Eren hadn't slept.
The ceiling above him blurred into shifting shadows that refused to stay still. Every time his eyelids drooped, he'd jolt awake, certain that the vines were moving in the corners, certain that a whisper would curl through the room.
But the night held. No tendrils snaked out, no silver blooms opened on the floor. Just the heavy thrum of his pulse and the faint rasp of the fern on the windowsill, its leaves bent toward him as if listening.
By dawn, exhaustion made his bones ache. He stuffed the journal into his backpack, dressed with trembling fingers, and stumbled out before his mom could notice the hollow pits beneath his eyes.
The town was too quiet. Main Street, still cordoned off, sat under the morning sun like a crime scene preserved in amber. People passed by quickly, pretending they didn't notice the black SUVs parked along the sidewalks. Pretending they didn't see the men in suits watching the crowd with the flat calm of predators.
Talia was waiting near the school gates. One look at him and she swore.
"You look like you fought a blender."
"Didn't sleep," Eren muttered.
"Yeah, no kidding. Come on." She jerked her head toward the empty bleachers by the football field. "Somewhere no one's eavesdropping."
They climbed the rusted stands, sat in the highest row. From here the whole town spread beneath them—the church spire, the clustered roofs, the thin strip of river cutting past the old mill. Normal. Ordinary. Except for the black vans and the men in suits.
Talia nudged him. "So. You gonna tell me why I woke up to find government cars parked outside my street?"
Eren hesitated, fingers tightening on the straps of his bag. "Because they know."
"Know what?"
"That the Garden isn't just a freak accident." He opened the journal, flipping to the page his grandmother had written decades ago. The sketch of the silver flower stared back at him. "They've been watching it. Probably for years."
Talia didn't laugh. For once, she didn't even argue. She just leaned back against the bleachers and stared at the sky. "If you're right, we're so screwed."
---
Langley, Virginia.
The conference room was windowless, humming with recycled air. On the screen, images flickered: aerial shots of the small American town, close-ups of pavement fractures glowing faintly under ultraviolet, a blurry still of vines wrapped around a streetlamp.
The CIA analyst cleared his throat. "Our field team confirms anomalous plant activity. Growth rates exceed natural biology. Material scans show hybrid organic-mineral structure, crystalline lattices forming within the vascular tissue. We've never seen anything like it."
Across the table, a senior officer leaned forward. "Containment?"
"Local authorities accepted the gas explosion narrative. Civilians remain unaware—or unwilling to believe."
A general from the Pentagon tapped his pen. "Unwilling won't last. If more of this… bleeds through, you won't hide it behind a gas leak story."
The analyst hesitated, then pulled up a satellite image. A faint shimmer ran through the soil around the greenhouse, spreading in delicate veins outward. "Sir… it already is."
By lunchtime,
the whispers at school had grown teeth. Kids filmed the cracks in the pavement, slowed the footage until the faint gleam inside looked like something alive. The videos spread. Hashtags bloomed.
#Glassroots
#BloomTown
Eren shoved his phone deep into his pocket and wished he could tear the whole internet down.
Talia caught his sleeve between classes. "We need to figure out how bad this is. Meet me after school, okay? Don't go near the greenhouse alone."
Her words stuck in his head all afternoon. By the final bell, his nerves were frayed. He stepped out into the fading light—then froze.
A man leaned against the school gates. Black suit, black tie. Sunglasses that didn't reflect. He didn't look at Eren, didn't speak. Just watched.
Eren's stomach turned to ice.
Moscow.
The Kremlin's war room was quiet, voices low but sharp. On the screen, the same American town.
"This footage leaked an hour ago," an FSB officer said. He played the clip of the vines coiling around the streetlamp. "The Americans are covering it up, but too slowly. Our satellites confirm unusual radiation signatures around the greenhouse. It does not match nuclear, chemical, or conventional biological profiles."
A senior advisor lit a cigarette, ignoring the no-smoking signs. "And you believe them?"
The officer didn't flinch. "We don't believe. We verify. And this… this is not theirs. It's something else."
"Then find out," the advisor said. "Deploy Zarya Unit. If the Americans want to keep secrets, let us steal them first."
That night, he dreamed of roots.
They threaded through his skin, winding around his bones, pulsing with green fire. He couldn't scream. Couldn't breathe. Only watched as his hands split open like soil and vines sprouted from the cracks.
He woke drenched in sweat. The fern on his windowsill loomed larger than it had any right to, its leaves stretched wide, reaching toward his bed.
He shoved it off the sill. The pot shattered. Soil scattered across the floor. For a heartbeat, the roots writhed like worms. Then they stilled.
Eren pressed himself against the wall, chest heaving. His grandmother's words burned in his mind.
The Garden tests the chosen.
He wasn't sure how much longer he could endure.
New Delhi.
The Prime Minister's security council gathered in the cool chamber beneath South Block. On the table: classified cables from the Indian embassy in Washington, intercepted chatter from RAW assets, satellite images from ISRO.
"It began as an isolated anomaly," the intelligence chief said, "but the pattern of growth is expanding. If unchecked, projections suggest it could destabilize continental soil structures. Earthquakes, collapses, famine."
One minister leaned forward. "And the Americans? They'll never admit weakness. They'll bury it until it swallows them whole."
The RAW director adjusted his glasses. "Which is why we must have our own eyes on the ground. Our team leaves tonight. Quietly. If there is power here, it will not belong only to them."
He stopped going straight home after school. Too many men in suits. Too many vans that seemed to idle wherever he turned.
Instead, he met Talia at the library, both of them bent over the journal, whispering like conspirators.
"Look at this," Talia muttered, jabbing at a page. "Your grandma wrote about government men even back then. She called them Watchers. Said they circled the Garden like vultures."
Eren's skin prickled. "She knew."
"Yeah. And she didn't trust them."
He closed the book, fingers trembling. "Talia… what if they're not just watching? What if they want it?"
Her silence was answer enough.
Langley.
"Sir, foreign movements detected. Russian operatives in-country. Possible Indian surveillance as well. They're circling the anomaly."
The senior officer pinched the bridge of his nose. "Of course they are. Tell the local team to tighten the perimeter. No more civilians near the site. And find the boy."
The analyst hesitated. "The boy?"
"The one always seen near the greenhouse. Find him before someone else does."
Two nights later, he came home to find his mom talking to a stranger in the kitchen. A man in a dark suit, sipping coffee like he belonged there.
"Eren," his mom said brightly. Too brightly. "This is Mr. Hale. He's from… uh, the Environmental Protection Agency. Just asking some questions about the greenhouse."
Hale smiled, but his eyes were cold. "Your mother says you spend time near it."
Eren's mouth went dry. "Sometimes."
Hale sipped his coffee. "Then you'll be very helpful to us."
The whisper came then, so faint only Eren could hear. From the soil still clinging to his shoes, from the memory of roots writhing on his floor.
Closer.
Eren forced himself not to flinch.
Because the Garden wasn't just testing him anymore. It was pulling him into the game the whole world had started playing.
And he didn't know who was more dangerous—men like Hale, or the voice in the dark that wouldn't let him go.