Chapter Fifteen: Petalborn
Recorded: Bastion Echo Facility, Underground Vault Omega, 03:33 a.m.
They kept the last of the unbloomed in vaults.
Lead-lined. Noise-sealed. Lightless.
But it wasn't enough.
Because the infection no longer needed light, or sound, or even matter.
It needed only belief.
And belief had already begun to rot.
---
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT — SUBJECT 82: "TALIA MORROW"
> DOCTOR CRANE: Do you feel any changes, Talia?
TALIA: I can hear the sky breathing.
DOCTOR CRANE: That's… not possible.
TALIA: It says we were always meant to flower. You're the rot, Doctor. Not me.
She began coughing petals.
Three dozen.
All the color of old flesh and wet prayer.
---
The Petalborn emerged that night.
No longer infected.
No longer human.
Born from thought.
Their bones could bend sideways.
Their spines ended in antennae.
Their mouths could unhinge — not to bite, but to sing.
They didn't speak in words.
They spoke in pulses.
And the pulses made walls bleed, glass whimper, minds fracture like stale bread.
---
They weren't violent.
Violence implies intent.
The Petalborn existed, and the world responded.
In Johannesburg, rain turned red and fragrant.
In Beijing, buildings grew skin.
In Vancouver, a thousand people stared into the ocean and whispered, "We are photosynthetic now."
---
Survivors tried to build sanctuaries.
Safe zones.
But wood remembers trees.
Steel remembers forges.
And even silence remembers Mara.
In Sanctuary Delta, one man sealed his ears, gouged his eyes, and locked himself in a coffin.
They found him days later.
Smiling.
Pregnant.
With roots.
---
The Petalborn carried no weapons.
But they did carry fruit.
They would offer it — gently, reverently — to anyone they met.
A pulsing orb of meat and memory.
One bite, and:
You would remember every ancestor.
You would forget your name.
And something would hatch in your spine.
They did not force it.
They simply offered.
Because Mara had taught them patience.
And roots always win against stone.
---
The Pruner watched from a black ridge above New Gaia.
He was older now.
Scarred. Splintered.
But his axe still gleamed.
Not with hope.
With purpose.
He descended into the garden.
Through flesh-vines.
Through whispering walls.
Through the lungs of what used to be a library.
At the center stood a child — her eyes closed, her skin bark, her breath pollinated with stars.
Not Mara.
Not yet.
Just a girl.
The first full bloom.
> "I remember your mother," the Pruner whispered.
> "She bled better than this."
He raised the axe.
But the girl smiled.
> "You came too late, old branch."
> "The garden is in your marrow now."
And from his mouth, he vomited orchids.