Node of the Mother Plant: solid at room temperature. If heated up to 173.4 degrees Fahrenheit, will become gas. If contained in a sealed vessel, pressure will build and there is a small chance it will explode, but 99.3 percent of the time it'll just fizz like a soda can.
IF YOU HAVE PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH GAS MOTHER PLANT SYMPTOMS: all I know is that it will cause irritation to the area of contact if the released node of the Mother Plant was far away. It spreads really freaking fast, so be aware. I don't really want to test any further, I was stupid once, I won't be stupid again.
The capped vial exploded, scaring the shit out of Seb and releasing the Mother Plant into the air. A flash of glass flung itself through the air and stinging Cody's arm in its wake. He didn't notice.
"Seb, get out of the room." Cody coughed, smacking the on button on the hood to suck all of the vial's contents out of the room. He ran out of the garage after him, still hacking up a lung from all of the Mother Plant he had accidentally inhaled. Finally he 0stopped, with Seb staring at him, concerned.
"You… you okay?" Seb asked, reaching his arm out but jerking it back, remembering that Cody didn't particularly like to be touched. "Sorry."
"I- yeah I'm fine." Cody wheezed, still out of breath. "We should probably steer clear of the garage for a while."
"That's smart." Seb agreed.
"Um. So. I was going to ask. Why were you there? What were you going to say when you were walking in?" Cody asked.
"Um. Well, I was going to say that you were apparently completely unaware of the passage of time and that it was 2am in the morning, but now it's that your arm's bleeding."
Oh? Oh. Crap. Cody touched the cut on his arm gingerly, jerking his hand away when it burned. "Ow. Okay." He looked back at Seb. "Where's Sammy?"
"Oh, he's asleep, I think." Seb replied.
"Okay cool. I'm going to shower and clean this up, probably sleep on the couch tonight ."
Seb nodded. "Well, I'm going to bed."
He turned and disappeared into the house, screen door slamming behind him. Cody took the time to inspect the cut on his arm more closely. Moving his arm hurt, his fingertips were beginning to develop pins and needles. Cody showered, cleaning his arm the best he could, and settled on the couch to sleep for the night.
Cody woke up to Sammy tapping quietly on the computer. On his own account, thankfully. He wasn't sure if he was going to be able to stand it if he was on his account. He sat up, hissing quietly at the pain that shot through his arm.
"Rise and shine, Cody." Sammy said cheerfully, not looking away from the computer. "It's about time you got up anyway."
Cody looked out the window to the sunny day outside. "Seb's at work?"
"Seb's been at work for a while." Sammy replied. Cody got up somewhat unsteadily, and checked the time on the computer. His eyebrows shot up. "I wanted to wake you up, but Seb said not to."
He flopped back onto the couch, being careful with his worse-off arm. "At least I don't have to go to work."
Sammy clicked a key on the computer and got up. "I'm going to go off and hang out with Micah, see if I can give him a hand with his sister. Don't die."
"Not planning on it." Cody replied dryly, watching him leave. The door shut with a clattering bang, the sharp rim chipping the door frame's paint. His father's voice echoed through his head. Promise nothing will happen if you're alone here?
"I promise." Cody added faintly.
He checked the time. Changed the password on his computer. Lifted his bad arm, made sure he could move it and his fingers. He could, but it shot needles of pain up his arm if he moved it a lot. He changed its bandage, then returned to the couch, with a few coughs in between. He checked the time again.
Bored.
His mind began to wander back to the garage, to where he was sure that all of the Mother Plant had been sucked out of the room. He opened the front door, to make sure it had all filtered out. The door took a few kicks to get open, Cody stepping through into the shockingly bright sun. It glared down at him, temporarily blinding him as he moved to cover his eyes. As soon as he got used to the light, he stepped off of the stairwell, bare feet burning against the sand. He quickly scrambled his way to the garage and opened the door. The damp air rushed towards him, the faint earthy smell of the Mother along with it. Cody immediately started coughing, a faint spray of red splattering his hand before he slammed the door shut and stumbled into the house.
He was partly collapsed on the kitchen floor before he stopped coughing, desperate to stop for just a minute so he could breathe. He grabbed the top of the counter, scrabbling for something sturdy enough for him to get up against. He finally managed to get himself to his feet, staggering to the couch and falling, crawling into a vaguely upright position.
"Excellent move, Cody. Go back to the danger plant gas room and breathe and move from where you are and want to take care of the people who got infected by the stupid Mother Plant and move to stupid Strangerville anyway and and and…" Cody ran out of breath and complaints, finishing his delirious rant with a fit of coughing and dropped his head onto the armrest, desperate for air. Finally, after getting a few breaths in, Cody involuntarily decided he wouldn't be able to be able to make his typical stupid decisions if he wasn't conscious, and fell asleep.
"Cody?" A nervous voice said quietly, shaking him to wake him up. He wasn't sure if he was going to wake up if it wasn't for the pain stabbing through his bad arm as the owner of the voice shook it. He instinctively moved his arm to brush the voice away before realizing it was Sammy. Cody flickered his eyes open. A scared looking Sammy stared back. "Cody, I told you not to die. You promised not to die."
"I didn't. Die. I didn't. I know I promised." Cody mumbled, not thinking about what he was saying. Sammy frowned.
"What's going on?"
Cody couldn't do anything but cough weakly.
"Okay. Okay I'm, uhh Cody I don't know what to do here, can you help me out a little with this? If you can?"
Cody tried to get up, unwisely putting weight on his bad arm and failing. A wave of dizziness washed over him. He squeezed his eyes shut to try and ward it off. "The Mother. What was being around it like? After you were vaccinated." He said quickly, coughing more blood onto his hand.
"What? Oh shit shit shit that's not good uh being around it after? It hurts, I feel like I would have been better off with your HAZMAT suit." He stopped, looking past Cody, then snapped back to attention. "Your friend. Mindy. The sketchy one. What's her phone number?"
Cody told him as fast as he could, struggling to stay conscious. He started to silently count backwards from one hundred, making up the trick on the spot. The way to staying awake that his father taught him mostly involved walking, and Cody doubted that he would be able to really even move.
"Hi Mindy, it's Sammy…" Sammy said on the phone, pausing. "Yeah, Samuel Blaze, has Cody mentioned me? Yeah it's about Cody. He's sick and I think it's because of sciencey reasons, he asked about The Mother… oh, you're on your way here? Thanks."
94… 93… 92…
Sammy hung up the phone and dialled another number, leaving the room. Probably Seb. Cody could hear Sammy saying "Hi Seb… yeah… Are you on your way home?" Before the conversation faded out of earshot. Cody managed to get into more of a sitting position while he waited for anyone to show up at the door.
83… 82… 81…
Someone rang the doorbell. That was fast. Cody called for them to come in, assuming it was Mindy.
"The door's locked, dumbass." Mindy's sour voice said, muffled by the door. Cody ditched the plan to stay awake.
"Oh! Mindy, you're here!" Sammy called from upstairs. He pounded down the stairs and opened the door to Mindy and her shock of purple hair.
"Hi." Sammy said.
"Hello, Samuel Blaze. That is your full name, right? Well, first and middle one. Anyway," Mindy replied, brushing past him to where she could see Cody. "Now what's going on..." she continued, annoyingly pretending that Cody couldn't hear her.
"What's up, Jett. I can tell that you have been… well, incapacitated by something. Was it The Mother? Samuel mentioned that it probably was."
Cody nodded and explained what had happened, trying not to run out of breath between words.
Sammy paced by the door, probably looking for Seb. Mindy waited patiently for Cody to finish speaking.
"Well, first off, that was stupid. Next time you want to almost kill yourself bring someone else who knows what they're doing. Second off, I might know what could fix you. But it'll suck. I have a bit of a lab back at my place, but there's no time to get it together and get back here. I could make it in your lab, though. I'll be back when I have it."
"But- you'll get sick-" Cody managed to call after Mindy as she swept out of the room.
Sammy looked at her strangely as she left. "That's why I refer to her as 'your sketchy friend.'"
Okay, I'm going to take that in silence. Cody thought, trying to keep his mind away from the pain in his arm that had started to burn the minute Mindy stepped into the room.
There was scrabbling at the door. Sammy opened it, Cody fully expecting it to be Mindy, coughing like he was after his last expedition to the garage. It was only a startled Seb, trying to get the stubborn door open. Seb stared at Sammy, who opened the door for him. "Were you waiting for me?"
Sammy looked confused. "No. Mindy. I don't know what she's doing outside. Did you see her?"
Seb shook his head and turned it in Cody's direction. His eyes widened. "You look like you were hit by a truck. What the hell happened?" He asked, scratching at his rolled-down sleeves. Should have warned you about that. Sorry, Seb.
"That vial that exploded last night had a bit of the Mother in it that was heated to a gas state and released into the air when it broke," Cody coughed. He squeezed his eyes shut to ward off the dizziness that came with trying to get upright and stay, his eyes taking more time to focus than usual. "Got me sick. Your arm." Cody pointed at Seb's arm, red with lines from the scratches of Seb's dull fingernails. "That's what happens. When you're far off."
Seb looked around outside. "Don't you think Mindy would have gotten here by now?"
Sammy nodded. "Mindy is here. She's in the garage. My guess is that all of the Mother Plant gas got out okay, cause she hasn't shown up dying at the door yet."
"She could actually be. Dead." Cody reasoned, the panic his words would normally cause not registering in his muddled brain.
"Good news— I'm not!" Mindy's voice piped from out the window. "That didn't take long at all to make, your door is just stupid and won't open."
"Oh! Well, you could have knocked." Seb said, opened the door after a bit of wrestling with it. Mindy strolled into the house, waving a syringe around cheerfully.
"Hello Sebastian. Got your antidote, Jett." She said, looking fairly proud of herself over something she claimed was simple. "Now, this is going to be absolute hell for about the first second and then you're going to pass out."
"Okay." Cody replied, not enough words registering in his head to make any difference.
"Cool!" Mindy chirped, plunging the syringe needle into his arm and backing up, bumping into the coffee table. She held up her finger. "And…"
Cody screamed as pain shot up his arm and through his body for an excruciating moment, his last conscious memory being Mindy dropping her arm and smugly saying "...now."
Laughter.
Then it stopped.
It started again, along with the slight swaying of trees, another figure streaking forwards, then backwards, then forwards, then backwards. The figure got down from the swing, saying "here, Cody. You can have a turn." He didn't recognize the boy for a moment, then he remembered Jonah. He didn't want to. He didn't want to remember how his fathers loved whenever Jonah was over, and how they were all devastated when they got the call from his parents, to tell them he had been hit by a car and wasn't going to wake up. Cody got up from the ground, looking at his small hands, then remembered that they had never been any different from the way they were. Cody wasn't sure what he expected. He got onto the swing and started to sway back and forth, only breaking into a full swing when Jonah started to push him, stopping when Cody got going, giggling at the wind in his hair.
Then something happened, something so distinctly wrong that Cody stopped swinging, jumping off of the swing and hitting the wood chips hard. He crumpled to the ground, shutting his eyes. He opened them again, noticing an immediate change he couldn't quite place. Jonah helped him up, his typical crooked smile plastered onto his face. The immediate feeling of falling made Cody shout and stumble back to the ground. Jonah looked at him, the smile melting off.
He helped Cody up again, saying something he couldn't hear. The feeling of wrongness returned full force when he was standing, the air seeming too thick, too hard to move. Something else caught his attention, something somewhere else Cody wouldn't typically notice, if it weren't for Jonah saying in a vaguely feminine voice "You have to follow it."
Cody obeyed, vision fading as he stumbled towards the different area of wrongness. Jonah's normal voice faded away, calling "Find it! Follow it, you have to!"
Cody woke up quietly, eyes snapping open to complete squinted, beginning to make out faint silhouettes of furniture. The edge of someone's bed. Faint light trickled through heavy curtains beside Cody, betraying whose room it was. Seb couldn't sleep with any light in his room whatsoever, and the only reason he picked his room was because of the blackout curtains that the previous owners of the house had left. Cody wasn't sure if he wanted to get up. He pulled one of the curtains aside to shed more light on the room, the plainness confirming his suspicions. A small yellow note card lay on Seb's nightstand, held down by his phone.
If you're reading this, Cody, yay! You're awake! I couldn't really get you that much to do, and Mindy wants you to stay in bed. I did get you your phone, though. Call Mindy. Then I guess I can't really judge what you do on your phone, so if it isn't going to immediately result in your getting out of bed or your death, you can do as you wish.
Cody fumbled for his phone, dropping it onto the carpeted floor. He sighed. Really?
Ah, well. I guess that doesn't count as me getting out of bed. He leaned over, nearly falling out of bed. He grabbed a sheet and wondered why Seb made his bed as neatly as he did. Scraping the carpet with his fingers in their blind search, they found his phone and pulled it back to where he wouldn't die if he got up to get it.
And… call Mindy. Right. He dialled her number. The call went directly to voicemail.
"Um, Hi Mindy, I'm awake. I'm guessing you were the one who wrote the note to call you, I know no one living here has that neat handwriting. Call me back when you can, I guess. Bye."
Cody hung up, trying to sit up but failing. Should have guessed that I wasn't back at 100% yet. Damn. He coughed, thankful that his hand was free of blood when he drew it away from his face. The phone started ringing again. He picked it up, fully expecting it to be was his father.
"Hey Dad."
"Hey, Cody! How ya doing?" Ryder said. Cody could imagine him leaned against the wall of his bedroom, arms and shirt splattered with paint.
"I'm…" Cody stopped, considering the events of the past twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours. But he knew that if he told his fathers about what happened, he would have to explain the whole business with the Mother and he would rather not go through all of that when all he really wanted to do was to go back to sleep. "I'm fine."
"Okay." his father paused for a moment. "You know, I haven't been to your house for a while. Is there any time I could come over?"
Cody stiffened, then relaxed, trying to re-convince himself that Ryder couldn't see that he was hiding things over the phone. "Um. Probably not anytime this week. I'll ask when Jake's off work."
"Sure." Ryder said. "Well. Faith's coming over soon, and she'll flip if she sees the kitchen in the state it's in, so I have to go. Love you, Cody. Bye."
"Bye." Cody echoed, and hung up. He put his phone back on his nightstand, burying his head in Seb's pillow. It didn't help him sleep, but the best he could really do was wait until someone got home.
Cody shook himself out of his stupor when the screen door banged open. His door opened, ever so slightly, Seb peeking through. Cody waved, Seb's eyes brightening when he realized his cousin was still among the living.
"Cody! You're awake! I didn't see that coming. Mindy said you would be asleep for way longer."
Cody gave a faint smile, sitting up. "Well. I didn't even expect to be alive, so…"
"You've fought a fifty foot tall sentient plant on your own and lived. I'd say you've definitely seen worse." Seb grinned, leaning against the wall.
Cody rubbed his eyes, exhaustion still tugging at him. "Still feel like crap, though."
"Fair enough. You want me to call Mindy over? She can probably tell you when you'll be back at 100%."
"You can try. She didn't pick up when I called."
Seb frowned. "Oh. well, I'll try again, it's probably better to have tried once than twice." he took Cody's phone and before he could protest, he called Mindy, but less than thirty seconds later he handed it back. "Yeah you're right, it went straight to voicemail."
"I do tend to be right."
"Shut up. You're right until you get yourself killed."
Cody looked down. "Fair enough."
There was a knock on the door. Seb went to get it. Cody could hear Mindy's voice floating down the hall, and suddenly there she was, bursting into the room. "Hi. you okay? I think I know what happened to you. Do you want to know?"
Cody looked up to Mindy's disheveled purple hair. "I'm fine."
"Good! Apparently the Mother reacted with her vaccine in your blood, and got you sick. You'll be fine in about a day." she paused for a minute, eyebrows furrowing. "You wouldn't wake up."
"What?"
"You were supposed to wake up after about an hour. You were out for way longer than that. I had to tell Samuel and Sebastian that you would be out for longer so they wouldn't worry."
"Thanks for that." Mindy nodded. "I do have one, less urgent question. I'll ask the other ones when I'm coherent enough to remember the answer."
Mindy looked up. "Yeah?"
"How'd you get here so fast? Do you live under a rock in my backyard or something?"
Mindy laughed, getting up to leave. "That's close enough to the truth. See ya, Jett." Seb's door shut for a moment, but reopened and Mindy's head popped through. "And Jett?"
"Yeah?"
"You owe me one."