Jeremy backed away, his gun still aimed towards the tunnel. No wisp or hair of the colored lupine showed itself from the cave entrance, eliciting a raised eyebrow from the hunter. The grinding of the doors ended as they rested into place, the hanger once again closed off from the rest of the world, and the ranger finally lowered his weapon once that feeling of safety washed over him.

 

“See, no problem,” Jeremy said to Matilda as he moved to the door. He walked in a sideways fashion, not willing to let his back be open. He may have sounded confident to the artificial intelligence, but his paranoia found ways to show itself. He was at least happy she couldn’t see him like this.

 

“Well, I’m certainly impressed by your bravado, Sunflower. I would almost say that was your intention. Unfortunately, I’m already dedicated to my job” She said in a mocking tone, and Jeremy shuttered as the gardener laughed at her own joke. The idea left him noxious, made worse by the fact that he knew some people would have found such an idea attractive. There were even entire series on it, some dreg brought up to infamy every year or so, loved then reviled by a few month’s time. He supposed it wasn’t too strange: Even serial killers had their crushes.

 

“Don’t mention it. Really, don’t,” Jeremy pleaded as he moved beyond the door back in the main room and made a beeline for the closest chair. Beyond anything else, he just wanted to sit down. He walked up the steps to the raised command platform and took a seat in the commander’s chair, relaxing in the comfort normally afforded to officer classes. He was tempted by the cup holder built into it to grab something from the pantry, but he wasn’t in the mood to eat and it looked like his next few hours was going to be staring at a computer screen watching plips circle around.

 

“It seems like you have your hands full,” Matilda gave a slow chuckle. “I’ll leave you to your work, since it seems like my part here is done. Need to go back to chaos is within acceptable margins back at base.”

 

“Hold on,” Jeremy stopped her. He leaned forward as he said this, as if to reach for her, then immediately leaned back embarrassed. The only other sound that accompanied him was the sound of metal buckling as the Mystic outside tried to force its way in again, and the ranger simply did not want to be left alone with that for hours on end. Even if it meant being with current company. “We both know you can do that while also talking to me.”

 

“Oh, really?” Matilda seemed happy to hear that, and left Jeremy to squirm as she left him with another pregnant pause, only broken by a small giggle. He hated how good she was at that.

 

He needed to do something, he couldn’t just sit there with the company of the gardener. He moved over to the atmosphere console. Jeremy had already considered that the vents into the base would be a poor way to get inside, since they had been reinforced specifically to keep animals from getting inside, and if the abomination tired to get through the vent fans and grills with its mist form, it’d likely get stuck inside the string of system meant to keep the underground bunker safe for use. 

 

Jeremy’s paranoia, however, drove him to search through the spider web of tunnels that traveled through the walls of the base, supplying it with fresh air and removing what toxic fumes may sneak up from the caverns below or the general human stinch. His wondered that the lupine might destroy the intakes instead, trapping him there with a dwindling supply of oxygen and a slow death in the ground. But the console showed the sections in a green hue, and the air mixture within the proper safety margin. It only partly lessened his fears.

 

“Well?” Matilida spoke on the other end. “Don’t ask me to spend memory on you if you’re not going to at least talk to me.” Despite sounding as measured as always, he could tell just a hint of annoyance behind her machine like control. Jeremy started to worry he was getting better at reading the AI’s mood.

 

“Do you really think we need you?” He asks, as he thought back to their last conversation. “Do you honestly think that low of us?”

 

“Well now, is that what’s gotten in your craw? I don’t think low of you, Jeremy, or any of the rangers. You fight Mystics for a living. There are far more people I could think worse of.”

 

“You’re not answering the question” Jeremy forced the issue There’s a slight pause from the other end after that. He expected for some sort of sigh of exasperation, before remembering she didn’t need to breath.

 

“I’m as necessarily as much as the sun is to the growth of a flower. That does not diminish the works of the spring rain or the neutrience of the earth. Perhaps you’re the ones who are thinking low of me.”

 

“You spend as much time terrifying us as you do helping.” Jeremy said as he glanced at the controls again. Still nothing.

 

“I don’t need to justify my hobbies any more than you justify watching reruns in the rec room.” She defended herself. She didn’t sound angry, she seemed to enjoy this as much as any other conversation they had.

 

“I think we would work a lot better without you hanging over our heads.”

 

“Would you? Could you imagine just how much worse your operation would be without me?” the gardener cooed, “scrambling just to make a schedule, lacking the coordination that only a team of humans could replicate. Observe miles of land in an instant, calculate projectile arcs in nanoseconds. If you didn’t die to the job, some other upstart corp would overshadow you. You’d be out in the streets in a month.”