Grower's Omen (The Fixers, book #2: A KarmaCorp Novel) by Audrey Faye Page B

bastard—takes over every damn thing. But if we can get him modified a stitch, he’s super good at terraforming. Doesn’t take shit from anybody’s soil micro-organisms. We just need him to do it without beating up on all the native greenery.”
    I grinned—she clearly loved both her work and the feisty bully of a plant she worked with. “Have you tried selenium in the soil enrichments?”
    She raised a surprised eyebrow. “We did. Helps quite a bit for about half a rotation, and then the little bugger adapts.” Her eyes twinkled. “And you really don’t want to see what he does when he’s mad.”
    I could only imagine. I reached a careful finger toward one of the spiky clumps. “Is it okay to touch?”
    “Sure.” She leaned over, watching my finger. “You’re the Grower, right?”
    I assumed scuttlebutt would have gotten that word around already—there likely weren’t all that many strangers wandering into the labs at the crack of dawn. “I am. You can call me Tee if you like.” I touched the spikes, which were just as prickly as they looked, and could feel the fearless spread-out-or-die mantra in every cell of the plant. “You’ve got your work cut out trying to modify this guy.”
    “Tell me about it.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m Veronica, by the way. Everyone calls me Nikki. I’m the lowly beaker washer, and the one who gets to run counts by hand when Toli gets her knickers in a twist.”
    More points for Toli. “The machine counts won’t see what your eyes will.”
    Nikki grinned. “That’s what Toli says.”
    I opened my mouth to offer to help count, and saw Nikki’s face shift. Gone was the friendly, talkative tech—and in her place, a low-level lab rat with a neutral expression, downcast eyes, and two hands on her tablet.
    She reminded me oddly of a chameleon I’d seen once.
    I turned around to see what surroundings she’d just shifted to match—and saw Jerome Salmera crossing the floor with a pleasant smile on his face.
    That was interesting, and too good an opportunity to miss. I reached out a hand and briefly touched Nikki’s forearm. “Thank you for the explanation of your work.”
    “Veronica is one of our best techs.” The complicated, charismatic scientist had arrived at my shoulder, and spoke quickly enough that I caught a flash of Nikki’s reaction before I lifted my hand away.
    Adulation, almost. And a touch of fear.
    That didn’t fit the man who had built the garden I visited last night, but it did fit the one standing in front of me now. King of his domain, and Nikki was just one of his peons.
    “Good morning, Dr. Salmera.” I held out a hand in greeting, curious if he would take it. I wanted another reading.
    He turned smoothly, as if he hadn’t seen my gesture. “Call me Jerome, please. Why don’t you come this way and I’ll take you in to some of our most experimental work. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
    Nikki raised a surprised eyebrow.
    Apparently I hadn’t been relegated to peon status. He wasn’t the person I’d come to find, but I could be flexible. I winked and waved goodbye to Nikki and her prickly marauder, and then shifted to join Jerome in a walk down the hallway, turning up the radar on my Talent as I did so. I wouldn’t pick up nearly as much as Kish without physical contact, but it added a layer to what my eyes could see.
    He started up a monologue as we walked—the fairly meaningless babble of a tour guide, and not a particularly engaged one.
    Curious glances flicked our way as we passed by, and then people went quietly and efficiently back to work. Which was just plain weird—back home, the labs were a riot of half-yelled conversations and teasing and the oddball camaraderie that happened when you stared into a scope or babysat beakers for way too many hours a day.
    Work happened—but life happened too.
    Not here, or at least not while the great Dr. Salmera was walking by. A similar vibe to the cafeteria last night, but