The City, Two Days Later
The forest had started to grow into the city.
No one said it out loud, but something was wrong with the trees.
Branches twisted into unnatural shapes, bark peeled back to reveal symbols, and vines broke through pavement cracks like veins seeking open skin.
Alexis stared through the precinct window as a bird—black, glassy-eyed—slammed into the glass and died with a sound like cracking teeth.
"Third one today," she muttered.
Amelia didn't look up from the map she was marking.
"All the spiral incidents... they're forming a ring. A growing perimeter. Like roots expanding."
---
Elsewhere – "The Conservatory" (Underground Facility)
The woman with the spiral tattoo examined the latest field report.
Specimen #34: Alexis Ward
Signs of latent echo-synchronization. Possible first-stage rooting.
Recommend isolation or awakening protocol.
She circled "awakening."
Then turned to a glass tank containing the mirror from Amelia's apartment.
The surface rippled.
Something inside it blinked.
---
Amelia's Dream – The Spiral Garden
The flower had grown into a tree.
Its trunk was made of faces, all of them hers.
They whispered truths in dead tongues.
At the top, the Hollow Man hung upside-down like fruit. He turned to her and said:
> "You are not born.
You were planted."
She woke with dirt in her hands.
---
New Clue – The Spiral Root Sample
Jonas Merrow, the coroner, called them in under heavy secrecy.
"I ran tests on that flower's stem," he said, pale and shaking. "It's not plant tissue."
Amelia frowned. "What is it?"
He turned the microscope toward them.
What they saw moved.
It pulsed.
It had nerve endings.
"It's neural. It's part of a brain."
---
Final Scene – Public Garden, Downtown
An old woman was feeding pigeons when the fountain began to tremble.
Water reversed.
Roots burst from beneath the marble.
The pigeons went still.
From the soil, a figure grew—not walked, grew—out of the ground.
A man, eyes empty, skin pale and veined with vines.
He whispered a name only Amelia would recognize:
> "303."
Then collapsed into ash.
A spiral remained where his body had been, burned into stone.