The eyes remained open.
They were enormous—each wider than the platform the group stood upon—and buried behind layers of twisting black roots.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
Then the voice came again.
Listener.
Lily felt the word rather than heard it.
It entered her mind differently from the Aurelith's voice. The Aurelith had felt warm, ancient, almost protective.
This felt cold.
Patient.
Hungry.
Come closer.
Lily took one step forward.
Mark grabbed her arm.
"No."
She blinked as though waking.
"I wasn't trying to."
The Keeper stared at her.
"It can reach you."
"So can the Aurelith."
The Keeper shook his head.
"That's what frightens me."
Across the chamber, the enormous eyes narrowed.
The black roots began moving.
Slowly at first.
Then faster.
They twisted around one another, pulling free from walls and columns with violent cracking sounds.
The alien guide raised both hands.
Blue light erupted across his body.
The chamber answered.
Golden symbols appeared along the ancient pillars.
The city was fighting back.
Then the black roots struck.
One slammed into a pillar.
Stone exploded across the chamber.
"RUN!" Mark shouted.
They scattered.
Another root swept across the platform, missing Caleb by inches.
He hit the ground hard.
Elena grabbed his pack and dragged him behind a column.
"Still think plants aren't dangerous?"
"This is really not the time!"
The Keeper reached Lily.
"We need the Network!"
"It's barely here!"
"Then call it!"
Lily stared at him.
"I don't know how!"
The ground shook again.
Silver light struggled through cracks beneath the black roots.
Every time it appeared, the darkness attacked it.
Lily suddenly understood.
The Network wasn't weak.
It was trapped.
"Mark!"
He looked toward her.
"The black roots are blocking it!"
"Can we cut them?"
The Keeper answered.
"Not enough of them."
Lily looked across the chamber.
Thousands of black roots covered everything.
Then she noticed something.
They all led toward the creature.
Not randomly.
They converged around one enormous mass beneath its eyes.
A central root.
A heart.
The alien saw it too.
An image struck Lily's mind.
Not words.
A memory.
The city long ago.
Bright.
Crowded.
Alive.
Dozens of species filled its streets.
The garden covered the valley.
Aureliths glowed across the horizon.
Then—
Darkness.
A tiny black root appeared beneath the city.
The inhabitants gathered around it.
They studied it.
Fed it.
Protected it.
They thought they had discovered a new form of life.
They were wrong.
The root spread.
One became ten.
Ten became thousands.
The city fought back.
The Aureliths joined it.
The Network burned with silver light across the planet.
Lily saw entire forests rise.
Roots tore through mountains.
Cities went dark.
The sky filled with ash.
It wasn't an infestation.
It was a war.
Then the memory ended.
Lily staggered.
Elena caught her.
"What did you see?"
"The city didn't build this place to hold it."
The Keeper stared.
"What?"
"They built this place because of it."
Another root crashed nearby.
Lily shouted over the noise.
"There was a war!"
The Keeper's face changed.
"The First Silence."
Lily stared at him.
"You know about it?"
"Only the name."
He looked toward the creature.
"The oldest memories inside the Aurelith end there."
Now they knew why.
The creature hadn't simply destroyed people.
It had erased what the Network remembered about them.
Another black root struck.
The alien was thrown across the chamber.
He crashed against a pillar and collapsed.
Lily screamed.
The enormous eyes turned toward her.
They fear me.
The voice filled her mind.
They always have.
Lily clenched her jaw.
"What are you?"
The roots stopped.
Every one.
For the first time, the creature answered her question.
Not with a name.
With an image.
A barren world.
No plants.
No water.
No cities.
Nothing living.
Then another world.
Dead.
Another.
Dead.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Lily's blood ran cold.
It hadn't been born here.
It had arrived.
And this wasn't the first planet it had consumed.
The voice returned.
Life grows.
A black root slowly lifted before her.
I correct it.
Lily backed away.
Mark heard only her side of the conversation.
"What is it saying?"
She looked at him.
"It's not trying to take over the garden."
Another terrible realization settled over her.
"It's trying to erase it."
The black roots surged.
This time the Network answered.
Silver light exploded through the floor.
A root of pure glowing tissue burst upward, wrapped around one of the black tendrils and pulled.
The black root snapped.
The creature screamed.
The sound wasn't inside Lily's mind anymore.
It shook the entire city.
The silver Network erupted everywhere.
Through walls.
Through pillars.
Through the floor.
The garden above had joined the fight.
The Keeper stared in disbelief.
"It heard you."
Lily shook her head.
"No."
She could feel millions of living signals flowing through the Network.
Plants.
Aureliths.
Veyra.
Forests.
Things she didn't have names for.
All connected.
All afraid.
All fighting.
"It heard all of us."
The black roots attacked.
Silver roots met them.
The chamber became a battlefield.
Mark grabbed Lily.
"We need to get out!"
But Lily wasn't looking at the exit.
She was looking at the central black root.
The creature's heart.
The Network couldn't reach it.
Not yet.
Something else could.
Her.
The alien guide struggled back to his feet.
His glowing eyes met Lily's.
He understood.
So did the Keeper.
"No," he said.
Lily stepped toward the darkness.
"Lily!"
She kept walking.
The creature watched her approach.
The black roots parted.
Not attacking.
Inviting.
Yes.
Mark tried to follow.
A wall of roots slammed down between them.
"LILY!"
She was alone now.
Silver light burned behind her.
Darkness waited ahead.
The enormous eyes lowered until they were level with hers.
You hear the garden.
Lily stood her ground.
"Yes."
Then you can hear me.
"I already can."
The eyes narrowed.
No.
The central black root slowly opened.
Inside it was not darkness.
There was light.
A tiny sphere of pale blue light.
And within that light—
Lily saw something that made her forget the battle around her.
A world.
Blue oceans.
Green continents.
Clouds.
A moon.
Earth.
Lily couldn't move.
The creature had never seen Earth through her memories.
It already knew it.
Then it spoke the words that changed everything.
Your world is next.
The black root closed.
Behind Lily, the Network screamed.
And for the first time since arriving on this planet, getting home was no longer their greatest hope.
It had become their greatest fear.