Page 60 of Aïdes the Unseen
The name looked out of place. Too soft. Too simple. Yet, I nearly tapped it. She always told me I had a kind of intuition that gave me a green thumb, and the stubbornness to never quite trust it. She’d know what to say about all of this.
Aboutthem.
I hesitated, my thumb hovered, and then the greenhouse shuddered. Just once, but the vibration was unmistakable. Not the building. Not the street outside.The greenhouse.
I dropped the phone and left my office on a course to the exhibit corridor. Heart in my throat and fearing the worst, I pushed open the door. Everything looked the same. Light filtered gold through the mist glass. Vines curled neatly along their lattices. The digital humidity readouts were still green.
It was fine, but then— The air shifted and the scent changed. Somethingwrongbloomed under the usual notes of moss and ozone. It was burnt copper and crushed jasmine, sickly sweet and electric.
I turned sharply toward theFuture Floraexhibit.
Regrowthwas trembling.
Not opening. Not reacting to anyone’s presence. Just shaking.
Each petal quivered at its edge, as if caught in a nonexistent breeze. The core stem bent ever so slightly toward the floor. An invisible weight pulling it downward.
I took a step closer just as the mist system hissed. A shadow flickered beneath the mesh floor. Then another. I froze in place.
There wasnothingunder the flooring. Just the support structure, the sub-misters, and the fiber-optic threads that connected each installation to the rest of the sensory web. I knew every inch of it, because I’d helped to design the grid.
Then something moved again, fluid and slow. If my imagination wasn’t playing tricks on me, I’d think it was the roots themselves shifting beneath the loose soil.
The puppy let out a single, sharp bark from behind me. His first. Shock jerked through me, galvanizing my pulse to racing. I shot a look back at him. He was stiff-legged in the doorway to the hall. The door that should have closed behind me. His fur bristled and his dark eyes locked on the floor beneathRegrowth. Ears forward. Tail low.
A warning.
“I see it too,” I whispered as much to comfort the puppy as myself. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but the air was pressing in from everywhere and I was staring at the trembling bloom. It was so dense in here, it was almost hard to breathe and the pressure closed in.
Then—just as quickly—it stopped.
Everything.
The tremors. The scent. The flicker.
All gone.
Regrowthstood still again. Perfect. Serene. Like she’d never moved at all.
My hands shook, but nothing else in the room did. I wasn’t exactly afraid, but something inside of me vibrated in almost perfect tune with what I’d just witnessed.
And Ihadseen it. Even the puppy reacted to it.
Confirmation.
I backed away slowly, not quite willing to turn away fromRegrowth. The puppy followed me as soon as I made it to the door and out. Then I closed it.
Once back in my office, I shut the office door and leaned against it. The once again silent puppy stared up at me. The room felt smaller, less safe. The edges seemed to have warped in my short absence.
“Okay,” I whispered, exhaling a hard breath and trying to get my pulse under control. “We’re going to do some research.”
Two men.
Crazy plant activity.
Monitors off.
Yes, we needed to do some research.
