*grumbles that work is taking up too much of her life*
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Mr. Herman had placed the look on his subordinate's face long before the man realized what he was feeling. Awe? For the plants? He looked around the room, his gaze taking in the men staring up at the bulb. They were supposed to be securing the people who had broken into the facility and taken a highly necessary bulb offline. They were not supposed to be standing around slack-jawed and with their hands up their… up. Every moment this plant was offline drained the reservoirs of the facility even further. Just a few more hours and the city would be experiencing brownouts. With any luck that would be all they would see, but he couldn't count on it. The populace knew how much their lives depended on the plants and if their power stream was interrupted there would be a panic. And likely riots. And the deaths as people became mobs and lost all semblance of reason.
He scowled and looked away from the travesty. His gaze fell on Vash, and in lieu of screaming at his men he turned to look at one of the saboteurs. He went down on one knee, ignoring the pops and creaks of his joints, ignoring the indignities of age.
It wasn't fair that this man could cause so much trouble and never even have to be faced with the discomforts of aging. Time was supposed to be the great equalizer, the one thing that no man could beat, and yet here lay the Stampede. Felon without equal, killer and destroyer of nearly everything he came in contact with.
And sleeping like a baby, without even a furrow of worry or stress on that unlined brow. It was disgusting.
He reached out a hand and shook the plant's shoulder. When that garnered him no response he shook harder. Vash's head knocked the wall, the hollow sound echoing loudly in the chamber but he didn't awaken.
Mr. Herman stood up with a grimace of distaste, wiping his fingers on his suit jacket to smear away the contagion that he imagined lingered there.
"I do not pay you people to stand around," he remarked loudly. Many of the men jumped and a few turned to give him a sheepish look while they awaited further orders.
"What do you want us to do, sir?" asked the closest. His soft voice penetrated the haze of ire that surrounded Mr. Herman's mind.
What to do with them now? Kill them, whispered the voice of reason in his mind. They are a threat to you, to this facility, to humanity as a whole. The planet would be better off if they were done away with, if all of their ilk were given no chance to survive. How many lives have been prematurely ended at the hands of the men in this room? Millions. Hundreds of millions? The number could no longer be easily determined but it was higher than the number claimed by any other mass murderer in history.
He sighed and closed his eyes as he struggled to find an answer. Death was no more than what they deserved, all of them. Too much power for men, abuse of reason and intelligence to create a more perfect means of destruction. No one would be safe while they lived, not even them. Humans feared them, those who knew what they were. All would fear, if all knew. For the moment he ignored the fact that a human woman had mated with Vash and that their son lay in this room. Far better to ignore the problem that Alex posited and concentrate on the twins that had terrorized the planet for decades.
And that was the heart of the problem. Terror. Fear.
Would Knives have killed so many had he not feared that they would kill him? Did not their efforts to destroy the legacy of their ancestors mean that the killer was right? That all his evil was justified as a means to protect his existence?
Not for the first time Jeremy cursed those ancestors that decided to fiddle with the human genome, to make it better and then leave it to their children to overcome the jealousy and fear that resulted. Who could not be resentful when faced with the near perfection that these plant children exemplified? Faster. Stronger. Smarter. Unaging.
Perfection, but flawed by their human minds, by the human emotions like fear, distrust, hate. All the emotions that their older brothers and sisters displayed whenever they got the chance.
Who was wrong? Was it the fault of the plants, that they were born, then persecuted for having the audacity to be better than those that made them? Was it the fault of the men, that they looked upon what even the best of them could not be and envied? Was it no one's fault and only the way things were meant to be? Did it have to be one or the other, plants or humans, incapable of living together?
He massaged his temples as the rhetorical thoughts that had plagued him for years moved from the realm of thought to action. He needed the answers and needed them now. No longer could he look at the problem and hide behind the fact that he could not answer it, that it wasn't his problem. Fate had chosen him to be the one to whom the question finally fell, the human who stood in for the entire race. What humanity would do rested with him.
Now it was, and it was time and past time for an answer. He opened his eyes and looked around the room, savoring the moment. It was time to begin the end of this sordid saga.
"Pick them up and follow me. I have a more… appropriate place to house them." The solider nodded and directed his men. With a minimum of fuss the plants were hoisted off the ground and carried out of the room. And still they slept, as history was made around them.
