Detective Langley hadn’t slept in twenty-one hours. Not really. He’d closed his eyes on the tram out to Congress and slipped into something like a nap, but the neural feed kept pinging. Some fragment of Eva Marquette’s voice. A sentence caught mid-transmission. “They think in gradients,” she’d said, or maybe it was “They sink in gradients.” The clip was corrupted. Or maybe it wasn’t.
Beneath the Congress Bridge, the air was swamp-thick and musky with jasmine. The old bat colonies still hung there, but now they roosted in harmony with the foliage—orchids, mosses, even edible vines cultivated in recessed panels of the bridge’s inner struts. He found Silva kneeling near the water, arms deep in a hydroponic basin, hair alive with bioluminescent strands that flickered like broken data.
“Langley,” she said, barely turning. “You’re late.”
“I was rerouted,” he muttered. “A spliced path lit up along Second. Crossfeed from a ReLeaf node. Someone didn’t want me walking straight.”
Silva wiped her hands on her thighs and stood, the vines in her hair dimming. “You think The Gardener doesn’t know you’re coming? Langley, this whole sector breathes with his rhythm now. If you’re here, it’s because he let you be.”
That was the thing. The city had grown conscious. Not in some fantasy way, not mythic—but responsive. Predictive. Buildings leaned into shade as the day warmed. Pathways adapted to foot traffic. Flora altered color to reflect stress levels. Langley had lived long enough to remember when concrete just sat there and did nothing.
He followed Silva through an access hatch disguised by a wall of scented ferns. The tunnel curved downward, the air cooling with every step. She spoke without turning around.
“Eva didn’t disappear. She was… assimilated.”
Langley stopped. “You mean she’s dead.”
“No. Worse. She’s been changed.”
They reached the root chamber—a dome of soil and light, where plants didn’t just grow, they arranged. Langley had seen diagrams of fungal networks, watched documentaries on engineered cognition. But this was something else. Rows of what had once been people, now fused into the walls—photosynthetic torsos, leafy fingers, humming skin with pores that exhaled pollen. He thought he recognized a journalist from Channel 8.
“They call it hybridization,” Silva whispered. “I call it colonization.”
In the center stood the oak. No city record of its planting. No coordinates logged. Just there, like it had been waiting. Langley stepped forward and the bark peeled open, revealing a body—Eva. Her eyes blinked once, adjusting.
“Langley,” she said, mouth barely moving. “They keep calling it harmony. But it’s just another system. Another control.”
He reached for her, and the tree responded. Vines lashed out, silent and fast. One caught his arm, yanked hard. Reflexively, he triggered the cutter. The beam hissed, sliced green and wet. Eva pulled free on her own, the bark cracking as she dropped.
They didn’t run so much as slip through the greenery—tunnels that weren’t there moments ago, openings that only appeared when Eva looked at them. The city helped them escape, just barely. A few nodes still resisted The Gardener’s influence.
By the time they reached solid ground, Langley’s coat was shredded and his feed was fried. Eva coughed out something green.
“He’s growing inside them,” she said. “He thinks he’s fixing the species.”
Langley didn’t answer. The signal from Central was fluctuating again—more patterns, more false echoes. Some of them sounding like his own voice. The Beekeepers had warned him about this: once you tapped into the bandwidth too deep, time got soft. Consciousness overlapped. You could sync, briefly, with other species, other timelines. It was beautiful. And it was dangerous.
Austin glowed beneath them, a thousand green lights blinking in unison. Somewhere in that glow, The Gardener was watching. Waiting.
Langley looked at Eva. Whatever she'd been before, she wasn’t that now. But she still had will. And that meant they had a shot.
He tightened the grip on his cutter. “Let’s go pull some roots.”
Case Notes: Langley’s Internal Feed
- Eva's neural signature still active—possibly overlaid with plant signal.
- Silva likely compromised—sympathetic to plant-side, but not fully converted.
- The Gardener’s influence extends through unknown fungal network. Possibly predates ReLeaf’s infrastructure.
- Bandwidth echo phenomena increasing. Identity bleed observed.
- Contact Beekeepers. Request mesh stabilization protocol.
- Mission priority: Sever the Oak. Reclaim Eva. Restore Austin’s autonomy.