The Five Evolution

『"Dan...dan...daaan!"』

"There!" Sophia shouted as the group continued giving chase.

Sophia lifted into the air and Naomi generated spheres of lightning, brightening the woods.

The creature moved fast, but it wasn’t just that. The trees shifted, roots erupted, and branches bent, all to slow them down and keep them away.

It seemed like the forest itself was determined to protect whatever they were chasing as the path ahead sealed with twisting trunks.

Before they knew it, they all emerged out of the woods and into the logging road where the van was parked, and the monster they chased after was gone.

Silence returned, and only heavy breathing remained.

Sophia stared back into the darkness and trees. "Seriously, what the hell was that?"

Amara lowered Angel’s Bane, white flames dimming. "Most likely..." Her gaze remained fixed on the woods, where the creature vanished. "...what’s been taking the hearts."

***

They returned to the motel with plans to visit Mabel again in the morning. For now, the sensible thing to do was get some sleep.

The only problem was that, after what they had witnessed in the woods, nobody was really in the sleeping mood.

That night, the motel was quiet except for the occasional groan and rattling of the old air conditioner embedded in the walls and the distant hum of trucks moving along the highway.

In the girls’ room, Naomi lay on one bed with an arm draped over her eyes, insisting she was "resting" despite the fact that she hadn’t stayed still for more than two minutes.

Amara sat cross-legged near the window, Angel’s Bane resting across her lap. She wasn’t meditating. She simply found herself staring at the tree line outside the motel.

Sophia on the other hand, had started reading one of her novels for the third time that night, though she couldn’t remember a single page she’d just gone through.

Across the hall, things weren’t much better.

Raj had tried his best to go to sleep before giving up and tossing from one side of the bed to the other every few minutes. "Stupid... #&@%..." he mumbled something incoherent.

Andre yawned, sitting quietly in a chair beside the window, watching the empty parking lot. "You can say that again."

As for Ethan, he had reopened the mission file on his laptop for what must have been the tenth time, searching for something he’d overlooked.

And Hiro had stopped pretending he’d get any sleep at all.

At four in the morning, Hiro sat in front of the small table in the room. Three empty coffee cups surrounded him, and a fourth sat half-finished beside his laptop.

The glow from the screen illuminated his face while dozens of tabs filled the monitor.

Maps. Forestry reports. Archived newspaper articles. Historical records. Biology journals. Satellite imagery. And enough conspiracy-looking material to get him placed on a watchlist.

The door to the girls’ room creaked open. Sophia stepped outside wearing sweatpants and an oversized hoodie.

She’d originally come out in search of something sugary from the vending machine to trick her brain into thinking she was tired. Maybe get a few bag of chips and chocolate bars while she was at it.

Instead, she noticed the light spilling from beneath the curtains of the boys’ room, and curiosity got the better of her.

She peered through the window and found Hiro, surrounded by coffee cups, eyes bloodshot, completely absorbed in the maze of information glowing across his laptop screen.

She watched him for another few seconds before knocking lightly against the window.

Hiro looked up, their eyes meeting. Then he reached over and unlocked the door without a word.

Sophia stepped inside and glanced at the collection of empty cups surrounding him. "Wow. Ever heard of moderation?"

Hiro didn’t look away from the screen. "No such thing."

Sophia pinched the bridge of her nose. "So, you find anything?"

Hiro answered by rotating the laptop toward her, and she scanned the open tabs.

Sophia’s eyes darted around as she read. Janestown historical records. Wildlife migration reports. Mycology journals. Archived newspapers dating back almost a century.

Then she looked at the wall.

At some point during the night, he’d covered it with maps, photographs, and handwritten notes held together by motel tape.

While loose threads from the motel curtains were used to connect locations to victims, dates, and even moon phases.

Sophia slowly looked back at him. "...You’ve lost it."

At that point, the sound of movement came from the otherside of the room. Raj wandered out of the bathroom rubbing a towel through his hair.

He stopped. "Oh, hey Soph. What’s up?"

She folded her arms. "Anyone seen what discount Holmes here been up to?"

Ethan kept tapping on his laptop. "Best to let him do his thing when he gets like that."

The conversation carried through the thin motel walls, and across the hall, Naomi frowned. "What are they doing now?"

Amara closed the book she’d been pretending to read. "I guess they’re awake." Angel’s Bane vanished. "Or they were never asleep to begin with."

Another muffled voice drifted through the wall. Sounds of Sophia, Raj, then Ethan.

Naomi stood. "If they’re making enough noise to wake me, something must be up in there."

Amara looked at her. "You weren’t sleeping."

"Whatever." Naomi headed to the door, then looked back. "Coming?"

Amara stood up. "Sure."

A minute later, the girls were out of their room and heading toward the boy’s.

Just before they could knock, Andre opened the door. "I figured you’d come," he said.

Naomi stepped inside. "...What the hell?" she muttered, staring at the wall that had become an investigation board.

"Looks impressive Hiro," Amara said as she stepped in. "Why don’t you regale us with your findings." She quietly took a seat on the edge of one of the beds, next to Ethan.

Ethan finally closed the mission file on his own laptop and looked toward Hiro. "Let’s hear it."

The room slowly settled into silence. Outside, dawn had begun to creep over Janestown.

The first rays of sunlight slipped through the blinds, cutting bright lines across the floor and across Hiro’s makeshift investigation wall.

He looked around the room as seven pairs of eyes stared back at him. Everyone was present.

Hiro exhaled once, then clicked a key on his laptop. The first newspaper clipping appeared on the screen. "I think we’ve been asking the wrong questions."

JANESTOWN TRAGEDY

LOCAL LOGGER PRESUMED DEAD AFTER ANIMAL ATTACK

1921

The room grew quieter as Hiro enlarged the article. "His name was Walter Finch," he said.

Amara sat forward. "The man from the locket."

Hiro nodded. "He disappeared one hundred and five years ago." He crossed over to the wall, tapping on a police report. "See, he was attacked in the woods. Animal mauling. No body recovered."

He rushed back to his laptop and switched the file, changing the image to a little girl. "However, a witness survives. The man’s daughter. Mabel Finch."

Raj slowly leaned back. "Oh."

"Oh," Naomi agreed.

"Exactly." Hiro switched screens, and a map of Janestown appeared with large sections of it highlighted in green. "Anybody know what this is?"

Sophia shrugged. "Ionno, trees?"

"Well... yeah. But it’s so much more than that." Hiro pointed at the highlighted regions. "These areas contain one of the largest mycorrhizal fungal networks in the country."

Naomi raised an eyebrow. "The mushroom thing?"

Hiro nodded rapidly, clearly fighting for patience. "Yeah, the mushroom thing!"

He enlarged another diagram, showing thousands of trees and roots interconnected beneath the soil and stretching for miles. "The network lets trees communicate."

Andre tilted his head. "Where are you going with this, man."

"Okay." Hiro turned the laptop back toward himself.

"So the official reports say Walter Finch was mauled by an animal." His fingers moved across the keyboard until another article filled the screen. "1921. October 2nd. On a full moon."

He clicked again, returning to the old geological survey of Janestown. "Remember this section of the forest?" He circled it with the cursor. "This is where Walter disappeared."

Raj scratched his head. "...Okay?"

Hiro looked at him. "So I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the supernatural and their transformations. I mean after learning that they exist, why wouldn’t I. It’s fuck—"

"Hiro." Ethan’s voice cut off his rambling. "You were saying?"

"Right." Hiro leaned forward. "So with a werewolf transformation, you either get bitten by an Alpha or scratched by one. Y’know," he gestured as he spoke. "Its claws get up all in there."

He looked around the room. "Now imagine you’re Walter Finch." He moved his hand to his neck and simulated the movement. "You get your throat ripped out, possibly by an Alpha."

Hiro shot an arm toward them. "And... and... and..." His hand sliced the air repeatedly in a frantic ’hold on motion’.

"And?" Amara leaned in without realizing it. It wasn’t just her. Everyone was pulled in, eager to see where he was going with this.

Hiro circled the section of Janestown highlighted in green with his cursor. "Your corpse sinks into a soil completely saturated with one of the largest fungal networks on the continent."

"And remember..." He highlighted the date one last time. "...this is all happening under a full moon."

Ethan’s eyes narrowed.

Sophia’s expression slowly changed. "No way."

Hiro nodded once. "What if Walter Finch actually died that day..." He pointed toward the interconnected roots beneath the forest. "But emerged as something else entirely."

Amara raised an eyebrow. "You think..."

Hiro looked at her. "I’m saying a supernatural transformation, coupled with a fungal network capable of communicating with organic life chemically..."

Raj blinked. "So..." He pointed toward the woods outside. "...a tree werewolf?"

"Plant werewolf?" Sophia added automatically.

Raj looked at her and gasped. "Fungi werewolf?"

"It would explain everything," Hiro continued before either of them could spiral. "The tracks." He pointed to images he and Amara took in the woods. "They disappeared because it doesn’t travel like a normal animal."

Ethan folded his arms. "And that would explain the unnatural control over the plants in the woods."

Amara’s gaze shifted to Ethan. "The vines, and the way the trees blocked us from chasing it."

Hiro looked at both of them. "It wasn’t controlling the forest." He paused for dramatic effect. "It was the forest." He lifted his arms theatrically. "A Forest werewolf!"

Nobody moved. Even Naomi looked unsettled now.

Outside, the wind picked up. The branch of the nearby oak tree scraped against the motel window, and everyone immediately flinched.

Ethan checked his watch. It was already eight o’clock. "Maybe we should go pay miss Mabel Finch a visit."

"Yeah." They all said in unison as they stood up, eager to leave the motel at that moment.

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