Chapter One: The Orchard Bleeds
Rook's Hollow, 11:47 p.m.
The road into Rook's Hollow hadn't seen tires in a decade, yet it seemed to anticipate her arrival.
Trees leaned in with gnarled limbs, branches interlocking above like a cathedral of bone. A fog crawled over the ground, thick as wool, clinging to her boots as she stepped out of the rusted SUV.
Dr. Mara Thorne stared ahead.
The orchard stretched beyond the trees, once symmetrical and green. Now the rows were crooked, uneven — as if the earth had convulsed in pain. The bark of the trees was dark, like congealed blood. Beneath them, the soil wasn't brown but a glistening, wet red.
It looked like flesh. It smelled like rot.
Mara lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. She hadn't smoked in years, but the scent of burning tobacco felt cleaner than whatever clung to this place.
Ten years.
Ten years since the Chimera Project had been shut down.
Ten years since the last screams over the intercom.
Ten years since she fled with her hands stained red and her mind shattered.
But the signal had come three nights ago — encrypted in the old project frequency. Just a whisper:
"Help me. Still alive."
It had used her voice.
---
The gate to the orchard was open. Not rusted shut, not chained — just waiting. The wind didn't blow, but the trees shifted as if breathing.
She stepped in. The crunch underfoot wasn't gravel. It was something soft. Mushy.
She paused, raised her flashlight.
A human hand, discolored and moss-covered, lay in the soil — fingers rooted into the ground like sprouting tendrils.
Mara didn't scream.
Instead, her breath caught.
Familiar.
Left hand. Scar across the pinky.
"Jules…?" she whispered.
Julian Rourke — her former colleague. Her mistake. The one who had stayed behind when the locks engaged.
The hand twitched.
---
Bile surged into her throat. She stumbled back, light flicking across the orchard trees.
The trunks were split — not naturally, but surgically. From top to bottom, clean incisions. Inside each, instead of wood and pulp, were organs.
Lungs shriveled like dried mushrooms. Hearts, pulsing slowly. Viscera wrapped around roots like vines.
They were… growing.
This orchard was alive.
The flashlight flickered and died.
Silence. But it was dense, like something holding its breath.
Then —
A soft moan.
Not from a person. From beneath her.
Mara dropped to one knee, hands sinking into the blood-colored soil. It quivered, then split.
From the crack, something rose: a head, half-skeletal, wrapped in veins like wire. One eye blinked. No mouth, but a low vibrating groan hummed through the air.
She scrambled back, hand slamming into her backpack. She pulled free a scalpel and a flare.
The flare ignited with a whoosh, throwing red light across the orchard. Shadows danced.
The head vanished into the soil with a wet sucking sound.
---
She turned.
The orchard was moving.
Trees shifting. Branches cracking.
The path behind her was gone.
"Stay calm," she muttered, to no one. "This is just memory. It's not real."
But it was real. She could feel the tingling in her spine — the first symptom.
The Chimera strain was dormant, until it wasn't.
Her left hand was shaking.
She ripped off her glove.
Her fingertips were splitting open.
Not bleeding — unfolding, like petals. Flesh peeled back, revealing clusters of red, jelly-like eyes. They blinked.
"No. No, no—"
She squeezed the hand shut. Blood leaked through her fingers, and the eyes closed.
---
A voice came from the trees.
"Mara…"
Not a whisper — a chorus. Multiple voices, speaking as one.
Her voice. Jules's voice. Her mother's. Her dead father's.
"We are waiting."
---
She bolted.
Branches lashed her arms, cut her face. The trees bent inward, trying to hold her, vines grasping for her legs.
She reached the lab's outer building — the husk of the genetics wing.
The door was covered in rust and flesh, fused into the wall like a scar. She slashed it with the scalpel. The door shuddered and peeled back open like skin.
Inside: darkness. And stairs.
She took one breath — and descended.
---
Behind her, the orchard sighed.
The trees stopped moving.
The soil stilled.
And deep underground, something opened its many eyes.