Chapter 3: First Bloom

Chapter 3: First Bloom

The change wasn't subtle. Hesperia was a town built on defiance, a grid of asphalt and stucco slapped onto a desert that was always trying to take it back. Now, the desert was winning, but not in the way it was supposed to.

Driving through the quiet suburban streets the next morning, Eddie saw it everywhere. It was a silent, synchronized riot. Manicured lawns, once symbols of suburban order, were now battlegrounds. Vicious, thorny dandelions, thick as a man's thumb, punched through pristine sod. Morning glories with unnervingly large, trumpet-shaped flowers constricted mailboxes, their vines tightening with a slow, deliberate strength that dented the metal. A crack in the sidewalk wasn't just a crack anymore; it was an open wound, spilling forth a torrent of kudzu that seemed to breathe in the morning light.

Through his new, unwanted senses, Eddie felt it as a low, angry hum. The world was a symphony of furious growth, and he was the only one who could hear the music. The seed in his pocket was a warm, constant presence, a tuning fork resonating with the town’s burgeoning chaos. He was no longer just an observer; he was connected to it, a nerve ending in a vast, awakening system.

He needed answers. The Bureau had declared him a lost cause, a piece of contaminated hardware to be decommissioned. His old life was a smoking crater. The only way forward was to understand what the Green Faith had done to him, and that meant finding one of them.

He remembered a face from the file—a young man, early twenties, a peripheral member named Kevin. A local kid who had fallen in with Lina's flock. According to the Bureau’s intel, he still lived with his parents in a beige tract home on the west side of town. It was a long shot, but it was the only shot he had.

Eddie found the house easily enough. The lawn was the worst on the block, a chaotic jungle of alien-looking flora. And there, in the middle of it all, was Kevin. He wasn't pulling weeds; he was tending to them. He knelt with a look of serene bliss, stroking the leaf of a plant that was actively prying a decorative boulder from the earth.

This was his goal. This was his chance.

Eddie parked down the street and approached on foot, his limp more pronounced than usual. He kept to the shadows, his old field agent instincts kicking in, but they felt hollow without the cold certainty of his Reaper abilities backing them up. He was just a man now, a tired, broken man hunting a monster in a kid's body.

He cornered Kevin in the alley behind the house, blocking his path to the back door. "Kevin," he said, his voice a low growl. "We need to talk. About the warehouse. About Lina."

The young man turned, and the placid look on his face curdled into something else. His eyes, like Lina’s, were unnervingly clear, but held none of a young man’s uncertainty. They were ancient. His skin had a sallow, greenish tint, and a fine tracery of green veins was visible on his neck.

"The Herald," Kevin breathed, his voice raspy, like dry leaves skittering on pavement. "The First Bloom has been waiting for you to embrace the gift."

"Gift?" Eddie scoffed, the word tasting like ash. "She turned me into a target. She sicced my own people on me. What did she do?"

"She opened you," Kevin said, taking a step forward. "She planted the Mother's consciousness within you. You are the vessel, the Heartwood. You will guide us. You will help us tear down the gray world of Man and raise the green world of the Mother."

The fanaticism was absolute. There was no reasoning here, no cracking the indoctrination. There was only the cult. Eddie’s desire for a simple interrogation was met with the obstacle of a true believer who was no longer entirely human.

"I'm not guiding anyone anywhere," Eddie snapped. "You're going to tell me how to reverse this."

Kevin smiled, a slow, pitying expression. "You cannot reverse a seed sprouting. You can only grow." He raised his hands. "Let me show you."

It happened too fast. Splinters of wood erupted from Kevin’s knuckles, sharp and hard as nails. He lunged, not with the clumsiness of a zealot, but with a fluid, unnatural grace. Eddie sidestepped, his body moving on muscle memory, but Kevin was faster than he looked. The wooden claws raked across Eddie's jacket, tearing the denim.

Eddie threw a punch, a solid, street-fighter's right hook that should have sent the scrawny kid sprawling. It connected with Kevin’s jaw with a sickening crunch, but it wasn't the crunch of bone. It was the sound of snapping wood. Kevin barely flinched, his head whipping back before snapping forward, a trickle of sap, not blood, leaking from the corner of his mouth.

"The Mother's flesh is strong," he hissed, and spat. A glob of thick, viscous liquid shot out, hitting Eddie's arm. It wasn't just spit; it was sap, and it hardened instantly on contact with the air, pinning his sleeve to the brick wall of the alley with the strength of epoxy.

Eddie struggled against the bond, but it was useless. Kevin advanced, his serene expression now one of righteous fury. "You are an unworthy vessel! You fight the inevitable!"

A thick, thorny vine snaked out from the weeds at the base of the wall, wrapping around Eddie's ankle. It was the same sensation from the warehouse—living steel, tightening, pulling him off balance. He fell, his tethered arm screaming in protest as the joint was twisted at a brutal angle.

This was it. His old skills were useless. He was outmatched, pinned, and about to be torn apart by a botanically-enhanced true believer. The cold voice of the Bureau agent on the phone echoed in his mind: You are the contamination. He was going to die here, in a filthy alley, another piece of cosmic waste to be cleaned up.

Desperation, raw and primal, clawed its way up his throat. His free hand instinctively went to his pocket, his fingers closing around the Heartwood seed. It was hot now, almost burning, and it pulsed with a frantic, furious energy that matched his own. The vision from his apartment flashed in his mind—the network of roots, the collective rage of the soil. RECLAIM.

He was out of options. The turning point wasn't a choice; it was an inevitability.

He stopped fighting the vine on his leg and the sap on his arm. He stopped thinking like a Reaper, like a man. He let go. And he pushed.

He didn't push with his muscles. He pushed with his will, with the raw terror and fury coiling in his gut, channeling it all into the seed. He didn't ask. He commanded.

The alley exploded.

It wasn't a sound, but a surge of motion. Every weed, every blade of crabgrass, every patch of moss clinging to the damp bricks erupted into violent life. The asphalt cracked as thick, gnarled roots, ancient and powerful, burst through from below. They weren't like Kevin's vines; they were wilder, darker, angrier.

They wrapped around Kevin's legs, not with the slow constriction of a snake, but with the snapping force of a bullwhip. He cried out in surprise as he was yanked off his feet. The vine around Eddie’s ankle withered, turning black and brittle before crumbling to dust. The thick root that had shattered the pavement smashed into the brick wall beside Eddie's trapped arm, and the entire section of masonry disintegrated, freeing him.

Kevin struggled, trying to command the green, but his connection was a flickering candle next to Eddie's raging bonfire. The wild weeds ignored him, obeying a greater, more primal authority. A thick carpet of clover surged up from the ground, swarming over Kevin’s body, forcing its way into his mouth and nose, choking off his cries.

Eddie staggered to his feet, breathing heavily, his mind reeling. He stared at the scene, at the thrashing mound of green that had once been a young man. He had done this. He had wielded the raw, untamed power of the earth as a weapon. It was terrifying. And a small, dark part of him found it exhilarating.

He had revealed his new nature. He was no longer just a vessel. He was a wielder.

Then he felt it.

It was a sensation utterly alien to the chaotic warmth of the Mother. It was a pinprick of absolute cold, a focused, predatory stillness descending on his location. It was the feeling of a scope zeroing in, of a file being opened, of a name being entered onto a kill order. It was the dispassionate, methodical attention of a professional.

They had felt his power surge. The Bureau knew where he was.

He had his first taste of what he could do. And in doing so, he had rung the dinner bell for the cleaners. The time for answers was over. It was time to run.