Walking was for squares - the automobile was the real wave of the future. Sitting in the back seat of the newest Arcadian model car, Hibiscus should’ve felt happy. Whether it was a train or car, she loved long travels away from home. Of course, it would take every ounce of energy to actually leave the nest she called her room, but once she was on the trip, it was nothing but smiles. And plus, cars could travel to places trains couldn’t. Trains were stuck to their tracks, and while cars were technically stuck to their roads, there were a whole lot more roads. This current dirt road took the automobile through tall oak forests. Hibiscus kept the window down - spring had ended long ago, replaced in the cycle of life by the heat of summer. Hibiscus would’ve stuck her head out of the window to feel the fresh air, but that’s something a dog would do, and the Reeds aren’t dogs. They were the best of mankind (as she was told, anyway).

Her father, the patriarch of the entire Reed family and its conglomerate sat in the front seat, remaining quiet as the chauffeur drove. Sitting next to Hibiscus in the back seat was none other than Alexander, who sat quietly and calmly. His eyes gazed out his window the entire time, his chest rising and falling steadily as he took in the sights. Hibiscus kept her distance, gradually scooting away from him in the backseat.

The presence of the Secretary of the Army unnerved her, since he had no real reason to be here. This was supposed to be a friendly visit to Karin, who had been hospitalized recently. Hibiscus’s father, in one of his rare visits to home and even rarer good moods, offered to take Hibiscus there to visit her. As to why Alexander came along - Hibiscus didn’t feel comfortable asking. But she suspected that this visit had an ulterior motive.

Of course, her suspect turned to firm belief when the car drove past Acushnet and into the countryside. Considering the hospital was in the city, and the unlikelihood of the chauffeur making such a mistake, Hibiscus knew for sure something was wrong. For so long, she tried to hear the music Karin could hear, but it was no use. Something had to be fundamentally wrong with Karin if she heard imaginary voices and music. The servants told Hibiscus that Karin was hospitalized for pneumonia; she found that increasingly unlikely.

The forest surrounding the road gave way to a large meadow surrounded by hills. An old building stood in the center; it looked rather dilapidated now, but was probably once a regal-looking structure. A large brick wall surrounded the structure, with a gate and armed soldier guarding the entrance. Rather than pulling to a stop, however, the car took a turn down an adjacent dirt road that ran along the edge of the wall. Out of the corner of her eye, Hibiscus caught the name of the place on the gate - ACUSHNET HOME FOR THE MENTALLY INFIRM.

That couldn’t have been good. Hibiscus’s throat felt dry and she uncomfortably scratched at her stomach. The road continued on, bringing them through another section of forest, until they arrived in a another clearing. A small cottage rested in a field of red and purple flowers; Hibiscus even saw patches of her namesake clumped together, their petals reaching out for the sun. A brick wall also surrounded this cottage, with a lone soldier smoking a cigarette by the gate. He snuffed it out as the car pulled to a stop next to another parked car, and then he saluted as Alexander stepped out. The soldier only gave Hibiscus a brief gaze before speaking to the two adults in a hushed tone. He then opened the gate and ushered the way inside.

Hibiscus’s stomach dropped as the gate closed behind her. The whole scene should’ve been picturesque; a quaint little cottage, surrounded by rolling hills and covered by a blue sky. But everything just felt off a little, as if someone deliberately tried to build the most calming scene they could without understanding why it felt calming. If this was the gilded cage, then the songbird inside had been quieted, or even worse.

The door to the cottage opened and a nun stepped outside, dressed in the traditional blue robes of those in service to the Skyfather. She looked worried and dismayed as she spoke quietly with the two adults, once again leaving Hibiscus out of the loop. But then she led the way inside the cottage. Maybe Hibiscus should never have gotten out of the car. The big wooden door closed behind her, sending a chill down her spin. A cage within a cage.

The party of four walked down a hallway and into the living room. Children’s toys and blocks were scattered about, and there Karin sat, staring vacantly out the window. Her head was wrapped in bandages.

“Karin,” Alexander gently called out. “Can you hear me?”

She looked back at him, her jaw slackened and hanging open.

“Can you speak to me?” Alexander asked.

She moved her mouth, but no sound came out.

“Unfortunately, she has lost the ability to speak,” a new voice informed them. An older man with glasses and graying hair joined them in the foyer, eyeing Karin with the similar disinterest a child shows to a toy he no longer wants to play with. “We believe it may be temporary, but as to how long it will take to restore her faculties...we’re unsure.”

Hibiscus needed to get out of there. She eyed her father for his support, because he was her father and ought to know when his kid was on the verge of freaking out, but he stood there silently, observing Karin without any change in facial expression. Karin went back to staring vacantly at a wall.

“Hibiscus, this is Dr. Oswald of the State Police,” Alexander introduced. Hibiscus gave the old man an awkward handshake; her hands felt clammy, but he paid it no mind.

“I’m your cousin’s doctor,” Oswald explained, gesturing at the broken Karin. He spoke in a gentle, soothing voice. “Your cousin wasn’t in the right state of mind. She heard and saw things that didn’t exist. She was not living in the real world. I helped bring her back down to us.”

“Karin…” Hibiscus mumbled. “What did you do to her?”

“Your cousin is very brave,” Oswald complimented. “She helped us advance the human race by partaking in a medical procedure known as a lobotomy. I don’t wish to frighten you, but essentially, we removed the problematic part of her brain.”

“You…her brain?” Hibiscus took a stumbling step forward, towards her cousin. "Karin?"

She saw Hibiscus approaching and opened her mouth, but just as last time, no words came out. She only gave Hibiscus an off-kilter smile, then resumed stacking blocks together. She succeeded in stacking a few before her own clumsy hands inadvertently knocked over the tower. Karin looked at them with her mouth still hanging open.

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Hibiscus took a step back. “You murdered her.”

“She’s still very much alive,” Oswald kindly corrected.

“You can’t call this living!” Hibiscus surprised herself with the volume of her voice. She wasn’t one for yelling. She usually didn’t have enough energy to get angry, either, but she glared daggers at Alexander. “You had a hand in this, didn’t you?”

Alexander calmly nodded and swept a dramatic hand over the room. “This is more than living. This is progress. Your cousin has done a noble deed. Once the lobotomy is perfected, we will no longer have to worry about deviants using their cultivator powers for evil.”

“She never used hers for evil!”

“She was delusional,” Alexander reminded her. “Who’s to say one day she wouldn’t?”

“You can’t just act based on fearful hypotheticals!”

“Being in charge is all about hypotheticals,” Alexander answered. “Your cousin has advanced the field of science. One day we will isolate the part of the brain necessary for cultivation. And once that happens, we may perform lobotomies to remove the risk of dangerous cultivators overrunning society. We will have peace for all time.”

“But that’s…” Hibiscus recognized that she wouldn’t get Alexander to budge, so she turned to Oswald. The room felt stuffy and even seemed to spin a little around her. “Did Karin consent to the procedure?”

Oswald's eyes remained hidden behind his glasses. “Getting her consent wasn’t possible. She was delusional.”

Karin made the motions of laughter as she laid down on the floor, but as with her speech, no sound came out. She then stared at the ceiling in a daze.

“You killed her,” Hibiscus repeated in a mumble. “How did it feel?”

Oswald looked at his patient. “I was just following orders.”

“...orders?" Hibiscus eyed her father, who still remained stone-faced this entire time. "No, you wouldn’t…”

The head of the Reed family was a large man, his suit tight over his frame. He had once been the leading cultivator in Arcadia, but as he got older, he transitioned into his current role as patriarch, administrator, and government leader. He wasn’t the official head of government, but this man - who should’ve been reading her bedtime stories or doing whatever fathers did with their children (Hibiscus wasn’t sure) - certainly gave orders that the nation followed.

“Did you order this to be done to Karin?” Hibiscus asked her father. It pained her, but she kept her voice quiet and in the respectful tone she knew she needed to use.

“I did,” he simply answered.

“But why?”

“She was a liability. To our family and to Arcadia. She ruined Alexander's speech. Her unpredictability poses a danger to our power.”

The detached tone in his voice pushed Hibiscus beyond her limits. For the first time in life, she raised her voice against her father.

“But she was family!”

Her father gave no reaction to her sudden outburst. “That’s why she had to go.”

“But she was my friend! And you killed her anyway!”

“I know. I gave the order. It’s my responsibility.”

Hibiscus backed away, but she stumbled over a block and into a wall. She slid to the wooden floor, its cool texture doing little to stem the feeling of suffocation. “All of you…you’re monsters,” she mumbled. “How could you do something like this? Someone has to stop you.”

As Alexander and Oswald looked on with neutral expressions, her father approached Hibiscus and loomed over her. “Will you be the one to stop me, Hibiscus?”

Considering Hibiscus was fourteen years old and lacked any sort of combat skill, she just looked away towards the floor.

“You were born into luxury, Hibiscus,” her father spoke in his firm voice. “It’s a deal with the devil. You won’t starve, you won’t toil away, you won’t die of illness. In exchange, you have to follow the rules of luxury. You must keep up appearances, you must socialize, you must do the things required of you. You must become the modern-day Viola, Hibiscus. That’s your duty. This country is at a crossroads, and needs a symbol to rally around. You must be this symbol. Otherwise…”

He glanced back at Karin, who smashed two blocks together mindlessly. “Otherwise, you’ll share the same fate as her. I love you, Hibiscus. Don’t make me hurt you again.”

Hibiscus wiped her eyes and slowly nodded in defeat. As she struggled back to her feet, time seemed to slow down. The stale air now took a pleasant warmth to it. For some reason, Hibiscus imagined a garden, with two chairs resting next to a slow-moving stream. A short woman with long brown hair descended from this garden; as time froze, she appeared in the room next to Karin. With a sad smile on her face, she wrapped her arms around her.

Karin closed her eyes and accepted her gentle embrace. Hibiscus stood there, completely speechless, for she was looking at God.

But that couldn’t be true. Karin was delusional. Hibiscus knew this was true. And Karin had always been searching for God - she had never found Him before, until this very moment. This couldn’t have been God - it was someone standing in for Him. Hibiscus heard the tall tales and rumors - this was the being known as the Gardener, the woman who traveled humanity’s dreams. Karin had called out for God long enough; she now received an answer.

Hibiscus rubbed her eyes and slowly reopened them. The adults were talking as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Did something extraordinary happen? Hibiscus couldn't remember. Karin was utterly alone, which was odd, because wasn’t there someone holding her? Hibiscus shook her head, realizing she must’ve been daydreaming. She couldn’t remember the dream, though - something about a garden? It felt bittersweet. So did the joyful look on Karin’s face.

----------------------------------------

Isaac - yes, he was Isaac, not Reed, not anybody else - returned to the black void, frozen in place once again. Kieran stood near him, frozen as well; Mackenzie and Babs remained motionless.

Only Lynn and Reed could move. The two stumbled around, trying to catch their bearings. But then Lynn cried out and tilted her head backwards; as she remained standing, she let out ugly sobs. Reed collapsed to her knees and gave Isaac a sad smile.

"Oh, c'mon..."

She balled up in the fetal position and brought her arms over her face. Isaac could hear sniffles from behind them.

Kieran had once mentioned in a taunting match at the mess hall that Reed had almost lost her mind. Isaac never realized he meant that literally. Reed must’ve ended up facing a lobotomy of her own and ran away to the Navy to escape it. But Isaac didn’t have a right to know that. Reed should’ve been the one to tell him that herself. Isaac wished he could inflict the same mental pain back at their captor, Harburg, but Isaac realized he still knew very little regarding matters of the mind. He was only good with his fists - but he was damn sure that, if he couldn’t inflict mental pain, he would certainly inflict physical pain.

“You are here today, in this very position, because of your own choices,” Harburg taunted with his disembodied voice. “Perhaps if you have fought for justice and revolution, instead of becoming another cog in the vast machine known as the Arcadian military dictatorship, this could’ve been avoided. But sometimes, the only way to get through to someone is to make them look in the mirror. And speaking of that…”

The mirror returned in front of Isaac. Reed’s neutral expression still remained on it, and Isaac realized just how much an expression like that could hide. But then the reflection shifted, and Isaac realized he was looking at himself again, as was everybody else.

It was his turn.