Day 17 Post-Transformation | 11:12 PM
Ethan Cross — Verdant Sovereign
Territory Size: 23 sq. miles (damaged, regrowing)
Connected Trees: 10,980 (rising)
LE Reserves: 10,300/15,000
The forest rebuilt itself like it was angry.
Burn lines sealed. Craters filled. New trunks pushed up in places that should've stayed black for a year. Ethan didn't call it healing. Healing implied comfort.
This was replacement.
This was the network refusing to accept loss.
Ethan moved along the perimeter in a human-sized body because tonight required precision. Eight feet tall. Bark-skin. Green veins. Eyes that didn't blink as often as they should.
Whisper tracked above him in the canopy.
No sound. No movement you could follow. Just the feeling of attention sliding across the treeline.
Ember stayed deeper in, managing heat vents where the orbital impacts had turned soil to glass. Thorn anchored the center, holding the regrowth pattern stable so the territory didn't expand uncontrollably into nearby towns.
Ethan didn't want more headlines.
Not yet.
A low-frequency pulse ran through the roots.
Contact.
One vehicle. Fast. Coming in without permission.
Ethan felt rubber tires on gravel a mile out. Felt the vibration pattern mismatch that meant armored plating. Felt the extra weight, the suspension strain.
Military-grade.
Not Thorne's drones.
A human driver.
Ethan stopped in shadow, half behind a dead trunk.
The vehicle hit the external barricade and braked hard. Headlights cut across scorched ground, revealing fresh shoots already climbing through ash.
A door opened.
Mira Chen stepped out.
She didn't carry a rifle this time. Just a hard case in one hand and a second smaller pouch on her belt. She wore a grey hoodie under a tactical vest like she'd grabbed clothes in a hurry and refused to look back.
She raised her free hand, palm out. A universal sign.
Don't shoot.
Ethan stepped into the light.
Mira's throat moved. A swallow she couldn't hide.
"Hey," she said.
Her voice tried to be normal. It wasn't.
"You came back," Ethan said.
"I said I would." Mira's eyes flicked to his chest, then away. Like looking too long might make him real in a way she couldn't handle. "I have the sample."
Ethan didn't move closer. "Put it down."
Mira set the case on the ground and slid it forward with her boot. Slow. Deliberate. No sudden motion.
"Thorne's calling it Blight-7," she said. "It's cold-stored. If it warms up, it… activates. That's what they told the team."
Ethan's head tilted slightly. "Team."
Mira's mouth tightened. "A strike team. Bio unit. I was attached as escort."
"You stole it."
"I did." Mira's eyes shone with something close to panic, but her hands stayed steady. "And if they catch me, I'm dead. So let's not waste time."
Ethan stepped forward one pace.
The roots under the soil shifted.
Not attack. Positioning.
Mira noticed anyway. Her shoulders tensed.
Ethan said, "How many copies."
Mira hesitated. "I don't know. More than one."
"Where are they deploying."
Mira exhaled, sharp. "Seventeen sites. They're calling them 'Heartwood anchors.' I don't know what that means but—"
"It means they mapped my spine," Ethan said.
Mira blinked. "Ethan—"
"No." Ethan cut her off. "Don't say it like a pity thing."
Mira's jaw clenched. "Fine. Then hear it like a tactical thing. They plan to hit all sites in a seventy-two-hour window. They think that collapses you."
Ethan's mind went quiet for a second.
Seventeen. Simultaneous. Pathogen.
Not fire.
Not metal.
Something that spreads.
Whisper's presence sharpened. A warning edge.
Ethan glanced up once. "Whisper says you're being followed."
Mira froze.
"What."
Ethan didn't repeat himself. He listened through the soil.
A second vehicle had stopped two miles out, engine off.
Footsteps. Six. Weight distribution like trained operators. Not running. Not sneaking badly either.
Confident.
"Shit," Mira whispered. The word came out cracked. "They were behind me the whole time? I—I checked. I checked twice."
Human mistake. Human panic. Real.
Ethan didn't comfort her. Comfort didn't stop bullets.
He said, "How far."
Mira's voice shook once, then steadied. "If they're good, they'll be here in five minutes."
Ethan nodded.
"Okay."
He reached down, picked up the cold case with one hand like it weighed nothing, and stepped back into the treeline.
Mira didn't follow.
She stood in the headlights, breathing too fast.
"Ethan," she called, "what are you doing?"
Ethan didn't turn around. "What you should've done."
Mira's voice rose. "No. Don't—don't do that hero thing. I brought it here. It's my mess."
Ethan finally looked back.
His eyes glowed in the dark.
"It stopped being your mess when they decided to kill everything," he said.
Then he vanished into the trees.
The forest closed behind him like a door.
Mira stood alone.
For ten seconds, nothing happened.
Then the first drone buzz cut through the air above the road. Small. Fast. Rotors. Infrared sweep.
Mira's head snapped up.
Another drone.
Then another.
Three.
A voice came from the darkness beyond the headlights. Amplified.
"Mira Chen. Step away from the tree line. Place your hands on your head."
She flinched.
"Do it now."
Mira didn't move.
Her eyes searched the forest.
"Ethan?" she whispered.
Nothing answered.
The voice again, impatient. "Chen. Last warning."
Mira's hands rose slowly.
Not to her head.
To her mouth.
She bit her own knuckle hard enough to draw blood and force herself to stay silent.
Then she said, "Go to hell."
The operators moved in.
Six shapes in matte-black gear, rifles up, visors down. They didn't look like soldiers. They looked like an invoice.
One of them approached the hard case spot on the ground, saw it missing, and froze.
"Target package is not here," he said into comms.
A beat.
Then a new voice. Calm. Female.
Vivienne Ashcroft.
"Then he has it," Vivienne said. "Proceed with containment. We retrieve the asset."
Mira's stomach dropped.
Asset.
Ethan.
The lead operator raised his rifle at Mira. "You're coming with us."
Mira's lips parted. A reflex to argue.
Then she stopped.
Because the forest behind them shifted.
Not wind.
A low rumble ran under the asphalt like a distant train.
The operators turned.
Too late.
Roots punched up through the road.
One second: clean pavement.
Next second: jagged spikes of living wood ripping through tires, through steel plating, through boot soles.
Men went down hard.
One screamed.
Another tried to fire into the treeline and the rifle jammed as vines wrapped the barrel tight and yanked it sideways.
Mira stumbled back as the road tore itself open.
"Ethan—" she started.
A vine snapped around her waist and yanked her backward.
Fast.
Hard.
She hit the dirt, rolled, coughed.
The vine didn't hurt her. It moved her.
Protection.
She saw it now: the forest wasn't attacking randomly. It was shaping the fight. Separating targets. Disarming. Containing.
One operator tried to retreat. A root hooked his ankle. Pulled. He slammed down and didn't get up.
The drones above whined, cameras tilting, trying to track.
Ember's heat wave rolled out from the trees and the drones dropped like dead insects, rotors melting mid-flight.
Three impacts.
Three thuds.
Silence.
The last operator—tall, broad—raised both hands.
"Cease! Cease!" he shouted. His voice cracked on the second word. "We're leaving!"
Ethan stepped out of the treeline behind him.
Not eight feet tall this time.
Twelve.
Bigger shoulders. Thicker arms. Bark plates layered like armor. His eyes bright enough to light his own face.
He walked past Mira without looking at her.
Straight to the operator.
The operator backed up, hands still raised, breathing loud in his helmet.
"Cross," he said. "We—We have orders—"
"Who," Ethan said, voice layered, "sent you."
The operator shook his head. "I can't—"
Ethan lifted one hand.
The ground under the operator's boots softened like mud.
Not mud.
Living soil.
It grabbed him.
Held him to the ankles, then the knees.
He struggled. Panic noise. The kind humans make when the world stops obeying.
"I can't," the man repeated. "I can't, I—"
Ethan leaned closer. "Name."
The operator's breath went ragged. "Ashcroft. Doctor Ashcroft. She runs the program."
Ethan didn't react.
He already knew. But hearing it said out loud locked the target in place.
Ethan stepped back.
The soil tightened.
The operator's voice rose, turning ugly. "You're not a person! You're a—"
Ethan cut him off. "Wrong."
He looked down at the ground like he was reading a map only he could see.
Then he said one word.
"Whisper."
The shadows behind the operator moved.
Something silent wrapped his throat.
Not choking. Not yet.
Just a promise.
The operator went still.
Mira pushed herself up on her elbows, breathing hard. "Ethan, don't. Don't kill him."
Ethan didn't look at her.
He said, "If I let him go, he brings more."
Mira's voice cracked. "And if you kill him, they'll bring war."
Ethan paused.
A small pause. Human length.
Then he turned his head slightly, just enough to acknowledge her presence.
"You think they weren't already bringing it."
Mira's eyes filled. She blinked fast. Tried to clear it.
Failed.
Ethan's gaze went back to the operator.
"You'll live," Ethan said.
The soil released a fraction.
The shadow loosened.
The operator sucked in air like he'd been underwater.
"But you'll carry something back," Ethan continued.
The operator froze again. "What."
Ethan stepped forward and pressed two fingers to the man's chest plate.
A thin vine slipped through a seam and touched skin.
The operator jolted. "No—"
Ethan didn't drain him.
Not fully.
Just a taste.
Enough to mark.
Enough for the network to remember his signal in the future.
The operator collapsed to his knees, shaking, eyes wide behind the visor.
Ethan stepped away. "Go."
The operator stumbled back, then turned and ran, leaving two men groaning on the broken road and one lying too still to argue about.
Mira stared at Ethan.
"You—what did you do."
Ethan looked at her now.
His face didn't show much.
But his voice did something strange. Softer. Almost careful.
"I tagged him," he said. "If he comes back, I'll know."
Mira swallowed. "That's… smart."
Ethan didn't respond to the compliment.
He walked to the edge of the road and looked at the fallen drones, the torn asphalt, the blood.
Then he looked at Mira again.
"You're bleeding," he said.
Mira glanced at her knuckle. Blood on her mouth too. She wiped it with her sleeve like it didn't matter. "I'm fine."
Ethan's head tilted. "Liar."
Mira's eyes widened. "Excuse me?"
Ethan's voice stayed flat. "You're shaking."
Mira tried to stop shaking.
It didn't work.
"Yeah," she said, and a laugh escaped her that sounded wrong. Too sharp. "I noticed."
Ethan turned and started walking back into the forest.
Mira followed one step, then stopped. "What happens now?"
Ethan didn't answer right away.
He held the cold case in one hand.
Blight-7 inside.
A weapon designed to kill his whole body.
He said, "Now I learn how to use their poison."
Mira's breath caught. "Use it?"
Ethan looked at the case.
Then back at her.
"Do you think they built only one version," he asked, "or do you think they tested it first."
Mira's face drained.
Ethan's voice dropped lower. "They have a lab."
Mira whispered, "Thorne HQ."
Ethan nodded once.
The forest around them shifted again, as if it liked that idea.
Ethan stepped into the trees.
This time, he didn't vanish.
He waited just long enough for Mira to understand what he was asking without saying it.
Come with me.
Mira's throat moved.
She looked back at the road. At the broken operator gear. At the darkness beyond the headlights where more enemies would come.
Then she looked at Ethan.
"Okay," she said. "But you have to tell me what you are planning."
Ethan's mouth didn't smile.
But his eyes brightened slightly.
"I'm planning," he said, "to stop being hunted."
The cold case clicked softly in his grip as he turned.
The lock disengaging.
On its own.