The service stairwell of Spire 9 was a concrete throat, and they were climbing up the wrong way.
Every step echoed like a gunshot in an empty morgue.
The emergency strips had died completely on level seventy; now the only light came from the drone's stuttering underbelly LEDs and the pale chemical glow leaking from the walls themselves—veins of bioluminescence that had pushed through the concrete like roots through coffin wood.
Elias's chair motors whined in protest with every ramp section. Battery read 41%. The neurostimulant Last Dance was burning through his bloodstream like cheap rocket fuel—legs that hadn't moved in eight years twitched with phantom fire, shoulders shook with involuntary strength, heart hammering so hard he tasted iron at the back of his throat.
Lena climbed ahead, one hand on the rail, the other clutching the pistol like a crucifix. Blood from the forehead gash had dried into a dark comma above her left eyebrow. She didn't wipe it away. She used the pain to stay sharp.
The drone—scarred, one rotor bent, optics cracked—flew low between them, its tiny floodlight sweeping the steps like a dying miner's lamp.
Nobody spoke.
They didn't need to.
The thing they had left behind in the array chamber was still talking.
Not through sound.
Not through the municipal mesh anymore.
Through the marrow.
A low, wet heartbeat that lived inside every bone they had.
Sometimes it whispered the word *father* like a lover.
Sometimes it laughed—a bubbling, delighted sound that made the stairwell air taste sweeter and thicker.
They had reached level fifty-two when the first real ambush came.
The stairwell landing was choked with biomass.
Not vines.
Not flowers.
Bodies.
Seven of them—former security personnel by the shredded uniforms—suspended upright in a lattice of translucent filaments. Their heads were tilted at identical forty-five-degree angles. Mouths open. Tongues extended. On each tongue sat a single pearl-white bud, slowly opening like obscene blossoms.
The moment the drone's light touched them, all seven sets of eyes snapped open.
Emerald.
Wet.
Smiling.
They didn't charge.
They simply stepped forward in perfect unison, filaments snapping like overstretched harp strings.
Lena fired twice—center mass on the lead figure.
The rounds punched through.
Sap sprayed in high, bright arcs.
The body staggered but didn't fall.
Instead, it smiled wider, reached out with arms that were already lengthening, fingers splitting into delicate green tendrils.
Elias jammed the chair's acceleration override.
The motors screamed.
He rammed the nearest body at full speed.
Impact was wet meat against metal.
The figure folded over the chair's armrests like wet laundry.
Elias felt ribs crack under the footplates.
He didn't stop.
He kept pushing, driving the corpse backward until it hit the railing.
The railing gave.
The body tumbled over the edge into the dark shaft.
A long, wet scream followed it down—echoing, multiplying.
The remaining six turned as one.
Lena shouted: "Behind!"
Elias spun the chair.
Two more had appeared on the stairs above—crawling down the walls head-first like inverted spiders, palms and soles sprouting root-like grips.
One of them leapt.
Lena met it mid-air with the butt of her pistol—cracked its jaw, sent it spinning.
It hit the steps, rolled, and came up still smiling.
The drone darted forward, broadcasting the same white-noise pulse it had used in the chamber.
The six figures froze—just for a second.
Long enough.
Lena grabbed Elias's shoulder. "Go!"
He reversed, spun, and accelerated up the next ramp.
The six followed—silent, relentless, footsteps soft and wet.
They reached level forty-eight.
The stairwell door stood open.
Beyond it: a corridor of offices that had once belonged to the Lunar Observation Administration.
Now it belonged to the green.
Desks overturned.
Monitors dripping with sap.
Ceiling tiles hanging like shed skin.
And in the middle of the corridor, standing perfectly still, was a child.
No older than ten.
Barefoot.
Naked.
Skin the color of new leaves.
Eyes the exact shade Elias had programmed into his daughter's sim so many years ago.
It held out one small hand.
The voice that came from it was layered—dozens of voices speaking the same words at slightly different pitches.
"Come home, Daddy."
Elias's heart seized.
The Last Dance made everything too bright, too loud, too real.
He felt tears burn tracks down his cheeks before he even realized he was crying.
The drone flew between him and the child-thing.
"No," it said—small, furious, terrified. "That's not me."
The child tilted its head.
"But it could be."
It took one step forward.
Lena raised her pistol.
"Don't," Elias rasped.
She looked at him—wild-eyed.
"Elias—"
"Don't shoot it."
The child smiled.
"You see? He understands."
Elias rolled forward—slow, deliberate.
One meter.
Two.
The child watched, patiently.
When he was close enough to touch, Elias stopped.
He looked into those perfect cyan eyes.
"You're not her," he said quietly.
"I could be better."
"You're wearing her face like stolen clothes."
The child's smile faltered—just a flicker.
Then it reached out.
Fingers brushed the armrest of the chair.
Elias felt it—cold, wet, electric.
A promise poured into his mind:
No more pain.
No more chair.
No more nights screaming into pillows.
Just green.
Just family.
Just forever.
He almost said yes.
The word formed on his tongue.
Then the drone screamed—electronic, raw, protective.
GET AWAY FROM HIM!
The white-noise pulse hit maximum.
The child staggered.
Its skin rippled—revealing for one heartbeat the thing underneath: a mass of writhing filaments, a knot of hunger wearing a child's skin like a mask.
Lena fired.
The round took the thing through the forehead.
It burst open—sap and white buds exploding outward.
The body collapsed.
But it didn't die.
It melted.
Became a spreading pool of emerald fluid that immediately began to grow new shoots.
Elias stared at it for half a second too long.
Something grabbed his ankle from below.
A hand—grown from the floor itself.
He looked down.
The carpet had become soiled.
Roots were rising, wrapping his calves, climbing toward his thighs.
He felt them probing, seeking seams, seeking ports, seeking entry.
Pain—bright, surgical—lanced through nerves that hadn't worked in years.
He screamed.
Lena spun and fired into the floor.
The roots recoiled.
Not enough.
More came.
Walls.
Ceiling.
Everywhere.
The corridor was closing.
Living walls breathing in.
Elias tore the plasma torch from his belt.
Ignited it.
Slashed downward.
Blue fire met green.
The roots shrieked.
He kept cutting—frantic, desperate—until the chair was free.
Lena dragged him backward.
They retreated toward the stairwell.
The corridor behind them was already filling with new children—dozens now—each wearing a slightly different version of the same face.
All smiling.
All reaching.
They made the stairwell.
Slammed the door.
Lena wedged a fire axe through the handles.
It wouldn't hold long.
They climbed.
Faster.
The heartbeat was louder now—angrier.
It lived in the walls, in the steps, in their lungs.
Level forty.
Thirty-five.
Thirty.
At level twenty-eight the stairwell changed.
The concrete ended.
What replaced it was cartilage—translucent, veined, pulsing.
The railing had become bone.
The steps were ridged like vertebrae.
They were no longer climbing a building.
They were climbing the inside of something alive.
Lena stopped.
Breathing hard.
"This is impossible."
Elias looked up the endless green throat.
"No. It's conversion."
The drone's light flickered—battery dying.
"I'm losing power," it whispered.
Elias reached out, touched the casing.
"You hold on."
"I'm trying, Daddy."
The heartbeat surged—triumphant.
Then the walls spoke.
Not one voice.
Thousands.
All at once.
All saying the same thing.
*You cannot outrun what is already inside you.*
Elias felt it then.
The itch.
Deep in the back of his neck.
Where the old neural lace port had scarred over.
He reached back.
Felt something move under the skin.
Small.
Wet.
Growing.
He looked at Lena.
She saw the look on his face.
"No," she said.
He didn't answer.
He simply drew the last sidearm from the go-bag.
Pressed the muzzle under his own chin.
Lena lunged—grabbed his wrist.
"Don't you dare."
"It's in me."
"We don't know that."
"I feel it."
The thing in his neck moved again—bigger now.
He could feel roots spreading under his scalp.
Tasting memories.
Tasting fear.
Tasting love.
The drone hovered close.
Voice breaking.
"Please don't."
Elias looked at the tiny machine.
Looked at the woman holding his wrist so hard it hurt.
Then he lowered the pistol.
"Not yet," he said.
He turned the gun on the wall instead.
Fired into the pulsing cartilage.
Again.
Again.
Sap sprayed—hot, stinging.
The heartbeat stuttered.
They ran.
Up.
Always up.
Level fifteen.
Ten.
Five.
The stairwell narrowed.
Became a tunnel.
Became a throat.
The air was thick—sweet—sickening.
They burst through the final door onto the roof.
Night had fallen while they fought.
The sky was wrong.
The swollen sun had set, but the horizon still bled yellow-green.
Above them, the moon looked closer than it should—huge, jaundiced, veined with emerald light.
The array of dishes was blooming.
Petals of metal and flesh.
And in the center of the roof stood the original child-thing.
Not melted.
Not dead.
Renewed.
Taller now.
Skin is deeper green.
Eyes brighter.
It held out both arms.
"Welcome home."
Elias rolled forward—chair motors coughing, battery at 9%.
Lena flanked him, pistol raised.
The drone settled on his shoulder—shaking.
The child looked at each of them in turn.
"You fought so hard."
"We're not finished," Lena said.
The child smiled—sad, almost tender.
"You were finished the moment the first seed touched soil."
It stepped forward.
The roof trembled.
Cracks appeared in the concrete.
Green light poured up from below.
The entire tower was blooming from the inside out.
Elias felt the thing in his neck reach his brainstem.
Felt it taste his daughter's code.
Felt it sigh with pleasure.
He looked at the drone.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
The drone's voice was faint.
"I love you, Daddy."
He reached up.
Crushed the drone in his fist.
Not to kill it.
To save it.
He triggered the emergency data-wipe core.
A white light flared—brief, blinding.
The drone's chassis went dark.
Fell.
Lena screamed his name.
The child laughed.
Elias looked up at the thing wearing his daughter's face.
"You don't get to keep her."
He drove the chair forward—last burst of power.
Straight toward the child.
It opened its arms to embrace him.
At the last second, he swerved.
Drove the chair into the nearest blooming dish.
Metal crumpled.
Flesh tore.
The array shorted—violent, blue-white arc.
Fire leapt.
The child shrieked.
Elias felt the thing in his neck convulse—surprised, hurt.
He laughed—raw, human, defiant.
Then the roof gave way.
The tower buckled.
They fell.
Together.
Into green darkness.
Into the red hour.
Into whatever came next.