Dang…