Reap What You Sow

At the far end of the conservatory, the propagation benches waited under blue lamps. Mara hurried toward them, keeping to the narrow path between potted citrus trees and towers of fern. Wet leaves slapped her sleeves. The packet pressed against her palm, its warmth growing sharper with every step.

The central doors clicked.

Mara stopped.

A beam of white light moved across the floor behind her, paused at the entrance, then swept toward the orchids.

“Miss Voss?” called a man’s voice. “Are you still inside?”

It was Calder, one of Harrowgate’s security staff. He had a habit of sounding polite when he was already certain someone had done wrong.

Mara slid behind a curtain of hanging vines. Their stems were cold and slick against her cheek. The packet’s paper rasped as her fingers tightened around it.

“I’m checking the irrigation valves,” she called.

“After closing?”

“The east bed was flooding.”

Calder’s boots struck the tile. Slow. Unhurried.

Mara lowered herself behind a row of clay pots. The beam passed over the leaves above her head. Water dripped from a broad banana leaf onto the floor with a soft, steady plink.

“Come out, Miss Voss,” Calder said. “The doors are locked.”

“I know.”

“That means no one should be in here.”

Mara watched the light slide along the tiles. Her pulse beat hard in her throat, but she kept her breathing shallow. The last thing she needed was to be found clutching an object connected to a theft. Three years earlier, a collection of rare seeds had vanished from Harrowgate’s restricted vault. The conservatory director had never said how much was taken. He had only said that the person responsible had known exactly what to steal.

Calder’s light moved away.

Mara waited until his footsteps faded toward the orchid wing. Then she crawled between the pots, rose, and ran.

The propagation room was separated from the main greenhouse by a glass partition and a sliding door. Mara shoved the door open and slipped through. Warm, damp air closed around her. Rows of trays filled the room, each marked with neat labels and dates. The soil bins stood beneath the worktable. She seized a small terracotta pot and a hand trowel.

The packet had no instructions, but when she tore the top, a single seed dropped into her palm.

It was the size of a plum stone, black at one end and pale at the other, with a fine silver vein running through its shell.

Mara stared at it.

Something moved behind the glass partition.

She tipped soil into the pot. Her hands shook so badly that half of it spilled across the bench. A second beam of light flashed through the leaves outside.

“Miss Voss!”

Calder was coming back.

Mara pressed her thumb into the soil, making a hollow. The seed seemed to twitch against her skin.

She nearly dropped it.

The sensible choice came quickly: return it, explain the impossible transfer, let someone else deal with the alarm and the stolen packet. But the sensible choice had already begun to feel like a lie. Whoever had placed the packet on her had wanted it found. If she surrendered it, the person who had planted it on her would know exactly where it went.

And beneath that thought, quieter and more dangerous, was another.

She wanted to see what it was.

Mara placed the seed in the hollow.

The heating pipes knocked overhead.

She covered it with soil, pressed the surface flat, and poured water from a nearby can. The first drops struck the dirt and vanished at once. The pot grew warm beneath her hand.

Outside, Calder reached the propagation door.

Mara snatched the pot from the bench and shoved it beneath the lowest shelf, behind a stack of empty trays. She had just straightened when the door rattled.

“Open up.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“The latch is stuck.”

Calder tried it again. The glass shivered in its frame.

Mara looked toward the rear wall. A narrow service passage led to the heating controls, but the outer exit had been sealed for winter. The conservatory was a cage of glass and iron, and she had put herself inside it.

“I’ll call maintenance,” she said.

“You’ll do nothing until I see what you’re carrying.”

Mara’s hand closed around the empty packet. The paper felt damp now, almost soft. She tucked it into her sleeve.

The latch snapped.

She backed away as the door opened.

Calder filled the entrance, rain darkening the shoulders of his uniform. His lantern hung from one hand. Beside him stood Lorne, the night supervisor, whose narrow face looked carved from old wax.

“Your coat,” Lorne said.

Mara lifted her chin. “What about it?”

“Empty the pockets.”

“For a broken irrigation valve?”

“For being in a locked building after hours.”

Calder stepped inside. His gaze moved over the benches, the trays, the floor. Mara could hear the faint hum of the blue lamps and the harder sound of rain striking the roof.

“I was assigned to the west archive,” she said. “The alarm went off. I came here to check the water lines.”

“Then you won’t mind showing us your hands.”

Mara looked down. Soil darkened her fingertips.

Lorne noticed.

His eyes sharpened. “What have you planted?”

“Nothing.”

Calder moved toward the lower shelf.

Mara reacted before thought could stop her. She seized the watering can and swung it into the nearest tray. Clay pots crashed to the floor. Seedlings scattered in wet soil.

Calder swore and lunged back.

“Careful!” Mara shouted. “Those are restricted specimens.”

The lie worked for half a second. Lorne turned toward the broken tray, and Mara kicked the lowest shelf hard.

The hidden pot rolled into the shadow beneath the worktable.

Then she ran.

She slipped through the rear passage as Calder shouted behind her. Pipes crowded the ceiling, radiating heat through the narrow corridor. Her shoulder struck the wall. A valve spun loose and sprayed her face with cold water. She stumbled onward, clutching the pot against her ribs.

At the end of the passage, she found the service door locked.

Of course it was locked.

Mara yanked the handle. Nothing.

Behind her, boots hammered over the tile.

She looked at the pot. A hairline crack had opened in the soil.

Something pale pressed against it.

“No,” she whispered.

The crack widened.

A thin green shoot pushed upward, bending as if it had been searching for light beneath the earth. It rose another inch while Mara watched. Then another. Its surface gleamed wetly, though no water touched it.

Calder rounded the corner.

Mara shoved the pot behind a stack of burlap sacks and stood in front of it.

“Move,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“You are making this worse.”

“I know.”

Lorne appeared behind him, breathing hard. His gaze fixed on the scattered water beading across Mara’s face, then on the service door.

“What did you take?” he asked.

Mara said nothing.

Calder reached for her arm.

From behind the sacks came a soft tearing sound.

All three of them heard it.

Lorne’s expression changed. Not confusion. Recognition.

“Get away from there,” he said.

Mara glanced back.

The shoot had become a stem. Two folded leaves pushed out at its tip, their edges silver and sharp. The pot trembled against the wall.

Calder drew his baton.

“What is that?” he demanded.

Lorne caught his wrist. “Don’t touch it.”

“Why?”

“Because the last one killed a man.”

The words struck Mara harder than Calder’s grip could have.

Lorne stared at the pot as if it had dragged him backward through time. “Where did you find the packet?”

Mara’s mouth went dry. “I didn’t find it.”

“Where?”

“It was in my pocket.”

Calder looked at her. “You expect us to believe that?”

The plant split its first leaf.

A thin green blade unfurled, bright as new glass. The lamps above flickered. Every sprinkler head in the room clicked open at once.

Water burst from the ceiling.

Calder shouted and covered his face. Lorne stumbled backward. Mara grabbed the pot and ran through the spray, slipping on the flooded floor. The plant’s stem brushed her wrist, warm and pulsing.

She reached the main greenhouse and ducked behind a bank of towering palms. Water drummed against the leaves. Alarms began to ring somewhere beyond the glass, one after another, until the whole conservatory shrilled.

Security lights flared along the walls.

Mara crouched with the pot tucked beneath her coat. The stem pressed against her ribs. It had grown past her wrist now, curled tightly around the rim.

Through the palm leaves, she saw Calder enter the room. Lorne followed, shouting into his radio.

“Seal the conservatory,” Lorne said. “No one leaves.”

Mara held the pot tighter.

The plant’s second leaf opened.

A faint red mark appeared along its center - the same crooked line stamped on the packet.

Calder’s light swept across the palms.

Mara crawled deeper into the foliage, into the wet darkness beneath the leaves, while the doors locked one by one around her. The packet had been stolen. The seed had been planted. Now Harrowgate knew she had it.

And somewhere beyond the glass, someone else was waiting to see what grew.

End of chapter one. 14 more chapters in the full book.