The Solara garden did not feel like a forest.
It felt like a held breath.
Light still existed here—thin ribbons slipping through twisted branches and glass-veined leaves—but it never landed clean. It scattered, refracted, broke into pale fragments that made the world look slightly misprinted, like Fusion had been copied once too many times.
And the deeper Cassidy and Allium ran, the more that light stopped being the garden's.
It became his.
Orange. Steady. Human-sized.
A moving lantern the world should not have been allowed to have.
Cassidy's boots cut through soft soil and brittle leaf-fall. The air smelled sweet—sap and heat and something faintly metallic, like distant rain on hot stone. One hand stayed tight against her gauntlet, fingers already adjusting settings she hadn't fully decided she needed yet.
Allium moved beside her without strain, but the tension lived in how carefully he placed each step—like he was refusing to let the forest feel him too loudly.
They ran until the sound of HQ was gone.
Until even the idea of walls felt far away.
Then Cassidy slowed.
And Allium's light washed over something wrong.
A node.
Not a device.
Not a machine.
A swelling in the land itself—bright and full of energy, pulsing just beneath the surface like a blister about to break. The air around it shimmered, not with heat but with density, as if the garden had thickened there on purpose.
Cassidy's breath hitched once.
Then she dropped to a knee.
"Found it," she murmured.
The comm piece pressed snug in her ear hissed softly as Nina's voice slid through—clean, precise, doing everything it could to sound like nothing was wrong.
"Confirm visual. That's Node One. You're on target."
Cassidy pulled one of the stakes free from her belt.
Metal. Heavy. A faint red glow at the top.
She drove it into the soil.
The ground resisted like muscle.
Then accepted.
A thin hum spread outward as the stake's frequency sank into the garden's rhythm and began to argue with it.
Numbers raced across Cassidy's gauntlet display—fast, dense, exact.
She stood, already turning.
"Second node?" she asked.
"Farther east," Nina replied. "I'm feeding you a route."
A soft chirp. A stripped-down overlay.
Cassidy nodded once. "Got it."
Allium had already stopped moving.
Not from fear.
From listening.
He stood at the edge of the node's glow, orange light sliding over his hands and face, energy lines beneath his skin quiet but present—not a weapon, just… him.
Cassidy looked at him.
"You ready?"
"Yes," he said.
She swallowed, forced a grin she didn't fully feel. "Okay. Then we do it."
She turned and ran deeper into the garden.
And Allium stayed behind.
Alone.
⸻
At the forest's edge, the others waited.
Rose stood at the front—no support, no hesitation—boots planted firmly in the soil as the faint blue of her aura curled low around her legs like cold mist.
Jax stood beside her, plasma rifle held low—not aimed, not idle. Ready.
Thane paced twice, stopped, then paced again like his body hadn't finished rebooting.
Weaver watched the garden without blinking, hands clasped tightly in front of him, resisting every instinct to reach.
"We should've sent someone with him," he muttered.
Rose didn't look away. "We can't."
"Khelos wants attachment," Jax added grimly. "Reaction."
Weaver exhaled. "I don't like the part where he said act different."
"We trust him," Rose said.
Weaver didn't answer.
Because hope was dangerous.
⸻
Deep in the garden, Allium inhaled slowly.
The forest listened.
Not animals.
Not wind.
A constant shifting—Fusion adjusting itself.
And beneath that…
Something else.
A pressure that wasn't weight.
A presence that wasn't sound.
"All right," Allium said softly. "I need his attention."
He stared into the darkness.
"What would I not do…"
He flopped backward onto the leaf-fall.
Not controlled.
Not dignified.
Just—down.
Then he forced a laugh. Too loud. Too clipped. Wrong.
He shot upright.
Dropped again.
Up.
Down.
Erratic. Unbalanced. Messy.
Then he stood and shouted into the trees:
"What a nice night to walk!"
Silence.
But the garden shifted.
Not forward.
Not back.
Sideways.
The sensation brushed his skin—neither heat nor cold. An absence of both.
One heartbeat—Khelos's silhouette perched on a branch to the left.
Another—crouched on the forest floor, joints bent wrong.
Another—upside down beneath a twisted root, clinging to nothing.
None fully real.
All possible.
Allium smiled.
Just a little.
He tossed a stick.
Tripped on nothing and slammed his shoulder into a tree on purpose.
Tried—and failed—to cartwheel.
Rolled once. Stared up at the canopy like it had disappointed him.
Clicks echoed softly above.
"…different…"
"…odd…"
Allium didn't react.
He tilted his head back and forth. Looked away. Bored. Unguarded.
Cassidy's voice crackled in his ear.
"I'm at the second node. We're ready."
Allium relaxed his shoulders.
Behind him—
Click.
Close.
He waited half a heartbeat longer than safety allowed.
Then ruptured the node.
Light exploded outward—Fusion energy tearing through the garden in a clean, violent bloom.
For a fraction of a second—
Khelos was there.
Whole. Defined. Real.
The blast struck him dead on.
His limbs spasmed. Wings jerked. Presence recoiled as reality burned him.
He snapped back into the trees as the light faded, phasing away.
A thin, scraped voice echoed:
"Light… hurts…"
Allium jumped, turning mid-air and shouting:
"Oh! There you are! BOO!"
He snapped his hands out like a child trying to scare someone.
The shadow flinched.
Actually flinched.
Allium landed laughing and sprinted deeper into the forest.
Clicks followed—rapid, curious.
"…assess…"
"…odd…"
He kept feeding Khelos wrong data.
Hit his own forehead lightly against a tree. "Ow."
Staggered theatrically.
Threw his arms out like he was balancing on nothing.
In his ear:
"We need a different frequency," Allium said calmly.
Cassidy didn't hesitate. "Working on it."
Outside the garden, the first flare bloomed between the trees.
Jax lifted his rifle. Weaver's breath caught.
Rose stepped forward instinctively, eyes burning with focus.
Then they heard Allium laughing.
Jax grimaced. "Acts different, all right."
Weaver swallowed. "He was definitely not designed for this."
In the garden, Cassidy adjusted the second stake rapidly, Nina feeding numbers, Cassidy bending them into place.
She sounded confident.
She sounded in control.
She sounded like hope.
A single bead of sweat slid down Cassidy's cheek.
Slow. Quiet.
She didn't wipe it away.
She didn't notice.
She just kept doing the math—
while somewhere between reality and sideways, Khelos clicked softly…
and learned.