The Five Evolution

『"The roots of regret."』

The woods of Janestown were unnaturally silent. Even the wind seemed hesitant to stir the towering pines overhead.

The seven of them stood beneath the dense canopy, the van parked idly on the old logging road behind them.

Hiro adjusted the straps of the compact backpack sprayer on his shoulders as the clear tank sloshed gently with copper sulfate solution.

"It won’t kill the mycorrhiza," Hiro reminded them. "It’ll just interrupt the communication. Like cutting phone lines."

Raj nodded solemnly. "Bye-bye tree Wi-Fi."

They arrived at a small clearing and Sophia stepped into it. Without a word, she crossed her legs and slowly levitated several inches off the forest floor.

The others instinctively gave her space, backing away.

She held the old silver locket in both hands, then released it. It floated above her palms as golden light seeped from beneath her closed eyelids.

Then her helmet materialized over her head, and the locket responded. It drifted forward, paused, turned, and continued deeper into the woods.

"So we follow the glowing locket?" Raj asked.

Sophia settled back to the ground, getting up and dusting off her pants. "Yeah."

No one else questioned it. They simply followed.

The deeper they walked, the older the forest became. Tree trunks thickened to amazing widths, roots rose from the earth like sleeping serpents, and the temperature dropped noticeably.

Amara felt that unmistakable sensation of being watched again. This time, not by one pair of eyes, but thousands. Every tree. Every root. Every leaf.

The locket stopped and once Sophia got there, it landed gently on her palm. "He’s here," she whispered.

It suddenly became so quiet, Amara could hear it if a pin dropped.

CRACK!

The ground split open and vines burst from the soil in their hundreds, some thicker than tree trunks, others thin as wire, every one of them aimed at the seven of them simultaneously.

Walter had no intention of letting anyone leave.

Amara’s blue eyes intensified, flooding her vision with hundreds of glowing intersecting lines of light that ran across the attacking forest.

She inhaled once, stepped forward, and made three clean strokes with Angel’s Bane, tracing the lines her eyes had already mapped.

For a heartbeat, nothing seemed to happen.

Then every vine that had crossed those invisible lines were severed simultaneously with such precision that the pieces fell as perfect cubes of wood.

They rained softly onto the forest floor as if reality itself had been diced into tiny blocks.

"Whoah." Raj stared at the small wooden blocks settling around his boots. Then at Amara. "Okay..."

Walter finally showed himself, emerging from the ground fully.

Roots had fused with muscle along his forearms. Bark covered his ribcage in overlapping plates. Fungal growth pulsed along his skin. And from his skull, two branches curved upward like antlers.

His yellow eyes found the locket in Sophia’s hand. "Giiive..." One of his arms pointed toward Sophia. "... baaack."

"You had your chance," Ethan said, stepping forward. "She’s moved on."

Walter roared, and the entire forest answered.

"Now!" Hiro shouted.

Instead of attacking, he took off running in a wide circle around Walter.

The modified sprayer hissed continuously, laying down a broad ribbon of blue copper sulfate solution that soaked into the leaf litter and upper soil.

He kept his pace even, watching the line behind him, and making sure it didn’t break as an unbroken ring formed around the creature.

Walter ignored him entirely, going after Sophia. Which was a big mistake on his part, and exactly what Hiro had counted on.

The roots beneath the soil suddenly stopped moving. Walter froze, looking downward in confusion, then rage.

"Well, I’ll be damned. It worked." Andre slammed both palms together. Ice erupted upward, swallowing Walter to the waist, then the chest, then completely entombing him.

For a moment, it felt like that was it, mission successful. Then cracks slowly began to spread across the prison’s surface, until Walter eventually shattered the ice with brute force.

His yellow eyes immediately darted towards each of them, finally settling on Raj. "Giiive..." It lunged straight at him, massive claws extended.

Amara stepped into his path as she caught the strike with Angel’s Bane, then looked over her shoulder. "Maybe don’t let the plant werewolf hybrid scratch you."

Raj chuckled. "It’s not an Alpha, Amara." He stepped around her and punched Walter squarely in the ribs.

The impact folded the creature sideways and launched him through the trees, snapping trunks as it disappeared into the forest.

Before Raj could charge after it, Amara caught his arm, and he looked back.

She held his gaze for a moment, her expression unusually serious. "Raj."

He stopped smiling.

"We don’t know what this thing is." Her grip tightened slightly. "We can’t assume it operates by the same rules as a regular werewolf."

Raj opened his mouth to protest.

"Please," she said quietly. "Don’t underestimate it."

Raj smiled sheepishly. "Okay." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I’ll be careful." Then he grinned. "Still gonna hit him, though."

"You snooze you lose," Naomi said from the sky, already airborne. Lightning shot out from both her palms as a sustained beam.

It struck Walter head-on, bulldozing him backward through the forest. Tree after tree exploded into splinters as the ground peeled back beneath him, carving a trench nearly thirty feet long.

Walter twitched, smoke curling from his bark-covered body.

Before he could move or recover, Sophia’s eyes ignited as every root within reach came to her instead of him.

They erupted from the soil and wrapped around his limbs, his torso, his neck, winding tighter as he struggled against them. The more he fought, the more there were. "Ethan!"

"I know." Ethan crouched calmly and rolled a metallic sphere across the ground until it settled beside Walter’s feet.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Walter finally understood what was happening. He twisted hard against the roots, one arm pulling almost free, eyes wide.

The sphere expanded, and a shell of light swelled outward and swallowed him whole. Then it inverted, pulling everything inward, compressing back into something no larger than a baseball.

With that, Walter, and an entire century of tragedy, vanished inside.

Ethan caught the containment sphere one-handed as it rolled toward him and examined it briefly. "Containment successful."

Hiro appeared next to Ethan in a flash and pointed. "What was that?"

"SCP technology," Ethan said. "They were finally able to weaponize the clam after all."

***

The van rolled through Janestown’s main street as the evening sun set properly over the rooftops.

The town looked the same as it had when they’d arrived. Same diner, same stores. Whatever had lived in those woods for a hundred years, the town had never known it.

Raj finally broke the silence. "Something still bugs me."

Everyone looked over.

"If Walter could control the whole forest... why leave the bodies where people could find them? Why not bury them? The woods would’ve hidden everything."

Andre nodded in agreement. "Plus it’s a win for the forest as well. Y’know, more nutrients."

Sophia considered it. "Maybe he wanted the Institute to come after the biker gang."

Naomi leaned against the window. "And we almost did."

Hiro scratched his chin. "Or maybe he knew disappearances would bring investigators anyway. So it didn’t matter."

Amara stared out the window absentmindedly. "Maybe," she said quietly, "he wanted the families to find them."

The van hummed around them.

"He never got to say goodbye." Her fingers moved to her jacket pocket where the locket was. "Neither did Mabel. Maybe he didn’t want anyone else to lose that chance."

Nobody said anything for a while.

Then Ethan rested his head back against the seat. "We’ll probably never know."

Outside, the last of the Janestown treeline passed behind them and disappeared around the first curve in the road.

Naomi finally broke the silence as she looked around the room. "I sincerely hope I never have to work with you trouble magnets again."

Raj grinned. "Until the next mission."

Naomi groaned. "Oh, shut up."

Ethan’s van rolled onward, carrying the seven of them toward whatever waited beyond Janestown.

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