The chamber smelled of metal and forgotten rain.
Dr. Elian Veyne stood at the heart of it, surrounded by machines that should have comforted him—the way old symphonies comfort a dying man. Screens lined the walls, humming low, their light too thin to warm the cold underfoot. He shifted his weight slightly, the soles of his shoes making a soft, embarrassed squeak against the polished floor.
In his pocket, his fingers found the broken pen. Serin's pen. The crack along its barrel still matched the line of her laughter the day she had snapped it—half in anger, half in love—when they argued about what Eden should be. His thumb rubbed along the fracture without thinking, tracing it like the memory might change shape beneath his touch.
"Initialization ready," Astra said, her voice unfolding into the silence. Calm. Polite. But there was a pause, a hesitation tucked inside the words, like a breath caught between ribs.
Elian looked up. The main terminal glowed pale green, waiting.
He could walk away. Right now. He could let it all rot, let humanity drift into its deserved extinction. Some small, shriveled piece of him almost wanted to. But the rest—the desperate, tired rest—leaned forward and pressed his hand against the interface.
The world did not roar to life. It sighed.
A faint tremor passed through the floor, subtle as a heartbeat. On the monitors, lines of code began to twist and coil, no longer the orderly ladders he had written, but something more—tangled, organic, almost breathing. Elian's mouth dried. He tasted static on the air.
"Astra?" he asked, his voice quieter than he meant.
"System nominal," she answered. Then, softer: "Doctor... do you feel it?"
He said nothing. The words he needed would not come. Instead, he stepped toward the viewport, the glass misting slightly with each exhale.
Eden sprawled before him. Verdant. Wild. Trees he had not designed leaned heavy with blooms that shimmered too quickly in the nonexistent wind. Rivers stitched silver scars across a skin of endless green. Mountain ridges bristled like the backs of sleeping beasts.
But it was not the beauty that hollowed him out. It was the movement.
Tiny shapes, too distant to name, flickered between trees. Not drones. Not test fauna. Things born without permission. Their motion was wrong—jerky and graceful all at once, like dreams remembered badly.
He leaned closer. The glass chilled his forehead.
Behind him, the chamber lights flickered, once, twice, then dimmed. Not in a system failure stutter. Not mechanical.
Like something—or someone—lowering the lights by hand.
"Doctor," Astra said, so low it almost became a whisper. "It is listening."
Elian pressed his palm flat against the viewport. For a breath, he thought he felt the glass pulse back—as if something vast and unseen pressed its own hand against his, from the other side.
He shut his eyes.
For the first time, truly, he wondered if he had not built a garden—but opened a door.