The Secret Garden

"I was expecting a prison cell, not a garden."

Sabi's hands froze in place, pruning knife stuck mid-cut on an aloe's leaf. Long green lashes fluttered as he blinked himself awake from a sleepless dream, the dazed look shifting to a weary one when he lifted his head to peer up at the stranger standing over his kneeling body.

"Is there a difference?" he asked.

The stranger in question, a tall short haired woman who'd been staring intently at the giant proteas behind Sabi, turned a careful gaze over to him.

Even under the warm, bright light of the heat lamps, her pitch-black eyes only shone darker, pupils perpetually eclipsed by shadow.

Like two black holes swallowing up all the light. Sucking him in.

"For someone like you, none, I suppose." The woman smiled, a lazy curling of lips that struggled to reach her eyes. "At least you have a nice view."

She looked away from him then, casting a sweeping gaze over the vast expanse of greenery, each of the various species of trees and shrubs and flowers, that surrounded them.

The urge to follow that gaze was there, strong and instinctual, like an itch, but Sabi's green eyes didn't so much as flinch away from the woman's face. The garden had nothing new to offer him; he knew every leaf and every bloom there like he knew each scar and bruise on his body.

But he didn't know this stranger in front of him.

As if feeling the heat of his stare on her white rose skin, the woman's eyes shot back to his, narrowing down on him with just the slightest twitch of a dark eyebrow before her expression smoothed out into something less readable.

"Dr Park Ji-Yeong," she said, offering him a black clad hand and a gracious smile. "But you can call me Yeong. Pleasure to meet you."

Sabi spared the extended hand no more than a second's worth of consideration, before ignoring it and turning back to his work. With slow, careful movements, he cut the rest of the aloe leaf and resumed trimming the rest of the sick, brown-tipped ones.

"Sabi," he said after a while, voice barely louder than a whisper. "Just Sabi."

Dr Park smoothly retrieved her hand, slipping both of them into the deep pockets of her dress pants, paper thin smile only stretching wider. "Like the flower?"

There was a sudden movement in the corner of Sabi's eye, followed by the crunching sound of dry soil and stones being misplaced. When he looked up, the woman was already a couple of steps into the succulent plant bed he was working on, gloved fingers rising to brush over the star-shaped petals of the Sabi flowers sprouting from one of the shrubs there.

"They're poisonous, aren't they?" she asked, bending over and tilting her head to examine the pink and white blooms up close.

Biting down a sigh, Sabi wrenched his eyes away from the woman to return to his work. His movements were jerky and rough as he ripped out the aloe from the soil, exposing its roots, but his voice remained calm and even.

"Yes, the old humans used the poison to hunt larger animals back on Ear-" He cut himself short, chocking on the word to stop it from slipping past his lips. But it was too late for that. "... back on Earth."

There was silence for a moment, heavy and thick in the humid, perfumed air of the garden. Sabi could feel those black eyes on him, burrowing into his skin, peeling off the layers there and digging for something. Something he refused to give.

"Do you miss it?"

Blinking, Sabi looked up, not surprised to find Dr Park staring up at the ceiling.

This time, he did follow her gaze, staring through the glass dome that covered the entire greenhouse and into the black void of space, where a lone planet floated; a dusty barren sphere covered with merely a couple of small, hopeful sprouts of green and blue.

The sight alone made his whole body tense up, a deep gnawing pain flaring up in his chest, too hot to bear. Gritting his teeth, he tore his eyes away from it and forced himself to stare down at the soil under him, jaw clamped tight and fingers tightening around the pruning knife to stop the tremble in his hands.

His voice was calm, but strained, when he finally spoke. "I've never been to Earth."

"Is that really true?"

His fingers twitched, same as his lips, but he immediately smoothed out his expression, keeping his breaths slow and even as he carefully detangled the aloe's roots. "It's in my records. I'm sure you've seen them."

The woman hummed, light and pensive. "Yes, I did."

There was a quiet, dry snap and Sabi almost crushed the roots in his hands when he realized Dr Park had broken off one the shrub's stems, just to bring it up to her nose and inhale the soft perfume of the Sabi flowers.

"Doesn't make it any less baffling though." The woman twirled the stem between her gloved fingers, nothing on her relaxed face showing that she'd even noticed his reaction. "I've never heard of a SYNT that hasn't stepped foot on Earth. Someone must've pulled a lot of strings to make that happen."

Black eyes slid over to him, a sideways glance from under hooded lids, voice light but dripping with suggestion. "Why do you think that is?"

It took everything in Sabi to hold back a glare, and not let any hint of a frown mar his features, as he stared back at her. "You'd have to ask Madam."

Dr Park scoffed, "Oh, I talked to miss Rose."

And just like that, the intense stare was gone, replaced by an annoyed, almost petulant pout as she casually flung the stem over her shoulder. The soil crunched under her boots when she stepped away from the shrubbery and over to him.

"She's just as tight-lipped as you. I thought it'd be harder to convince her to let me evaluate you, but it was surprisingly easy, given how worried she was."

She stopped just an inch from him, looming figure blocking some of the light from the heat lamps and casting him in dim shadows. Sabi refused to look up at her, or let her close presence affect him, but his hands had stilled and refused to move, fingers still tangled up in the aloe's roots.

"You're her weak spot. She's very fond of you."

Gloved fingers slipped beneath his chin. The rough but cold synthetic texture made his skin crawl, body screaming at him to recoil and get as far away from that touch as possible. But when forced to meet those pitch-black eyes straight on, so close that they seemed to swallow the whole world up, Sabi froze.

"Although I guess it's hard to blame her."

The touch shifted, just as another hand joined the first, this one without a glove. Bare pale fingers swept over green curls, buried themselves there before trailing down to rich brown skin. They brushed against the arch of a thin green eyebrow, down the delicate slopes of his eyelids and cheeks, her black eyes tracing every invisible line drawn on his face.

She was so close. Too close. Enough that when she spoke, the words joined in the caress, blowing across his cheeks. "Why would a glorified gardener be designed to be so pleasing to the eye?"

The fingers stopped on his lower lip, prodding the fresh cut there. Those eyes snapped back to his once more, pitch black on vivid green, a heavy and curious stare that left him breathless and exposed.

"Are you happy, Sabi?"

Something lurched in his chest and he blinked, breaking through the haze. Suddenly realizing that he was shaking, he wrenched himself away from the woman's lose grip, no longer caring to hide the clear signs of revulsion and nausea twisting his face.

"How are any of these questions supposed to assess whether or not I'm broken?" he asked, eyes darting between Dr Park and the plant in his hands, unsure of whether to avoid her gaze or keep her in his sights.

"Broken?" For the first time, the woman's deep, confident voice cracked, that one word wavering on her tongue. But then she straightened up, and there was only a hard, sharp chill in her booming voice when she addressed him. "SYNTs don't just go around disobeying human orders for no reason, Sabi. I'm here to assess that reason."

A pause, as the woman stepped back, moving to walk behind him like a predator circling and seizing up his prey.

"You tried to escape," she said, sharp and uncompromising. "Why?"

Sabi drew in a breath, hesitating for a brief moment before whispering. "I don't know."

"The ship you stole had its coordinates set for Earth. Why do you want to go somewhere you've never been to?"

"I don't know."

Silence, thick and tense, as Dr Park stepped up behind him, leaning over his shoulder to whisper in his ear, breath cold and damp.

"You know, some SYNTs would say you lucked out," she said, voice dripping with the sort of vicious contempt he'd long grown used to. "You're up here on the main space station, all cosy and pampered and safe, and not down there, forced to labour away in places that would kill a human in seconds. Forced to fix what you didn't break."

His hands were shaking again. He couldn't stop it. Everything was slipping away from him; his thoughts racing, his breathing ragged.

The voice turned low, barely the ghost of a whisper sliding down his neck. "Why would you ever wish to throw that privilege away?"

The shaking stopped.

"Privilege...?" Sabi repeated in a weak, strained voice, eyes wide in pure shock and disbelief.

Dr Park leaned away from his space, but there was no relief in the distance. She walked around him, stopping right in front of his kneeling body on the plant bed, leaves and roots crushed under the uncaring weight of her boots. From her full height, she looked down at him with narrowed eyes, contemplating him for a second or two before resuming.

"Or maybe it's the way you were designed?" she asked, more taunting than pondering. "Are you such a slave to your original genetic programming that you can't bear to do anything else? Is that what this ridiculously expensive garden is for, to appease your desire to fix?"

She spat out that last word. The contempt in her voice just grew and grew with each question, until she was just yelling them out. Her eyes were burning a hole in Sabi, his whole body shaking with the sheer effort of trying to keep it together under that hateful stare.

"What happened then? Did it stop being enough? Is this cushioned existence not enough for you? What do you want, Sabi!"

"I don't know!"

The aloe and its roots fell to the ground, crushed. Before either of them could process it, Sabi was on his feet, clutching the collar of Dr Park's white shirt, leaving wet dirt stains on them.

"You don't understand," he said, the trembles racking his body making his weak, strained voice wobble, green eyes wet with unshed tears. "You will never understand."

The woman stared back with a blank stare, eyes as cold and unflinching as her posture. Sabi faltered under it, grip loosening on the shirt, letting it go completely as he took a small step back to look down at his own stained, trembling hands, eyes struggling to focus through the blur.

"I'm so tired, all the time." He took in a sharp breath, forcing the words out through the lump in his throat and the fog in his head. "I feel like I'm withering away here, more and more each day. These vines and wondering hands... It's suffocating."

He gasped, bringing his hands up to tighten around his throat, right over the dark bruises he knew where there, hidden under the high neck of his collar. "Some days I can't breathe. Most days I don't want to."

His eyes went wide just as his own unbidden words struck him. Something snapped as he choked out a sob and he fell to his knees once more, hands flying out for anything to hold onto and finding only the fabric of Dr Park's pants to take in his grasp.

He looked at her with wild, pleading eyes, tears flowing freely down his cheeks. "If I'm not broken, then please break me. Tear me into pieces, feed it to the plants. Fling them into the dark void of space. Or just take me away. I don't care where. Just not here."

He looked down, sinking further to the ground, the pain in his chest ripping a sob out of his throat. "Please, anywhere but this empty place!"

Everything fell silent. For a moment, there was nothing but the low drone of the heat lamps and the buzz of insects around them.

"Alright."

Sabi blinked. He sniffed, looking up at the woman staring down at him with that unreadable face. "What?"

In one smooth, slow motion, Dr Park got to one knee in front of him. Something warm had started to take hold in her dark eyes, thawing out the cold in them.

"I'm not going to break you, Sabi," she said, slipping off her glove to hold the sides of his face in her bare, warm hands, a gentle finger brushing over his cheeks to wipe off a stray tear. "But I am taking you with me."

Sabi frowned, searching Yeong's eyes, desperate yet unsure. The woman simply smiled, a soft, delicate but assuring tug of lips that mingled with the warmth in her gaze.

"Let's get you out of here. No more gardens. No more glass cages. There's a forest out there, waiting for you."

One of the hands slipped away, and Sabi instinctively tried to follow it, a spark of panic flaring up in his chest at the thought that the woman would leave him.

But she didn't. Instead, that soft smile broadened, growing into a full, blown grin when she lifted the swept sides of her short black hair, revealing blue roots underneath.

"Waiting for us," she said, emphasizing the word with the single wink of a now vivid sky-blue eye.

The half gasp, half laugh that bubbled out of Sabi's throat was as crazed as it was joyful.

Leaning into the hand still on his cheek, he gently returned the touch, swiping a thumb under those vibrant coloured eyes. He shed one last tear as he closed his own eyes and whispered his first heartfelt word to her.

"Thank you."