Dawn comes gray and careful, like someone who's apologizing for waking the city. The greenhouse sits behind a block of unused lots, glass panes banded with rust and vines that have learned to read laws and ignore them. The place smells of damp soil and the kind of green that eats concrete slowly. Corin moves with the kind of economy that makes people trust him; Jeong fidgets like he's carrying extra courage and I tuck the ledger deeper so it doesn't jostle.
System: Suggestion — Use Shadow‑Map overlay for entry points. Reward: 300 XP.
The System wants routes and etas. I prefer to move like a hand in a glove—easy, deliberate, and not loud.
We slip through a side gate that surrenders with a creak and a small shower of old leaves. Inside, the air is warmer than dawn should be. Light catches dust and makes the place feel sanctified. The greenhouse is a pocket of experiments—benches with rusted tools, a chart pinned to a wall with faded notes, a skeletal irrigation system that still remembers water. On a central table sits a shallow tray of soil and, at its center, a small metal tag half-buried and stamped with a gardener's symbol. The symbol is a circle cut by a single vertical line—an emblem I've seen in documents and felt as a promise.
Min's Shadow‑Map suggested this site. The gardener's mark on the tag makes something in my chest unquiet—like a memory thrumming without a name.
We spread out to search. Echo Sight draws faint afterimages of hands that moved carefully—someone who handled fragments like seeds, someone who didn't want them to be trophies. The residue is gentle, not predatory: sorrow braided with stubbornness. I trace a path through the benches and find a glass case bolted to the floor. Inside, under a bed of peat, is a small housing roughly the size of a fist—an engineered cradle that looks like it was made to listen rather than shout.
When Corin lifts the cradle, the air shifts. A scent of quiet unfurls—not the System's tag but something more human: a lullaby, the whisper of a promise kept. The cradle hums faintly with memory resonance. Echo Sight shows a single afterimage—a woman's hands setting the device down, a photograph tucked under its lid. The image is a quick, intimate flash and then gone.
System: Anomaly detected — Garden node active. Suggested task: Extract sample for analysis. Reward: 400 XP.
The System's suggestion is clinical. I obey enough to be safe and then pause because machines are good at asking you to do ethically ambiguous things with polite labels. Hae‑In kneels beside me and, with quiet hands, lifts the photograph from under the cradle. It is the same woman—Hae‑In—only younger, hair loose, laughter older in the face than the photograph we carry. She doesn't flinch at seeing herself younger; she merely breathes like someone who has met a map.
"Someone was protecting these," she says. Her voice is small and raw, like a seam pulled tight. "Not selling. Protecting."
We find notes pinned to a board: hand‑written schedules, the word stabilizer repeated and circled, and a line in cramped ink: DO NOT LET MEMORY BE COMMODIFIED. Another note, more cautious, reads: IF NECESSARY, BURY THE NODE. The handwriting shakes in places as if the writer tried to hold composure and failed.
Min crouches over a schematic that frames the greenhouse with gentle precision. "This was a sanctuary," he says. "Not all tests aimed to profit. Some tried to keep memories close to their owners. The gardener—whoever they were—built a network of nodes to stabilize wards without selling what they anchored."
That's the part that matters: someone had been trying to do the right thing and got messy results anyway. Rights and ethics do not protect you from markets.
We collect samples carefully, wrapping the cradle and the tag in oilcloth. Hae‑In insists we take a copy of the notes. "If they tried to bury this, they left crumbs," she says. "We follow crumbs, we find answers."
We leave the greenhouse lighter and heavier at once—lighter because someone once tried to protect memories; heavier because the effort proves the problem has scale. Outside, on the path back, Mariel steps from behind a rusted pot like a person who has learned where shadows gather. Her expression is unstartled; she expects us.
"You found their garden," she says. No accusation, no sneer; just a flat observation.
Hae‑In straightens and answers first: "We're keeping what we found safe. We won't profit off others' memories."
Mariel studies Hae‑In like a jeweler inspecting a gem. "You're naive," she says softly. "Not all protectors survive their generosity."
Mariel doesn't leave like a threat so much as a weather pattern—unpredictable and capable of ruin. She turns toward the street and melts into the market's breathing.
Back at the yard, we lay the greenhouse items out and Hae‑In begins transcribing the gardener's notes. The writing reveals a philosophy as much as a protocol: memories are not commodities; stabilizers can anchor without extracting; the city's wards require more than crude fixes. The gardener's voice—sharp and tender—lists names of people and places to protect and a cluster of coordinates that match the Shadow‑Map's faint tributaries. It's evidence of intention, not malice.
I run my thumb along a line of script and the System pings with neutral efficiency: System: New mission available — Secure Garden Node Network. Reward: 800 XP.
I close my eyes and breathe. The System frames everything as a mission, a ladder of scores. Hae‑In's words sit in the room like a person you forgot to visit: "The gardener tried to give the city a scaffold of memory. Someone tried to sell that scaffold."
We debate options. Publicize, go official, or protect quietly. Hae‑In votes for quiet. Min suggests building a coalition of keepers—the vaults, the shelter, a few retired engineers. Corin says guard, route, refuse deals. I think of the broker's card and Mariel's patience and the message we received: WE CAN HELP YOU FIND HER FOR A PRICE. The ledger's blank margin feels like a place to write a stronger vow.
That night, I add a new line to my ledger: Find gardener. Protect nodes. Do not trade names.
Jeong, who has been careful and brave in the way that makes you proud, asks if he can come when we check other nodes. "I want to help," he says, bright as a coin.
"You will," I tell him. It's a promise and a plan and a warning, all bundled together.
Before sleep I walk the yard and stand under a sky that's almost indifferent. The greenhouse mark, the gardener's symbol, hovers in my mind like a thread waiting to be pulled. Somewhere out there is a person who planted these nodes and probably paid a price for their ethics. Somewhere out there is the person whose name slides in and out of my memory.
If the gardener's network is real, then the System's tests and the market's hunger are two sides of the same coin. One wants to construct, the other wants to capitalize. I want to be on the side that stitches the city back together.