I scrambled out of the dorm buildings and ran as fast as my feet would allow. Where did they even follow him to? Where am I supposed to go? Before my confusion could stop me in my tracks, a faint memory of Velia's desperate voice rang in my head.
"The trees had eyes!"
A grove of trees...with...eyes? I stopped running and looked around at the dizzying canopy above me. It's a bloody forest. How am I supposed to find one specific group of trees? I couldn't tell how long I had been wandering through the woods. It was still dark out, so likely not that long at all, but my heaving lungs and heavy legs made it feel like I had been aimlessly stumbling around for ages.
"Velia and...friend...Vespertine...trees with eyes...missing..."
An incoherent fountain of words spewed from my lips on repeat as I attempted to remind myself of the fleeting gaps in my memory.
"You said this would work!" A hushed voice stilled the chaos in my head. "It's been two months and my son hasn't made any progress." It was a familiar voice.
Ah yes! That man, Doctor Anastasia's husband. I had heard that Vespertine had found some kind of breakthrough in treating their terminally ill child...but what was he doing here? and what was he talking about? I crouched down, trying to steady my erratic breathing so they wouldn't hear me.
"Patience Noah. These things take time. Besides, the cells have bonded well with the child's have they not?"
"My son doesn't have time!"
Vespertine sighed in irritation. "Fine. I suppose there is a way to speed up the process. But it will require another host. Preferably one with the same blood type as the boy's."
"I can do it. We have the same blood type."
"Wonderful. Follow me."
The pair began to make their way further into the woods. I followed at a safe distance, mumbling my list of fragmented memories as I trudged along. I followed them until the grassy path beneath my feet became scattered with dead plants and the forest fell silent. As if there was an unseen barrier that no plant or animal dared to cross, the path they followed turned into one marred by death and decay.
"I must say, I do feel for you, Noah. You see, I myself have an ill son."
Noah looked at him in surprise. "You do? I...sorry. It's just that nobody knows much about you. I'm just surprised to hear you have a child."
Vespertine laughed. "That's fair. My son has been struggling with a genetic issue for some time now. He’s in the care of a specialized facility but it still pains me to see him so lifeless. That's precisely why, I began to wonder...we deal with all kinds of bizarre creatures, many of whom have these... life-altering abilities..."
"I'm not following. What does that have to do with your child?" asked Noah.
"Well, the more I saw, the more I began to wonder if...if we could somehow use these abilities for ourselves. If we could harness the abilities of these creatures, would we be able to prolong our lives? Cure illness? Heal what has been deemed incurable? I kept thinking that if we could just find a way to combine the essence of our subjects and our DNA, then perhaps it would be possible.
But we would need to find a creature that is compatible with humans. It was then that I decided to delve more into the research of the flora in our possession. These things with a never-ending force like nature, one that will surely be thriving long after humanity has perished, I have no doubt we could use them to alter our genetic makeup, allowing us to exceed our current limitations.”
Noah fell silent, urging Vespertine to continue.
"I began taking scraps from our experiments in the labs. Pieces of creatures, blood samples, etc, and infusing them into other such life. Hence, this..."
Vespertine gestured to the surrounding area of dead plants and rotting trees.
"As you can see, it took quite a bit of trial and error, but I believe I’ve finally come upon a breakthrough."
Vespertine led Noah further into a descending groove, where the path opened up to reveal several dreadfully deformed trees.
"THE TREES HAD EYES!" Velia's words echoed in my head louder than ever.
Sure enough, the trees were littered with bulging eyes that glowered in every which way.
"Behold! The Grove of Eternity." Vespertine strode over to a tree and picked up a tap. "Just last night I was able to finally combine the essence of these immortal creatures with our human biology using these plants as a medium."
My skin crawled under the sickening feeling of being watched, though I couldn’t be sure that the eyes on the trees had actually spotted me. I crouched, crawling closer to the tree they were at. With each push I made, I silently hoped I wouldn't fall under the nausea-inducing gaze of the trees above me. When I was close enough to peer around one of them I froze. Noah had stopped dead in his tracks in front of me. He retched, reaching out to hold onto Vespertine's shoulder for support.
"What the hell is that!"
From beneath the dried brush, I could see a pair of legs, melting into the side of the tree. Dread erupted in my chest like an explosion lying dormant all this time. Looking up, It felt like I had slammed right into a wall of memory. The vacant face of the thing above me was none other than Velia's.
Her eyes had been gouged out and her body was covered in mold and leaves. It was almost embedded into the tree trunk alongside the eyes. I watched in horror as Vespertine took the tap and jammed it into one of her empty eye sockets. He held a small plastic cup beneath it and let it fill with viscous red liquid.
"The last piece of the puzzle. For the past month or so I have been trying to fuse various parts of creatures and the plants here. For whatever reason, these trees only accepted the eyes. Other body parts simply rotted away or killed the plants entirely. This woman and her friend paid me a visit the other night while I was offering up some more eyes."
V-Velia was with someone else? I shut my eyes. Willing myself to remember what I had long since stopped repeating in my head.
"He was a curious one. He unfortunately decided it was a good idea to try and grab me while I was inserting the eyes. In an...unfortunately fortunate turn of events, when I pushed him off of me, he stumbled right into the tree. Instead of taking the eyes, the tree just...latched onto his body and drained the life right out of him. So I simply had to go and get the girl. Lucky for me, it seemed like she felt guilty for running off without her friend so she had come back all on her own to look for him. The trees took her right in too. It was the first time they had done such a thing. Their eyes were the first thing to be assimilated into the tree trunks, their bodies well…as you can probably tell, have more or less been turned into flora."
"So what does that mean for us? For this...experiment of yours?" Asked Noah.
Vespertine smiled. "That is the question of the hour isn't it." He pulled a syringe from his pocket and dipped it into the cup, filling it with whatever he collected from the tree. "Here, give me your hand."
Noah recoiled, revulsion plastered on his face. "What?"
Vespertine sighed. "I told you, didn't I? That I knew of a way to speed things up? It's just a hunch but you've made it clear that you're willing to do whatever it takes to save your son." He grabbed Noah's arm. "If we inject this into your bloodstream, I believe that the tree's power will take root in you."
Noah's gaze fluttered to the rotting corpses beneath them. "B-But—"
Vespertine angled the syringe against Noah's arm, I could hear something come undone in his voice when he began speaking again. It was no longer composed and calculating, but rather, it shook with an obscene eagerness .
"Do you know why I call this place the Grove of Eternity Noah? It's because this is the key to breaking free of what binds us to humanity! Think of all the good we can do if this is successful! Your son is already far too strained from all the other treatments we've been administering. You have a chance to be the bridge between life and death for your child Noah! If the tree accepts you as a host, we can use your blood in your son's treatments. Think about it…"
Noah tore his gaze from the two rotting corpses beneath the trees. "I'll do it," he said in a less than determined tone of voice.
Vespertine's smile widened to an extent I didn't think was humanly possible. "I knew you were a man of conviction!"
There were no other words exchanged between them. Vespertine plunged the syringe into Noah's arm. A morbid sense of curiosity began to creep into my mind. I crawled closer to one of the trees. The strange liquid was leaking from one of the eyes on the trunk. Leaning closer, it smelt like…something sweet? Some kind of sap? But…how could it be ordinary sap? I reached out to touch it.
It was difficult to reach from the angle I was crouched in, but my fingers managed to dip into the substance ever so slightly. My attempt to quietly retract my hand was thwarted when a protruding edge of the tree trunk scratched me as I moved away. Without thinking, a sharp gasp pushed itself from my lungs and I yanked my hand back, instinctively biting down on it to try and stop myself from making a sound. A candied sweetness made my tongue tingle.
As soon as I swallowed the sap, memories of the days prior came rushing back to me in its entirety. Jasmine and Ron no longer felt like something trapped behind a distant fog.
I was so distracted by the sudden sensation in my head that I hadn't noticed when Noah lurched over in the throes of a violent coughing fit. Leaves fell from his mouth as he coughed.
Vespertine's voice cut through his hacking. "My…it's taken to you faster than I thought it would. Good."
With that, he placed a hand on Noah's back and began guiding him back to the dorms
. . . . . ╰──╮ꕥ╭──╯ . . . . .
Prof. Saros: "You know what happened next right? You must have been able to put two and two together by now. That record you found of Dr.Fusarium's son…that was after Noah was completely overtaken. Vespertine was right. Their experiment did work to save Noah's son, but it destroyed Noah in the process. He became insatiable, consuming and spreading more and more moss until the whole academy was destroyed. When Vespertine saw that his experiment with the Grove of Eternity overtook human DNA far too quickly to provide long-term benefits, he abandoned Noah and let him run rampant.
By the time we began getting word that subjects had escaped their enclosures, Noah had already lost control. Vespertine used the chaos to escape with some of the subjects. I found out later that it wasn't just me who was experiencing memory loss. In the days that followed, I realized that not a single person remembered Ron or Jasmine. I suspect the reason I've retained my memory has something to do with the tree sap I swallowed."
Dr. Solomon: "But how did you end up working in this place after that?"
Dr. Saros: "I was one of the few people who made it out of Frostein before it turned into some sort of leafy time capsule. A few months later I got a letter advising me to take up employment here. I tried to ignore it but it wasn't long before academy personnel came knocking at my door. They took me straight from my home. They said that those with confidential knowledge of Frostein were being given a choice. Either come work for Vespertine where the academy can monitor them or, be disposed of as a threat to the academy’s confidential operations. I’m sure you can understand why many of made the choice we did."
· The door to the observation room creaks open and footsteps approach.
???: "You know, I always had my suspicions. You hardly seem to age after all. Or at least, you seem to age slower than the rest of us. I'd like to thank you for confirming these suspicions of mine Selene."
⦾ The sound of the pressurized gate standing between the researchers and Astrophel is heard opening.
Dr.Saros: "Y-You—wait! AHH! VICTOR! HELP! VIC—AHH!"
The remaining transcript has been corrupted. Please see the appropriate academy personnel for help recovering it.
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