Reborn Before the Bloom: I Grow the Last Fortress

Chapter 1: Sealed

The ledger was lying face-down in the aisle, and the aisle was moving.

Jonah dropped to one knee between the tomato benches and grabbed it. His hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped it. Green cloth cover, spine split, his grandfather's handwriting gone soft with damp. Yellow spores coated everything. Every breath scraped. Overhead a vine as thick as his thigh dragged across the roof panels and the glass groaned under it.

"Got it." His voice cracked. He pulled his collar up over his nose. "Dalton, I've got it. Open up."

The intercom by the door crackled. "Just a minute, Jonah."

Dalton's voice. The calm one he used on bankers and at funerals.

"There's no minute. The filters in here are dead."

"I know. Just a minute."

Jonah ran for the door, boots crunching through seedling trays he'd potted himself that spring. The air tasted sweet and metallic, like a coin under his tongue. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. It came away yellow. Through the glass wall he could see the gravel yard and the three family SUVs parked in a row, doors open, engines running. People loading suitcases. Someone counting heads.

Nobody looked at the greenhouse.

He yelled anyway. Dalton's name, then Marguerite's, then just noise, until his throat tore and nothing came out.

He hit the door with his shoulder. The bar didn't move. Then came a click, short and clean. The deadbolt. He'd oiled it himself last winter because Dalton asked him to.

"Dalton."

"Grandfather's planting records are the only thing in there worth saving," Dalton said. "Somebody had to go in. You're the one who knew where it was." Static hissed. "You were always useful."

"Open the door."

The intercom clicked off.

Jonah pressed both hands flat on the glass. Out in the yard Dalton walked across the gravel in his pressed gray coat, phone at his ear. He didn't hurry. He didn't turn around. He got into the lead car.

Marguerite stood at the back door of the second SUV, white hair pinned tight, one gloved hand on the frame. Jonah pounded the pane with his fist. Again. Again. The glass shook but held.

She looked at the orchard. She looked at the sky. She looked at her gloves.

Then she got in and the door shut. The convoy pulled out in a line of red taillights, and gravel dust drifted back and settled on the glass. She never looked at the greenhouse. Not once.

He stood there longer than he should have. Then the coughing started and folded him in half. When he straightened there was blood on the back of his hand, bright red against the yellow dust. His eyes were streaming. His chest felt packed with wet sand.

His legs quit near the back wall. He slid down against his grandfather's old bench, the one with the scorched corner and the initials cut into the leg, and his hand landed on something dry and light that rolled against his fingers.

A seed pod. Brown, wrinkled, about the size of a walnut. His grandfather used to keep it in a tin and never say what it was.

The ledger had slipped out of his other hand. He didn't pick it up. They had sent him in for paper. His signature, his labor, his mouth shut: that was all they'd ever wanted from him, and now they'd gotten the last of it.

Past the glass the orchard was disappearing under green. The roof panel above him cracked. A thin vine came through the gap and hung there, swaying.

His knees were soaked through from the wet floor and his ears were ringing. He couldn't get a full breath. His fingers closed around the pod.

"If I could do it again," he whispered.

He didn't mean it as a prayer. He meant it as a debt.

The light went white. Then it went out.

Jonah woke on his back with sun on his face and one hand pressed flat against his chest.

No cough. No blood. He breathed in through his nose, all the way down, and kept going just to check. Nothing caught. The room smelled like fabric softener and old pine.

He knew the ceiling before he knew anything else. A water stain in the corner, shaped like a boot. The guest room at the Pike house. He'd slept in it since he was nine years old, and nobody there had ever let him forget that was what it was.

He sat up fast. His heart was slamming. The quilt was the faded blue one with the burn mark on the corner. Through the window the orchard stood in full summer leaf. No vines. No yellow haze. A tractor was idling somewhere past the fence. Downstairs a screen door banged and somebody ran water in the kitchen. Ordinary noises. Somebody alive, making breakfast.

"No," he said. His voice came out younger, steadier. "No, no, no."

His left hand was clenched so hard his knuckles ached. He pried the fingers open.

The pod sat in his palm. It was warm, warmer than his skin, and it was pulsing. He could feel it against the pad of his thumb, a small steady knock, and when he held his other fingers on his wrist the two beats lined up.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand. He grabbed it. Cracked screen, same crack as the day he'd dropped it at the feed store. The date made no sense at first. Then he saw the gray number sitting under the clock, a widget he had never installed.

100 DAYS

He knew what it was counting down to.

The pod split open in his hand with a dry snap. A single green shoot pushed out, thin as thread, and wound itself around his index finger. It tightened once. Then it held on, and it wouldn't let go.