Arborvoid

Night had settled, wrapping the city in a quiet hum as Emma returned to her modest lab—a cluttered haven of books, samples, and softly glowing monitors. She sank into her chair, eyes tracing the magnified image of a wood sample on her screen. Under the scanner's light, its tiny cells pulsed like bright constellations, shifting in ways no Earth plant should.

"Living. Breathing. But not like anything I've seen before."

Emma tapped her fingers against her desk. "Chloe," she called, her voice calm but sharp with focus. "Run a full spectral scan on this sample. Its energy signature is... off. I've never seen anything like this in Earth's biology."

Across the lab, Chloe glanced up, strands of violet hair catching the monitor's glow. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. "On it, Doc. Running now..." A pause. Her brows furrowed. "Whoa. Okay—this is not normal. This frequency? It shouldn't even exist."

Emma leaned in, her pulse quickening as numbers scrolled across the screen. "A resonance... like a tuning fork." Her breath hitched. "But what could it be tuning to?"

---

Far from the confines of Emma's lab, the infiltrators watched.

A construction worker adjusted his grip on a heavy beam, effortlessly lifting more than any human should. His eyes flickered with an unnatural glow—but only for a second.

A neighbor, his movements too smooth, too deliberate, smiled in perfect rhythm with the conversation around him.

A corporate executive traced the wood grain of his desk with absent fingers, a message only he could hear threading through its structure.

They blended in, unnoticeable to the crowds, yet their attention never wavered. They watched the forests. The trees. The lifeblood of this world.

---

Emma's focus stayed locked on her screen, comparing the spectral scan to forestry reports. With each data set, her unease deepened.

"Something isn't right."

"The deforestation rate in these flagged areas is way higher than reported," she murmured. "And the way they're cutting—it's too precise. Almost... planned."

Chloe's chair creaked as she shifted, studying another feed. Her voice was quieter now. "Doc, I'm picking up strange energy bursts near the logging sites. Brief, almost like a signal—but cloaked. Someone doesn't want us seeing this."

Emma stiffened. "Cloaked?" She tapped the desk, connecting different threads. "Why all the secrecy over wood? It's a resource, sure, but nothing about this is normal. Unless..."

Her gaze flicked back to the pulsing cells on her screen.

A thought pressed against her mind—a realization slow, eerie, and too large to ignore.

"It's not just about wood," she whispered. "It's about what's inside it. The essence that gives it life."

The lab fell silent.

Data blinked across their monitors, but neither woman spoke. The numbers told a story—one that stretched beyond Earth, beyond everything they thought they understood.

Outside, among the trees, something watched back.