Root Rot

The safehouse wasn’t safe anymore.

It breathed around them — slow, shallow, broken — like the walls themselves were suffocating.

Jessi bolted the door and scanned the room fast, instincts snapping back into place.
No new tracks.
No broken seals.
No static surges tripping the perimeter.

Good enough.

She dropped her gear by the entrance and turned —
only to see Victoria sliding down the wall, knees buckling.

"Vic—" Jessi lunged, catching her just before she hit the floor.

Victoria’s body was stiff, trembling, eyes wide open but unseeing.
Her mouth moved in tiny, broken motions — not words. Not yet.

Paul scrambled up onto the counter, tail puffed wide, fur sparking faint static under the flickering lights.

"Is she—?"

"She's breathing," Jessi snapped, pressing her hand against Victoria’s clammy forehead.

Breathing, yes.
Stable?
No.

Victoria shivered like an overloaded processor about to fry itself.

The static here was thicker.
Wrong.
It coated everything — their clothes, their skin, their breath — a low, itchy hum burrowing into their bones.

Jessi clenched her jaw, focusing only on Victoria.

She didn’t notice when Paul slipped out the door.

Paul darted through the back corridors like a rat on rocket boosters.

He wasn’t running away.
He was helping.

Jessi needed supplies.
Victoria needed real food.
They all needed something alive.

He squeezed through a cracked drainage duct and popped up in a half-collapsed maintenance sector — forgotten, looted, perfect.

In rapid, jittery bursts, Paul raided everything he could reach:

Rusted hydroponic tubes.

Cracked nutrient filters.

A battered seed bank case (half the seeds probably dead — but hope was hope).

He crammed it all into a ratty pack he’d scavenged last week.

And there — glinting behind a toppled EdenNet kiosk — something shiny.

Paul’s eyes widened.

A tangled, half-dead shard of EdenNet hardware — sleek black, faintly pulsing deep inside.

He didn’t think twice.

Into the bag it went.

Then he was gone, tail streaming static like a tiny comet as he tore back through the ducts.

Back at the safehouse, Jessi hadn’t moved.

She knelt beside Victoria, whispering old anchor phrases under her breath, trying to pull her back from wherever the hell she’d gone.

Victoria’s lips twitched.

Finally, finally — she spoke.

A whisper so faint Jessi had to lean in until her forehead nearly touched Victoria’s.

"The core isn’t clean..." Victoria breathed.

"The seeds..."
Her voice cracked.
"The seeds didn’t die..."

"The root cracked itself..."

Victoria’s eyes fluttered closed.

A long, ragged breath escaped her chest like a punctured lung finally giving up.

Jessi caught her, cradling her carefully as Victoria sagged into unconsciousness again.

But this time, it wasn’t breaking.
It was shifting.

Changing.

The front door rattled violently.

Jessi tensed, hand flying toward the knife hidden in her boot.

But it wasn’t a Harvester.

It was Paul.

He stumbled inside, panting, a giant, filthy backpack nearly twice his size dragging behind him.

"Victory!" he crowed.
"I bring trash! And hope! Mostly trash!"

He skidded across the floor, dropped the pack with a thud that rattled the foundation, and beamed at Jessi like a kid presenting a dead bird to his horrified mother.

Jessi opened her mouth to yell —
then closed it again.

Too tired.
Too much.

Paul started yanking out treasures: cracked irrigation lines, busted sensor boards, half-melted grow lamps.

And at the bottom —
half-buried in the wreckage —
the shard.

Black.
Pulsing.
Alive.

Paul didn’t even notice.

Jessi dragged a hand down her face, a headache blooming behind her eyes.

Whatever chaos he’d just dragged into their home?

They’d deal with it.

They always did.

Victoria stirred in her arms, shifting fitfully.

Somewhere deep inside the walls, the static pulse quickened.

Tomorrow would bring chaos.

Tomorrow, EdenNet would bleed.

But tonight?

Tonight they had a garden to build.

And a storm to survive.

Together.