The root is humming again.
It doesn't make a sound—not in the air—but it hums. The vibration shudders through the floor of the research base, subtle as a memory. It crawls up Elias Vorel's spine, tingling in the marrow of his bones, coiling behind his teeth.
The lights flicker. They always do when the root pulses.
He sits at the terminal, his blood pressure rising, hand trembling, jaw tight with effort. His voice recorder is cracked but still functioning, patched together with bits of copper wire and resin from a local moss.
"Day twenty-two. Subject Zero: myself."
His voice is calm. Too calm.
"Cognitive integrity: 83 percent. Visual distortions are increasing. Emotional dissonance—"
He hesitates, then smirks to no one.
"—manageable."
He leans back in the chair, one hand pressed over his chest. The heartbeat beneath is not steady. It skips. Syncs. Pulses in rhythm with the vines now snaking beneath the floor tiles, searching for light.
He hears it whisper sometimes. Not with words. With intention.
The lab is underground, forty meters of steel, stone, and bio-sealed concrete. The Miraat Jungle above is dense and wet and humming with heat. They had come here chasing something novel. A prehistoric tree-root fossil that, upon closer analysis, had a pulse. Not electricity. Not water. Something else.
Something ancient. Alive.
He tried to leave. But the spores had already sunk beneath his skin by then. And now, every time he blinks, he sees moss crawling across the faces of his colleagues in old photos. Their eyes are wide and green and empty.
The door hisses open behind him.
Dr. Caelum Shaw enters without a word. He doesn't wear gloves. No hazmat. Just a hoodie soaked through with sweat and jungle stink, and a jaw clenched hard enough to grind.
He tosses a data module onto the table. It bounces, slides to a stop beside the recorder.
Elias doesn't look up.
"Still growing?" Caelum asks.
"I'm not," Elias replies. "But it is."
Caelum rubs the heel of his palm into one eye. "Jesus, Eli…"
"I warned you not to come down here."
"And you knew I'd come anyway."
That gets a faint chuckle. "Still loyal."
"I built my career on backing the wrong bastards." Caelum's voice softens. "Not this time."
Silence.
A containment pod flickers behind them—its lights now flickering with soft bioluminescent pulses. Inside is a root. Not large. Its surface is coated in translucent growths like gill slits. A droplet of gold sap clings to one.
"I'm not dying," Elias says.
"I can see that."
"I'm changing."
Caelum looks away.
"I don't want to be part of it, Cael. But I think I already am."
The root pulses again.
"I dreamed of soil last night," Elias whispers. "Of sinking into it. I could feel the earth pulling me down, soft as breath. And I didn't want to fight it. I wanted to bloom."
Caelum's hands tremble. He balls them into fists.
"You have to kill it."
"I tried. The fire doesn't last. The spores return with the rain. And they remember."
"Then we burn it bigger."
"No." Elias leans in. His eyes—green now, with cracks of gold in the irises—shine in the dim lab light. "You don't kill this. You outlast it. You hide from it. You preserve who we are and wait for the rot to fade."
"By doing what? Praying in bunkers?"
"By building a mind that can think faster than it spreads."
Caelum stares at him.
Then down at the data module.
"You want me to build a system."
"Yes. Something modular. Something quiet. Something that can bond to a survivor. Learn from them. Guide them. Give them tools to survive—not just another day. Another decade."
Caelum exhales.
"And if there's no one left worth saving?"
Elias smiles faintly.
"Then it carries what we were. Until someone is."
Caelum takes the module.
"You sure you're still you?"
The smile fades.
"I don't know."
Another pulse.
"You better hurry."
Two days later, the facility went silent.
The jungle swallowed its entrance. The moss grew over the signage. The vines wrapped around the sealed doors like hungry fingers.
The world above kept turning—for a little while.
Until the Green Rot began to bloom in the cities.
But in a dormant shell beneath the Rocky Mountains, something blinked awake.
[SYSTEM BOOT COMPLETE…][USER NOT FOUND][SEED PROTOCOL ACTIVE…]
[SYSTEM ARCHIVE ENCRYPTED MESSAGE FOUND]
ORIGIN: DR. CAELUM SHAWDATE: SEPT 11, 2025
"No cure... yet. Maybe not ever.""But if someone's still out there, still breathing—""Give them a map. Give them shelter. Give them a shot.""If nothing else... make sure they live long enough to matter."
"Don't save the world. Save the people who will build the next one."
[CORE DIRECTIVE SHADOW PROTOCOL ENCODED][SEED LOCKED UNTIL HOST COMPATIBLE]