"They are succeeding and if they think I am above chasing down every single spore left on this planet until no worm is ever born again—"

"Oh, Mr. Zash, don't spoil it! We want to be surprised." Body 1 disperses. "Especially after you see what we did to Yvette—"

He slams the door shut. "Get in, Wolfwood."

"Ahuh."

In she goes.

Zazi prods him some more but he just ignores them and follows Morgan's directions.

The car is parked in a sensible little garage that looks like it's for exactly this purpose, and then from there they ride an elevator down.

Morgan doesn't know precisely where Yvette is, but she knows where Conrad's human experimentation labs are. So she takes Zash there. Zash can likely triangulate which part of it Yvette's in.

It helps that she's still screaming.

Yeah, at that point he just sprints. There are many corners here and he keeps hitting minor dead ends but he's still running at the speed of an independent plant so he finds his destination quickly enough.

The room Dr. Conrad is in is spacious and has two doors into a lower level split into two rooms, as well as large windows overlooking both rooms. Each of them has an operating table; one of them has Yvette, and the other has Nai.

Yeah now Conrad has a gun to his temple.

"You don't want to do that."

"What are you doing."

"Linking Ms. Marlowe to your brother's gate so she can become a plant hybrid."

Wait what.

Dr. Conrad continues working on whatever's going on in the computer. "She will appreciate your presence."

...he'll walk over to the window to look at her, the arm holding his gun hanging limply at his side.

Yvette's table is a mess of gore, and she herself isn't looking much better. There's bruising all over her body (as her cells are forcibly replaced from the inside out) and tears from where she thrashed too hard against the tubes going into her. Her hair's gone white, not from stress, but because the newly grown hair follicles from her several-times-over-replaced scalp just come in white. On a molecular level, they were the closest stand in to her human hair that was plant compatible. She isn't capable of properly physically screaming, there seems to be a bite guard in place to keep her from biting her own tongue off, but she is more than making up for it psychically. He can feel her fury and her violation and her pain. She has a vague understanding of how she got here, and what's happening, and she's really fucking mad about it, actually.

But she can, vaguely, tell that Zash is here, and she quiets her screaming (just a little) to reach for him. It hurts so much. She loves him and missed him and why the fuck is she being treated like this they could have fucking asked first, she could have braced or something!!! She could have been attached to Zash's gate instead of sharing one with a guy she SORT OF WANTS TO STRANGLE RIGHT NOW.

"Why. Did you do this. Why are you doing this."

"Master Knives did not want her to die."

Zash turns around to glare at him. "I got that part already."

(Psychically he is sending her all his love and more, he is so happy she's alive, he's so relieved, he is fucking livid at Nai but he loves her so so much he will be here with her for as long as this takes—)

"You will have to ask your brother."

"And you're going to tell me that I can't disturb him for reasons."

"No, actually. She has been successfully connected to his gate, now. The connection is still fragile, however, so you might want to hold off on seriously hurting him because it might hurt her."

Zash growls and then kicks the metal door leading down to Nai's half of the room until it's been entirely bent out of his way so he can go yell at his brother.

[don't worry love]

[I got there first]

Nai has had to deal with directly having a screaming, angry, agonized woman directly hooked into his gate and showing him all of the things he fucking did wrong.