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The Proper Growing Conditions of Onions

Mendel felt a peculiar prickle along the side of her forearm. Had she not turned her arm to look, it could've easily been disregarded as a ticklish breeze, or a finger of greenery eking out from one of her pores. But it was too yellow to be a plant, and too visible to be a breeze.

This visible, yellow thing was a bumblebee.

Mendel raised her wrist to the tip of her nose. Her six-legged passenger explored the miniature garden sprouting from the back of her arm. Onions, mainly, but there were a few wildflowers she had 'borrowed' from neighboring farmers thrown in. Intercropping was prohibited behavior, but Mendel trusted that the bee wouldn't snitch on her.

The bee itself could cause enough trouble on its own. If there was one wild bee on Mende's farm, there were hundreds, a whole colony, and the auditors wouldn't rest until it was eradicated.

But Mendel had no idea how to hide one bumblebee, much less a colony. No idea that didn't involve squishing and squashing, that is.

Moving slowly, so as to keep her passenger comfortable, Mendel tiptoed to the fence that separated her farm from Josie's. Josie had been stuck here much longer than Mendel, and might have some idea of what to do with this little lady.

Mendel rested her arms on the chest-high wooden fence. The bumblebee dragged itself off Mendel's arm, but didn't stray far. Poor girl must be hungry, surrounded by flowerless onions. Mendel would have to get her some sugar water, just as soon as she figured out how to keep her from being obliterated.

It didn't take long for Josie to notice the heavyset, overalled woman waving her down from their shared fence. Josie, like Mendel, had a tendency to linger near the fences, hoping to swap news, jokes, or even--if there weren't any auditors around--plant samples. Mendel wasn't the only heterogeneous farmer, though she was probably the most conspicuous one.

Josie jogged straight toward Mendel and waved back. Mendel chanted her name, as though reeling Josie in with each shout. "Josie Josie Josie!"

"Yes Yes Yes!" Josie laughed back.

"I found a crawly dude!" Mendel exclaimed. She directed Josie to the bumblebee, which had started trecking down the fence.

"Indeed," Josie agreed. The two of them strolled alongside the bumblebee, keeping it soundly sandwiched between them. "And would this 'crawly dude' happen to be more contraband?"

"No!" Mendel answered adamantly.

"Mm." Josie nodded, her puckered smile growing just a mite wider.

"It's not contraband this time!" Mendel insisted. "It'd be pretty dumb to sneak in a single bee. And pretty impossible to sneak a whole hive."

Josie raised her eyebrows, unconvinced, but mostly believed Mendel. Mendel wasn't the humble type, nor the discreet type. If she had managed to resurrect an extinct insect, she would not have been coy about it.

"Well, thank you ever so much for making me an accomplice in this infraction," Josie curtseyed, "but I'm too busy preparing for my appointment with the auditors."

Mendel sputtered, "But this isn't my- what should I-"

"In fact," Josie cocked her head, "shouldn't your appointment be happening right now?"

"Shit! Fuck! Yes!" Mendel started to run back toward her office-slash-living-space, turned back to retrieve the bee, then thought better of it and turned around a third time, sprinting full-force toward the sole building on Mendel's plot of land. Josie waited until Mendel was out of earshot to start chuckling.

The bumblebee paused, taking a much-needed rest. Or maybe she, like Josie, was watching Mendel leave, laughing and falling a little in love with the sector's newest farmer.

"Hi there, you little criminal," Josie cooed to her unexpected guest. She offered her flowered wrist to the bee. It crawled gratefully onto the cluster of fresh petals that grew evenly from Josie's arms, plenty more welcoming and well-kept than Mendel's onions. "Let's find you something to eat."

Mendel charged through her back door, flustered with directionless panic. Her house was small enough that she could tell within seconds that the auditor hadn't come in yet. That didn't keep her heart from pounding into her throat, constricting her breath into tight, disjointed gasps.

Burning her lingering adrenaline, Mendel quickly checked every drawer and closet. No auditor, nothing out of place. She even checked the tops of her bookcases, hopping onto her kitchen counter to peek at her secret succulent garden, hidden in the tiny space between the cabinets and the ceiling. The succulents were still sitting prettily in their repurposed tissue boxes and toilet paper tubes.

The auditor was late. That gave Mendel an advantage before the appointment even started. For once, she'd be the one on higher moral ground.

Mendel was too busy planning a speech on the importance of punctuality to notice the shadow behind her window blinds, and opened her front door directly into the auditor's side.

Mendel heard a guttural oof, and drew the door back just a fraction. Peeking through the crack, Mendel saw a person so slick and lean that they had to be an auditor. They were important enough to be dressed in an actual suit, and had to work somewhere that required little caloric energy. A metal pin, which 'Samson', confirmed their position.

Mendel waited patiently for Samson to acknowledge her. Samson was still doubled over in pain, long dreadlocks veiling their face. They were clasping their bruised side with one hand and covering their mouth with the other.

"Yooooou...good?" Mendel asked hopefully.

"Perfectly fine," Samson gasped through a gap in their fingers. They drew their hand away slowly, as though expecting to find coughed-up blood. Mendel nearly rolled her eyes. She hadn't hit Samson that hard. Samson did look frail enough to be a Victorian-era victim of a fashionable respiratory disease, though. Had it not been for their army-green suit and tie, they could've been a third-tier character in a Bronte novel.

Mendel didn't feel like arguing. "Then let's get this over with," she waved the auditor inside, pulling out one of her two dining room chairs and taking the other for herself. The auditor took a seat. "You could've let yourself in, you know."

"Company policy," Samson said flatly. At least they no longer sounded like they was about to die of consumption. "I'm not permitted to enter private dwellings unannounced. It would be unprofessional."

"And standing on my doorstep like an orphaned puppy is so professional," Mendel snarked. Samson had been practically leaning against the front door. It was their own fault they got doorknobbed in the kidneys.

Samson ignored Mendel's sarcastic remark. They withdrew a floppy square of plastic and set it on the table between them. It clung flat to the table's surface and lit up, displaying a bulleted list on its hair-thin screen.

"This initial meeting is largely a formality, but it's important to us that you feel cared for," Samson said. "This is for your benefit. So, please, relax."

Mendel scoffed, "Um? I'm relaxed." She swung her right leg onto the table, her foot inches from Samson's face. Mendel was too short and wide for this to be a comfortable position, but this wasn't about comfort. This was about pride. How dare this sharp-dressed stranger imply that Mendel wasn't relaxed? Because she was. Relaxed.

"If you're trying to act extra chummy, it won't work," Mendel said. "I know you're not here to send me on vacation, or raise my salary, or say the food crisis is over and we can all go home."

Instead of getting upset, like Mendel had been aiming for, Samson just nodded. "That's correct."

"Whatever it is, it's bad news. We don't get good news here."

Samson's lower lip nudged into a frown. "I would not have taken you for a pessimist. You, who hold the power to end these crises."

"Does this look like power to you?" Mendel gestured at her small allotment of living space. This setup wasn't any worse than where she had been living before, but at least then she had had a choice of where to live. No lease-signing involved this time, just armored trucks and tracking devices. Home sweet home.

Samson's eyes narrowed, maybe concerned, probably just annoyed that Mendel wasn't playing the part of happy little farmer.

"I didn't ask to get sent here," Mendel sneered, "so if you 'spect me to play nice, you got another 'spect coming."

Samson pursed their lips. Mendel braced herself for anger, but instead got something even worse.

"I don't care if you like me, Mendel."

"I don't care about you, either," Mendel snapped back. "I don't care if you live or die." Her eyes darted to the magnetic knife rack in the kitchen. Not that she wanted to kill Samson. Much. But it's not like there would even be consequences, right? Mendel was already imprisoned, and, thanks to her biology, they couldn't afford to get rid of her.

"I didn't say I didn't care about you," Samson corrected, as though stating an obvious truth, the words holding no emotional weight. "I just said I don't care if you like me."

"Great. Because I don't. Like you."

"We've noticed larger than normal yields this season." Samson jumped right into their bulleted list before Mendel could have even a split-second's worth of satisfaction. "Of course it's no problem, but we have to ask if it's due to a change in farming technique, or your biology. It is of everyone's benefit if you share any new information you may have."

Mendel couldn't think of anything out of the ordinary. Except the one tiny, black-and-yellow striped thing she could not under any circumstances mention. "No. Nothing to report. Mrs. Samson."

"Mx.," Samson snipped reflexively. "And it's just my first name. Samson." Shame flashed across Samson's face. Mendel had gotten her wish of tearing some emotion from Samson's stubborn frown, but she could hardly take satisfaction in it. Mendel had to deal with the exact same shit every time she introduced herself to a new field hand or pollinator, and that wasn't very often. Samson, though, they probably met new people every day.

Must be hell, Mendel thought.

Serves them right, Mendel countered, though she frowned at herself for it.

"We've found no issue in your farming practices. You can expect an increased allotment of land arable land in the near future. We'll be bringing the intesturbines in beginning next week."

Eugh. Mendel hated those damn bio-machines. Giant worms with tractors for mouths.

Mendel did enjoy the chaos that followed a visit from the intesturbines. With a bunch of giant worms on the loose, no one cared where Mendel went or what she did in the meantime. A perfect opportunity to find more plants. Or possibly more bees. If the intesturbines didn't get to them first...

"Do you have any requests you'd like me to take to management?" Samson interrupted Mendel's fantasy of finding an untouched colony of bees. Really, Mendel would be happy with a handful. Actually, that wasn't a bad-

"I can't guarantee your request will be approved," Samson interrupted again, as though they didn't care whether Mendel was trying to scheme or not, "but we will do our best to provide you with anything you might need."

"Anything?" Mendel asked doubtfully.

"Anything you feel with aid the growing process. You are, after all, one of very few individuals with first-hand farming experience. And believe it or not, we are here to help."

"Well, there's nothing much," Mendel stalled, though she knew she would eventually have to finish the damn question, "just some...bees?"

"Bees?" Samson scowled. "Is there some problem with your pollinators? Because I can assure you, every one had been trained to the fullest-"

"No, the workers you got me are...fine," Mendel spat. It wouldn't be fair for her to ask for human workers who could fly and sting and bumble. Resume requirements were ridiculous enough as-is. One of her pollinators in particular, Marbs, was someone Mendel considered a friend.

"Then there's no need," Samson clipped, forcibly scrawling something on their digital notepad. Mendel tilted her head up, but couldn't make out what Samson had written. Asking about bees had probably made Mendel appear suspicious. And so, Mendel realized, did trying to peek at Samson's notes. She dropped her gaze to her lap. Best keep quiet, to keep from further incriminating herself.

"Besides," Samson continued when Mendel remained silent, "we couldn't get you bees even if we wanted to. They're extinct. They have been since before you were relocated. You should know that."

Mendel's stomach clenched. She managed not to say anything, even though she ached to rub Samson's wrongness right in their cold business face.

"The fences will also be replaced," Samson read off their notes. "The new ones will be taller. Solid steel. Cut down on cross-pollination."

For a split second, Mendel was ten minutes in the past, chatting with Josie over their perfectly jumpable wooden fence. Mendel wondered if the 'cross-pollination' Samson referred to was the type accomplished through blind acts of nature, or the kind conducted by Mendel's dirt-stained hands in the middle of the night.

It had to be the former. Samson wouldn't be acting so amicable--relatively amicable, anyway--if they knew about Mendel's ongoing quest to break as many of their regulations as possible.

Mendel's mouth popped open to protest, but she could only form a small, surprised sound. Complaining about walls would be an obvious sign of guilt.

"We'll be installing new fences while we prepare the new land," Samson said as they gathered their notepad back into their pocket. Mendel barely noticed Samson get up and open the door. But before they slipped away, Samson half-turned to Mendel and mumbled just loud enough for her to hear:

"So if you're going to do something foolish, you'd best get it done quickly."

Josie came straight to the fence when her appointment was over. Mendel was already there waiting, standing on the lowest slat and bouncing her heels.

"Do you still have the bee?"

"N-? No, Mendel, I don't have the bee."

Mendel threw her hands in the air and made a nasty face.

"Mendel. How am I supposed to keep tabs on a flying insect."

Mendel stuffed her hands into her armpits. "Fine. But you'd better let me know ASAP if you find it."

"I take it your appointment didn't go well?"

"That's not the point!" Mendel shouted. She wasn't done complaining about the missing bee. But she was all too happy to complain about the appointment, too. "Did you know that they're going to put in new fences?"

"Yes, that's what he told me."

"He?"

"Yeah, my auditor. Nervous skinny guy, blonde hair that could use a wash. Did you get someone different?"

"Yeah, 'someone'," Mendel huffed. Sounded like Josie got one of the newbies. Someone she could bully. Polar opposite of Mendel's auditor. Lucky Josie.

"It won't be for a while," Josie consoled, coaxing Mendel's hands out from under her arms. "And we need the extra land, hon."

"I don't," Mendel argued. "You don't." They both, by nature of their roles, had plenty to eat. One of the few perks of being a farmer.

"It's not about us, baby."

Instead of being endeared, Mendel was indignant at that pet name. She was only a few years younger than Josie, but knew that Josie referred to their time as farmers, not on the earth as a whole. Josie had been here since she was a teenager. Mendel's handful of months made her an infant by comparison.

"It never is, huh?" Mendel answered sourly. Samson had said that the auditors were here to help. Yeah, right. They were just trying to suck as much profit out of them as possible. It wasn't Josie that Mendel was mad at, but Josie was the only one in range.

Mendel jerked her hands away from Josie's and left in a huff. Josie didn't call after her, and Mendel was grateful. She only hoped she'd have time to reconcile with Josie before the fences separated them completely.

Samson's parting remark haunted her. Was it a warning, a hint that Samson knew more than they let on? No, Mendel had to believe the auditor was bluffing. They hadn't mentioned the succulents, or the bees, or Mendel's network of seed-swaps. Samson knew that Mendel didn't like them. This had to be reverse psychology.

Well, for once, Mendel was going to do exactly what she was told.

First thing the next morning, Mendel charged to the outside edge of her plot. It was packed with tidy rows of onions, with a border of empty land around it. The 'empty' land was as such in name only, since it was impossible to keep seeds from spreading on their own. They were supposed to keep roaming plants out of the border, so naturally, Mendel grew as many plants there as possible.

As much as Mendel enjoyed cultivating weeds, her real treasure trove lay in the woods beyond the edge of her plot. The boundary between the two was far from a clean line, as much as the higher-ups would like it to be otherwise. Ferns and brambles shuffled daintily toward the empty boundary, too pristine to be anything but a trap. The farm workers always slashed it back, yet the forest kept pressing forward.

Beyond the muttering masses of knee-high foliage, sturdy saplings and brambles watched from behind an invisible fence. A lake of biological diversity, held behind a dam ever on the verge of crumbling. Just one week of negligence, and the mighty forest would overrun their precious onions.

But it would all be gone once they brought the intesturbines through. Biomechanical machines the size of bullet trains, earthworms grown to prehistoric proportions. Mendel had only seen them once, when she was at the training facility. From a distance, they looked like paintbrush tips, painting even, brown brushstrokes across uncultured prairies. Supposedly they were as reliable as old-fashioned gas-gulping tractors. When Mendel saw the intesturbines' translucent pink skin, stretched across segmented rings of motors and muscle, she'd had her doubts.

Until those ghastly machines were brought in, Mendel's secret garden was safe. Truly, it was more museum than garden. Seedlings stood on tiered displays made from fallen logs and plastic storage boxes from her house. Mendel had to keep all her clothes in an unsorted heap on her floor, but it was worth it.

Whatever Mendel couldn't grow herself, on herself, she kept here. Every cutting begged off a neighboring farmer, every specimen discovered on her regular walks through the surrounding area, and anything else she could sneak in from outside. It wasn't an optimal place to keep her menagerie--the deciduous forest was unkind to orchids and lilies. Even resorting to hand-pollinating--a precision task otherwise left to the other workers, for good reason--did little to help.

But if Mendel could preserve even a single specimen, it would be worth it.

The air here was still, the wind weakened by trees. Mendel's arms floated close to her sides. Her seedlings' leaves and budding blossoms seemed to wave in the air. The landscape hung off Mendel like a chandelier, spinning ever so slowly.

Mendel tilted her head. No buzzing.

Of course it wasn't that easy. She wouldn't start seeing bees everywhere, now that she had seen one. Extinct pollinators weren't something she could conjure up with a wish.

Before giving up hope completely, Mendel checked her arm, the same one the bumblebee had brushed what seemed like ages ago. No yellow, only faint folds of green, worn down by Mendel's fingernails. Onion sprouts had never looked so bland and disappointing.

Mendel's tongue popped out the corner of her mouth. Maybe the bees were disappointed by the lack of color, too.

Mendel had some standards when it came to trying out new plants on her skin, as well as self-imposed restrictions on when and where she would plant them. She wasn't afraid of getting caught--what's the worst they could do?--but with so much clothed acreage available, putting prohibited plants on her naked arms was straight up unscientific.

Mendel's vision of her own loyal swarm of pollinators shut down every scientific thought in her head.

Mendel's fingernails weren't as kind as the company's made-to-order uprooting-and-replanting devices (they were just expensive tweezers, if you asked Mendel), but they got the job done. Mendel picked the healthiest-looking flower specimens from her collection and delicately placed them where the onions had been. One plant at a time, her arms became multicolored mosaics, set against rusty backdrops. Her arms would be sore for a good few weeks.

"Mx. Mendel?" On the edge of the forest's boundary, an overall-clad figure leaned close to the trees. Mendel could see their silhouette clearly against the backdrop of the setting sun. She hoped her position was shadowed enough to hide her recent makeover and the pile of baby onions at her feet.

"Yes? Marbs?" Mendel called back, her voice cracking. Gravity turned horizontal, and a heavy weight slammed sideways into her stomach.

When Mendel dared to look back at Marbs, she saw that their head was turned away from the forest, a gloved hand raised to obscure whatever stupid thing Mendel was doing.

"Samson's been looking for you," Marbs announced, addressing not Mendel but an empty space to her left.

"Awesome. Cool." Mendel grumbled to herself. She scampered out of the brush, stopping halfway to kick some dirt over the incriminating onions, and tapped Marbs on their shoulder. All clear, no more illegal activities happening in plain sight, no sir.

"Thank you. For your discretion," Mendel whispered. "I thought, with the new security measures, maybe-"

"'S no trouble," Marbs interrupted. Mendel was grateful--she tended to ramble and say more than she should, forgetting the fragile position Marbs was in. People with useful biology--Mendel with her onions, Josie with her edible wildflowers--had a certain immunity to consequences. Those with no biology whatsoever (like that fucking handsome auditor) had their own special privileges. And Marbs...

"Guess Samson's already butted in and introduced themself?" Mendel tried to joke, to clear the awkward mood she was mostly imagining.

Marbs looked quizzically at Mendel. "Yes," they answered hesitantly, bracing for a humorless punchline, "I've met Samson before."

"Ugh. I feel sorry for you," Mendel said wryly.

Marbs gave Mendel a half-smile, appreciating the effort, despite missing the humor. "They're waiting on the east end of the plot. You'd best get a move on, Mx."

"Yeah. And...thanks again, Marbs, really."

Marbs shook their head. A 'don't worry about it' head shake, but also, Mendel suspected, a 'you really gotta work on being less suspicious if you're going to overthrow the government, babe' head shake. Mendel was intimately familiar with both.

Samson had their notepad out again, inspecting not the onions but the stray vegetation surrounding them. Mendel approached cautiously from behind, simultaneously pulling her shirt sleeves as low as they would go and trying to peek at Samson's notepad. Neither attempt was very successful.

"Mendel," Samson said without turning around. Mendel froze, spooked, even though, honestly, who else would be sneaking up behind an auditor like a cartoon fox? "Excellent. I've just spoken with Marbs."

"I'm sure you did," Mendel said sourly. She shifted her weight, and tucked her arms behind her back.

Samson raised an eyebrow at her. "You have reason to doubt me?"

"You're a manipulative, lying bastard."

"Charming as ever, eh, Mendel?" Samson noted coolly.

"'As ever'? We met yesterday, weirdo."

"Mm-hm. Of course," Samson agreed quickly. They held their notepad much closer to their face than was necessary, kissing the screen.

Mendel squinted. "So why'd you call me over? You know I'm busy, right?"

Samson coughed into their fist, keeping their mouth guarded.

"You're supposed to use your elbow pit," Mendel nagged with relish. Goddamn company jerks couldn't even cough right.

Samson swallowed, winced. Mendel expected to see blood, or crumbs of a particularly dusty Nature Valley granola bar, on Samson's thin lips, but they were clean. So it could just be allergies, or tuberculosis. Mendel hoped it was both.

"We'll have to speak later," Samson said, their voice raspy and sore.

There was a vaccine for tuberculosis, right?

"Mendel?" Samson choked. "Can we speak later?"

"Yeah. Whatever." Not like Mendel cared what Samson said, anyway. But now she was curious, and she had already walked all the way here. "Fuck, dude, just get a glass of water or something."

Samson, bent over like a novelty water-drinking bird, nodded. Mendel decided that that bit of advice was enough unwarranted kindness for one day, and left Samson alone at the edge of the field.

Hope they choke, Mendel thought. No, but then they'll just send another auditor, and that wouldn't be any better. It might even be worse.

The fact that Samson was on Mendel's land without her knowledge was worrying. Might be a routine check-in. Might be that Samson only meant to lecture Mendel about the importance of careful weeding and pruning, keeping her onions inside the margins and everything else outside. Might be more.

Just to be safe, Mendel took the long way around the plot, checking on the edges of the perimeter that weren't Samson-infested. Everything looked fine until Mendel got home. She wouldn't put it past an auditor to intrude on her private space while she was away.

Thankfully, Mendel didn't find any evidence of intrusion, nothing missing. There was only one odd addition to her home. On the inconspicuous shelf above her kitchen counter, next to a flowering succulent, was a bumblebee.

"It's not a coincidence," Mendel insisted. "Bees love me. All there is to it."

Josie was unconvinced. She leaned over the fence and gestured at Mendel's general aura. "Could be your flashy clothes. I think I read somewhere that bees were attracted to bright colors."

"Are, Josie," Mendel said sternly. "You saw a bee yesterday! With your own eyes!"

"I saw a black and yellow insect," Josie said measuredly. Conversations with Mendel often got interrogation-y. "I couldn't say with any certainty whether it was a bee, or any other pollinating insect, for that matter."

"You think I'm seeing things."

"That may well be the case."

"Well, I'm seeing something, all right."

Josie waited.

Mendel hammered the fencepost with her palm. "I'm seeing the truth."

"Alright. So, what will you do with this prophetic knowledge? Discover a hidden colony of bees and single-handedly end the famine?"

"I might. That sounds pretty good, when you put it that way."

"I'm looking forward to it," Josie smiled. Teasing, but not without a speck of genuine hope that Mendel's claims were true.

"Bees or no bees. This is happening." Mendel glanced side to side, and pressed her head close to Josie's. "I'm getting all the plant samples I can. Before the intesturbines and the new fences and whatever other shit they decide to throw at us."

Josie nodded. "I noticed you're sporting some new accessories."

"Whatever I can carry. I don't know how I'm going to secure the rest of the samples, but I will. Have you gotten anything new from the other farmers?"

"I don't think it's the farmers you should be asking." Josie nodded toward Mendel's fields, where the workers were weeding and pollinating the rows of onions.

Mendel turned her head and watched. Marbs was one of six workers (not including Mendel) who handled the manual farm work. With robotic precision, Marbs was using a synthetic cotton swab to paint the small onion flowers with pollen.

"I haven't asked them yet," Mendel muttered, breaking her gaze away from Marbs.

Josie pressed, "What are you waiting for?"

"It's different." Mendel's voice wheedled higher. "They could get in serious trouble. It's not like they're a farmer, they're..."

"A fluke?"

"I hate that word," Mendel grimaced. "Earth doesn't fuck up, people do."

Josie breathed heavily through her nose. "Listen. Mendel. Your new flowers are pretty and all, but they're not resilient enough."

"I can do this myself," Mendel pouted. It was a lie, but a forgiveably obvious one. Mendel was fine with asking for help. So long as doing so didn't endanger anyone but herself.

Josie heard Mendel loud and clear. If Mendel wanted to get herself in trouble, Josie wouldn't, and likely couldn't, stop her. Instead of giving encouragement or warning, Josie simply brushed the violets circling Mendel's biceps. "They are pretty," Josie repeated. "And I'm sure all your little imaginary bee friends will appreciate the effort."

"They will." Mendel insisted. And, she hoped, the new flowers would also piss off Samson. The company would find out eventually, but Mendel would blow her cover on her own terms.

Samson could stick their nose wherever they wanted, but Mendel was the one in charge. And she'd make sure they knew it.

"Hey, Samson! Wanna see something neat?"

Samson looked up from their notepad to see Mendel running toward them. During the last few days, they'd gone back to making sneaky notes, slinking around the edge of Mendel's onion plots. Mendel was almost disappointed. Even a pencil-pusher like Samson had to get bored of onion fields eventually.

When Mendel grabbed Samson's arm, they didn't put up much of a fight. Their legs were much longer than Mendel's, but they stumbled behind her like a newborn horse. Probably not used to running, or having enough space to run at all.

"No lectures," Mendel warned as they reached the border around the onions. The area that should've been sterile dirt was lush with plants Samson could not name, with some rogue onions sprinkled in.

Samson didn't object to the scruffy border, nor to the casual way Mendel strode into the forest.

"If you're going to do something foolish, you'd best get it done quickly," Mendel parroted. They reached Mendel's clearing, her stockpile of plants. Most were represented somewhere on Mendel's skin, a kind of traveling exhibit, or a backup of a precious data store. Mendel welcomed Samson to her den of resistance with open arms, displaying both the makeshift exhibits and her own arms bursting with three-dimensional freckles.

Samson looked ahead with eyes unfocused. Unable, or unwilling, to see.

"Your move," Mendel challenged. She kept her stance open, daring Samson to attack her, with either sharp words or bony fists. Mendel wasn't afraid of either.

Instead of striking, though, Samson just shuffled their head back and forth. "Mendel."
"Yessss?"

"I already knew about your surplus plants."

Mendel scowled. "I knew you knew. You know fucking everything, don't you, Samson? So you can stop playing dumb and tell me the truth."

"I have not lied," Samson said too quickly, and had to amend, "not to you."

"To who, then?"

Samson looked down at their feet.

"Samson," Mendel chided. "You haven't been lying to your boss, have you?"

Samson stood still.

"You know that these plants are valuable," Mendel reasoned, stringing together the doubts she'd been collecting like precious beads since she'd met Samson, since Samson had first hinted that the company wasn't as dense as it seemed. That Mendel wasn't as tricky as she thought she was.

"Yes," Samson gasped at the air, expecting their breath to be stolen at any moment.

Mendel's rebellious horticulture was no rebellion at all. It was exactly what the auditors--or one very slimy auditor in particular--wanted.

"How long have you known?" Mendel asked in the steadiest voice she could muster. She dreaded the answer, but not as much as she dreaded a lifetime of wondering.

"As long as I've known you." Samson raised their head, rubbing some of the guilt out of their eyes.

Mendel thought back to when she left the training center three months ago. Samson was young, close to Mendel's age, she guessed, so they couldn't have been an auditor for long. Mendel's ego pressed her to ask whether she was Samson's first assignment.

"And you didn't tell anyone because, what?" Mendel asked. "You wanted to keep sneaking around, burgling my plants? To sell? Or to keep for yourself?"

Samson looked straight at Mendel's museum for the first time. "There are people on the outside who are starving, Mendel. Not just for food. For life, for something alive."

"I'll bet," Mendel spat. She turned her back to Samson, arms crossed, looking over her garden for what she accepted would be the last time. "Too bad this'll all be turned to mulch when your intesturbines come through."

"I would stop it if I could," Samson said dejectedly. "I tried to warn you."

"Lotta fucking good that did."

Mendel heard the muffled sound of Samson coughing. Worry flicked at her shoulders, but wasn't enough to turn her around.

"But you got the plants," Samson said between coughs. "It won't have been a waste."

"I have nowhere to replant them," Mendel scowled at her useless arms. Yes, the specimens were safe on their living ark, but they were one company inspection away from destruction. That, or they'd keep growing larger and larger until Mendel had to pull them out herself.

"No. Not here," Samson agreed. Their coughing fit was petering out into throat-clearings and terse words, as though it was hurting them to speak. "It's not too late. We can request a delay, we can hold off the renovations, if we both-"

"What do you mean?" Mendel sing-songed sweetly. "Why wouldn't I be eager to see that hideous forest mowed down to make room for more delicious, company-approved onions?"

Samson ducked their head, muttering into their shoulder, "You hate onions."

"It's not about what I want," Mendel continued her sugary performance, "it's about the good of the people, right? That's what the company always taught us." She had no time to wonder how Samson knew she didn't like onions.

"The company doesn't care about people." Mendel could hear Samson's scowl.

Mendel rolled her eyes, trusting the gesture would carry in her voice. "Oh, and you do?"

"I care about-" Samson cut themself off with another bout of coughing. Convenient, Mendel thought, but couldn't definitively say it was intentional. It did sound like Samson was really hacking up a lung. All the more reason for Mendel to keep her back turned.

Mendel broiled, imagining Samson selling her plants, leeching off her like the livestock kept by farmers in the past. And for what? So a few wealthy people on the outside can have contraband flowers, and Samson gets some extra spending money? Mendel wondered what Samson was spending it on. New suits, maybe. They definitely weren't spending it on food. "You're deluded if you think you're helping anyone by doing this. You're no better than the others"

"You're the one who can help, Mendel," Samson countered, miraculously overcoming their persistent cough. "With your biology, and all the plants you've collected..."

"I don't care about money." Mendel looked past her collection, deeper into the forest. "I want out. I want-"

A muted buzzing interrupted her. She turned around. Samson knelt with their hands clasped and dotted with red bumps. Samson's eyes were wide, their mouth shut tight. Their hands buzzed.

Mendel's half-believed fantasy, her inexplicable power to summon bees, was reality.

"I knew it," Mendel gasped. She sprung toward Samson, but clutched at empty air. Samson had scrambled to their feet, keeping their hands clasped and raised so Mendel couldn't reach even if she jumped.

"Mendel, I swear I can help you," Samson spoke, forgoing their usual steadiness to get out as many words as possible. Mendel was still swarming them, grabbing their arms, struggling to unlock their clasped hands. "But you have to forget about the bees."

"This is some serious cover-up shit!" Mendel protested, still trying to climb Samsom like a jungle gym. "I told Josie-"

"You can't tell anyone!" Samson held their hands above their head, leaving Mendel grasping at their armpits, the highest part of Samson's body she could reach.

"Fucker!" Mendel switched her focus from Samson's hands to their legs, which were helpfully within Mendel's reach. It was time to lean into her role as the neighborhood toddler.

"Quit kicking me!" Samson tried to counter Mendel's flurry of kicks, but couldn't manage it while still keeping their arms steady. Their hands broke apart for a moment, then flattened together.

Mendel gave Samson a few more kicks for good measure. "Fuck you! You killed it!"

Samson glanced down at their insect gut-streaked palm, then let it drop to their side. Mendel wasn't a bee expert, but there was way too much gunk on Samson's hands to have come from a single bee.

"Is that how you've been 'helping me'?" Mendel sneered.

"I am helping you, Mendel." The only remaining fault in Samson's voice was a raspiness. Otherwise they were once again cool and composed, as though they hadn't just admitted to countless deceptions and destroyed a literal handful of precious insects.

"I don't want your fucking help."

"I understand you're upset, but-"

"Actually, I don't want to see you ever again."

Still undazed, Samson only sighed. "Mendel, I swear. Once the intesturbines come, I'll be gone for good."

"Good." Figures, Samson would ditch as soon as Mendel stopped being valuable. They'd probably spill Mendel's secrets on their way out, too.

Without another glance at Mendel or her garden, Samson started heading back to the farm. Probably to keep pretending to take notes on the onions, like they even mattered anymore.

Samson hadn't admitted it themself, but Mendel knew. The intesturbines would come, then the fences, and then Samson would be long gone.

And hopefully, by then, so would Mendel.

"Are you sure you can make it through?"

"Yes," Friend said solemnly. She and Mendel were huddled against a wall, heads poking into the corridor with the armored door at the end.

Mendel could not remember her old training center comrade's name or face, but she'd memorized the way Friend's fingers had stuttered across her bony knees. It wasn't the detail Mendel would've chosen to remember, but it was better than forgetting Friend completely, she supposed.

The very first night after they'd met, Friend and Mendel began a routine of getting up after hours and sneaking around. Friend was tiny and shrewd enough to slip out of her room without being noticed, and Mendel came up with the ideas for what to do once they were out.

Wandering around without supervision was a thrill in of itself, but Mendel had had bigger plans that night. Plans that involved not only stealing out of their dormitory, but also stealing in the more general sense.

"And what does it look like?"

"It's a little box with a flap," Mendel described, miming a small rectangle with her hands. "It'll probably be with the emergency supplies. By the candles."

Back then, Mendel hadn't realized the immunity from punishment that came with her biology. Everyone knew Mendel had onions, and that she would inevitably sent off to manage a farm of her very own. Nothing Mendel did would change that; her future was set.

Friend had biology, too, but whatever it was hadn't been deemed valuable enough to cultivate. That wasn't so odd--most kids at the training center were flukes, working hard to someday be considered for an agricultural job. Friend, evidently, wasn't so interested in that, since she never objected to Mendel's hijinks, never acknowledged the risks of getting caught.

Back then, Mendel wasn't rude enough to pry into other people's biologies. That was between them and Mother Nature. And Mendel had never seen so much as a sprout on Friend's skin.

The two children froze at the sound of footsteps. The nightshift guard was coming from the other end of the hallway, and turned down the corridor with the door at the end. Friend rose silently and followed stealthily behind the guard.

Mendel watched, holding her breath, sure that the guard would immediately turn around. But he didn't. Why would he? Friend's footsteps were silent, her breathing lighter than the ruffling of the guard's uniform. Her dark skin and darker clothing blended into the low nighttime light, making her just a bit more solid than a ghost.

pulled her eyes away. She had to keep a lookout for other guards, but she listened intently to what was happening just behind her. Mendel heard the laminated thwap of the guard's badge, then the grumbling of the armored door. She counted the precious milliseconds before the door slammed shut again. In that short time, she heard nothing more than the guard's unhurried footsteps. No meaty ker-snump of a child bisected by mechanical teeth, no ghastly cry of alarm.

When the door opened again, Mendel didn't dare lean over the corner, in case it was the guard coming back. She heard no footsteps approaching, and just as she began wondering whether she had only imagined the door opening, Friend appeared at her side.

Mendel jumped, but kept her mouth shut tight. Friend was beaming, breathing heavily but silently, victoriously holding out a matchbox.

"This is what you wanted, right? Now what?"

"So that's why you have an 'arson' charge on your personal record," Josie nodded over the doomed picket fence. She had kept quiet until now, giving Mendel space to squeeze any details she could from her foggy memories of the training center.

"It's not like we immediately burnt the place down!" Mendel objected. "It was a few nights after that. We were trying to cook marshmallows."

"So, another criminal charge is no big deal to you? Is that what you're saying?

"Talking it out helps me remember," Mendel answered. "I was hoping to remember how I used to be sneaky. You know, just in case."

"'Just in case'," Josie parroted sarcastically. Her eyes narrow like a cat's in a sunbeam. "So you're not planning on sneaking away from your plot?"

"Not unless you've decided you want to be a co-conspirator."

"I don't."

"Didn't think so."

"But it'd be safe to give you some general, non-conspiratory advice, right?"

"Shoot."

"Well, the renovations start tomorrow, but you probably already know that. And you probably know that all that commotion would make a great distraction, were someone to do something semi-illegal."

"That sounds about right."

"So if there's anyone this 'someone' still needs to talk to, they should do it today."

Mendel sighed. "Yeah. Marbs."

"Them too, but I was referring to Samson."

"What. Josie. Josie no."

Josie shrugged nonchalantly.

"How do you even know about Samson?"

Josie raised her eyebrows. "What, you were hoping to keep them all to yourself?"

"No."

"The color in your cheeks suggests otherwise."

"I'm super not spending my last day here trying to get some," Mendel scowled, her ears glowing brighter. "'Specially not with someone I swore never to talk to again."

"As much as I would love to hear that kiss-and-tell, that's not the kind of conversation I had in mind." Josie ran a hand over her forearm, waking up a miniature plot of pink clover.

Mendel blinked.

Josie sighed. "Samson has biology, Mendel. You should find out what it is."

"Now isn't the time to be cryptic, Josie!" Mendel said, exasperated. "Don't bait me, just tell me."

"The truth is, I don't know," Josie answered truthfully. "But I know they have one."

"How, exactly?"

Josie looked dotingly down on Mendel. "Your memory is pretty shit, isn't it, hon?"

"Yeah, so? 'S not my fault my brain is broke."

"Sure, but I doubt it's only your memory that's failing. You're a bit full of yourself, babe. You were at the training center with Marbs for, oh, six months? And you didn't even remember them when they showed up on the farm a month later."

"I did too!" And that was only half as untrue as Mendel's usual lies. She had remembered Marbs. Remembered their face and their biology, at least. Just maybe not their name.

"Okay, but do you remember anyone else? Besides Marbs, and a friend whose name you can't remember?"

Mendel made a dismissive 'pbbbbt' sound with her lips.

"Right. So trust me on this. Samson was at the training center, that means they have biology."

"Who says it's even useful?"

"No one, evidently," Josie admitted, keeping her patience, "but the same goes for Marbs, and you hand-picked them to work for you above everyone else. Don't tell me you don't know what their biology is."

Mendel stared down at her toes, processing. "I'll talk to Marbs first. And if, if, there's time, I'll see if I can even find Samson."

"I don't think that'll be too hard," Josie said with a smirk.

Mendel squinted suspiciously at Josie. "You're fuck-full of helpful information today, huh?"
"You honestly thought Samson would fuck off, just like that?" Josie laughed. "You really do need to have a chat with them, hon."

"Marbs? I, uh, have a favor to ask."

The daylight was all but dried up, but Marbs was still in the onion field. Probably exhausting their eyes, searching for weeds with such little light.

Mendel couldn't understand it, why Marbs pushed themself to exhaustion for no reason. Their job wasn't in jeopardy. Mendel had personally requested them and had never reprimanded them, or any of the workers. In fact, Mendel all but encouraged negligence, by way of letting the borders grow wild, untrimmed. One of Marbs' responsibilities was to defend against the forests' thousand soldiers, and they always did a frustratingly thorough job.

Marbs blinked up at Mendel, their eyes adjusting to looking at something larger than a millimeter-high weed. "Name the favor."

Mendel gulped. The fact that she may never see Marbs again didn't make this any easier. If anything, it added pressure, knowing this could be the final installment of their history, the snapshot that would solidify Mendel in Marbs' mind.

"I know how dangerous it'd be if anyone found out, but..." Mendel glanced at Marbs' shoulder-length plastic gloves. "This is my last chance to ask. I need something hardier than fucking fruits and flowers, I need..."

"A weed," Marbs finished. They dropped to their knees, carefully, gaze reflexively scanning the pristine soil. "You might not believe it, but I like this job, you know. Fresh air, plenty to eat, good for the heart. It's the best a fluke like me could've asked for."

"You're not a fluke, Marbs!"

"I know that," Marbs said, nodding kindly. "I've known since before you hired me, Mx. Mendel."

Mendel snarled. "Then act like it. Fight back. Take off your gloves."

Marbs chomped their lower lip. "Yeah. Yeah, I guessed that you didn't choose me out of pity. I guessed you didn't hire me for my farming skills."

Mendel's revolutionary spirit smudged into sick-smelling ash. Her eyes watered. "N-no, Marbs, I didn't-"

"'S okay, Mx. Mendel," Marbs said, stubbornly smiling through the hurt in their eyes. Hurt, Mendel realized, that had lingered there since the day they set foot on Mendel's plot, waiting for this exact moment to manifest. It'd only been a matter of time. "I do want to help you. However I can. 'S not much."

Marbs peeled off one of their gloves. Golden tufts sprung like images in a pop-up book. Despite their lack of light, water, and air, dandelions covered Marbs' arms like fur. The inside of Marbs' pesticide-laced glove, designed for the express purpose of inhibiting plant growth, was linty with dandelion fuzz and sticky with dandelion sap.

Marbs took a generous handful of dandelions and uprooted them without flinching. Mendel did the flinching for them. She was used to the precise, meticulous replanting of her own precious onion seedlings, not this forceful deweeding. Marbs, sadly, was plenty used to it.

"This'll do?" Marbs asked in a strained voice.

"This is more than enough." Too late now, Mendel thought. Even the fuzz stuck to Marbs' empty glove might've been enough material for Mendel to start growing her own dandelions.

"And you'll be careful?"

Mendel knew Marbs was not only handing over a piece of their biology--an intimate offering in of itself--but their livelihood as well. A couple of rogue bumblebees was nothing compared to invasive vegetation. The onions, all the remaining farms, were in enough danger as it was. No doubt Marbs would shoulder the blame if so much as a single dandelion was found. And what farmer want them after that?

"On my life," Mendel swore, clenching the handful of dandelions tighter until sap oozed from her fist.

Mendel was never out in the fields this late. It was disconcerting to see clear across the onion rows, straight to the fences on either side, without any human-shaped disruptions. She had left the lights on at home, a makeshift lighthouse in the distance.

Mendel didn't want to admit it, but she was out hunting for one misguided ship in particular. If Samson really was still here, as Josie implied, then surely they would've left some clue for Mendel to find. It was too dark to play hide-and-seek with someone skinny enough to hide behind a fence pole. Mendel kept her eyes on the ground, half-expecting to walk right into that human tripwire.

But Mendel was so busy looking for discreet, well-placed clues, she neglected to notice that the forest beyond the fields was on fire. It wasn't really a forest fire, but Mendel didn't have enough experience with large bodies of fire to make that distinction. Anything larger than a scented candle qualified as a natural disaster in her eyes, especially considering what happened at the training center...

Yes, it was a stupid trick to get Mendel to run straight into the forest, and yes, Mendel ran straight into the forest anyway. At least, she hoped it was a misguided attempt to get her attention and not an actual emergency. She ran with all the speed her stubby legs could muster, the sound of Josie's suggestive taunting trailing behind her.

In person, the fire was much less threatening, and Mendel was embarrassed for ever mistaking it for an out-of-control blaze. The only thing this fire was a danger to was marshmallows. And of fucking course, Samson was standing there, trying not to grin as Mendel stomped toward them.

"Wooooah, isn't this romantic?" Mendel said, half-sarcastically, and half-something-she-didn't-want-to-think-about.

"If you find arson romantic," Samson deadpanned.

"Oh you know I do." Mendel walked casually to the modest campfire, surrounded by a wall of stones. Samson held a box of matches with a single gap in its teeth.

In the other hand, Samson had a sheaf of paper, which Mendel supposed they had used to start the fire. Smart, if a little extravagant--paper was a luxury, reserved for crucial documents. Since leaving the training center, Mendel had taught herself how to start a fire without wasting paper (and without burning her house down). Even if Samson had no fire-starting experience, Mendel couldn't imagine they'd needed more than a couple of pages to get a good blaze going. A whole sheaf of paper was just excessive.

"Pretty expensive kindling," Mendel noted.

"The company has plenty. Not for everyday communication, naturally, but any classified information has a physical master copy. Employee documentation. Urgent memos."

The fire was sitting prettily on its hearty logs, but Samson continued feeding it paper, one sheet at a time. It ignited as soon as it got near the flame, but by the glow of firelight Mendel could see each page was packed with tiny script. Maybe it wasn't just kindling after all.

"So, what, you're burning some embarrassing records?" Mendel squinted, but couldn't make out a single word. "Can't imagine you were written up for anything. Unless they count excessive stick-up-assery as a misdemeanor now."

Samson didn't answer, instead extending one of the doomed pages to Mendel. Mendel snatched it. Squinting by firelight, Mendel could only pick out a few key words. Her hometown, her training center, and her name were riddled throughout the page like bulletholes.

"These are my records," Mendel muttered uselessly.

"This won't erase the digital documentation, but it'll buy you time while they look for the hard copies." Samson tugged gently on the page Mendel held, but Mendel wouldn't give it up.

"Buy me time for what?"

Samson gave Mendel a blank look. "You're leaving tomorrow, aren't you?"

Mendel curled her arms to her chest, arms pressed so tightly against her face that even she didn't know what false answer she was muttering.

Samsom plucked the paper from Mendel's hand and tossed it into the fire with the others. "Good."

"Well don't encourage me!" Mendel spattered. She flicked her hands through the air, chasing away smoke or bugs or feelings. "I don't want to agree with you!" Mendel tried to push Samson playfully on the shoulder, but her hand turned traitor and lingered on Samson's forearm instead of reverting back to her side.

"If it'll get you to make the right choice, I'll lie to you." Samson gave Mendel a half-smile, oblivious to the electric circuit being upheld by Mendel's treacherous fingers. "Mendel. You should stay here forever. Do not leave."

Mendel groaned, "How the fuck did you manage to sound less human than usual?"

Samson shrugged. "I suppose I need more practice in deception."

"No," Mendel muttered, taking a tentative step toward her wayward hand, using Samson as an anchor. "You don't."

Samson looked almost startled, but stayed rooted where they were. "I said I would help you. And I stand by that. But I'll still stay away if you want me to."

The remaining papers dropped to the ground.

Mendel ran her hand over Samson's head, which they inclined obligingly. Curious, Mendel asked, "If you were going to help me...how would you do it?"

Samson had to take a second to think, and Mendel was glad to have found a question Samson didn't immediately know the answer to.

"We would start by running north, then turn west a quarter-mile out. There's a river roughly a half mile that way. There's no farms or corporate buildings anywhere near it."

"Smart. Someone did their homework."

Samson waved dismissively at the pile of burning paper. "Not all of those documents were useless drivel. They moved the maps offline a long time ago to keep people from finding them."

"Didn't work out so well, did it?" Mendel pressed herself further into Samson's chest, and they responded by wrapping their arms loosely around Mendel. Filling the space between them, but nothing more.

Mendel could feel Samson stifling a cough, though they were doing their best to be discreet. She leaned back to give Samson some space, and to avoid getting coughed on.

Samson raised their hand to their mouth, but the coughing fit abruptly stopped when they met Mendel's eyes. "Sorry. It's a nervous habit."

"So I make you nervous?" Mendel smirked.

"Terrified," Samson said, pulling and stretching the vowels from the back of their throat. "After all, you are an anarchist gardener, threatening to destroy society as I know it."

"Damn straight."

Mendel tried leaning closer and tripped off her own feet, sending Samson on a controlled fall down onto their ass. Samson gave a soft 'oof'. Mendel brought her lips to the 'o' formed by Samson's lips, but Samson shut their mouth before Mendel got there. Mendel stopped short of her target, letting her hands drape complacently against Samson's shoulders. Samson pressed their chin forward in a gentle pulsing motion, but kept their lips locked together, airtight against Mendel's darting tongue.

Oh well, Mendel thought. There were more interesting places to explore than the inside of Samson's mouth. Slowly and, she hoped, discreetly, Mendel slid her hands down Samson's arms and slipped underneath the mouth of their sleeves, pressing into their bare skin.

Mendel explored the parts of Samson's flesh she could access without tearing off Samson's clothes--which, while tempting, wasn't very spy-like. She found no traces of any kind of plant, nor did Samson even react to Mendel's probing. Samson apparently had nothing to hide. That, or they just thought Mendel was really turned on by forearms.

If anyone's forearms could be considered sexy, Samson's would certainly be in the running. But that was beside the point.

Josie was wrong, Mendel realized dimly. She should've been angry, but it was no more than an interesting afterthought. The dead lead didn't matter. Her hands could stay where they were, for just a second longer.

Kissing Samson was nice, but there was only so much Mendel could do with such unwavering lips. Mendel broke the disappointingly chaste kiss. Samson was smiling, but couldn't meet Mendel's eyes. Their eyes drifted aimlessly to the right, lips still pursed, neck tense.

Mendel didn't have to ask why Samson was so stiff. This was the wrong time to press for conversation, or for more interesting kisses. Instead, Mendel simply propped her chin on Samson's stooped shoulder, letting their heads rest against each other.

The two of them had fallen onto the papers Samson had dropped. Mendel reached around Samson's shoulder to fish one from underneath their handsome behind.

"Hey, what's your name doing in my files?"

Samson cleared their throat, and Mendel could feel them smile. "Not everything is about you."

Mendel removed her head from its nook and looked Samson in the eyes. "Are you trying to look suspicious by burning your own files?"

"Suspicious? Please. This is nothing." Samson ran their hand down Mendel's arm, lingering near the lip of her skirt. "I can think of some far more scandalous things I could be doing."

Mendel felt a heat stronger than that of the fire before her. She leaned away, and Samson's arms retracted like an unclicked seatbelt. Mendel shuffled to the side, still facing Samson, but not touching.

"I still don't trust you," Mendel spat. "This could all...the papers, the escape plan, it doesn't change the fact that you used me."

Samson pursed their lips and let their eyes fall shut. "Mendel. I've given up everything I have."

Mendel shook her head slowly, a scowl rising from her stone-set jaw. "But you had a choice. They took everything from me and I couldn't do shit about it."

Realizing that wasn't entirely true, Mendel shot up off the forest floor. Samson didn't follow in suit until Mendel, instead of walking back home, turned deeper into the forest.

Samson tugged Mendel back. "You don't have to. The intesturbines will...or I could..."

"No, I'm doing it myself. They're not taking this away from me, too."

Samson waited obediently by the fire as Mendel retrieved each plant from her secret garden, one small armful at a time. The living vegetation was far slower to ignite than the paper, hissing and writhing like it could feel the flames consuming them. Smoke like crayon residue stuck to Mendel's skin and choked out the starlight.

Mendel threw in the final specimen, the last trace of her life beyond that of a human plant nursery. All that remained of herself was within the boundary of her skin, or very slightly beyond. She had the sense that her escape plan had fallen through her fingers, subject now only to gravity, or to combustive chemical reactions.

All Mendel could do now was watch what happened next.

Mendel returned home while the sky was still dark, but was unable to sleep. Her conversation with Samson--as well as the pleasant nonverbal interlude--played and rewound over and over in her mind. Nothing else had been said after Mendel had burned the last of her treasures. And that, Mendel realized, had been their last opportunity to plan an escape together.

Mendel hadn't decided whether she'd wanted to escape with Samson or not. She'd been learning toward 'not', but now she didn't have a choice. Not unless she was able to find Samson before the intesturbines showed up.

Mendel got out of bed faster than she'd ever gotten out of bed before.

The air was humid and heavy. A wall of thick, pinkish fog stood between Mendel and the forest. Mendel half-jogged toward the plot's edge, expecting the fog to clear as she came closer, but it instead seemed to grow thicker, completely blocking the trees from view.

Mendel stopped. The air was dry, the sky blue, cloudless, overhead. There was no fog. The tall, flesh-colored barricade was solid.

Mendel had only ever seen intesturbines from a distance. It wasn't until now, when she was close enough to see the bristled, metal-pierced skin, that Mendel realized how lucky she'd been. The one Mendel was staring at was stationary, but she could imagine how much more horrid it would be once set in motion. Like a biblical beast intent only on annihilation.

The intesturbine's one redeeming quality was that it made a great distraction. The dozens of auditors milling around the farm didn't so much as turn in Mendel's direction as she ran toward them. They were all either staring at the worm or forcing their gaze onto the merciful blue of a notepad.

Threading through the auditors, Mendel regained her speed, inertia pushing her toward the small crowd of workers and auditors closest to the intesturbine. That's where Samson would be.

If they weren't already gone.

As soon as she was close enough to distinguish their faces, Mendel scanned the members of the makeshift group. The auditors stood out from the farm hands like M&M's in trail mix, with their neat, brightly-colored suits, but none wore green.

Samson's gone, was Mendel's first thought. Samson's dead, was her second. And, trailing leisurely behind the first two, came the third, Samson's just wearing a different color suit.

The auditors near the intesturbines did at least acknowledge Mendel, but immediately dismissed her by her threadbare overalls and greenery-spotted arms. Whoever they were waiting for, it wasn't her. They stood around nervously, stilted on thin legs like poles supporting circus tents. If the sheer terror of standing this close to a towering biomechanical beast didn't knock them all over, the next gust of wind would get the job done.

Mendel nudged through the nest of auditors. They kept their distance from Mendel's grimy hands, stepping back without looking twice, magnetically repelled. Mendel felt like a child searching through sand with a metal detector, getting nothing but grit under her fingernails.

Then, a promising beep, a soft murmur of her name that was immediately steamrolled by a bone-deep rumble.

Earthquakes were rare in the once-Midwest, but right here was a living fault line, mere meters from where Mendel and the rest of the crowd were standing. The intesturbine was barely rocking in place, yet the ground heaved with a roar. Mendel felt her bones rattle, humming the same urgent melody as the earth she stood on.

Mendel fell backwards in a controlled stumble, spiraling her arms until she found solid footing again. Those around her faced the same difficulty, torn between using their arms to balance or to cover their ears. That wouldn't help much--the sound was just as much inside their heads as outside it. As if their paper thin hands could block out the sound of the planet tearing in half.

With her footing as steady as it was going to get, Mendel noticed the intesturbine start lurching forward. The rumbling grew more rhythmic, beating into the earth as if it were a drum, the crust no sturdier than an old slice of animal skin. Right now, that didn't seem too far off. The ground beneath Mendel's feet felt about as stable as tissue paper.

The intesturbine picked up speed, sluggish only compared to its size. It was headed toward the forest just on the edge of the cultivated farmland, where Mendel's doomed garden was hidden. And where, camouflaged by the trees behind them, a green-clad figure was trying to run from the oncoming machine.

To Mendel, it felt as though hours had passed, yet it must have been less than a second, because Samson's tongue had not yet pulled back from their teeth, still forming the second syllable of Mendel's name. They weren't dead. They weren't gone. They weren't wearing a different color suit.

For one short, terrible second, Mendel could see Samson, and knew with absolute certainty that she would not have to run away alone.

An endless pink roar enveloped Mendel like a blanket. The roar of disintegrating earth grew so loud, it was closer to silence. Mendel could see nothing but the intesturbine rocketing past her, swallowing up the ground, the sky, and everything sandwiched between them.

Something about silence makes the whole world feel distant. It pushes you back into your movie theater seat, and you can only watch the silent screen dumbly while the technician fixes the audio. The movie will restart soon, and everything will be okay.

The intesturbine moved on, giving Mendel back her ground and her sky, but something was missing. Someone was missing. The deafening roar faded away, but something urgent and human rose to take its place.

Mendel scanned the landscape like a Highlights activity page. The solo scream became a chorus behind her. The chasmic furrow left behind by the worm was just a few footsteps away, but Mendel couldn't let herself glance down into it. She vaguely heard the commotion behind her, but nothing distinct, nothing that would indicate that what she was seeing was real.

The movie will restart soon, and everything will be okay.

A pair of hands peeled Mendel away, and the people behind her rushed to fill her place. Whoever was guiding her tried to turn her around, but Mendel couldn't tear her eyes away from the person-sized absence burned into her vision.

"SA-" Mendel howled, the first syllable of Samson's name broken off with a wet choking sound. Physically, Mendel couldn't speak at all. Even if she had been in complete control of her vocal chords, she didn't dare call out for Samson knowing there would be no answer.

The auditors and farm hands swarmed the spot where Samson had been just a few seconds earlier. A crowd of bodies blocked Mendel off from whatever grisly wreckage lay in the intesturbine's wake. People from the other side of the farm, everyone Mendel could see, was running toward the growing crowd. Everyone but Josie, who was gripping Mendel's shoulders, still struggling to pull her away.

"Mendel." Josie shook Mendel like a bag of wet concrete that was rapidly drying into place. "Mendel, you need to leave, now."

"What?" Mendel latched onto Josie, focusing intently. The rest of the world blurred into a happy paste. As long as she didn't look away from Josie, it would stay that way. Distant, indistinct, safe.

"No one's paying attention to us. But you have to go before this whole place shuts down." Josie's throat muscles tensed, visibly straining to keep her voice steady, urgent, but not hysterical.

Mendel refused to think about what kind of horrible incident would necessitate putting the entire sector under quarantine. The company didn't stop production unless it was a matter of life or-

In the corner of her eye, Mendel saw someone speaking into a handheld communication device. A second, selfish fear fought its way to the forefront of her mind. She remembered how, as recently as yesterday, the only thing she cared about was getting out of this place for good.

Josie gave Mendel a final shake, shouting something, but it didn't matter what she'd said. With that small push forward, Mendel snapped out of her stillness and bolted for the forest. She gave the crowd a wide berth, both to keep herself from being seen and to avoid accidentally seeing what they were looking at.

Mendel reached the intesturbine's furrow, the last obstacle between her and the forest. She closed her eyes as she stumbled down and crawled up the far side of the hole, grasping blindly at warm, fresh clumps of pulverized earth. It was only dirt running between her fingers and staining the knees of her overalls. She refused to think of what else could've been left in the intesturbine's wake.

Mendel reached the forest's edge, and her thoughts began to clear. For a while, she could focus entirely on running, avoiding the roots and rocks that rose up to snag her ankles.

When Mendel had dreamt of escape, she'd imagined running toward her old friends, her first apartment, toward everything she'd been forced to leave behind.

Instead, even as she ran, Mendel could hear the rumbling of the armored truck, smell the nervous bodies crammed into the back along with herself. The screams behind her might as well have been her parents', calling her name instead of Samson's. Once again, she was alone, and leaving her entire life behind her.

She tripped over a root. The truck bounced over a pothole.

Faintly, Mendel heard someone wail hopelessly for a stolen child, a lost friend, who was never coming back. Mendel's own chest ached, straining to contain the impulse to join the chorus, to howl their name at an absent moon.

Mendel didn't even know where she was running to. She might've had a plan before all this shit went down, but all she could think about now was Samson. If Samson was here, they would know-

A recent memory flashed in her chest. Samson's arms around her, Samson's lips against Mendel's own, Samson's-

No, Mendel scolded herself for the painfully indulgent distraction, before that.

Samson had had a plan, and despite Mendel's squabbling, they had told Mendel exactly what to do. As if they had known that Mendel would later be posing that question to their ghost.

We would start by running north, then turn west a quarter-mile out....Samson whispered in Mendel's ear, guiding her steps with the same smug surety they'd used with everything else.

Instead of arguing, Mendel ran.

Mendel had no way to gauge how far she'd run, save for the soreness in her legs. Running a mile seemed like an impossible feat, so a quarter-mile was only three-fourths impossible. Mendel ran until she felt only 25% certain she was going to spew her guts. It took far less time than Mendel was comfortable with.

Samson had been right to send her north. When she managed to raise her head from her protesting feet, Mendel couldn't see any sign of organic or artificial life, save for the many varietals of grasses and trees. Mendel was familiar with most, but trusted even the unknown plants to keep quiet about the rogue human running through their midst.

The sounds of the forest were familiar to Mendel, given the time she'd spent hiding and plotting on the outskirts of her land. So when a strange growl rose through the rustling leaves and her heavy footsteps, it gave Mendel more than enough reason to stop running. It sounded like something alive, but definitely not human. Mendel hadn't considered that there could be animals still living in this forest. Even more concerning than the threat of dangerous predators was the spontaneous realization that Mendel had yet to grapple with the eventuality of pissing in the woods. Nasty.

Mendel continued west carefully, tiptoeing best she could on her exhausted cement-block legs. The trees thinned, and Mendel sighed with relief. Now that she saw the source of the sound, it seemed obvious. This was no dangerous predator. She'd found the river Samson had spoken of.

Mendel was so relieved to find that the river wasn't a living creature, that she nearly missed the insect buzzing in front of her nose. Even against the river's constant rushing and crashing, Mendel heard it clear as day.

Before she could properly appreciate the first bee, a second joined in, bobbing curiously around its twin. They looked identical to Mendel's untrained eye, but the hums of their wings were minutely different, a soprano and alto in a minuscule chorus.

Mendel took a step back, leaving the bees to their private congress, but continued to watch as they drew drunken spirals in the air. Two living creatures, where there ought to have been none.

It took Mendel an embarrassingly long time to notice the third living creature. They were silent and stiller than the bees, and were watching Mendel's fascination with a heartbreaking smile.

Mendel couldn't process the figure reclining by the river. She should've, by all accounts, been startled to see another person out here in the supposedly deserted wilderness, especially someone in such a dangerously important-looking suit. But Mendel's instincts, it seemed, recognized them before Mendel herself could catch up. Mendel met their eyes with the same detached observation with which she'd studied the bees, as if admiring a painting, before realizing that this painting was blinking, was breathing, ever so slightly beneath their mud-streaked suit.

Samson was here. They were ragged, and bloody, and filthy, and they were here.

Mendel's throat surged with repressed sobs. For the hour she'd been running, alone with her thoughts and her aching legs, she'd grown to accept her feelings, slowly overcoming the urge to repress them. But now Samson was back in the picture and she had to delete all that character growth ASAP.

"Bastard." Mendel's legs announced their intent to give out, but gave Mendel the precious few steps she needed to collapse into Samson's arms. She burrowed into Samson's chest, silent tears mixing discreetly with the dirt plastered over most of Samson's body.

"Filthy-ass auditor." Soil was wedged into every faint crease and fold of Samson's suit, diluting its strong army green to a sickly brown. Their dreads were heavy with dirt, mangled in wicked knots. Mendel felt the urge to untangle them, wring out the clumps of dirt by hand. To touch any part of Samson that remained under the metric ton of filth they were buried in.

"Fucker," Mendel mumbled into Samson's armpit. Samson was gently rubbing Mendel's back now, as if they knew--and of course they knew--that these insults were just something Mendel had to pass before she could say what she meant. As much as Mendel hated to feel treated like a baby, it wasn't hard to convince herself that, by this point, she'd well earned a tantrum or two.

After choking out all the other insults she knew, and replaying some of her greatest hits for good measure, Mendel peeled her face away from Samson's suit, leaving a cantaloupe-sized smear. As filthy as her face probably was, Mendel still couldn't hold a candle to Samson, whose already-dark face was wearing what looked like several dozen mud masks.

"How..." are you not dead, Mendel almost said, but remembered that she was still trying not to let Samson know she cared about them, and instead said, "How did you get so filthy?"

Samson snorted, the mud on their face curling up into a smile. "I hitched a ride with a giant worm."

From anyone other than Samson, that would've been either a great joke or an awful lie. Mendel replayed the memory: Samson standing in the intesturbine's path one moment, and vanishing the next. It was a magic trick Mendel couldn't comprehend, even with the explanation sitting right here, wrapped in her arms.

Mendel tried rewriting her memory. Samson grabbing hold of the intesturbine's flesh instead of allowing it to crush them into a bloody paste. Samson fighting against an onslaught of dirt, twisting into slim crevices between intesturbine skin and metal plating without getting crushed. Samson letting the worm carry them out of the other auditors' sight, then extracting themself and running for the woods.

There was only one person Mendel knew who was bold enough and nimble enough to pull off such a feat. Their real name might've been lost to Mendel's shitty memory, but their skills were firmly established in her mind.

Mendel extracted herself, sitting across from Samson to get a better look. Samson's body was changed significantly--and Mendel heartily approved--but their face remained familiar. Perhaps thanks to the obscuring grime, Samson bore uncanny resemblance to the crafty, match-stealing child they had once been.

"You were..." Mendel couldn't say 'Friend'. Normally she'd take pride in being as rude as she could possibly be, but she could save that sting for later, when Samson wasn't busy being miraculously not-dead.

Samson understood Mendel's half-spoken revelation. "Some things have changed. Gender-wise."

"Transitioning and planning an elaborate escape scheme? You've been a busy bastard, haven't you?"

Samson smiled shyly at the almost-compliment. "There's one more-" Samson coughed. Mendel braced for another of Samson's coughing fits, but it stopped immediately. Samson brought a clenched fist to their mouth.

"There's one more thing I should tell you," Samson said clearly. They slowly moved their hand away from their mouth, turning it so Mendel could see the bumblebee perched on Samson's fingers.

Mendel stared. The bee crawled contentedly across Samson's knuckles, as though it hadn't just emerged miraculously from Samson's esophagus. Mendel's onions felt a lot less miraculous by comparison.

"I knew that," Mendel said matter-of-factly. If she said it snarkily enough, maybe she'd make it retroactively true.

"I didn't want it to affect your decision," Samson said mildly, either mishearing or ignoring Mendel's claim. "I didn't want to force you into running away with me, if you didn't actually want to."

"And why the fuck would you leave something as important as that up to a dumbass like me?"

"I already told you. I care about you, even if you don't care about me."

"That doesn't mean I have to trust you. Because I don't. Trust you."

Samson slid their hand over Mendel's. "But do you like me?"

"Like you?" Mendel vaguely recalled their first conversation. The first conversation Mendel had had with Samson as 'Samson', at least. "Yeah," she decided, "at least more than I did before."

Samson smiled and squeezed Mendel's hand.

"That's a pretty low bar." Mendel leaned away, but kept her hand where it was. "I wanted to murder you for a while back there."

"You. Wanted to murder me."

"Just a little bit. Take it as a compliment." Unconvinced with her own sincerity, Mendel added in a burst, "I do like you!"

Samson raised their eyebrows. "That's good. Otherwise all the plans I've made would've been a waste of time."

Mendel stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes. "Does your plan have a part two?"

"You're an anarchist gardener, aren't you? I thought we'd do some of that."

"Okay. But on one condition."

"Just one?"

Mendel shoved Samson, who fell completely to the ground. Mendel was stronger than she'd thought. Or Samson was thinner than she remembered.

"What is the condition?" Samson prompted through a fistful of easy laughter. Mendel couldn't imagine Samson's laugh as anything but sarcastic, or hurt. It was wonderful to hear them so cheerful, even while they looked like zombified roadkill.

"I'll need a partner. Preferably an anarchist beekeeper."

Samson unfolded into a caricature of pondering, as if posing for a sculpture. "That is a tempting offer. How are the benefits?"

Mendel nuzzled her mouth up Samson's chest to the edge of their chin. "Very good," she murmured, lips tickling Samson's soft, dark chin hairs.

"I'll think about it," Samson smiled, refusing to move their head. Mendel had to climb over Samson's lanky legs to get at their mouth properly. Samson met Mendel's lips halfway, but again, to Mendel's disappointment, kept their mouth shut tight.

"It's okay," Mendel reassured between quick kisses, her hands creeping over Samson's still body, subconsciously checking that everything was right where she'd left it. Her budding arms pressed eagerly into the dark earth embedded in Samson's skin.

Samson's eyes shifted downward. "I'm nervous."

"Because of me?" Mendel giggled. "Listen, if I still wanted to kill you, I would not need to seduce you first."

"No, no," Samson tried to smile at what they hoped was mostly a joke. Leaning back on one hand, they brought the other to their throat. It throbbed urgently, with more than a single being's heartbeat.

Mendel glanced down to Samson's hand, and grinned. "I'm not afraid of getting stung."

Samson searched Mendel's face for any glimmer of doubt, and, finding none, cautiously opened their mouth.

Mendel forced herself not to recoil at the first touch of insect legs against her lips. She broke the kiss for a second, and the bee flew from Samson's lips, probably relieved to be excused from their private moment.

They were interrupted a dozen more times before Samson calmed down, but Mendel had stopped being surprised by the interlopers well before the twelfth bee. It was still an unpleasant sensation, unexpectedly kissing chitin where she expected only Samson's parted lips, but each bee was as precious as the first.

Mendel kissed Samson, and she kissed the Earth itself. She was running her hands over a living planet that had chosen the two of them as Her ambassadors, to repopulate Her flesh with life. And if Mendel's tongue got stung a few times, that was just the price you have to pay to make out with God.

Samson leaned back onto the grass, and Mendel kissed her life hello.

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