Dr. Alex Nolan II's Arc

Chapter 2 of 13

Nolan woke before dawn with his hand on the pack. The artifact inside was warm through the canvas, warmer than it should have been sitting in the shade all night. He pulled his hand back and flexed his fingers. The brand on his forearm stayed quiet and dark. The heat built through the morning as he walked. By midday, the pack was hot enough to burn through his shirt where it pressed against his back. He stopped and set it on the ground, unwrapped the outer layer of cloth. The fabric underneath glowed faint purple around the edges, like something was bleeding through from inside. He wrapped it tighter and kept moving, but the heat didn't stop. It pulsed now, steady as a heartbeat. The trees ahead started bending. Not swaying in wind — bending toward him, trunks twisting in ways wood shouldn't move. The bark split open in spirals, showing raw heartwood that gleamed wet and wrong. One massive tree directly in his path groaned as its trunk warped into a mouth shape, branches curling back like they were trying to pull away from their own center. The purple glow from his pack spread across the ground in thin veins, crawling up roots and into the warped wood. Nolan backed up three steps. The distortion followed him, the ground rippling outward from where the pack sat. He grabbed the pack and ran perpendicular to the spreading warp, boots sliding on moss. The shelter he'd slept in the night before appeared ahead through the trees, but it wasn't sticks and vines anymore. The frame had become something living — thick coils wound together in an A-frame, scales catching the light, bodies writhing slow against each other. The purple glow pulsed brighter from his pack, and the shelter pulsed back in answer. Nolan threw the pack into the river twenty feet away. It hit the water and sank, the glow cutting out instantly. The trees stopped bending. The shelter collapsed into a heap of ordinary deadwood. He stood on the bank, breathing hard, watching the spot where the pack had gone under. Three days to civilization, and he'd just lost the only thing that mattered.