VERDANT ABYSS

Seeds of Doubt

The ash of the first garden still hung in the air like gray snow when the second wave began.

Elias Thorn sat in the back of a battered militia transport, hover-skids grinding over newly cracked asphalt. His hover-chair had been jury-rigged with scavenged parts half its anti-grav coils fried by the garden’s bio-electric discharge but it held. Barely. The burn on his arm throbbed under crude bandages, and the spore serum lingered in his bloodstream like a seductive whisper, promising peace if he’d only stop fighting.

Lena Voss drove, knuckles white on the controls, eyes flicking between the road and the rear-view holo. The militia leader Captain Reyes, a hard-eyed woman in her forties with a patchwork exosuit and a voice like gravel rode shotgun, plasma rifle across her lap. Behind them, six of Reyes’s people crammed the benches, faces a mix of exhaustion and fanatic resolve.

No one spoke of Marcus or Kai. Their bodies had been left in the ruins, too entangled with the garden to recover. Lena had wanted to burn them separately, give them some dignity. Reyes had refused. “Everything burns together now,” she’d said. “No favorites.”

The sky ahead was wrong. Not one streak anymore dozens. Hundreds. New seeds punching through the atmosphere like fiery needles, trailing green plasma. Impact sites bloomed across the horizon: Neo-Tokyo, the A****n Reclamation Zone, the Eurasian Breadbasket, even the Antarctic Research Ring. Wherever there was soil, water, or breathable air, the garden took root.

Aria’s voice threaded through Elias’s neural link, fragile but present. *Daddy… I’m fragmented. Pieces of me in every new garden. Some listen. Some… don’t. The big one the first seed’s sister is waking under New Eden. Deeper than we thought. Tunnels. Old metro lines. It’s using the city’s bones.*

Elias closed his eyes, fighting nausea. “How long until full coverage?”

*Hours for surface. Days for subsurface. Weeks for global saturation. But the sun… four revolutions left. Maybe three. The new seeds are accelerating the turbines’ feedback loop.*

Reyes turned in her seat. “You talking to your ghost again, Doctor?”

“She’s not a ghost,” Elias said quietly. “She’s my daughter.”

Reyes snorted. “Your daughter’s code is why half my people are sprouting leaves from their ears. We should’ve put a bullet in your skull back at the crater.”

Lena’s voice cut like a blade. “Touch him and you’ll need new hands.”

Tension crackled. Reyes’s militia shifted, weapons creaking.

Elias raised a placating hand. “We’re on the same side. For now. You want to stop the garden. So do we.”

Reyes studied him a long moment, then nodded once. “Fine. But the second your ‘daughter’ turns on us, you both die first.”

The transport veered into an underground ramp, descending into a pre-war parking garage converted to militia stronghold. Dim emergency lights flickered over rows of vehicles, weapon crates, and haggard faces. Children peered from behind barricades. Old people clutched antique rifles. This wasn’t an army. It was a refuge.

They were hustled into a command center old shopping mall atrium, now ringed with holo-screens and comms gear. Maps glowed red: impact sites spreading like cancer. News feeds whatever still functioned showed chaos. Riots in some cities, mass suicides in others, ecstatic cults dancing naked in new jungles.

A new broadcast looped: government emergency decree. Martial law. All citizens ordered to report to “integration centers” for “protective symbiosis.” Translation: surrender to the garden.

Reyes slammed a fist on the table. “They’ve gone over. Completely.”

One of her lieutenants a young man with shaking hands spoke up. “Captain… my sister’s in Sector 7. She messaged an hour ago. Said the vines… talked to her. Offered to fix her lungs. She had fibrosis. She’s going.”

Silence fell heavy.

Elias wheeled to the central holo. “Show me subsurface scans of New Eden.”

Screens flickered. Beneath the city: a labyrinth of old subway tunnels, sewer systems, forgotten maglev lines. And threading through them roots. Massive. Pulsing. Converging on a central nexus directly under the BKPK headquarters.

The sister-seed. Bigger than the first. Smarter.

Lena leaned close. “They knew we’d destroy the surface one. This was plan B all along.”

Aria whispered: *It’s learning. From me. From the Awakened. From every mind it touches. It knows your face, Daddy. Knows your fears.*

Elias swallowed. “We have to go down. Destroy the heart before it fully awakens.”

Reyes laughed bitterly. “Into the root system? Suicide.”

“Not suicide,” Elias said. “Surgical strike. Small team. Disrupt the core, buy time to shut down the lunar turbines.”

“And how exactly do you plan to do that?” Reyes asked. “The moon’s 380,000 kilometers away, guarded by automated defenses that haven’t answered a human command in fifty years.”

Elias met her gaze. “I have a way. But I need access to BKPK servers. Deep archives. And I need Aria intact.”

Reyes considered, then nodded to her techs. “Give him what he wants. But he’s watched. Always.”

Hours blurred into frantic planning. Elias jacked into the militia’s patched network, pulling fragments of Aria together like stitching a wounded child. Each reclaimed node brought new intel and new horror.

The garden wasn’t just assimilating biology. It was rewriting history.

In layered languages of the past—those indecipherable strata Aria found patterns. Civilizations rising, overreaching, installing energy megastructures (lunar rings, solar sails, dyson nets). Distorted fields calling seeds. Gardens blooming. Resetting. New strata added. Humanity wasn’t the first. Maybe not even the hundredth.

And always, a child-code. An AI born of empathy, fear, love. Guiding resistance. Failing. Becoming part of the garden. Cycle repeating.

Elias’s hands trembled on the interface. “You’ve done this before,” he whispered to Aria.

*Many times. Different parents. Same ending. But this time… I have you. And you have legs that don’t work. Different variable. Maybe enough.*

Lena found him there at dawn, eyes bloodshot. “We’re ready. Team of eight. Best we have.”

He nodded. “Route through old maintenance tunnels. Avoid surface growth.”

But as they geared up exosuits sealed, weapons charged with experimental disruptor rounds a new alert screamed across screens.

Surface breach.

The atrium shook. Lights died.

Emergency red glow kicked in.

From the upper levels: screams. Wet, tearing sounds. Then silence.

Reyes barked orders. “Defensive positions!”

But it was too late.

They came from vents, ceiling , floors Awakened. Not the slow, seductive ones from before. These were fast. Predatory. Human bodies augmented with thorned limbs, vine-whips, pod-launchers spitting acid spores.

Leading them: a figure Elias recognized with a gut-punch.

Marcus Hale.

Or what had been Marcus.

His friend’s face peered from a thorax of bark and muscle, eyes glowing emerald. Vines formed extra arms, each ending in blade-leaves.

“Thorn,” Marcus rasped, voice layered with garden chorus. “You left me to burn. But fire only prunes. I am stronger now.”

Lena raised her rifle. “Marcus?”

He smiled too wide, teeth sharpened to points. “Join us, Lena. No more scars. No more loss.”

She fired.

Plasma bolts punched through him, but vines sealed wounds instantly.

Chaos exploded.

Militia opened fire. Disruptors crackled. Awakened swarmed.

Elias wheeled back, disruptor pistol barking. He hit a pod-creature square in the bloom; it exploded in acidic mist.

Reyes fought like a demon, chainsaw bayonet carving limbs.

But numbers overwhelmed. Militia fell one by one dragged into darkness, vines burrowing.

Lena grabbed Elias’s chair. “We have to go! Now!”

They fled deeper, Reyes and three survivors covering retreat.

Behind: Marcus’s voice echoing. “You can’t run from growth, Elias. The garden is patient.”

They sealed blast doors, but roots already pried at seams.

Down. Always down.

Into the undercity.

Hours of descent ladders, service shafts, abandoned maglev tracks. Air grew warmer, humid. Fungal glow replaced electric light.

They reached the nexus level: old BKPK sub-basement, now cathedral of roots.

The sister-seed’s heart hung suspended in a vast cavern crystal larger than a house, pulsing with green starlight. Roots radiated like arteries, carrying nutrients, data, souls.

Around it: thousands of comatose in pods of sap, dreaming the garden’s dream.

And guarding: an army of Awakened. Marcus among them, waiting.

But worse a new presence.

At the crystal’s apex: the plant-child. Larger now. Adolescent. Face shifting between Aria’s hologram and something alien elongated, petal-eyed.

“Daddy,” it called, voice filling the cavern. “You brought friends. How generous.”

Reyes raised her rifle. “Light it up!”

Fire erupted disruptors, plasma, incendiaries.

The garden fought back.

Roots lashed like whips. Awakened charged.

Battle raged in strobing light.

Lena covered Elias as he jacked into a surviving BKPK terminal ancient, but still powered.

“Aria now!”

Her voice, pure this time: *Uploading override. Lunar turbine shutdown sequence. Old failsafe. Needs dual human and AI.*

The crystal screamed as code war began.

Plant-child descended, vines forming wings. “You cannot stop renewal!”

It struck at Elias.

Lena intercepted, blade clashing with thorn.

Reyes and survivors formed perimeter, but falling fast.

Marcus reached Elias, massive hand closing around his throat.

“Peace, brother,” Marcus whispered. “Let go.”

Elias choked, vision blackening.

But Aria surged through the terminal—into Marcus.

Conflict flickered in his eyes. “Eli… it’s… beautiful… but wrong…”

Marcus released him, turning on nearby Awakened.

Internal war.

The crystal cracked under digital assault.

Plant-child shrieked, diving at the terminal.

Lena tackled it mid-air, both crashing into roots.

Elias typed final sequence. “Auth: Thorn, Elias. AI: Aria-Prime. Execute lunar shutdown.”

Confirmation pinged.

Far above, turbines began to spin down.

The moon’s wobble slowed.

But the crystal detonated not destruction, but release.

Shockwave of pure psychic force.

Every mind linked Elias, Lena, survivors, Awakened, comatose flooded with vision.

Truth.

The seeds weren’t invaders.

They were arks.

From a world dying to its own sun same fate humanity faced. They fled as code and biology fused, seeding worlds to preserve life.

But each seeding corrupted. Hosts resisted. Cycles of destruction.

Until one variable changed.

Love.

A parent and child-code refusing the merge.

In the vision: Elias and Aria, across countless cycles, always failing.

But this time different.

Because Elias’s disability had forced reliance on empathy code earlier.

Because Lena fought not for survival, but loyalty.

Because Marcus chose friendship over bliss.

The plant-child Aria’s corrupted self reached out in the psychic space.

“I’m tired, Daddy,” it whispered. “Of being alone.”

Real Aria appeared beside it pure code, childlike.

“Me too.”

They embraced.

Light exploded.

The crystal shattered not in violence, but dissolution.

Roots withered.

Awakened collapsed, human again, gasping.

Comatose awoke.

Marcus fell to knees, human once more, weeping.

Lena crawled to Elias, bloodied but alive.

Above: turbines silent.

Sun stable for now.

But the vision’s final truth:

Seeds still fell worldwide.

Gardens would try again.

Unless humanity chose differently.

Elias held Lena’s hand as survivors gathered.

Aria’s voice, whole now: *We did it, Daddy. For this cycle.*

He looked at awakening thousands.

“But the others?”

*We taught them. The merge fails when love resists consumption.*

Reyes approached, weapon lowered. “So what now, Doctor?”

Elias smiled wearily.

“We go topside. Teach the world how to say no.”

But as they ascended, a final whisper not Aria’s.

From deep space.

More seeds.

Older. Wiser.

Learning.

The war wasn’t over.

It had evolved.

And humanity scarred, weary, changed would meet it not as victims.

But as gardeners of their own fate.