Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
IRINA
T hree days passed.
The puppy still hadn’t barked.
He slept most of the time, curled near the windowsill or beneath the old fern by the kitchen, as if the apartment were his burrow. I kept calling him temporary, but the longer he stayed, the more the label started to feel like a lie.
I hadn’t named him. I told myself I was waiting for the right word, but maybe I was just afraid to claim something I didn’t understand.
Naming him would mean admitting I wanted him to stay, and letting him stay meant allowing something else to take root.
As strange as the thoughts were, I didn’t deny them.
Thankfully, I could take him to work with me. The Greenhouse Annex wasn’t the kind of place that followed strict rules, not when it came to lifeforms of any kind, really. I brought his blanket and tucked him under the desk in my office, near the big window where sun pooled through by noon.
He made for a silent companion. Observant. Growing stronger every day.
We had a rhythm now. Morning check-ins with the sensors in Future Flora, a walkthrough of the propagation corridors, then updates to the interactive installations—adjusting scent diffusers, reprogramming the ambient pulse reactions for Regrowth , that sort of thing.
If he joined me, he’d pad quietly between the aisles of bioreactive flora like a tiny curator.
Somehow, no one questioned his presence. Maybe they didn’t see him. Or maybe they just knew not to ask.
After work, I’d settle him into the basket on my bike and we’d glide up the trail toward Williamsburg, the city shifting around us like a breeze. At night, after dinner and a walk through the park, we returned to a peace that was no longer just mine.
When the next storm promised, we went to bed early. A soft headache had been building behind my eyes since sunset. A pulse like a second heartbeat, slow and steady, hammering an ancient drumbeat.
I dreamed of soil.
Rich, black, humming with life. I was buried in it, but I could breathe. I wasn’t afraid. My fingers curled into the dirt like silk. Something was growing around me—through me—roots twisting into my ribs, my spine, my lungs. Not choking. Connecting.
And far above, a voice.
Low, like thunder in a cavern. Not words. Just presence. Ancient and ? —
I woke in the dark. Not just early-dark. Wrong-dark. Thicker than it should’ve been, like sleep hadn’t fully let go.
The puppy was at the foot of the bed, standing still, silent. Watching me. Not whining. Not pawing at the sheets. Just— waiting .
I sat up slowly, the air oddly still, and rubbed my eyes. The faint strip of streetlight across the floor felt like the only real thing in the room.
He looked different in the half-light. Taller, maybe. Limbs stretched longer than they had any right to be. But when I reached out, he licked my palm like always—soft, grounding.
Still real.
“Bathroom break?” I murmured.
But he didn’t move. His gaze shifted toward the window.
That look chilled me.
I padded barefoot across the floor and pulled back the curtain. Outside, the city was silent. No wind. No sirens. Not even the familiar groan of the subway below.
But, the ivy in the fire escape planter had grown. Not by a little. By inches. Its leaves were darker, waxy, curled inward. As if listening.
I reached toward the glass as if to touch it and it shivered. Visibly shivered.
Then— A soft knock from inside the wall.
I jumped.
The puppy growled, low and deliberate, ears angled toward the hallway.
Nothing. No footsteps. No creak. Just that strange thudding in my chest—not fear. Recognition.
I tried to shake it off in the kitchen. Made tea I didn’t want. The puppy followed, his steps careful, distant.
He was still watching me. Like I was the one changing. Maybe I was.
Since Skotos' visit—since Regrowth recoiled for the first time—things had felt... thinner. Not broken. Just stretched. Like my nerves were far too worn away in spots.
I’d begun waking with dirt under my nails. Soil in the folds of my sheets. Dreams that lingered past waking. Most of it, I could dismiss as my imagination running amuck. Most of it.
Not all of it.
At work, the systems misfired. Biofields pulsed irregularly. Misting cycles triggered without input. Plants seemed to be listening, even when no one spoke.
I’d biked to the Annex early. Cut through the back gate to avoid the loading zone and the chatter from the education staff.
The puppy leapt from the basket before I could lift him, trotted up the path like he knew it.
Every day he grew stronger, more certain.
His ribs had begun to vanish from regular meals.
The greenhouse loomed, veiled in dew. My breath caught.
Something in the way the light hit it made it feel like stepping into memory.
Inside, the air was warmer than it should’ve been.
I checked the climate logs—no change. But I knew better.
The air was saturated, heavy, like it had been waiting for us.
The puppy didn’t follow me through the main corridor. He walked straight toward Future Flora. Straight to Regrowth . I hesitated, then followed. The exhibit was dark, still waking. The petals on Regrowth were half-shut, but twitching—aware.
A ripple moved through the surrounding soil trays. Slow. Deliberate.
Not wind. Not moisture shift. Movement.
I crouched beside one of the propagation beds. New shoots had emerged overnight—broad, waxy, unfamiliar. Not part of any registered seedling I’d logged.
The soil? It was darker than it should’ve been. Thick with that forest-floor smell. Alive.
The puppy stood a few feet away, tail still, ears angled. Watching the dirt. Not barking. Just staring.
I reached down and touched the base of one new stem. It trembled beneath my fingertips. Something responded. Something beneath.
I straightened, heart thudding. Dragging out my phone, I jotted down my notes with shaking fingers. It had to be the compost interacting with some experimental mineral blend. Weird dreams or not, I knew the soil and the plants knew me.
This was explainable . Dreams didn’t make weird things happen, they just made it seem weird because of the hazy state between waking and sleeping. That was all. I clung to that fact.
Later, as I passed Dr. Lane near the scent-diffusion panel, he nodded in that quiet, knowing way of his. “Something’s different today,” he said.
Surprise bubbled through me. “You can feel it?”
He glanced toward the installation. “The ones who listen always can.”
His comment startled me. The ones who listen? Was I still asleep? The puppy brushed against my ankle then. Not playful. Anchoring. A touch to remind me I was still here. Still in the waking world.
And yet… I wasn’t sure.
When I finally returned to my office, I found the ivy from my fire escape somehow included in the latest lab registry.
Unsubmitted. Unlabeled. But registered. My name beside it.
When did I log it?
Despite my love for them, I had to admit—nothing about this was a beginning even if it should be. It was like waking up in the middle of an episode of a show. While I could read the blurb, it didn’t really tell me what I’d missed. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had missed something.
Outside, the city moved on—its noise folding over the quiet edges of the greenhouse. But inside, something else had already taken root. No, it felt like something so much older and no matter how strange, I couldn’t shake the sensation and I didn’t know if I was ready.
I told myself I was going to find Mara.
There were too many coincidences. The unregistered ivy. The shifting soil. Bloom cycles collapsing into minutes instead of days. Not to mention the look Mara had given Regrowth just three days earlier, all sharp and strange, like she was measuring more than just the light.
I stepped out of my office, the puppy padding behind me like a small shadow, but didn’t get far.
“Ms. Bloom!”
Erin from Facilities waved me down, her clipboard already in motion. “Sorry to bug you, but one of the calibration pods in Gallery B isn’t responding. It’s throwing off the humidity curve.”
I blinked. “That shouldn’t be possible. I just reset Gallery B’s systems yesterday.”
“I know, but the orchids are reacting like it’s monsoon season in there. Can you take a look?”
I glanced toward the corridor leading to Analytics, where Mara’s lab was housed. Just past the atmospheric sensors and the sub-basement entrance.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll come now.” Ten minutes. It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. Famous last words. Gallery B was a mess .
The orchids had dropped half their petals. The air was thick with their scent, sweet and almost cloying. It was far too much for morning. The misting nozzles had frozen in a constant half-drip that created a slow, syncopated rhythm like a leaking faucet.
I crouched to recalibrate the base panel, and the system responded almost a full second before I put in the commands. A kind of reverse lag, like the sensors were anticipating me. That shouldn’t be possible.
The puppy whined, just once. Then stopped.
I glanced at him. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s okay.” Even if it wasn’t, he shouldn’t have to worry about it. A few minute changes should fix all of this.
What puzzled me were the number of minute changes I had to make. When I finally got the room to stabilize, I stood. My body protested the sudden stretch and I had to roll my head from side to side to ease the tension. That was when I realized it had been over thirty minutes since I started.
Not a swift fix at all, even with the system's strange behavior. We were going to have to pull the logs and see if the programming was off somewhere.
I wiped my hands and turned to go, heart already racing faster as I thought of the long hallway and the static hum of Mara’s lab. Unfortunately, the puppy and I didn’t even make it to the threshold of Gallery B before my earpiece buzzed.
The sound startled me. I’d slipped it on out of habit and hadn’t even paid attention to its presence.
“Ms. Bloom, we’ve got a group in the atrium that didn’t book through central. NYU undergrads. They’re saying Dr. Lane invited them.”
I sighed. “Of course he did.”
“Do we want to turn them away or…?”
“No, I’ll be right there.”
Puppy glanced up at me and I found a smile for him before giving him an affectionate scratch. “Hold that thought.”
The atrium was full of noise and perfume, flashes of student cologne and overheated wool scarves. Dr. Lane waited near the entrance, calmly sipping a thermos of what I knew would smell like cedar and citrus. The man really liked his tea.
“I thought we agreed on Thursdays for walk-throughs,” I said under my breath as I joined him.
“Spontaneity is vital to ecological curiosity,” he replied, smiling in that maddening way of his. “Besides, Regrowth seems more expressive when she’s surprised.”
I didn’t argue. I ran through the demo. I enjoyed watching the students wave their hands over sensors and gasp when petals curled or color shifted.
Then I felt it again.
The sense of being watched, not from within the exhibit, but beneath it.
As if the greenhouse had layers I hadn’t yet mapped.
By the time I finished with the question and answers session following the demo and finally excused myself to return to the hallway for Analytics, the day began sliding sideways again.
Puppy stopped at the foot of the corridor, head low, ears pinned slightly back. Unease slid through me.
I knelt beside him. “You feel it too?”
He didn’t move.
The hallway was dimmer than it should’ve been. Even the overhead fluorescents looked pale and thinned out. I walked forward anyway, my steps echoing slightly despite the sound-dampening panels.
I had just reached the halfway mark when?—
“Irina.”
It wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t from my earpiece or from behind me.
It came from the intercom above the emergency hatch. That line was only supposed to be used during drills or if something went wrong. I hesitated, heart thudding. The call light blinked again.
“Please report to the back loading bay, immediately.”
There was no sign off nor recognizable voice, just the robotic tone of the automated system. I glanced back toward Mara’s lab then down at the puppy. He’d followed me silently and stared in the same direction I’d been headed. He didn’t whine or wag his tail, he just waited.
I had a feeling neither of us was going to make it down there today. With a longer sigh, I turned away and the puppy fell into step with me.
The loading bay was cooler than the rest of the Annex, and smelled faintly of rust, fuel, and old rain. The gate was closed, but not sealed. A thin line of soil trailed in from outside, which was unusual. The last delivery had come in the day before, and we always swept up after a delivery.
One of the freight panels had shorted out. Again. That made for three times this month.
This time, however, the error code flashing wasn’t the usual mechanical alert. It was a string of text.
001-REGROWTH-EXCEEDED
I stared at it. That wasn’t even a real code. The puppy stood beside the freight bay now, nose pressed to the seam between the gate and the floor. He didn’t bark, but his entire body was braced like he waited for something to come through.
I didn’t know what I expected when I opened the panel housing. Maybe it was a wiring error or a loose connection. I definitely expected something explainable .
What I found though, inside the electrical box was a single green leaf.
Dark. Waxy. Curled.
Not burned. Not out of place.
Just there .
That did not make any kind of sense, at all.
By the time I finished running diagnostics and closed the panel again, I had no answers for the leaf. I took it with me and returned to the hallway for Analytics, but the corridor was empty. Normal. The air was cool and quiet. The lights shined properly.
I didn’t have to check. Mara was gone.
Of course she was.
The puppy trotted ahead of me now, his gait light. It was like he knew we didn’t have to go down there and he was happy about it. Though, I might just be projecting because I wished the emotion was mine. Unfortunately, all that I experienced was relief.
Still, my questions were far from finished. There was something moving under the greenhouse and I was running out of reasons to pretend I couldn’t feel it.
Then there was the leaf still in my palm.