The East River docks reeked of salt, diesel, and the faint copper tang of old blood—the scent of industry long forgotten, of crime deeply rooted in rust and rot. It clung to the air like mold in a locked cellar. To me, it was more than a stench.
It was fertile ground.
The Conehead zombie I had dispatched earlier shuffled ahead of me down the cracked pier, its movements slow but deliberate, a silent herald of the coming harvest. My connection to it was like a fishing line cast into still water—thin, cold, but perfectly attuned. I saw through its decayed eyes, heard the distant buzz of insects, felt the bite of wind against rotting flesh. The world filtered in not as colors, but gradients of death and entropy.
Ahead lay the Black Fangs' claimed territory.
Shipping containers towered like monolithic tombstones, stacked and forgotten, while rusted cranes stretched into the night sky like skeletal fingers. The system's ambient scan lit up the edges of my mind with data—eight distinct life signs clustered in a structure just beyond the stacks. An old warehouse with broken floodlights and boarded windows. Their den.
Their grave.
The Grave Energy here was stronger than I anticipated. Ancient, stagnant, and freshly disturbed in places. The system pulsed faint alerts with every step I took closer. Someone had died here recently—violently. That energy hadn't dissipated yet. It lingered like a scream stuck in a throat.
I stayed off the main path, moving like a shadow beneath shadows. My body moved silently, aided by a dozen subtle enhancements I'd woven into my limbs with chlorokinetic reinforcement. Even the gravel beneath my feet refused to crunch, cradled by moss that spread at my mental command.
Ahead, a sliver of green grew across the side of a concrete piling—moss clinging desperately to the damp surface. I reached out.
A whisper of power flowed from my palm. The moss accepted me.
Through it, I saw.
Not with eyes, but with sensation—a vague but powerful impression of heat, motion, and sound. Inside the warehouse, the gang moved like restless cattle. Shouting. Drinking. Laughing over weapons they didn't understand. One voice stood out—a braying, angry tone like a buzzsaw forced through flesh.
Rico.
The leader.
"You think AIM's gonna keep doing business with us if you keep screwing up?" he barked. "Stark's tech ain't cheap, you idiot! A single component could get us all killed!"
That confirmed it.
They weren't just petty thugs anymore. They were mules. Running technology from Stark—or something worse. AIM. Advanced Idea Mechanics. The scent of ambition and desperation rolled off them in equal measure.
They thought they were climbing.
They didn't know they were standing on the edge of a pit.
My Conehead zombie rounded the final stack of containers. The guards outside the warehouse hadn't noticed it yet—too busy laughing, passing a bottle between them, guns slung lazily on their shoulders.
That was about to change.
I crouched behind a rusted beam, one hand brushing against a coiled vine hidden beneath a tarp of moldy tarpaulin. It stirred slightly at my touch, awaiting my command. I could feel the tension building in the air—the moment before a storm, the pause before the blade falls.
I didn't smile.
But deep inside, something unfurled like a petal touched by sunlight.
This was my stage.
And the curtain was about to rise.
***
The guards finally noticed the Conehead when it was less than ten feet away—its head tilted at a sick angle, eyes like wet marbles catching the warehouse floodlight.
"What the—?"
The big one reached for his crowbar, too slow.
The zombie lunged with a burst of unnatural speed, decayed muscles snapping forward like over-wound springs. Its hand closed around the man's throat with crushing finality. Bone cracked. His feet left the ground. No time to scream.
The second guard panicked, fumbling with a cheap handgun. His first shot went wide. The second pinged off the zombie's traffic cone helmet with a hollow clang.
Pathetic.
From behind a pile of tires, a Peashooter burst forth like a blooming nightmare. Its stem twisted, its jawless muzzle glowing with acidic green light. It fired—once.
The shot hit center mass. A hiss of melting fabric. Then flesh. Then bone.
The thug collapsed, shrieking, the stink of chemical burn choking the air.
I emerged from the shadows at last—not as a savior, not as an attacker, but as a gardener answering hunger. My fingers brushed the concrete, and the moss I'd seeded earlier answered.
Vines erupted from cracks in the pavement like awakened serpents—coiling, lashing, ensnaring.
The thug still screaming? Dragged backward by the ankles, arms flailing as thorns wrapped around his chest. The one with the crushed windpipe? Pulled into a nest of roots that wrapped him like a cradle… or a coffin.
The warehouse door burst open.
Six more gang members poured out, guns raised, shouting Rico's name. I didn't flinch. I simply whispered.
Grow.
From a shattered pallet beside the door, wood split and gave way as a second grave ruptured open—gravel, bone, and soil spitting upward as my next gift emerged.
Buckethead Zombie.
He rose slow, unbothered by the shouting or gunfire. A dented steel bucket covered his skull like a knight's helm. One bullet struck him square in the chest—he didn't even blink. Just kept walking.
Rico stood at the threshold now, his face twisted in confusion and fear. He looked at the vines, the Peashooter, the Conehead still tearing at one of his men—and at the towering bucket-headed corpse approaching like a nightmare in boots.
He didn't see me.
He saw retribution.
One of his lieutenants—a scarred man with brass knuckles—charged the Conehead, screaming as he swung.
Too slow.
The zombie caught his wrist mid-air, twisted, and ripped the arm clean off. A spray of blood painted the container wall. He dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
I stepped through the curtain of vines and finally made myself known.
Rico saw me—really saw me—for the first time. His mouth opened.
He said nothing.
What could he say?
I raised one hand.
"Feed."
The word rang out like a spell.
My minions surged forward.
The Conehead flung itself into the fray, jaw clamping onto the shoulder of a retreating thug. The Buckethead tackled two men at once, burying them under his massive frame. Vines crawled from walls, dragging down others screaming into the dirt.
One tried to run.
I snapped my fingers.
A Wall-nut burst from beneath his feet—stone-hard, immovable. He tripped over it. Fell. Never got up again.
In less than a minute, it was over.
The warehouse groaned in the aftermath. Acid smoke drifted lazily through the open air. Gunmetal clattered to the ground, forgotten by hands that no longer functioned.
Blood soaked the soil.
I harvested every drop.
***
> [System Notification: Grave Energy Absorbed: +45]
[Memory Trace Fragmented: AIM Logo Identified – Source Connection: Moderate Credibility]
[Unlocked – Buckethead Class Zombie: Durability Tier 2.5]
[Dominion Progression: 8%]
Their bodies weren't corpses to me.
They were seeds.
Memory Echo: Rico
I stood over Rico's mangled corpse, vines slowly tightening around his limbs. His eyes were wide open—glass marbles in a face frozen by terror. I crouched and placed a hand against his temple.
> [Initiating Memory Echo Reconstruction…]
Cognitive integrity: 42%
Priority: Visual-Emotional Fragments
Cross-referencing known logos… AIM match: 86% confidence
The world blinked sideways.
A fractured vision bloomed behind my eyes.
Dark alley. Neon buzz. Breath fogging in cold air.
Rico stood in front of a man in a charcoal-gray suit. No name, no face—just an outline carved in confidence and danger. A stylized "M" glinted on his lapel.
The man spoke with a calm, filtered voice. "No interruptions. No delays. No witnesses."
He handed Rico a case—sleek, metallic, Stark-designed but AIM-reengineered. Rico opened it.
Inside: a glowing node. Vibranium mesh, miniaturized arc tech, something too advanced for street rats to understand.
Rico swallowed hard. He nodded. "It's safe with us. Ain't nobody touching this."
The vision fragmented—gunshots, laughter, a flash of Rico's pride. He didn't know he was a pawn.
I ended the connection.
> [Memory Echo Complete. New Data Logged.]
[Target: Unnamed AIM Agent. Status: Unknown. Threat Level: Medium.]
[Item of Interest: Recovered Stark-AIM Hybrid Component.]
[Dominion Progression: 9.1%]
I exhaled slowly.
This wasn't just about turf anymore. This was infrastructure. These thugs were a delivery system for something far larger. A secret wrapped in glowing tech and cloaked intentions.
And I had just severed one of its roots.
***
Silent Withdrawal
I turned from Rico and looked upon the carnage. The bodies—no, the raw material—lay scattered like felled saplings. But soon, they would rise anew.
I knelt at the center of the warehouse and placed my palm on the floor.
> [Command: Establish Seedbed – Permanent Grave Anchor Site]
[Area Saturation Level: 89% – Suitable for Conversion]
The ground pulsed. Moss curled upward in spirals. The concrete cracked and flaked into soil. Vines coiled like wards around the room's perimeter.
It was done.
This was no longer a warehouse.
It was a bloom of death—a hollow temple of stillness and fertile decay. Any trespasser who crossed the threshold would be greeted by my roots, my watchers, my wrath.
But I didn't need to be here to protect it.
My presence would be felt in absence.
The Conehead and Buckethead zombies had done their work. I dismissed them with a mental command, their forms crumbling back into Grave Soil. The Peashooter and Wall-nut decomposed into their base flora, dormant, hidden in cracks and drainpipes.
No minions remained.
No bodies.
No sound.
Just a warehouse that had devoured its own inhabitants and returned to slumber.
I left the docks without a word, my shadow fading into the mist of a dying night.
***
[Short Time Later]
[Jessica Jones's Perspective]
She lit her third cigarette before she even stepped into the warehouse.
The East River docks were always bad news, but this... this was different.
Jessica Jones had seen gang hideouts that reeked of sweat, diesel, and desperation. Places stained with blood, filled with shattered bottles and half-cooked meth in rusted tubs. But this place? This one felt... wrong.
Wrong like a sealed coffin with fresh flowers on top.
No sounds. No movement. Not even rats.
She stepped through the warped doorway, her boots crunching softly over the floor. Moss. Brittle, green, unnatural moss. Spread in patches like it had grown overnight—except moss didn't grow like this. Not in geometric patterns. Not in handprint shapes.
Her eyes narrowed.
The walls were veined with vines. Still. Coiled like they'd frozen mid-crawl.
And no bodies.
That was the worst part.
She'd come expecting blood. Maybe some smoldering crates, the aftermath of a gang shootout. A sloppy execution, even. But this? This was a vanishing. Like someone had vacuumed up a dozen men and left behind an art installation of quiet rot.
Her enhanced senses didn't help. If anything, they made it worse.
The air was too clean. No blood. No sweat. Just a faint tang of wet earth and ozone, like a storm had passed through. The dust hadn't even settled—it had been swept. Intentionally.
She crouched at the center of the room, brushing her fingers across the concrete. It was fractured—no, veined, like the cracks had formed around something that grew up, then retracted.
She muttered, "Since when do weeds eat people?"
Her phone buzzed, and she ignored it.
Instead, she pulled out a tiny UV light and scanned the walls. Nothing. No blood spray. No prints. Just faint chlorophyll residue, like someone had scrubbed the crime scene with nature itself.
Her instincts screamed.
This wasn't a clean-up job. This was a ritual. Something primal. Something intelligent.
Jessica stood, her cigarette burning low between her fingers. She took a picture—wide angle, the whole room. Then a close-up of the wall where a vine had left a perfect human palm imprint, down to the curl of the thumb.
Alias Investigations wouldn't believe it. Hell, she didn't believe it.
The Black Fangs hadn't gone into hiding.
They'd been erased.
And whoever did it didn't want attention.
They wanted silence.
She pocketed the cigarette and glanced once more toward the dark rafters.
"Yeah," she said to no one in particular, "this is gonna get weird."
End of chapter.