Vance stepped forward, face pale. “What is the harvest?”
Jensen tried to scream. But his throat was already full of sweetness. The last thing he saw was the orchard—the beautiful, terrible orchard—as his consciousness dissolved into the Undermine , one more rotten fruit on an infinite tree.
“Please,” it gurgled, voice like wet paper. “Don’t run. The harvest is almost complete.” warped apple undermine 7z
“Command,” Vance shouted into his collar. “7Z is lost. Enemy uses airborne memetic vectors. Requesting immediate—”
A figure shambled out from between the trees. It wore the uniform of a 7Z security officer, but the fabric was fused to its skin, and its head… its head had split open along the jawline, revealing not bone, but a dense, fibrous mesh of white mycelium. Vance stepped forward, face pale
That was three hours ago.
“A what?”
Now, Jensen’s boots squelched through the mud of the 7Z agri-dome, the air thick with the smell of overripe fruit and ozone. The dome’s bioluminescent lights flickered erratically, casting long, warped shadows. The apple trees—genetically engineered to feed the sector for a century—stood in crooked rows, their branches heavy with fruit that glistened like polished blood.