Rain turned to mist as the helicopters circled above. Their spotlights sliced through the treetops, swaying between branches like pale eyes searching for sin.
Cobi crouched behind a fallen log, soaked and shivering, listening to the static of radios closing in from every direction.
"Team Bravo, sweep west ridge."
"He's armed?"
"Negative, but considered extremely dangerous."
The word dangerous hit something deep inside him. It lingered like a wound.
He was no monster. He was just trying to find his brother.
"Monsters never know what they are until it's too late."
The voice was calmer now, almost sympathetic.
"Don't fear the roots, Cobi. They were yours before they were mine."
"Stop," he muttered, clenching his fists. "Stop—"
Crack.
The sharp pop of a taser wire cutting the air. Then pain — bright, electric, all-consuming.
He dropped, muscles locking. Mud splattered his face as boots thundered closer.
"Target down, we got him!" someone shouted.
Hands grabbed him, yanking him upright. Through the blur of haze and flashing LED lights, he saw Halpern — soaked, her expression unreadable.
"Cobi," she called out, "this doesn't have to get worse. Just come with us. Tell us what's really happening."
Something in the ground pulsed as she spoke — a hum beneath his boots, deep and rhythmic. The nearby trees trembled like they were breathing.
"Can't you hear it?" he gasped.
Halpern frowned. "Hear what?"
The earth split.
A fissure tore through the clearing, throwing mud and roots into the air. Officers stumbled backward as vines erupted upward — thick, glowing, threading between them like serpents of light and shadow. The helicopters swung their beams down, but it only made the scene more surreal: a storm of living roots pulsing with pale fire, moving with purpose.
Cobi collapsed to his knees, clutching his head.
"Make it stop!"
"You can't stop what you are," the chorus replied.
Then the roots found him. They spiraled around his arms and chest — gently, almost reverently — lifting him off the ground. His body glowed in rhythm with the tendrils, silver veins lighting under his skin.
Halpern shouted orders, but radios crackled only static. Officers fired; bullets never hit. The air warped, thickening, each shot muffled like a dream.
And then the trees screamed.
Every branch bowed inward toward Cobi. The roots lashed out, shattering glass, tearing through vehicles, dissolving metal into dust. The forest itself rose against the intruders — eyes blinking open in the bark, voices overlapping in human and alien tongues.
Above it all, thunder rolled—a deep, feminine voice bleeding through the storm.
"My children defend themselves at last."
Cobi's eyes widened. "Mother Nature…"
Lightning struck the hilltop, consuming him in a blinding flash. The sound knocked everyone flat. Cameras on the helicopters fizzled into white noise before transmission cut completely.
When the light faded, the roots were gone.
The helicopters hovered over an empty clearing.
Cobi Rivers had vanished.
In his place, only a single flower had sprouted in the center of the crater — silver veins running through its translucent petals, whispering softly in a voice only the nearest officer could hear:
"The vessel is awake."