Nothing drives home the feeling of having a bad week at work better than getting punched in the face by a plant.

Before today, I wouldn’t have expected a plant to hit particularly hard, largely owing to the fact that they’re generally inanimate. These floral warriors, it seems, are the exception. According to Network, they were a mid-nineties project developed jointly by the United States military and Department of Metahuman Affairs. The army was searching for a way to bolster its ranks other than bribing poor teenagers with the promise of a free college education, and one of the DMA’s employees, a metahuman by the alias of Botanicus, offered his services.

The endeavor came to be known as the Soldier Seed Project, despite the presumably unintentional innuendo. They created a complex artificial seed that, when planted, would rapidly grow into a semi-autonomous plant-based life-form capable of killing. According to Axel, the plan had been to market them as ‘Homegrown Heroes.’ The scientists involved were concerned that, if programmed improperly, the seed could pose a threat to all human life, as their sole directives would be to make more of themselves, and destroy everything that wasn’t them. It was eventually shuttered, not because of the existential risk, but because some genius realized that the only conflicts of note at the time were taking place in a part of the world where the seed would be completely unable to flourish.

As a result, the Soldier Seed lay dormant in some storage facility or another for two and a half decades, until it got loose today. How and why, we still don’t know. But we’ve been learning firsthand that the risk they posed wasn’t understated.

‘We,’ in this instance, refers to Adamant, Ulysses, and I. We weren’t chosen for our specific talents, but rather because we were the only ones available. I’m not the only one who’s been having a rough week- the entire Council has been worked to the bone. Kellan hasn’t been able to leave Pax for days, with an old enemy on the loose. Zero is virtually comatose, after spending seventy-two hours awake trying to contain an adaptive virus that would have caused a global financial crash on the order of a dozen Black Thursdays. Ishtar, Tahir, and Vindicator are trying to contain a crisis of their own on the other side of the world. And Network is stretched thin trying to coordinate between all of us. He’s got a few combat-capable bodies on-site here, but most of the heavy lifting still falls to us.

The ‘Homegrown Heroes’ may be plant-based, but they aren’t easy to kill. For one, their Soldier Seed was designed to germinate under various conditions, including fire, which is why we haven’t just napalmed them already. For another, their bodies are covered with armor-like bark capable of absorbing heavy gunfire. Frankly, I was somewhat disappointed when I first saw them. They resemble humans in most ways, even down to having five fingers and toes. The bark covers most of their bodies, with softer plant matter underneath, but it’s more like body armor than an actual carapace. Had I been in charge of the project, I would have gone with a more imaginative design than ‘human trees,’ but I suppose expecting creativity from government employees is foolish.

However dull their designs might be, the green G.I.s are formidable fighters. The bark-gnarled fist that connects with my nose would be sufficient to break it, if I wasn’t protected by the synth-fluid lining my uniform. It absorbs and distributes the kinetic energy so that the force of the impact is diffused. Doesn’t mean it’s not painful, though. I stumble back, feeling blood bubble up in my throat, and pull up the mask over my mouth to spit it out. Then I reach out to my right and think about baseball bats.

During the months I was working on the dimensional tunneler, before I hit a dead end, I made a significant discovery. It was of no use in helping to find Father, but it did offer certain advantages in other areas. It was a pocket dimension sufficiently ‘close’ to ours that it could be accessed at virtually no energy cost, using a portable device. And it was completely empty. Naturally, I found a use for it quickly, in storing my weaponry. I have a few pockets in my jacket and on my utility belt, but none sufficiently large to hold an entire rifle, to say nothing of the larger weapons I’ve built. Now, I can simply summon them from the ether with a thought. And right now, I’m thinking about one weapon in particular- the Superdensity Slugger. Kellan suggested the name after I told him about the bat I’d built, and I decided to make it official. A small portal opens in the space before my hand, and when I reach through, the bat’s handle is within my grasp immediately. Once I pull the Slugger out, the portal closes, just as I swing the bat around to strike the tree-man’s head.

The bark-helmet around its head shatters in an instant, and the guts swiftly follow. Luckily for us, whatever these things have that passes for a brain seems to be stored in roughly the same place it would be on a human. A boring design choice, but convenient enough at this moment that I’m not about to complain. Resting the Slugger on my shoulder, I bend down to pick up the gun that I dropped when the Homegrown Hero hit me. We’re not quite stupid enough to wade into a melee with these things- instead, we’ve been trying to keep them at bay from a distance for about an hour now. One of them managed to get past and sneak up on me, but besides that, we’ve been fairly successful so far.

However the Soldier Seed ended up getting loose, we were fairly lucky in terms of location. A secluded chunk of farmland in rural Kansas might have seemed a fertile choice for deployment, but it also means keeping this whole battle a secret will be fairly easy. Network is taking care of that, naturally, though I have no idea what story he’ll be spinning to explain the devastation to whoever owns this land. Right now, my focus is just on exterminating the weeds. Depositing the Slugger back into my dimensional storage space, I heft the rifle and rejoin the others.

Adamant is wielding a massive sonic cannon, far too heavy for an ordinary human to hold, that projects a vast cone of pure sound strong enough to liquefy the plant matter of dozens of the Homegrown Heroes at the time. Still wearing his well-tailored suit, Ulysses is operating a number of holographic screens like he’s conducting an orchestra- when in reality he’s controlling a number of artillery emplacements positioned several miles behind our ‘front line.’ Since normal shells wouldn’t be of much use, as fire helps the seeds germinate, he’s using kinetic rounds instead- giant tungsten rods that skewer the plant-men with enough force to send shockwaves through the ground each time one hits. Network’s combat bodies are using armor-piercing rounds to mow down anyone that gets too close to us. For my part, I was able to synthesize a decent amount of Father’s ultra-herbicide, which I’ve been spraying the battlefield with using my rifle.

One element in our favor is that the Homegrown Heroes are essentially mindless. They just charge at us unthinkingly, and we cut them down with relative ease. The rogue weed that snuck up on me would seem to be an exception, but I don’t have time to worry about that at the moment. The downside is that they simply won’t stop coming. Each time one dies, another sprouts right up. The seeds are resistant to virtually any attempt we make to destroy them. Obviously, the original Soldier Seed project team developed a weedkiller capable of destroying their creations, but Network hasn’t been able to find any samples on file. Worse still, the formula itself was nowhere to be found. Fortunately for us, Father’s ‘Ultracide’ seems to do the trick just fine, but with only a limited amount on-hand, we still had a problem. So I gave Network the formula, and he delivered it to one of our labs, where they’re currently synthesizing a massive batch. Until that’s ready for deployment, I’ve been using what little I have to thin the herd of plant soldiers. For each one we take out, though, it seems as if two to four more spring up, meaning it’s a war of attrition we’re destined to lose. All we can hope for is to hold out long enough that a larger dose of Ultracide can wipe these things out permanently.

“Winters, you okay?”

Adamant’s voice cuts through the dull roar of artillery fire like a hot knife through butter.

“Fine,” I reply, hefting the liquid rifle and hurrying back to the front. There’s something disconcerting about seeing an ordinary-sized human carrying a gun bigger than their own body. Fortunately, the sonic cannon Adamant wields has virtually zero recoil, but I doubt she would budge even if it had the force of a proper mortar.

As I watch, she fires the cannon and liquefies an entire wave of Homegrown Heroes before they can reach our barricade. Wasting no time, I peer down the sights of the rifle and fire a pressurized spray of Ultracide at the green-brown slurry that constitutes their remains, before the seeds can begin to grow. A few moments later, the ground shakes again, as a volley of kinetic spears strike their targets with perfect precision. Predicting where the enemy will be when the artillery strike lands, rather than targeting them where they are when the trigger is pulled, is no small feat. Ulysses pulls it off effortlessly.

Once that’s done, however, the battlefield falls eerily silent. The Homegrown Heroes don’t make much noise in general, but enough that the absence of it is noticeable. The next wave of them doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. Optimistically, I was able to kill enough of the seeds before they could sprout that the mission’s complete, but it’s a big battlefield, and I know for a fact I haven’t covered that much of it. That means something worse is coming.

After a few moments where the only thing I hear is my own heartbeat, my suspicions are proven right. The ground begins to quake, disturbing the piles of plant matter we’ve created, and I see branches emerge from the soil with terrifying speed. We’ve watched enough of the Homegrown Heroes come to life to know that this isn’t that. Whatever these things are, they’re bigger and stronger. Naturally, the others waste no time in opening fire, but Network’s bullets seem to have no effect, and the bark surrounding the new creations’ internals looks tougher, maybe even somehow resistant to sonic attacks entirely. Ulysses’ mortars are still reloading, which gives the Soldier Seeds time to finish their latest creations.

Rather than dozens of quick, flimsy Homegrown Heroes, these are seven giant tree-behemoths, each sporting four legs and a thick trunk with too many branches to count, all of which are whipping around at sufficient speeds to take my head off, if I let them get close enough. That’s not all, either- a moment later, the first volley of thorns strikes us. Most of it is absorbed by the hard-light barricade, but a few go over the top and strike at us. My suit diffuses the impact from the few that hit me, and they simply break against Adamant’s skin, but the others won’t be able to hold out for as long. Network’s bodies have armor and Ulysses has a personal shield, but neither are wholly indestructible.

“Thorn, are they supposed to be able to do this?”

“Not so far as I’m aware,” he responds, sounding shaken. “But so far as I’m aware, this is the longest combat deployment the Soldier Seed has seen. Perhaps we’re witnessing… emergent behavior.”

He’s being delicate. What we’re seeing indicates a degree of intelligence beyond what the Soldier Seed is supposed to be capable of. It realized that its preprogrammed tactics weren’t working, and manifested new ones, seemingly suited specifically to dealing with us. That makes it all the more imperative that we exterminate it completely, here and now.

“Great,” Adamant says. “This thing isn’t doing the trick anymore. I’m going in.”

Without waiting for confirmation, she drops the sonic cannon and launches herself into the fray. With fewer enemies on the field, she can probably do more damage with her fists than with a weapon. Surprisingly, the behemoth she strikes first doesn’t go down immediately. Withstanding a full-power blow from Adamant isn’t something most metahumans are capable of, much less plant-based meta-science experiments. But after realizing that simply whaling on the thing won’t work, she digs her fingers in and begins attempting to pry it apart. The more flexible branches wrap themselves around her limbs almost immediately, but rather than tearing her apart and they intended, they get torn off rather swiftly.

The Ultracide won’t do much against these things, not until they’re taken down so I can sterilize their seeds. Instead, I pull another weapon from my pocket dimension and prepare to fire it. This one is called the Monsoon, and it resembles a crossbow, but without a bowstring or arrows. Moreover, the ‘bow’ is inverted, with the inside of the curve facing outward. As I hold down the trigger, it sucks in air, and when I let go, it fires a scimitar of wind sharp enough to shear off the branches of one of the dreadnoughts. It’s slow, and probably not strong enough to actually kill one of these things, but it’ll at least slow them down. Meanwhile, Ulysses fires another volley, this time concentrating his fire on a single target. The kinetic spears land in a line that bisects the behemoth, but as the top half tumbles to the ground, the bottom half begins to regenerate almost immediately.

“That seems less than ideal. Thorn, what’s the status of the Ultracide?”

“First batch is in the air. Fifteen minutes out.”

Fifteen minutes. We can hold out that long. I fire off another air-cutter from the Monsoon and swear under my breath when it fails to do even superficial damage this time. Fighting alongside Adamant and Ulysses can be frustrating, when each outclasses me in one way or another. Fortunately, I do have one thing on them- versatility. The Monsoon goes back into storage, and I grab the next weapon I can think of.

This particular toy fires a monofilament wire net, which I manage to hit one of the dreadnoughts dead-on with. The magnetic clasps wrap the net around my target, and then a moment later, miniature motors pull it taught, which slices the behemoth into a few hundred tiny chunks. Technically speaking, that makes me the first to get a kill on one of these things, though only by a few seconds. Almost as soon as mine goes down, Adamant finally succeeds in permanently separating the two halves of her dreadnought, and tosses each half at the nearest intact one, hard enough that they burst apart on impact.

Not one to be outdone so easily, Ulysses fires another volley, and a moment later I see two kinetic spears descend from the heavens, striking two different behemoths directly from above. Rather than cutting them in half, it tears them asunder entirely, leaving insufficient contiguous biomass to regenerate from. He isn’t one to brag, either, but I can see the ghost of a smug, self-satisfied smile on his face. That only lasts for a moment, however, before he goes back to targeting another bombardment. Meanwhile, Adamant dashes across the battlefield and grabs both of the spears, before stopping short, kicking up a plume of dirt and plant matter in her wake. Then she hurls them with just as much force as the mortars themselves, spearing through one of the three remaining dreadnoughts. I’ve got no time to be competitive, though- I have to spray down the areas where the other behemoths were destroyed, lest more pop up from seeds they left behind. As I’m doing that, however, I see more of the seeds beginning to sprout. Some are producing more of the generic Homegrown Heroes, perhaps hoping to take us by surprise while we’re still occupied with the big ones, while others look like they’re trying to generate more dreadnoughts. I make sure to target those first, sterilizing the seeds before they can begin to flourish. Despite how much of a headache it’s proving to be, the Soldier Seed is undeniably an impressive bit of bioengineering, considering how well it’s able to flourish even among this blasted-out battlefield.

While I’m doing that, Haley picks up another set of tungsten rods left behind by Ulysses’ bombardments, and uses them as melee weapons to fend off the whip-like branches thrashing around at her, while she approaches her target. Already wounded by her assault, it actually tries to retreat, but it’s optimized for durability, not speed. Adamant catches up with it easily, and drives the spears into it from above, before splitting it in two with a single blow. Before it can begin to regenerate, she digs her hands into its guts, and starts ripping it to shreds, staining her silver skin green-brown.

The next round of kinetic artillery finishes off the last two behemoths, but we don’t even get a chance to catch our breath. Already, in the areas I haven’t been able to hit with the Ultracide yet, more of the Homegrown Heroes are sprouting up. They try to rush Adamant, but she swats them away easily and crosses the battlefield swiftly, before vaulting over the barricade and picking up the sonic cannon again. Despite the display she just put on, she doesn’t seem the least bit tired. Eventually, though, even she’ll be overwhelmed. No matter what we do, these things are just going to keep coming. Fortunately, our coup de grace is imminent.

A harsh roar drowns out all other noises, as a drone swoops down from above and drenches the entire field in a massive wave of Ultracide. The harsh chemical smell is almost overwhelming by itself, and I turn away, eyes watering beneath my mask. Even Ulysses pinches his nose shut with a grimace. When I look back, however, the entire field is barren. Even the natural plant life that was here before we arrived is dead, or if not yet dead, swiftly withering away. This farmland probably won’t be usable for a few decades, but that’s a small price to pay for the world not being overrun by an army of murderous vegetables.

Everyone is quiet for a few moments, as we watch the last of the Homegrown Heroes die. I sink to the ground, leaning against the hard-light barricade, and let out a sound that’s somewhere between a sigh and a laugh.

“Well, I could go for a salad. Anybody else?”

“We’re being played.”

Zero sees patterns in things, almost compulsively. It’s a function of how her power rewrote her brain, the same way that I conceptualize almost everything as a problem that can be solved by building a solution. Sometimes that means drawing connections that aren’t really there, but this time, I’m inclined to believe her.

“The Sidewinder virus, your plant-soldiers, this thing in Jakarta, whatever Hawkshaw’s dealing with... there’s no way it’s all a coincidence. Somebody’s moving against us.”

The doomsaying does take on a slightly different tenor when it’s delivered by someone curled up on a couch under a blanket, holding a mug of warm cocoa in her hands. For once, Zero isn’t monitoring a dozen data feeds while she talks. Ulysses is standing in for her at the moment, while Adamant had to rush off to provide Tahir and the others assistance with the Jakarta situation. My talents wouldn’t be of much use there, so here I am instead, keeping Sandra company while she recovers.

“The null hypothesis has to be that this is all just an unfortunate coincidence,” I respond, swirling my tea around idly. We’re sitting in the lounge at Abyss, with Sandra occupying the couch while I sit in an armchair adjacent to her. A fire crackles on the other side of the room. Two years ago, Grendel died here, but we’ve long since scrubbed out all of the blood.

“Right. But that doesn’t seem likely. Some of these could just be happenstance, but others feel like they’re tailored to us specifically. The virus was something only I could handle, and the fact that something came up in Kellan’s city at exactly the same time...”

She trails off, but the implication is clear.

“If you’re right, it means someone knows who we are. Maybe not all of us, but enough to be a serious concern. That also limits the possibilities significantly.”

The both of us are silent for a moment, trying to come up with our own list of possible suspects. Obviously, the Council’s existence is a secret- probably the best-kept one in the entire world. But without Geas around to read minds and verify that nobody knows about us, or erase their memories if we do, we can’t be certain that we’re completely protected.

“Maybe it’s O’Connor. He could have left behind some kind of contingency for if the rest of the Council betrayed him, like Hunt did. It would explain how they know about us.”

Sandra looks skeptical at that.

“I went through his files pretty thoroughly after he died. If he left anything for his team, I would have found it.”

“He wouldn’t have made it digital, since he knew you would be checking. Maybe he told one of his lieutenants, then blocked the memory, but set the blocks up to decay after a certain amount of time if he didn’t periodically refresh them.”

“Was he even capable of that?”

I shrug.

“Hard to say. We know he could lock and unlock memories, but there’s no indication he could make them unlock by themselves. And if the blocks did decay, you’d think that would have happened with Hunt already.”

“Well,” Zero says, taking a sip of her cocoa, “I’ll take a look into what the Royals have been up to, see if any of them have been acting suspicious. But personally, I think it might have been the Arcana.”

That makes sense. She’s always been suspicious of them, and they do know that the Council exists, though not the true scope of our operations. I nod, indicating she should elaborate.

“It feels like we’ve tipped our hand to them. Shown too much. And we don’t even know who all of their members are. They could be much more powerful than we’re aware of. It’s not like we’re the only ones who know how to lie. Plus, most of our power-base is concentrated in the West, while they still have serious influence behind the scenes in Russia.”

The notion that the Arcana isn’t merely a second-order secret society, but rather rivals the Council in terms of power and resources, is worrisome. But I have a hard time buying into it fully. If that were the case, they’d have to have built up said power quite recently, considering one would expect Gilgamesh to have known about it otherwise. Then again, maybe he simply never had the chance to find out. Assuming that the information he left behind is entirely accurate or all-encompassing would be a mistake.

“They know Kellan works with us, so that would explain why his city was targeted. But as far as I’m aware, they have no idea that you exist. I suppose they could have employed some sort of remote-viewing ability that’s capable of penetrating Abyss’s defenses, but that theory relies on an assumption for which there’s no hard evidence.”

“Fair point. Still, we should see about putting names to faces when it comes to their mystery members. Any other ideas?”

“There’s always the chance it’s an enemy we simply know nothing about, but beyond acknowledging that possibility, there’s really nothing we can do about it. Besides that... well, it might be a mutiny.”

Sandra frowns.

“Really? I mean, I guess there’s a chance, but I can’t see anybody actually going through with it. Except your girlfriend, maybe.”

“She... isn’t my girlfriend. I don’t think. Besides, Ulysses seems the more likely option.”

That prompts an eye-roll. When Ishtar and I brought the issue of the quantum brain to Extinction Group, she was the least concerned. According to her, everybody is essentially just a social algorithm dedicated to reproduction, and Ulysses being more efficient at it doesn’t make him an existential threat.

“If he’s as dangerous as your girlfriend says, he wouldn’t have to do all this to deal with us. He could just talk us into killing each other, or ourselves. And if he’s only concerned with survival and self-perpetuation, he wouldn’t risk getting killed by going up against us.”

She makes a salient point, but I’m still glad I’m wearing my uniform, just in case he comes in and tries to kill us.

“Perhaps. Obviously, it wouldn’t be Kellan or Haley, unless they’re under some sort of compulsion. Tahir knows that it’s in Arcadia’s best interests for the Council to exist, so it’s not likely to be him. I suppose it might be Astro...”

“We’d know if he was anywhere near Earth, though, and there’s no way he could be coordinating all this if he wasn’t.”

“He could be falsifying his status updates, and secretly have come back.”

“Network’s got bodies on his ship, he’d know about it,” Sandra replies unhesitatingly.

“Axel could be in league with him,” I shoot back just as fast.

“Sure,” she says, our momentary verbal riposte coming to an end. “But what reason would either of them have to try and take the rest of us down, except random psychosis?”

“Indeed,” I admit. “I think we can largely dismiss the possibility of a second insurrection, at least for the time being. But it would be prudent to keep an eye on Ulysses regardless. There is, however, one final prospect. It could be the Vitruvian.”

Sandra raises an eyebrow, clearly not having been expecting that.

“You think? I guess we did let him keep that suit of his, but he’s in a blackout cell. Can’t imagine he could be orchestrating this whole thing from inside of there.”

She’s correct, of course. No information of any kind should be coming in or out of that cell. But I can’t shake the idea that he’s involved somehow. He represents too much of an x-factor in my head. The enemy Father could never truly defeat.

“I suppose you’re right. But it remains a distinct possibility. He’s uniquely talented, after all. Most likely the superior of both myself and Machina, who designed the cell he’s being kept in.”

“Maybe. I’ll keep a closer eye on him once I’m back online. But... I think I might go back to bed first. Talking about this is kinda giving me a headache.”

“My sympathies. Have a pleasant rest.”

“Thanks, Conrad.” She pauses, as if belatedly remembering her pleasantries. “What are you gonna do?”

I grin.

“I think I’ll pay a visit to the Professor.”