Page 52 of Aïdes the Unseen
His comment startled me. The ones who listen? Was I still asleep? The puppy brushed against my ankle then. Not playful. Anchoring. A touch to remind me I was still here. Still in the waking world.
And yet… I wasn’t sure.
When I finally returned to my office, I found the ivy from my fire escape somehow included in the latest lab registry.
Unsubmitted. Unlabeled. But registered. My name beside it.
When did I log it?
Despite my love for them, I had to admit—nothing about this was a beginning even if it should be. It was like waking up in the middle of an episode of a show. While I could read the blurb, it didn’t really tell me what I’d missed. The only thing I knew for certain was that Ihadmissed something.
Outside, the city moved on—its noise folding over the quiet edges of the greenhouse. But inside, something else had already taken root. No, it felt like something so much older and nomatter how strange, I couldn’t shake the sensation and I didn’t know if I was ready.
I told myself I was going to find Mara.
There were too many coincidences. The unregistered ivy. The shifting soil. Bloom cycles collapsing into minutes instead of days. Not to mention the look Mara had givenRegrowthjust three days earlier, all sharp and strange, like she was measuring more than just the light.
I stepped out of my office, the puppy padding behind me like a small shadow, but didn’t get far.
“Ms. Bloom!”
Erin from Facilities waved me down, her clipboard already in motion. “Sorry to bug you, but one of the calibration pods in Gallery B isn’t responding. It’s throwing off the humidity curve.”
I blinked. “That shouldn’t be possible. I just reset Gallery B’s systems yesterday.”
“I know, but the orchids are reacting like it’s monsoon season in there. Can you take a look?”
I glanced toward the corridor leading to Analytics, where Mara’s lab was housed. Just past the atmospheric sensors and the sub-basement entrance.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll come now.” Ten minutes. It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. Famous last words. Gallery B was amess.
The orchids had dropped half their petals. The air was thick with their scent, sweet and almost cloying. It was far too much for morning. The misting nozzles had frozen in a constant half-drip that created a slow, syncopated rhythm like a leaking faucet.
I crouched to recalibrate the base panel, and the system responded almost a fullsecondbefore I put in the commands. A kind of reverse lag, like the sensors were anticipating me. That shouldn’t be possible.
The puppy whined, just once. Then stopped.
I glanced at him. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s okay.” Even if it wasn’t, he shouldn’t have to worry about it. A few minute changes should fix all of this.
What puzzled me were thenumberof minute changes I had to make. When I finally got the room to stabilize, I stood. My body protested the sudden stretch and I had to roll my head from side to side to ease the tension. That was when I realized it had been over thirty minutes since I started.
Not a swift fix at all, even with the system's strange behavior. We were going to have to pull the logs and see if the programming was off somewhere.
I wiped my hands and turned to go, heart already racing faster as I thought of the long hallway and the static hum of Mara’s lab. Unfortunately, the puppy and I didn’t even make it to the threshold of Gallery B before my earpiece buzzed.
The sound startled me. I’d slipped it on out of habit and hadn’t even paid attention to its presence.
“Ms. Bloom, we’ve got a group in the atrium that didn’t book through central. NYU undergrads. They’re saying Dr. Lane invited them.”
I sighed. “Of course he did.”
“Do we want to turn them away or…?”
“No, I’ll be right there.”
Puppy glanced up at me and I found a smile for him before giving him an affectionate scratch. “Hold that thought.”
The atrium was full of noise and perfume, flashes of student cologne and overheated wool scarves. Dr. Lane waited near the entrance, calmly sipping a thermos of what I knew would smell like cedar and citrus. The man really liked his tea.
