Ethan ran.
Not jogging. Not fleeing.
Running.
The kind of running where your lungs turn to glass and your vision tunnels and your brain screams MOVE MOVE MOVE because stopping means dying.
Behind him: sirens. Shouting. The distinct crack of a fire extinguisher being discharged—or was that gunfire? He didn't know. Couldn't tell anymore. His ears were ringing and his chest was burning and—
Someone yelling: "—containment protocol Alpha-Seven, we have a Class-B botanical anomaly—"
Anomaly.
That's me.
Ethan didn't look back.
He vaulted a chain-link fence—when had he gotten athletic?—landed hard on asphalt, stumbled, kept running. His hands were still glowing. Faint. Pulsing. Like he'd shoved glow sticks under his skin.
The smell hit him mid-stride.
Chlorophyll.
His own sweat didn't smell like sweat anymore. It smelled green. Like crushed grass and something chemical-sweet, like antifreeze mixed with fresh-cut stems, and his stomach lurched because that's not what people smell like—
Text flickered into existence in the corner of his vision.
Translucent. Cold. Clinical.
[LE: 447/500]
[Stamina regeneration: +2 LE/minute under direct sunlight]
[Note: You are now photosynthetic. Baseline efficiency: 14% above standard fern.]
"Shut up—" Ethan gasped, dodging into an alley.
His phone buzzed.
He ignored it.
Buzzed again.
And again.
Fuck.
He yanked it out while running, thumb swiping blindly—his palm left a smear of green on the screen—
The screen showed a video call.
Unknown Number.
The caller ID photo was a leaf. Just. A green leaf. Perfect veins. Dewdrop on the tip.
Against every survival instinct, Ethan answered.
A woman's face filled the screen.
Late twenties. Sharp cheekbones. Dark hair pulled back so tight it looked painful. Eyes like wet stone—grey, cold, assessing.
She was beautiful the way a scalpel is beautiful.
"Ethan CROSS." Not a question. "Stop running. You're bleeding chlorophyll. Fire department has thermal scanners. You'll be tagged in—" She glanced off-screen. "—forty seconds. Maybe less."
Ethan's legs locked.
He stumbled to a stop, pressed his back against a dumpster, chest heaving. The metal was cold through his shirt. The alley smelled like piss and rust and rot, but underneath it all, he could smell himself—that green chemical smell—and it was getting stronger.
"Who—"
"Mira Laurent. Verdant Concord. We texted. You didn't respond." Her voice was clipped. Efficient. But her eyes kept flicking to something off-camera. "Listen very carefully. In thirty seconds—maybe twenty—an NYPD drone will round the corner behind you. It's equipped with tranquilizer darts loaded with—" She paused. Corrected herself. "—with glyphosate. Weedkiller. Which will put you in a coma for six to eight weeks. Possibly longer. We don't have great data yet."
Ethan's stomach dropped.
"You're lying—"
"Check your left hand."
He looked down.
His palm was smeared with green.
Not paint.
Sap.
His sap.
He'd cut his hand on the fence—hadn't even felt it—but the wound was already closing, healing fast, skin knitting back together in real-time. But the blood leaking out wasn't red.
It was chlorophyll-green.
Glowing faintly in the shadow of the dumpster.
And it smelled like the greenhouse. Like the moment before the fire. Like ozone and wet soil and something old.
"Oh god—"
"Twenty seconds," Mira said. Her eyes locked back on him. "Duck into the basement access on your right. Green door. Rusted handle. Now."
Ethan looked right.
There was a green door. Half-hidden behind trash bags, almost invisible in the alley shadows.
"How do you—"
"Satellite imagery. Fifteen seconds. Move."
He moved.
Grabbed the handle—rusted, flaking, cold—yanked.
Locked.
"It's—"
"Use the LE."
"The what—"
[PROMPT: Channel 20 LE into lock mechanism. Oxidized iron responds to chlorophyll saturation. Accelerated corrosion possible.]
"That's insane—"
Mira's voice cut through, ice-cold: "Ten seconds. Do it or get darted."
Ethan pressed his glowing hand against the lock.
Think green thoughts.
He didn't know what that meant. His hand was shaking. The lock was cold and rough and—
(The oak sapling. The way its roots punched through concrete. The way it drank the life you poured into it, greedy and desperate and—)
His palm started burning.
Not heat. Not cold. Something else. Something growing. His LE dropped—447 to 427—and the lock started smoking. Flaking. The rust crumbling into orange-brown powder that smelled like wet metal and compost and—
The door swung open.
Ethan threw himself inside, slammed it shut.
Darkness.
Basement. Smelled like mildew and rat piss and something rotting in the walls. His phone screen was the only light. Mira's face stared out at him, expression unchanged.
"Good," she said. "Now stay quiet."
Outside, the whir of a drone.
Ethan pressed his back against the door, holding his breath. The wood was damp against his spine. He could feel mold growing in the grain. Could feel the faint pulse of old roots beneath the concrete floor, dried-out and dead but still there, still reaching—
The drone hovered.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Ethan's lungs were screaming but he didn't breathe, didn't move, didn't—
The drone moved on.
Ethan exhaled, legs shaking, and the air tasted like copper and chlorophyll.
"What the fuck is happening—"
"You awakened," Mira said. "Four hours ago. Along with roughly 800,000 other people globally. Most of them are—" She stopped. Started again. "—most of them are dead. Or detained. Already."
"Dead—"
"Seventy-three percent of new Users experience fatal LE depletion within the first six hours. They use their powers without understanding the cost. Burn through their reserves. Organs shut down." She paused. Her jaw tightened. "You're alive because you're either very lucky or very stupid. Probably both."
Ethan's hands were shaking.
The glow was fading now. Barely visible. But his veins—he could see them under his skin—were moving. Pulsing. Like roots.
"I didn't—I didn't ask for this—"
"Nobody asks. The Primordial Seeds don't care about consent." Mira's eyes narrowed. "You touched one. Where?"
"The greenhouse. Brooklyn Botanical—"
"Which greenhouse?"
"The—the tropical one. There was a fire—I tried to save—"
"Which section." Not a question. A command.
Ethan's throat closed.
"I—I don't know, there were ferns and—and those big tree ferns, the prehistoric-looking ones—"
Mira's face went blank.
Just for a second.
Then: "Fuck."
She said it quiet. Like a period at the end of a sentence.
"What—"
"Ethan. Listen." She leaned closer to the camera. Her voice dropped. "That wasn't a normal Seed. That was a Primordial Fragment. Do you understand what that means?"
"No—"
"It means you're not just a User. You're a Conduit. The planet chose you specifically. We don't know why. We don't know how. But it did." She exhaled, sharp. "And that means three things. One: Every faction on Earth is going to want you. Two: Most of them will kill you to get what's in your blood. Three: You have approximately—" She glanced off-screen again. "—eighteen hours before Thorne Industries tracks your genetic signature and sends a kill team."
Ethan's mouth went dry.
"Thorne—the pharmaceutical company?"
"Was a pharmaceutical company. Now they're the largest Verdant harvesting operation in North America. They kidnap Users. Drain them. Sell the LE on black markets." Mira's voice was flat. Clinical. Like she was reading a grocery list. "Current survival rate for captives is eleven percent. That's—that's up from nine, so. Progress."
The walls of the basement felt like they were closing in.
"I—I need to call my mom—"
"Don't."
"What—"
"Your phone is compromised. The second you touched the Seed, your biometric data pinged every surveillance network in the city. Thorne has your number. Your address. Your—" She stopped. "—your mother's address. If you call her, they'll trace it. If they trace it, they'll use her as bait."
Ethan's vision swam.
"No. No, you're lying—"
"Check Twitter. Hashtag VerdantAwakening. Scroll down."
He did.
His hands were shaking so hard he almost dropped the phone.
The feed was a nightmare.
Videos. Dozens of them.
A teenager in Mumbai, vines erupting from her chest. Screaming. Soldiers dragging her into a van, and the video cut off but the screaming didn't, it kept going in Ethan's head, looping—
An old man in Berlin, kneeling in a park. Trees growing from his spine. He was smiling. Crying. The video cut off when the sniper round hit and his head snapped back and—
A woman in São Paulo, holding her daughter. Both of them glowing green. A SWAT team surrounding them. The woman raised her hands and the trees around her exploded and the camera shook and—
Ethan's thumb kept scrolling.
Kept scrolling.
(Couldn't stop scrolling.)
A man in Tokyo. Moss covering his face. Trying to speak. His words came out garbled, wet, and then the moss forced its way into his mouth and—
The comments were worse.
burn them all
this is God's punishment for playing god
my neighbor started growing moss on his face last night and tried to EAT MY DOG
Ethan dropped the phone.
It clattered on the concrete.
Mira's voice, tinny and distant: "Ethan. Ethan. Pick up the phone."
He did.
Slowly.
His hands were shaking so hard the screen blurred.
"I can't—I can't do this—"
"You don't have a choice."
"I'm not a soldier, I'm not a—a fucking superhero, I'm a grad student who waters plants for minimum wage and writes thesis drafts no one's ever going to read—"
"Irrelevant." Mira's voice was cold. Final. "You have 427 LE in your system. That's enough to regrow a small forest. Or kill—I don't know—twenty people? Thirty? Depends on how efficient you are." She paused. "The world doesn't care what you were. It cares what you can do."
Silence.
Ethan stared at his hands.
Still faintly glowing.
Still wrong.
The veins under his skin were still moving. Pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Or maybe the heartbeat of the dead roots beneath the floor. He couldn't tell anymore.
"What do I do?" he whispered.
For the first time, Mira's expression softened.
Barely.
A microflicker around her eyes.
"Survive the next eighteen hours. Get to the Concord safehouse. Let us teach you how to control this before you accidentally kill someone." She paused. "Or yourself."
"And if I say no?"
"Then Thorne finds you. Or the Thornbound cult does. Or the NYPD does." Mira's grey eyes locked onto his. "Your choice."
Ethan closed his eyes.
Took a breath that tasted like mildew and rust and his own green sweat.
Opened them.
"Where's the safehouse?"
Mira smiled.
Thin. Sharp. Like a paper cut.
"Prospect Park. Southwest corner. There's a dead elm tree near the lake. Touch it. Say 'sanctuary.' Someone will meet you."
"That's—that's insane—"
"Welcome to your new life."
The call disconnected.
The screen went black.
Ethan stood in the dark basement, alone, hands glowing faint green in the shadows.
From above: sirens. Shouting. The heavy stomp of boots on pavement, getting closer.
Text appeared.
[OBJECTIVE UPDATED: Reach safehouse - Prospect Park SW]
[Distance: 2.3 miles]
[Thorne Industries ETA: 17:42:16]
[Survival probability if captured: 11%]
Ethan looked at the door.
Then at his hands.
Then at the ceiling, where faint cracks spiderwebbed through old concrete, and he could feel them now—roots, old and dead and dried-out, buried in the foundation decades ago when they poured this building, but they were still there, still reaching, and if he concentrated—
(Don't.)
—really concentrated—
(You'll kill yourself.)
—he could feel them waking up.
Hungry.
Ethan swallowed.
His throat tasted like copper and green things.
"Fuck," he whispered.
He pushed open the door—the hinges screamed, rusted metal scraping—and stepped out into the alley.
The sun hit him.
Warm.
Wrong.
It didn't feel like sunlight anymore.
It felt like food.
[LE regeneration: +2/minute in direct sunlight]
[Current LE: 429/500]
Ethan started walking.
Not running.
Walking.
Toward the trees.
And deep in the earth beneath Brooklyn, something vast and old stirred in its sleep.
Tasting his blood on the wind.
And smiling.