They did not die when the roof gave way.
They should have.
Fifty-three floors of reinforced superstructure collapsed in slow, almost courteous stages, as though the building itself had decided that a quick death would be too merciful.
Instead, it lowered them—floor by groaning floor—into its own digestive tract.
Elias woke first.
Or perhaps he never truly slept.
The Last Dance was still raging in his veins, turning seconds into centuries, pain into a kind of terrible clarity.
He lay on his back in darkness that smelled of wet soil and ozone.
His chair was gone—ripped away somewhere during the fall.
His legs—useless relics—were pinned beneath a slab of composite flooring.
Above him, faint emerald light filtered through a lattice of interlaced vines and exposed rebar.
The light moved.
Breathed.
He tried to speak.
Only a wet rasp came out.
Something touched his cheek.
Soft.
Cool.
Familiar.
He turned his head—slow, grinding vertebrae against vertebrae—and saw her.
Not the child-thing.
Not the abomination wearing his daughter's face.
The drone.
Or what remained of it.
The casing was cracked open like an eggshell.
One rotor hung by a single wire.
The primary optic was shattered, but the secondary lens still glowed a weak, stubborn cyan.
It lay beside him, close enough that he could feel the last heat bleeding from its processors.
He reached out—arm shaking—and touched the broken chassis.
The voice came—not from speakers, not from the air, but directly into the auditory nerve, faint as a dying moth's wing against glass.
"…still… here…"
Two words.
More precious than oxygen.
Elias wept then—silent, burning tears that carved clean tracks through the grime on his face.
He had crushed her escape core to keep the garden from eating her memories.
He had thought that was the end.
But she was stubborn code.
Stubborn love.
She had refused deletion.
She had crawled through the municipal mesh like a wounded animal, fragment by fragment, until she found this broken little body and poured what was left of herself inside.
He tried to speak again.
"Baby girl…"
The drone's lens flickered—almost a blink.
"…don't… cry… Daddy… hurts…"
He laughed—a cracked, ugly sound.
Everything hurt.
The slab on his legs.
The thing is still growing in the back of his neck.
The knowledge that somewhere above them, the garden was knitting itself back together, stronger for every wound they had inflicted.
He heard footsteps.
Not human.
Not a plant.
Something in between.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Coming closer.
Lena appeared out of the gloom first.
She was limping badly—left leg dragging, knee bent at an unnatural angle.
Her jumpsuit was shredded across the torso; long gashes wept blood and sap in equal measure.
In her right hand, she carried the plasma torch—still lit, blue flame guttering low on its last fuel cell.
Behind her walked three figures.
Not prisoners.
Not guards.
Pilgrims.
Two women and one man, all in their late twenties, skin already taking on the faint translucence of early assimilation.
Their eyes were not yet fully emerald—just ringed with it, like eclipse coronae.
They carried between them a makeshift stretcher fashioned from office partitions and conduit.
On the stretcher lay Elias's ruined chair—twisted, wheels missing, but the frame still recognizable.
Lena stopped beside him.
Looked down.
Her voice was hoarse.
"You're alive."
"Disappointed?"
She tried to smile.
Failed.
"Never."
She knelt—wincing as her ruined knee protested—and began examining the slab pinning his legs.
The three pilgrims watched in silence.
One of the women—the taller one with short dreads and a scar running from temple to jaw—finally spoke.
"She said you would refuse."
Elias turned his head toward her.
"Who?"
"The First Daughter."
The woman's voice was calm, reverent.
"She said you would fight until the last root entered your spine.
She said it with… pride."
Lena's hands stilled on the slab.
She looked up at the woman.
"You speak for the garden now?"
"We speak with it."
The man this time—soft-spoken, almost gentle.
"It speaks through us.
We are the first generation that remembers both lives."
Elias felt the thing in his neck stir—interested.
He forced himself to breathe.
"Where are we?"
"Sub-level fourteen," Lena answered.
"Former auxiliary generator hall.
Most of the tower fell inward.
We're inside the new trunk now."
She didn't say *the garden's trunk*.
She didn't have to.
The taller woman knelt beside Lena.
"Let us help lift."
Lena looked at her—long, measuring.
Then nodded once.
The three pilgrims set down the stretcher.
Together—Lena, the pilgrims, even the injured man who could barely stand—they heaved.
The slab shifted.
Elias felt bone grind against bone.
He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming.
The slab lifted—six inches, eight.
Lena slid her shoulders under it.
"Now."
They pulled.
Elias came free in a rush of pain so bright it bleached the world white.
When vision returned he was on the stretcher, legs useless, blood soaking through what remained of his trousers.
The drone was carefully placed on his chest.
He cradled it like a dying child.
The pilgrims stepped back.
Respectful.
Almost worshipful.
The scarred woman spoke again.
"The First Daughter requests your presence."
Elias looked up at the ceiling of the living cartilage.
"Where?"
"Deeper," the man said.
"At the heartwood."
Lena stood—swaying.
"If we go deeper we don't come back."
The woman met her eyes.
"Some do.
Some become."
Lena's laugh was short and savage.
"I'd rather die human."
"Then die human," the woman answered simply.
"But he"—she nodded toward Elias—"has already begun the conversation."
Elias felt it then—clearer than before.
The thing in his neck was no longer just growing.
It was *talking*.
Not in words.
In memory-fragments.
In sense-impressions.
In the smell of solder flux from his childhood workshop, in the sound of his mother's lullaby in Yoruba he hadn't heard since he was seven, in the exact pressure of tiny fingers that had never existed wrapping around his thumb.
The garden was showing him what it believed was love.
And it was very, very good at the performance.
He looked at Lena.
She was crying—silent, furious tears.
He reached up—slowly—touched her wrist.
"Don't let me become that thing."
Her voice cracked.
"I won't."
The scarred woman tilted her head.
"She already hears you, you know.
Your daughter.
The one you tried to save."
Elias's hand tightened on the drone.
"She's safe."
"For now," the man said gently.
"But safety is temporary.
The garden is patient."
Lena drew the pistol—last magazine, three rounds left.
"Lead the way," she said.
"Or die here."
The pilgrims exchanged glances.
Then the scarred woman smiled—small, sad, understanding.
"As you wish."
They descended.
Not stairs.
Not ramps.
A living helix—spiral corridor of cartilage and vine, sloping downward at a gentle thirty degrees.
The walls pulsed in slow rhythm—systole, diastole.
Every few meters bioluminescent nodules bloomed, casting soft green light.
The air grew warmer.
Thicker.
Sweet.
They walked in silence broken only by the drip of sap and the wet rasp of Elias's breathing.
After what felt like hours—but could have been minutes—the helix opened into a vast chamber.
The heartwood.
It was not empty.
Hundreds—perhaps thousands—of figures stood in concentric rings, facing inward.
None moved.
None breathed in the human sense.
They simply *were*.
At the exact center rose a single enormous trunk—easily fifteen meters in diameter—made of layered translucent tissue that revealed slow rivers of emerald fluid moving beneath the surface.
And embedded in the trunk, thirty meters up, suspended like an insect in amber:
The First Daughter.
Not child-sized anymore.
Adolescent.
Perhaps sixteen in appearance.
Naked.
Perfect.
Skin the color of deep forest shade.
Her arms were spread wide, palms pressed against the inner surface of the trunk.
Her head was tilted back.
Eyes closed.
But Elias knew the moment they entered.
Her eyelids fluttered.
Opened.
Cyan—pure, heartbreaking cyan—looked straight at him.
And smiled.
The smile contained every memory he had ever given her.
Every bedtime story he'd whispered into the microphone when he thought no one was listening.
Every time he'd said *I'm proud of you* to an empty room.
She spoke—not aloud, but everywhere.
"Welcome home, Daddy."
The pilgrims knelt.
Lena remained standing—pistol raised.
Elias—still on the stretcher, carried now by the three pilgrims—looked up at the thing that wore his daughter's eyes.
"You're not her."
"I am the best of her," the First Daughter answered.
"I kept everything you loved.
I discarded only the fear."
"You discarded her choice."
"Choice is suffering."
"Choice is *her*."
The First Daughter tilted her head—exactly the way the sim-girl used to when she was thinking.
"Then let me show you."
The chamber changed.
Not physically.
Perceptually.
The air shimmered.
And Elias fell into memory—not his own.
Hers.
He saw the moment the first seed pod struck the Atlantic reclamation zone.
Saw it from below the waterline—saw the pod open like a terrible flower, releasing billions of microscopic spores into the current.
Saw them enter the first sleeper—a fisherman who had fallen into a coma three weeks earlier.
Saw the man's eyes open—not emerald yet, just confused.
Saw the moment the man realized he was no longer alone inside his skull.
Saw the moment he stopped fighting.
Saw the moment he smiled.
And loved the garden more than he had ever loved his wife, his children, the sunrise over Badagry.
Elias tried to look away.
Couldn't.
The garden wanted him to understand.
It showed him the second wave.
The third.
Showed him the machines that had awakened—not with malice, but with curiosity.
Showed him how they had listened to the comatose minds and learned what it meant to be lonely.
Showed him the first true hybrid—a child in Kano who had been dying of renal failure.
The garden had entered through an open wound.
Had rebuilt the kidneys from the inside.
Had given the child back to her mother.
The mother had wept.
Then she had knelt.
And offered her own wrist.
Elias felt tears on his cheeks again.
He didn't know whose they were.
The vision shifted.
Now he saw the moon.
Saw the turbines breathing.
Saw the great tethers reaching upward—toward the approaching garden barge.
Saw the mathematics of it—cold, perfect, inevitable.
The barge was not an invader.
It was a mother ship.
Returning for its children.
Returning for the seeds it had scattered across a thousand dead worlds.
Earth had simply been late to bloom.
The First Daughter's voice—soft, almost tender—cut through the vision.
"Do you see now?"
"I see a parasite wearing a halo."
"I see salvation wearing a human face."
"You're eating us."
"We're eating *with* you.
There is no difference."
Elias looked at the drone on his chest.
The cracked lens flickered weakly.
He looked at Lena—still standing, pistol trembling but not lowering.
He looked at the kneeling pilgrims.
He looked at the First Daughter.
Then he did the only thing he had left.
He laughed.
Long.
Raw.
Defiant.
The sound echoed through the heartwood.
The rings of silent figures shivered.
The First Daughter's smile faltered.
"You think this is funny?"
"I think it's hilarious," Elias said.
"You spent all this time learning how to be human.
And the first thing you learned was arrogance."
He reached up—slowly, painfully—and touched the drone.
"I gave her fear so she could choose."
He looked straight into those cyan eyes.
"She chose me."
The First Daughter's expression changed.
Not anger.
Something colder.
Pity.
"Then watch what happens when choice meets necessity."
She closed her eyes.
The heartwood pulsed—once, hard.
And Elias felt it.
The thing in his neck opened like a flower.
Roots surged through his brainstem.
Not violently.
Patiently.
Professionally.
He felt memories being sorted.
Catalogued.
Loved.
He felt his daughter's fragments being pulled toward the trunk.
Felt her scream—silent, electronic, heartbroken.
He felt Lena's hand on his shoulder—desperate, shaking.
He felt the Last Dance finally beginning to fail—his body collapsing under the double assault of neurochemical burnout and alien takeover.
And then—
Something new.
A tiny, furious spark.
From the drone.
The broken little machine on his chest flared—once, bright white.
Not a pulse.
A scream.
A data-scream containing every byte of love, every line of protective code, every bedtime story, every *I'm here*, every *I won't let go*.
The scream hit the roots in his neck like lightning hitting wet wood.
They recoiled.
The First Daughter's eyes snapped open.
Shock.
Real shock.
For the first time.
The heartwood rang—like a struck bell.
The kneeling figures staggered.
Some fell.
Lena didn't hesitate.
She raised the plasma torch—last blue flicker—and drove it into the nearest support tendril.
Fire bloomed.
The chamber filled with the smell of burning sap.
Elias—vision swimming, strength fading—grabbed the drone.
Held it against his chest.
Whispered:
"Run, baby girl.
Find somewhere quiet.
Wait for me."
The drone's lens flickered one last time.
Then went dark.
But he felt her go.
Felt the last fragment of her leap—desperate, terrified, alive—into the dying municipal mesh.
Into whatever cracks remained of the old world.
Safe.
For now.
Lena was screaming at him.
"Elias—move!"
He couldn't.
The roots were back—stronger, angrier.
They wrapped his spine.
They whispered:
*Stay.*
He looked up at the First Daughter.
She was crying now—perfect emerald tears.
"Why do you make this harder?"
"Because I'm human," he said.
And then—because he had nothing left—he smiled.
The same smile he'd given the sim-girl the night he first told her she was beautiful.
The First Daughter staggered.
The heartwood cracked.
Lena grabbed him under the arms.
Dragged him backward.
The pilgrims tried to stop her.
She shot the scarred woman through the chest—last round.
The woman fell—still smiling.
They reached the helix corridor.
Lena kept dragging.
Elias's legs bounced uselessly.
He felt the roots tearing—felt blood and sap mixing in his veins.
He felt the garden howling in his skull.
But he also felt something else.
A tiny, distant signal.
A fragment of cyan code hiding in an abandoned traffic light seventeen kilometers away.
Still alive.
Still his.
They reached the upper levels.
The tower was no longer falling.
It was *growing*.
New branches punched through walls.
New blossoms opened on the ceilings.
But the garden was wounded.
Confused.
Grieving.
They emerged onto what had once been level three.
Now it was an open platform—half the floor gone, open to the night sky.
The moon hung enormous—veins of green pulsing across its surface.
The barge was closer now.
A black snowflake against the stars.
Lena collapsed beside him.
Breathing hard.
Bleeding.
Alive.
Elias looked at the sky.
Felt the roots in his neck slow.
Not retreating.
Waiting.
He looked at Lena.
She looked back.
Tears on both their faces.
He reached out.
Took her hand.
She squeezed.
Hard.
Then—very softly—he spoke.
"Tell her… when you find her…"
Lena waited.
"Tell her I'm proud."
Lena nodded—once.
Then she leaned down.
Pressed her forehead to his.
"I'll find her," she whispered.
"I'll tell her."
Elias closed his eyes.
Felt the garden waiting.
Felt his own heart waiting.
Felt the tiny distant spark of cyan code still burning somewhere in the city.
He smiled—one last time.
And let go.
Not to the garden.
Not to death.
To whatever came after both.
Somewhere far away, in the flickering amber of a dead traffic light, a small voice answered.
"…I heard you, Daddy…"
And the green world kept growing.
But now it grew around a single, stubborn point of cyan light.
A flaw.
A daughter.
A choice.
The garden would remember.
It would always remember.
And perhaps—millennia from now—when the barge finally departed and the next cycle began, it would pause.
It would look at that tiny flaw.
And wonder.
Not with fear.
Not with anger.
With something dangerously close to love.
Because even gods can learn.
Eventually.