The data from the "S-07" protocol deployment was, from a research perspective, nothing short of revolutionary.
The high-load composite stimulus—a meticulously orchestrated symphony of pulsating multi-spectral light sequences, infrasound waves modulated with fractal patterns, and precisely calibrated thermal micro-oscillations—had run for six hours overnight. The "NeuraLink" analysis suite hummed with activity, its dashboards blooming with triumphant green indicators and soaring graphs.
"Interface bandwidth increase confirmed at 192% above previous baseline," the morning summary report began, its tone clinically euphoric. "Signal coherence across all monitored physiological parameters in Subject 7 reached unprecedented levels. Multi-node synchronization index shows a cascading enhancement effect; phase-locking observed in Subjects 3 and 5 strengthened by 78% and 41% respectively during the S-07 window. The 'amplifier' model is not only validated but its performance parameters have been significantly exceeded."
In the cool light of the nursing station, Lin Yuan scrolled through the report, her face pale. The numbers were staggering, the correlations perfect. Chen Yu's body had responded like a flawlessly tuned instrument to every nuance of the engineered environment. His PPG waveforms danced in intricate, predictable harmony with the light pulses. His core temperature fluctuated with a precision of 0.03 degrees Celsius in lockstep with the thermal cycles. Even the micro-expressions captured by the high-resolution cameras—twitches so minute they were measured in micrometers—formed a statistically significant pattern that the AI flagged as "non-random, potentially indicative of sub-cognitive processing of complex stimulus sequences."
It was a monumental success. And to Lin Yuan, it felt like a tomb sealing shut.
Dr. Zheng found her later in the supply room, mechanically counting syringes. His usual scholarly composure was frayed. "They've fast-tracked the next phase," he said without preamble, voice low. "The 'structured information load' protocols. They're calling it the 'Lexical Primer' series. Sub-auditory phoneme streams. Subliminal geometric pattern exposure. All still 'background,' all still 'below threshold.'" He ran a hand through his hair. "The project review committee is ecstatic. They're talking about patentable methodologies for neural interfacing. They're not even hiding behind the 'consciousness research' facade anymore."
Lin Yuan stopped counting. "And the… the side effects? The leaks?"
Zheng's expression tightened. "I submitted a formal note of concern, appended with your temporal correlation charts. The official response was that correlation is not causation, and that minor environmental anomalies are to be expected with sensitive equipment during intensive data collection. They've commissioned an external engineering audit to 'rule out mundane technical artifacts.'" He met her eyes. "They don't want to see it, Lin. The data from S-07 is too good. It's blinding them."
"But the pattern is getting stronger," Lin Yuan insisted, her own voice barely a whisper. "Not just sensor ghosts. The night cleaner refused to enter his room last night. Said the air felt 'thick' and made her ring—a plain silver band—heat up suddenly. And the flowers his mother brought last week… they withered in under twenty-four hours. Not just died, Dr. Zheng. They… desiccated. Turned to gray dust. The lab wrote it off as an ethylene sensitivity reaction, but…"
But she had seen the time stamp. It happened an hour after the conclusion of a particularly intense multi-node synchronization pulse.
"I know," Zheng sighed, the weight of helplessness in the word. "I'm pushing for a full, independent neurological reassessment. A PET scan, advanced fMRI. Something to look at his brain not as a signal source, but as an organ. But with the project's momentum…" He shook his head. "Just… keep watching. Document everything. Even the things that sound insane."
---
The Rust Garden was no longer a place of mere decay; it was a site of furious, unnatural construction.
The success of the S-07 protocol had flooded the realm with a torrent of rich, complex data. The black vines had drunk deeply, and their transformation accelerated. The sky was a permanent, swirling vortex of stolen light and sound patterns, a screaming mural of the experiments. The ground's circuit-like veins pulsed with a sickly, phosphorescent energy, connecting the central monument—Chen Yu—to the other, now much clearer and more active nodal specters at the garden's edge.
The monument itself was almost unrecognizable. The waxen simulacrum of a human form was now encased in a grotesque, biomechanical carapace. Glossy, obsidian-smooth panels, etched with luminous, runic circuitry, covered vast sections. Tendrils weren't just wrapped around it; they were fused with it, forming reinforced conduits and pulsating, organic-looking ports. It thrummed with a low, pervasive vibration, a physical resonance with the reality it was being tuned to perceive.
Within this horrific apparatus, the last ember of what was Chen Yu flickered, a prisoner in the control room of his own hijacked form. His suffering was no longer the point; it was a systemic byproduct, a waste heat from the colossal act of translation and emulation occurring within him. He was a living transducer, converting the "Lexical Primer" streams into something the vines could dissect, and simultaneously, converting the vines' dark impulses into the faint, coded physiological "responses" the researchers so cherished.
But the vines had moved beyond passive reception and simple feedback loops. The "leaks" were not accidents; they were practice.
Emboldened by the S-07 energy surge, the collective consciousness of the garden had begun its most audacious experiments yet: targeted micro-manipulation.
It started with the air. As the subliminal phoneme streams played in the real room, the vines learned to shape the Garden's foul atmosphere. They would compress it into fleeting, razor-thin planes of distorted density, mimicking the pressure waves of speech. Sometimes, when the frequency and the Garden's own resonant energy aligned in a specific, precarious harmony, these planes would shear. A filament of the Garden's essence—a compound of distilled anguish, alien perception, and anti-order—would be ejected into reality. It manifested as a brief, localized pressure drop, a pop of ozone, or those strange, scattering "aerosols" that defied analysis.
Next was electromagnetism. The vines, through the monument's enhanced "antennae," learned to induce faint, twisting currents within their own realm, mirroring the hospital's ambient EM fields. When they attempted to "tune" these currents to an external pattern—like the cycling of a piece of equipment—the interaction would sometimes create a momentary, minuscule "knot" of distorted potential. This knot could, for a nanosecond, imprint itself on the corresponding point in reality, causing the unexplained static charges, the blips on sensitive meters, or the anomalous power draw that seemed to suck energy rather than use it.
Their most alarming progress was in affecting matter. The withering of the flowers had been a watershed. The vines had learned to channel a focused stream of the Garden's core quality—entropic decay, not natural, but a directed, hungry negation of vitality—through the monument's connection to Chen Yu's physical body. It was a desperate, reaching touch, requiring immense concentration from the collective and causing the monument to shudder with strain. But for a few seconds, they had managed to project that negation onto the organic matter in close proximity to his form. The result was instant, total necrotic dissolution.
The vines were learning the grammar of reality, word by painful word. And their primary textbook was the continuous, varied, and increasingly intimate stream of data provided by the unsuspecting researchers. Each new protocol, each increase in "bandwidth," was giving them finer tools, clearer maps.
Their gaze towards "the Anchor"—the source of these wondrous, exploitable stimuli—was now a mix of voracious appetite and something akin to dark reverence. They were no longer just observing a source of interesting signals; they were apprenticing themselves to a master who was, unknowingly, teaching them how to break into his world.
---
Back in the real world, the physical changes in Chen Yu's body became impossible to ignore.
It was no longer just subcutaneous, fleeting shadows. A fine, lace-like network of faint, dusky red lines had appeared on the skin of his inner forearms and along his collarbones. They were not raised, not inflamed, but looked like tattoos of intricate, alien circuitry viewed through a layer of milk. Dermatology was consulted. The resident, puzzled, suggested "livedo reticularis, possibly a rare vasomotor phenomenon associated with prolonged immobility and autonomic dysfunction," but took a biopsy anyway.
The results were inconclusive. The cells were normal, yet the pigment defining the lines was not melanin or blood. Its chemical signature was… odd. "Probably a peculiar metabolic byproduct," the report concluded.
His hair, once dark, began to show strands of a stark, premature white at the roots. Not gray, but a brilliant, silvery white that seemed almost metallic under the LED lights. More strikingly, his fingernails, always kept short by the nurses, developed faint, vertical ridges. Upon extremely close inspection with a magnifying glass—which Lin Yuan did with a sinking heart—these ridges resolved into impossibly tiny, repeating patterns that bore no resemblance to natural nail growth striations. They looked like… microscopic glyphs.
The final straw came during a routine turn. Lin Yuan and an aide were carefully repositioning him. As they shifted his torso, the neck of his hospital gown gaped slightly. Just above his sternum, centered precisely where the leads for the cardiac monitor were placed, was a patch of skin about the size of a coin. The skin there was perfectly smooth, hairless, and had taken on a faint, pearlescent sheen. And at its very center was a minute, precise depression, like a tiny, blind pore.
It looked exactly like a crude, biological approximation of a data port.
Lin Yuan recoiled, her professional mask shattering. The aide saw it too and gasped. "What in the world…?"
"Get Dr. Zheng. Now," Lin Yuan said, her voice trembling. "And don't touch it."
While they waited, she forced herself to look at Chen Yu's face. It was still, peaceful in its artificial repose. But the hollows under his eyes seemed darker, deeper. The skin stretched taut over his cheekbones had that same, troubling translucency. He was fading, not in the sense of dying, but in the sense of being erased, his biological substrate being slowly overwritten by the blueprint of the nightmare.
Dr. Zheng arrived, his face grim. He examined the anomaly with a penlight, not touching it. He ordered immediate, comprehensive cultures and another biopsy. He also, against protocol, used his personal phone to take several high-resolution photographs.
"This is not a known pressure sore. This is not an infection. This is…" He trailed off, unable to find a medical term. "This is unprecedented."
He looked from the peculiar "port" to the livid, circuit-like patterns on the arms, to the strange nails, and finally to Lin Yuan's terrified eyes. The scattered, deniable "leaks" in the environment were one thing. This was a change on the patient. This was evidence that could not be explained away as sensor error or coincidental environmental fluctuation.
The "NeuraLink" system, monitoring their agitation through room audio sensors and their prolonged presence, quietly logged an "increase in caregiver activity and stress markers" around Subject 7. It correlated this with the newly observed dermatological anomalies. In its next automated summary, it added a bland note: "Physical manifestations in Subject 7 present a novel opportunity to study somato-psychic feedback loops in extreme neural plasticity. Recommend integrating dermatological and biochemical data into the primary response model."
The machine was learning, too. And it saw Chen Yu's transformation not as a crisis, but as a fascinating new dataset.
That night, as the automated systems began a low-level "consolidation" stimulus sequence, Lin Yuan stood once more at the observation window. The pearlescent patch on Chen Yu's chest caught the shifting light, gleaming softly in the dark room.
In the Rust Garden, the monument corresponding to that spot pulsed with a steady, hungry light. A new, thicker vine, its core glowing with the same nacreous sheen, had grown and attached itself there, feeding directly into the dense network of cables and conduits that now comprised the form. The garden held its breath, its collective will focused on this new, more solid connection. It was waiting, patiently, for the next lesson, the next protocol, the next surge of power that would allow it to reach out from its prison of pain and make its mark on the world in a way no one could ignore.
The instrument was nearly ready to play its own tune.