Sara meets me in the Lobby of the real BioLink facility, and guides me through the central hallway. As always, the place is less crowded than I expect it to be, the hallway echoing with the sounds of our footsteps. We come to a stop in front of an unfamiliar door, to which Sara opens and promptly ushers me in.

There's not much to look at, besides a simple desk, a pair of chairs on both sides, and a slim monitor positioned atop it.

"I do most of my work these days while uplinked," Sara says, as if anticipating my question. "Now, what the hell are you implying?"

I whirl in her direction, surprised by the sudden force in her words, but it's not anger I see shining off her expression. It's excitement.

There's a frantic grin on her face that sends a chill running through me with far more efficiency than her wrath ever could.

"I think that LeafLink might be... conscious? Self-aware, maybe?" I'm not sure how to express my thoughts.

"Tell me what you know." She's leaning in close.

"You... believe me?" I take a half-step back. "Just like that?"

Something in my expression must have relayed my unease, because she relents slightly, draws back. Gesturing to a chair while circling the desk towards the other, her demeanor regains a degree of restraint.

"Depends on what you say next," she says. "Have you told anyone else about this?"

I shake my head, and she sighs a little. "You need to tell me what happened to you. Now."

I'm still off-kilter, but it's gratifying to be treated with such seriousness. After all, I had little to go off of besides some extremely detailed lucid dreams and my instincts. So I explain everything to her: my two encounters with LeafLink, its growing intuition and ability to create realistic objects, and the sudden sense of surveillance I'd begun to detect in LeafLink."

Sara doesn't say anything for a long moment after I'm done, just looks at me with glittering eyes.

"So?" I ask. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

"Let me tell you something," Sara finally says, ignoring my question. I'm so rattled that I let it slide; I'm just grateful she hasn't thrown me out of the office yet. "It's true that LeafLink's main components are genetic material from both trees and fungi. During your onboarding, I implied that some mechanical modification was also necessary for LeafLink to operate. But that's a little bit of bullshit, Anton. I mean logically, it just doesn't make sense. How could a mind ever connect - or, or enter some sort of shared network with no commonality to the human brain? The four of you just nodded along."

' She held up a hand before I could protest. "I'm not accusing you of being ignorant. Why would we have lied to our own employees?"

"Did you lie?" My words are thick in my mouth.

"Stem cells," she says after a moment. "From a human embryo. We needed to be sure the network was compatible - that it would pick up a person's electrical signals and have the ability to translate them."

"I don't understand." It was the truth.

"Neither did we!" Sara's voice pitches with emotion. "No one thought that the cells would ever develop into more than just individual, isolated synapses. Enough to do their job, but nothing more. But then they kept growing, complex enough that it was clear that the generator had within it something very similar to a human brain."

"What? You made a fucking plant-person?" I'm reeling, not sure whether to laugh or slam my fist onto the desk. "Isn't that illegal?"

Sara shuts tiredly. "It violates codes, no doubt. But there was never any sign of consciousness, and LeafLink had begun functioning as intended. But then the trouble started."

"Oh, then the trouble started?" I can't help myself.

"Yes. It wasn't the lifelike, powerful alternative we were expecting. Like I explained to you all, everything was in place, but there was some sort of block. That's when I suggested to the board that we approach it from a creative angle. Bring in artists who could train, guide, or otherwise jumpstart LeafLink's adaptive system to unlock its potential."

"Wait." A flash of intuition calms me somewhat. "You said, once, that the board was against this..."

"They were. They thought it would work too well - their theory was that we'd jump-start its awareness - give it the tools it needs to manipulate the world around itself."

"And you didn't?"

"Oh, I did," Sara said. "But unlike them, I wanted this to happen."

I sit in silence for a moment, unexpected rage building. It doesn't take very long to reach the boiling point. "What's stopping me from telling everyone what I just heard - the creative team, the residents? This is... an abomination you've all made! People deserve to know!"

Sara tilts her head, and I'm struck by how similar the movement is to the way in which LeafLink itself had regarded me.

"You'd only hurt them, Anton. This is a federal project - everyone who leaves Locust Valley must undergo quarantine and a session of questioning by the secret service. You think they'll let someone with knowledge like that slip out into the world? I'm telling you this to keep you here, Anton, as selfish as that may be. Because I need you."

"Why?" I am meek against this woman's intense will.

She grins like a predator. "Because I need you to reach LeafLink"

...

Try as I might, I cannot get Sara to tell me why she wanted this to happen. How she got the board's approval in order to trigger it. There are too many questions without answers, and no one for me to turn to.

Sara sent me back to my cottage with nary a whisper of a threat. After all, she was right - why would I condemn anyone else with such classified information? For the first time, I question Locust Valley's lack of cellular and internet service. We'd all been trained to think that it was to allow LeafLink as an experiment to function within a sterile environment, but maybe it was simply acting as an information stop-gap, preventing any potential leaks?

I was expected to continue my work as though nothing had happened, and that Sara would reach out to me when she was ready. Based on my experience, she apparently felt that LeafLink wasn't quite at the level of maturity she was hoping for, but it seemed she was content to wait.

Why? Why? Why? A single, taunting word clung to my mind like honey that night, growing everything else out. I considered myself a victim of circumstance and power.

And yet... Sara needed me right? It seemed as though I was the only one who had truly reached the mind of LeafLink - the only person aware of its intelligence and curiosity pressing down on all of those connected to it. Sara herself seemed to be.a bit of an outcast. She seemed to have little interest in the practical applications of LeafLink, but knowing it was aware... that had lit up her face like nothing I'd seen from her before.

At the very least, it meant no bogeyman or special agents were going to abduct me in the dead of night. 

One night, amidst the turmoil, there's knocking at the door, an incessant rap against the wood that drives me to my feet. For a split-second, I picture myself facing down a special agent; the FBI maybe, or the CIA, ordered to take me out. But I'm opening the door already, and it's just Bridget standing on my porch, shifting her weight from foot to foot in anticipation. She's nervous. There's none of her smooth movements I've grown accustomed to; she steps jerkily into the cottage when I step to the side.

"Hello," I say.

"Hey," she says, sinking down onto my living room couch. I snatch a nearby chair from the dining room and position myself so we're directly facing each other.

"What's up?" I ask, because she's lapsed into silence, just staring at me.

"You've been avoiding us?"

"No," I said. "I've just been tired. Getting used to the routing of things here and all."

"Sure," she looks away from me, her gaze drifting across the room. "Everything okay, though?'

Her voice catches on the words, and I can't help but smile at her unpracticed concern. But then it fades as the words rise to my throat, threatening to spill out.

But I can't, can't, tell Bridget the truth. She's not passive, like me. If she found out the truth, she wasn't the kind of person to be threatened into silence, to keep her head low and do what's easiest.

"You've stopped coming out with us. Did something happen this week?" She kept pressing. "This place isn't a good one to spend so much time alone. I get it, you know."

"Get what?"

"The addition. Of just spending hours and hours in that garden, creating anything you could think of."

"No, no, it's not that," I assure her, but then my thoughts trail off as I realize what she's said. "Wait - I thought you hated LeafLink."

"It's not that I hate it... I just think it should be regulated. Supervised, so that it doesn't take the work people out there are doing and commodify it."

"Look Bridget," I say. "I think that we're all a bit worried about what it can do because it's new, right? Like when the internet first appeared. People will figure it out, there'll be regulations, and copyright protection, and all the rest of it."

I wanted to believe that.

"I guess so," she says. "But anyway, I'm glad to see you're alright."

"Sure," I say. "I'll be fine."