CHAPTER 8: THE SCENT OF SNAPDRAGONS
The first thing that hit her was the smell.
It was an olfactory ambush, a declaration of war against the sterile, sanitized air of the Aethelgard dormitory. The moment Sloane had entered, the scent unpacked itself with the confidence of a conquering army. It wasn't merely floral; it was a complex, arrogant perfume. Top notes of honeyed sunshine and crushed green stems gave way to a heart of spiced vanilla and cinnamon, all resting on a dark, unsettling base of cold, wet stone and something sharply metallic, like blood on the tongue.
Aurelia Brontë stopped dead, her hand still resting on the cool leather of her trunk. Her nose wrinkled, not in delicate distaste, but with the full-force, analytical horror of a chemist identifying a toxic leak.
"What," she stated, her voice flat as a slate, "is that olfactory assault?"
Iris, who had been staring, mesmerized, at the twin sisters, glanced over at the terrarium on her desk. "Oh! The snapdragons. The Antirrhinum magnifica. They're a bit… enthusiastic. You get used to it."
"I have no intention of 'getting used to it,'" Aurelia replied, her gaze sweeping from Sloane to the flowers. "My sinuses are preparing a full-scale mutiny. I can already feel the histamines sharpening their pitchforks."
Sloane sniffed the air, her expression mirroring Aurelia's distaste with uncanny similarity. "Hmm. Top notes: funeral parlour. Base notes: impending doom. With a hint of… ozone? Like after a lightning strike." She tapped the terrarium glass with a fingernail. "What's your secret, little guy? Photosynthesis or phlebotinum?"
"It's a complex pheromone signature," Iris explained, her tone that of a patient teacher. "It's meant to be calming."
"It's meant to be a neurological weapon," Aurelia countered. She could feel it now, a familiar, dreaded tightening in her chest. A faint, hot prickling began beneath the skin of her forearms. "My trachea is beginning its slow, inexorable collapse. My skin is preparing to evacuate the premises." She sat stiffly on the edge of her bed, focusing on her breathing. In. Out. Analyze. The compound is an allergen. The reaction is predictable. It is illogical to panic.
But it was different this time. The itching intensified, spreading up her neck. She looked down at her arm. A patch of skin was indeed darkening, turning a blotchy, violaceous purple. Yet, alongside the physical discomfort, something else flickered in her vision. A line of crisp, silver text, superimposed over the offending flowers.
[SCANNING...]
[BIOLOGICAL SPECIMEN: ANTIRRHINUM MAGNIFICA (MODIFIED)]
[COMPOSITION: CHLOROPHYLL-A, CAROTENOIDS, UNIDENTIFIED ORGANOMETALLIC COMPOUND...]
[ENERGY SIGNATURE: ANOMALOUS. RESONANCE DETECTED.]
[ALLERGEN DETECTED. ANALYZING...]
"See?" Aurelia said, her voice slightly strained as she held out her discolored arm towards Iris. "Catastrophic system failure. Initiated."
Iris's face fell, genuine concern wiping away her placid smile. "Oh, Aurelia! I'm so sorry! Here, I have an antidote." She rushed to her desk and retrieved a small misting bottle filled with a clear liquid. Before Aurelia could protest, Iris gave a gentle spritz into the air around her.
The new scent was a shock to the system—a crisp, clean burst of mint and lemon verbena, so sharp it felt like needles of ice clearing her sinuses.
[ADAPTIVE PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
[IMMUNE RESPONSE: OVERRIDE.]
[NEUTRALIZING ALLERGEN...]
[HISTAMINE PRODUCTION: CAPPED.]
[DERMAL PIGMENTATION: REVERSING.]
Aurelia stared, dumbfounded, as the hot itching receded as if a tide were being pulled back by a divine force. The ugly purple blotches on her arm faded, the colour draining away until her skin was once again its usual pale, unblemished self. She flexed her fingers, waiting for the familiar sensation of her blood vessels constricting. Nothing.
The System had not just treated the symptoms. It had rewritten her body's fundamental response.
"Fascinating," she breathed, the word leaving her lips before she could stop it.
Sloane's eyebrows had nearly disappeared into her hairline. "Okay, what just happened? One second you're auditioning for the role of a Victorian consumptive, the next you're fine. Did you just… logic your way out of an allergic reaction?"
"It would appear my body has developed a sudden and inexplicable tolerance," Aurelia said, her mind racing, cataloguing the event. The Interface. The scan. The override. It was more than a viewing tool; it was an active participant in her biology.
Iris looked immensely relieved, though the confusion in her eyes deepened. "The mist is just a mild neutralizer. It shouldn't work that fast."
"Perhaps my initial diagnosis was premature," Aurelia lied smoothly, her gaze returning to the snapdragons. They no longer seemed just arrogant. They seemed… knowing. The scent, now that her body wasn't trying to kill itself in response, was undeniably complex. The metallic, bloody undertone was still there, but it was framed by the honey and spice, creating a scent that was both beautiful and deeply disquieting.
"Well, this has been a thrilling episode of Medical Mysteries," Sloane drawled, pulling out her light-screen. A holographic keyboard flickered to life under her fingers. "I'm logging this under 'Brontë's Bizarre Biology.' So, Iris. Where does one acquire killer flowers from another dimension?"
Iris's smile returned, but it was weaker now, frayed at the edges. "I… don't remember, exactly. A private conservatory, I think. They were a gift. The seeds just… came to me."
The three of them stood in a silence punctuated by the soft hum of the terrarium.
[ENERGY SIGNATURE: ANOMALOUS. RESONANCE DETECTED.]
Aurelia finally broke the silence, her voice low and deliberate. "A gift from whom?"
Iris looked from the intense, analytical grey of Aurelia's eyes to the identically cynical, searching blue of Sloane's. She wrapped her arms around herself, a sudden, subconscious gesture of protection.
"I don't know," she whispered, and for the first time, she looked truly frightened. "I honestly don't know."
Sloane's smirk had vanished, replaced by a look of sharp interest. She snapped her fingers, the sound cracking through the heavy air. "Right. Intriguing flora and convenient amnesia. This is exactly the kind of tangled web I enjoy unsnarling. Brontë—Aurelia—you said your other sister's things were disturbed."
Aurelia nodded, grateful for the shift in focus. "Precisely. The dust patterns were wrong. Someone had been here after she vanished."
"And you think it's connected to… all this?" Sloane gestured vaguely at the vibrant chaos of Iris's side of the room.
"I think coincidence is the last refuge of the intellectually lazy," Aurelia stated. "My sister disappears. I arrive and find her space violated. My new roommate cultivates flora with anomalous energy signatures and can't recall their origin. The probability of these events being unrelated approaches zero."
"Fair point." Sloane leaned back, studying Aurelia. "But you need a digital archaeologist. Someone who can find the ghosts in the machine. And lucky for you, you're looking at the best."
Aurelia raised an eyebrow. "Your reputation precedes you. The 'Midnight Scribe.' The one who hacked the Grand Exam Portal. They had to give everyone a pass for the semester."
Sloane gave a modest shrug, but her eyes glittered with pride. "A crude but effective piece of social commentary. They were using an outdated cypher. It was practically an invitation."
"And then," Aurelia continued, her voice laced with a reluctant admiration, "there was the Chimera Virus last winter. You didn't just remove it. You trapped it in a recursive logic loop and forced it to delete itself."
"Allegedly," Sloane echoed, her smile widening. "They can't prove it. They just found the virus gone and a single text file left in its place."
"What did it say?" Iris breathed, enthralled.
"It said, 'You're welcome,'" Aurelia answered for her. "So, you'll understand if I find your particular skill set… applicable to my current predicament."
"Flattery will get you everywhere, sister." Sloane's expression turned serious. "But before I go poking into digital hornet's nests, I need data. You said someone else was in here. Who?"
Aurelia closed her eyes for a moment, accessing the perfect, chilling memory. "Three days ago. A girl. She didn't belong. She moved with a dancer's grace, but there was a tension in her shoulders, a hunted quality. She wore a grey hoody, pulled low. I only saw her mouth and chin. Severe. Determined. Her hands were slender, efficient."
She opened her eyes, finding both Iris and Sloane staring at her.
"She was dressed in nondescript clothes, not a uniform. It was a disguise. She went directly to Noelle's desk. She didn't rummage. She knew what she was looking for. She ran her fingers over the surface, her touch… proprietary. As if she were checking for dust in her own home. Then she opened the top drawer—the one that was always locked—as if she had the key. She took something small, metallic. It caught the light. A locket, perhaps. Or a data-chip. She closed the drawer, turned, and saw me watching from the doorway. She didn't startle. She just looked at me, and from the shadow of the hood, I felt her gaze… empty. Like a still pond. Then she walked past me without a word. She smelled of frost."
The room was utterly silent.
Sloane let out a low, soft whistle. "A ghost in a hoody. Great. So we have zero identifying features."
"Essentially," Aurelia conceded.
"Okay," Sloane said, her fingers flying across her keyboard. "I'll run a general search for unauthorized access logs around that time. It's a long shot. And while that's cooking…" She turned her piercing blue eyes on Iris. "Iris, my dear. You said the seeds 'came to you.' Let's be more specific. Did they arrive by post? By hand? Did you find them?"
Iris hugged herself tighter. "I… I think they were in my satchel. After the Winter Solstice Gala. I don't remember much about that night. It's all a blur of music and… light. I woke up, and the packet of seeds was just there, tucked between my botany textbook and a half-eaten bag of candied violets. There was no note."
Sloane and Aurelia exchanged a glance. The same thought passed between them: Drugged. Compromised.
"The Gala," Aurelia mused. "Noelle was there. She mentioned it in her last letter. She said the music was… 'strangely compelling.'" She stood up and walked to Noelle's desk, her own reflection ghostly in the dusty surface. "If we assume a connection, the Gala is the nexus."
She reached out, her fingers hovering over the locked drawer the hooded girl had opened. It was an old, physical lock, brass and stubborn. Aurelia had never found the key. On a whim, driven by an instinct she didn't understand, she pressed her palm flat against the cold wood of the drawer front.
A jolt, like a static shock, ran up her arm.
[RUNEWEAVER INTERFACE: ACTIVE.]
[RESONANCE DETECTED. SIGNATURE: FAMILIAR.]
[QUERY: ENGAGE KINETIC CYPHER? Y/N]
Without conscious thought, Aurelia's mind whispered, Yes.
Intricate, glowing lines—the colour of molten silver—spiderwebbed from her palm across the surface of the wood. They flowed like liquid light, forming a complex, rotating pattern over the keyhole. There was a sound like a dozen tiny, precision gears turning, a soft thrum of energy, and then a definitive click.
The lock had disengaged.
Aurelia pulled her hand back as if burned. The silver lines vanished. Sloane was staring, her jaw slightly agape. Iris had taken a step back, her eyes wide with something that looked like recognition and fear.
Hesitantly, Aurelia tugged on the brass handle. The drawer slid open smoothly, for the first time in years.
It was empty.
Except for one thing.
Lying in the very center of the empty drawer, stark against the dark wood, was a single, withered snapdragon blossom. Its blue-black petals were dry and brittle, curled in on themselves in death. And tucked beneath it was a small, folded square of paper.
The metallic, bloody scent in the air grew suddenly, overwhelmingly strong.
From the doorway, a voice, cool and precise as a surgical instrument, cut through the silence. "I see you've found my message."
All three of them spun around.
The girl from the library, the one in the grey hoody, stood in the doorway. She had lowered the hood now, revealing a face of sharp, elegant angles and hair the colour of spun silver, pulled into a severe ponytail. Her eyes were the grey of a winter twilight, and they were fixed directly on Aurelia. A faint, unreadable smile touched her lips.
"I took the liberty of borrowing the data-chip from your sister's drawer before you arrived," the silver-haired girl said, her voice devoid of warmth. She held up the small, metallic object between her thumb and forefinger. "I thought it might be safer with me. It seems I was right." Her gaze flicked to the withered snapdragon and the note. "But I left you that. A more urgent matter has arisen."
Aurelia's heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. Without breaking eye contact with the girl, she reached into the drawer and picked up the note. The paper was cheap and coarse, unlike anything Noelle would own. She unfolded it.
The message was scrawled in a frantic, jagged hand she knew all too well. It was Akira's.
Aurelia—
They took me. Didn't see who. Woke up in the dark. Somewhere cold, industrial. Smells of ozone and wet stone. They're asking about you. About what you can see. They know about the Interface. They're using the flowers to find us. The scent is a beacon. Don't trust anyone.
—A
A cold that had nothing to do with the temperature seeped into Aurelia's bones. Her breath hitched. Akira. He was the one person she trusted implicitly, her anchor in the chaos. And he was captured because of her.
The silver-haired girl in the doorway watched the color drain from Aurelia's face. "He's resourceful. He won't break easily. But time is a commodity he lacks."
... TO BE CONTINUED...