My Scumbag System-Chapter 356: The New Normal [2/2]

The old greenhouse sat at the edge of campus, forgotten by most and claimed by Monica Von Astrom approximately four days after the Arboretum.

The glass panels were cracked in places, letting in shafts of golden afternoon light that painted patterns on the floor. Vines had claimed the walls, growing in strange spirals that seemed almost deliberate. The air smelled of earth and growing things and something faintly sweet, like honey mixed with ozone.

Monica stood at a workbench, her honey-blonde hair tied back in a messy ponytail. Ferdinand the fern sat beside her in his pot, leaves rustling occasionally as if offering commentary. Samples from the Clockwork Arboretum spread across the table in careful rows. Copper leaves. Brass flowers. Sections of vine that still pulsed faintly with luminescent sap.

Jacob Williams stood three feet away, holding a datapad and trying very hard not to stare at Monica’s profile.

He was failing.

"These, um." He cleared his throat. Pushed his glasses up his nose. Tried again. "These are the samples from the Arboretum? The ones you... talked to?"

Monica picked up a copper leaf. It shimmered in her palm, and the metal seemed to warm at her touch. The veins of the leaf pulsed with a soft glow.

"They remember me." Her voice held quiet wonder. "Isn’t that strange? Plants don’t have memories. At least, they’re not supposed to. But these do."

She could feel them, even now. Faint echoes of consciousness at the edge of her perception. Gratitude. Longing. The barest whisper of mother-friend-liberator every time she touched them.

Jacob’s brain kicked into analytical overdrive. It was easier than confronting the way his heart hammered against his ribs.

"M-maybe you gave them memories. When you connected." His words tumbled out too fast, the way they always did when he was nervous. "The neural pathways, or whatever passes for neural pathways in botanical-mechanical hybrids, could have been restructured during your psychic... interface... thing. You essentially uploaded yourself into their network, right? So maybe part of you stayed. Like... like a cached file in a biological system."

Monica looked at him.

Her amber eyes were soft. Warm. The kind of eyes that made Jacob want to crawl under the nearest rock and die of embarrassment and also never look away ever.

"That’s actually a beautiful thought," she said.

Jacob turned approximately the color of a tomato. A very red tomato. The reddest tomato in the history of tomatoes.

"I just meant, scientifically, the synaptic connections could have formed permanent engrams when your Aspect interfaced with the collective consciousness of the—" He was doing it again. "I should go."

He turned toward the door.

Monica’s hand caught his wrist.

Her fingers were warm against his skin. Gentle. But firm enough to stop his retreat.

"Stay." The word was quiet but steady. "Please."

Jacob’s higher brain functions crashed. Rebooted. Crashed again.

"I... you... the samples..."

"The samples can wait." Monica guided him back toward the workbench. "Show me what you found in the Arboretum’s environmental data. You said there were patterns you wanted to analyze."

Right. The data. He could do data. Data was safe. Data didn’t make his palms sweat or his heart do that weird thing where it beat way too fast and then seemed to skip entirely.

He pulled up the files on his datapad with hands that only shook a little.

"So the ambient energy readings during your network takeover were fascinating. Look here." He pointed at a graph, grateful for something to focus on besides Monica’s proximity. "The electromagnetic frequency shifted by approximately 47.3 hertz at the exact moment you established control. That suggests your Aspect doesn’t just manipulate plant biology, it actually alters the fundamental energy state of—"

"Jacob."

He looked up from the screen.

Monica was smiling at him. Not a polite smile. Not the kind of smile she wore like armor around the rest of the guild. A real smile, small and private and just for him.

"Thank you."

"For... for what?"

"For not being afraid of what I did in there." She turned back to her samples, but her shoulder brushed against his and didn’t pull away. "Everyone else looks at me different now. Even the ones who are trying to be supportive. They see what I can do and they’re scared. Or impressed. Or calculating how to use me."

"I’m not scared," Jacob said. And found, to his surprise, that it was true.

Monica raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, I’m terrified," he amended. "But not of you. Just of... everything else. Social situations. Combat. Whether I remembered to lock my door this morning. The possibility that the VHC is hiding evidence of trans-dimensional entities in their classified files."

Monica laughed. The sound was like wind chimes, soft and musical and utterly unexpected.

"You’re strange, Jacob Williams."

"I prefer the term ’uniquely neurotic.’"

"I like strange." Monica picked up another copper leaf, and this time she pressed it into Jacob’s palm. It was warm. Alive, somehow, despite being made of metal. "Here. Keep it."

"Won’t you need it for your research?"

"I can always get more." Her smile turned mysterious. "They grow for me now. Wherever I am."

Jacob looked down at the leaf in his hand. Looked up at Monica. Looked at Ferdinand, who seemed to be nodding approvingly with his tiny fern fronds.

"Did you just give me a magic plant?"

"I gave you a memory." Monica turned back to her work. "Mine. And theirs. So you don’t forget."

"Forget what?"

"That someone wanted you to stay."

Jacob’s brain short-circuited completely. By the time it came back online, Monica was already sorting through samples and humming quietly to herself.

He stayed.

He stayed until the light through the cracked greenhouse windows turned from gold to amber to deep purple. He stayed while Monica catalogued specimens and he ran data analyses and Ferdinand occasionally rustled his disapproval at their organizational methods. He stayed even when his stomach growled loud enough to echo off the glass walls.

The copper leaf stayed warm in his pocket the entire time.

Later, walking back to Onyx House in the gathering dark, Jacob would realize something important. For the first time in his life, he hadn’t calculated the optimal moment to escape a social situation. He hadn’t been counting the seconds until he could retreat to his room and his datapads and his comfortable isolation.

He’d just been... present.

It was terrifying.

It was wonderful.

It was also probably a terrible idea, given his track record with anything remotely resembling human connection.

But as he touched the copper leaf through the fabric of his pocket and felt its impossible warmth against his fingers, Jacob decided that maybe, just maybe, some terrible ideas were worth having.