Chapter 226: Tree Aftermath

Engineers spent most of the morning opening a route into the Core, and Hans left Cinderrow as soon as the first corridor was marked passable.

Johannes remained at the tower. After the Broodmother and Hive sites, he had little interest in testing another unknown psychic field before Tyrus examined it.

Hans’s Armored SUV crossed three cleared intersections before the road ended at a collapsed avenue.

Callum, the Engineers and the recovery section continued on foot with him for another few blocks, although the formation began slowing as they moved closer to the crater.

A familiar psychic field covered the area, stronger than the one around the Ironford Hive and spread across a much wider range, although none of it settled against Hans’s mind.

He glanced back toward his troops. One Engineer rubbed his temple and forced himself backward, while the DASFs frowned at the path ahead.

"Retreat to a safer position. I’ll see what’s going on here."

"Understood, Commander."

The recovery section withdrew toward the previous intersection while the DASFs and Engineers stopped farther out, keeping the route and Hans’s position covered without following him deeper.

Hans continued alone.

Dust and debris covered most of the approach, but his enhanced senses filled in enough of what they obscured.

The district looked worse from the ground.

The Tree’s roots did not merely cross the streets. They drove through foundations, parking levels and transit tunnels, and their final thrashing pulled entire sections of the district down with them.

One avenue sagged into the roof of an underground concourse, exposing platforms and service passages underneath the broken road.

A high-rise farther east leaned across the crater where most of its lower floors no longer existed, while another block had dropped through several basement levels and left rows of crushed vehicles visible below.

The bombardment widened the damage, but the pattern around the Tree was different.

The ground was dragged inward.

Streets sloped toward the center from several directions, broken by roots as thick as smaller buildings and the remains of towers that collapsed across them. Some sections still rested on intact columns, while others opened into utility corridors, underground shops and parking structures buried beneath the financial district.

Hans stopped near the rim of the largest collapse. The remains of the Tree occupied most of it.

Broken sections of trunk rose among concrete and twisted steel, while roots spread outward through the surrounding blocks before disappearing under buildings that were no longer standing.

What survived the bombardment no longer resembled the organism they watched from Cinderrow. It looked like several city blocks had been filled with wood, flesh and rubble, then crushed into the levels below.

Hans continued along the path until the debris opened enough for him to see it. At first, he mistook the shape for another root.

The shape resolved into fingers, each one longer than a soldier.

An enormous hand lay pinned underneath the remains of the Tree, its skin split and darkened while several roots passed through the wrist and disappeared farther into the body. Part of the forearm followed it into the crater, along with one shoulder and the side of a head crushed against the exposed basement levels below.

Dmitri’s old report returned to him: six stories tall, lured out of Pandora. An unknown giant last seen walking toward the city center.

"So this is where you went. I was beginning to worry you teleported someplace else."

More of the Giant appeared underneath the collapsed trunk as Hans followed the crater farther around.

Roots entered the corpse from several directions, wrapping themselves through the torso, major limbs and what remained of the spine before joining the Tree’s central mass above it.

"It fed on the Giant too. That explains some of the biomass. What about the psychic energy then?"

Hans studied the giant corpse before shifting his attention elsewhere.

The psychic field moved strangely around him. Instead of pressing inward, it split around his body like wind striking the curved front of a shield, bending outward before continuing past him.

"Is this my new power? How convenient."

He brought up the Radar map and zoomed in on the center.

The streets appeared underneath the overlays together with building foundations, parking levels, transit passages and the shallow underground sections exposed by the collapse.

Several roads sloped sharply toward the crater where the Tree pulled the ground inward, while entire basement floors had opened into one another after the roots tore through their walls.

Hans moved the map toward the Tree.

Its trunk and major roots formed a broad outline through the ruined blocks, with the Giant tangled underneath one side of the central mass.

Most of the roots converged farther in.

Hans zoomed again.

An irregular object sat inside the deepest surviving section of the Tree, embedded near where the trunk widened into the root network. Several thick roots wrapped around it before spreading outward through the surrounding blocks.

"Finally found you."

He moved farther around the crater until broken sections of the trunk gave him a partial view.

Black material showed through the wood. Thin fractures crossed its surface, and faint pinkish light remained inside them.

The fragment underneath the Ironford Hive was large, but this one—he could only describe it as enormous.

"How did this damn tree survive anyway?"

Hans remembered this part of the city before the apocalypse. The original tree was nothing more than decorative greenery in the middle of the financial district, the kind of project a mayor could point at and call the area environmental enough before moving on.

Hans studied the way the roots wrapped around the fragment. The Tree grew around it, the Giant and whatever other biomass accumulated in the center, eventually binding all of them into the same enormous mass.

Even dead, an absurd amount of energy remained inside it. Most radiated outward through the Core; some bent around Hans, while a smaller portion simply vanished into him.

"This isn’t just psychic. There’s something else too."

Kimmy changed after exposure to far weaker psychic residue, while Johannes, Evelyn, Marcus, Yunera and the others showed smaller improvements during Tyrus’s controlled tests.

Hans looked back toward the route his soldiers used to withdraw. Bringing any of them this close immediately would be stupid, but wasting this much energy would be equally stupid.

"Preserve the other power. I’ll take care of this part."

Tyrus could have the remains later. Hans was not letting him wander this close to the fragment simply because the man would find it interesting.

Either way, Tyrus was going to have a very busy week.

Hans moved closer until he could reach the exposed surface of the fragment.

The black material felt cold against his palm, and a moment later, a familiar prompt appeared.

------

[ Mysterious Psychic Meteorite Fragment detected. ]

[ Direct Conversion unavailable. ]

[ Further analysis requires an operational Tech Center. ]

[ Containment Subspace compatible. ]

[ Store item? ]

------

The last line took Hans back a long way ago, when he was travelling the third apartment building with Dmitri, Adrian, Vex, and Rex.

"Stop giving me flashbacks. It’s as if I’m about to die."

He shook his head and took a deep breath. "Store."

The effect ran deeper into the Tree, following the irregular shape buried inside the trunk before the entire mass broke apart into countless digital fragments. Dead roots slipped into the cavity it left behind, while the faint pink glow disappeared with the rest.

The fragment floated inside one of the sealed spaces, vastly larger than the shards already stored there but occupying only a single slot all the same.

A loud crack suddenly reached his ears.

"Shit!"

Hans kicked off the broken concrete and bolted away with a loud boom.

The ground dropped behind him.

Several roots that had been resting against the fragment folded into the empty space at once, dragging loose concrete and part of the dead trunk with them. The collapse spread through the crater before Hans reached the opposite side, and another section of road broke away into the basement levels underneath.

He landed beside a fractured retaining wall and nearly carried himself straight through it.

"Still having death throes? Okay then."

Hans looked back.

Dust rolled through the crater while pieces of the Tree continued settling into the cavity left by the fragment. Without the black mass holding the center together, several roots sagged farther down and pulled whatever remained attached to them along for the ride.

Another crack followed. This one came from underneath the street.

Part of the financial district floor gave way and exposed another level below the parking structures, deeper than the concourse Hans saw on the way in.

His Radar map changed with it.

New outlines appeared through the broken ground: reinforced walls, service corridors and several large enclosed spaces that the intact street had hidden from the shallower view.

Hans stared at the new section.

"Congratulations. You’ve unlocked a new map. Come on, System. Be with me here."

The psychic field around the crater was already thinning now that the fragment was gone, though the remaining biological mass still held enough residual energy to keep everyone else at a distance for the moment.

Hans marked the newly exposed underground section before checking the route behind him.

Callum’s group was still where he left them.

"Viper, hold your position. The center’s collapsing."

"Copy, Commander."

Hans looked down at the newly exposed levels again.

The Tree had apparently done more than destroy the financial district.

It had peeled the city open for him.