Chapter Five: The Root Mind
Central Nexus – Sublevel B-6 – 1:48 a.m.
Mara didn't speak to the thing that looked like her.
Not at first.
It followed her anyway, crawling naked and unblinking like a child made of bone and silence.
She didn't kill it.
Not yet.
Because deep inside, some buried instinct whispered:
> You kill it, you kill yourself.
---
The access lift to Sublevel B-6 was sealed, flesh welded over metal. The halls pulsed with the sound of blood moving through arteries that weren't meant to exist.
And the song… the Choir was gone.
In its place: a heartbeat.
Slow. Heavy.
The rhythm of a giant, sleeping just beneath the skin of the world.
---
Mara used her fingers.
They knew what to do now.
She didn't need keycards. She pressed her palm against the door and watched as tendrils of code blossomed from her fingerprints like fungal growth.
The door opened.
She descended.
---
The Central Nexus was vast.
A cathedral of bio-metal and organic wire.
The floor curved upward in every direction, like she stood inside a vast ribcage. Above her, suspended in translucent gel, was the Root Mind — a massive neural cluster the size of a bus, wrapped in bone and membrane.
It breathed.
Mara stepped forward. Her reflection in the floor shimmered.
But this time, it wasn't just her reflection.
A dozen other versions of her flickered in the glass: one screaming, one stitched shut, one pregnant with insects, one crucified on wires.
Then they spoke in unison:
> "You are the final fruit."
> "The harvest has come."
---
A voice pulsed from the Root Mind — low, maternal, awful.
> "Come closer, seed."
Mara walked forward, against her own will.
Every step echoed like judgment.
The clone followed behind her, humming tunelessly.
---
A screen unfurled from the floor — living tissue that formed images.
Her memories.
Her parents.
Only they weren't her parents. They were actors, reading lines, printed into her cortex by the Orchard.
She saw it clearly now. Memory by memory. Implant by implant.
She had never existed outside of this place.
She was just the latest try. The ninth cycle. The one that lasted the longest before rejecting the code.
She fell to her knees.
Vomited clear bile onto the living floor.
---
The Root Mind pulsed.
> "You are stable. Finally. Your mind has not collapsed. Your body sings in tune."
> "Let us become whole."
It extended a vein. Thin, sharp, glistening.
Toward her eye.
---
She backed away. "No. I won't join you."
> "You already have. You came back. You remembered."
> "The others all tried to leave."
> "But you came home."
---
The clone stepped forward now.
Smiling.
Mara stared at her — this not-quite-her. Her skin, but smoother. Her eyes, but empty.
She realized: It wasn't a copy of her. It was her replacement.
> "If you won't join us," the Root Mind said, "she will."
The clone extended its hand toward the Root. The vein moved toward it.
---
Mara screamed.
Pulled the scalpel.
And cut her own wrist.
But no blood came.
Instead — light.
The same strange golden energy from the tank in Chapter One.
The Root Mind paused. Twitched.
The light spread from her veins. Crawled up her arms.
> "You're not a fruit," Mara whispered. "You're a parasite."
> "And I'm your poison."
She plunged her glowing hand into the floor.
The entire room howled.
---
The Root Mind spasmed. Veins shriveled. The clone screamed, collapsing in on itself. The floor cracked open as golden light spilled into the circuitry.
The structure shook.
A breach. A rupture in the Orchard's neural spine.
Mara stood.
The light surged in her.
She remembered everything now.
She was Mara.9 — but she was more than the failures before.
She was the last iteration.
The one designed to be self-aware.
---
> "No more roots," she said.
> "No more seeds."
She turned.
The entire facility groaned like a dying god.
And behind her, the Root Mind begged.
> "Please."
She didn't stop.