Holden

Holden logged out of his work computer and slid his phone from his pocket, checking the screen.

Becca: Hey, just checking in. Haven't talked in a while. Hope you're well.

Hope you're well.

Holden's anger morphed to shame in a matter of seconds. The emotion was crisp and buzzed much like panic did. Shame and panic had always felt the same to him—a loss of control, an inability to process thought. He stared dumbly at the message until the sensation fizzled out.

His fingers itched to fly across the keyboard.

IstillmissyouIloveyouInevercheatedonyou—-

Stop. He locked his phone and shoved it back into his pocket. Any response to Becca needed to be well marinated; he couldn't let his guard down with her, not when she dissected his every word.

Holden packed up his stuff and left the library, heading down Jefferson toward the Forestry building. In his hands were the external drive and a folder of key PDFs from Dr. Dupont's project.

He was just past Sackett Place when he heard his name. He shielded his eyes as Chelsea hurried toward him from the quad, flipping back her hair.

Today was cursed. Had to be. Then again, he hadn't received this much unexpected attention from a sober woman in months.

He forced a grin. "What's up? What are you doing on campus?" From his fragmented conversations with Chelsea the other night, he remembered her saying she'd just graduated with her MBA.

"I had some B.S. parking tickets from the campus police that I still had to take care of. Thought I'd say hi to a professor while I was at it." Her teeth sunk into her perfectly glossed lower lip, green eyes popping against her dark makeup. She looked great for an outing to pay off a ticket.

"Wanted to apologize for the other night," she said. "I got out of a shitty relationship a couple of months ago and haven't been coping well. I shouldn't have drunk that much... especially on a date."

Holden hadn't considered it a date; even so, she seemed sincere enough. "It's not a big deal, really."

"I appreciate you not taking advantage of the situation."

"You really don't have to thank me for doing the bare minimum to not be a shithead."

She smiled. "Can I make it up to you? Dinner, on me?" His surprise must have shown on his face, because Chelsea flushed and added, "You don't have to say yes."

"No," he said. "I mean, yes. I'd like that."

"Awesome. I'll text you the place and time. I... uhh... don't think I have your number. But Emma has Kyle's."

"...Emma?"

"My BFF. You met her! Anyway, I'll get it, don't worry."

"I can just give—"

"Looking forward to it." Chelsea waved. "See ya."

Holden scratched his head as Chelsea crossed the street and disappeared down 30th. Maybe hanging out with Kyle wasn't a total waste of his time, after all.

Despite everything that had happened in the last twenty minutes, Holden was certain Becca and Chelsea weren't the strangest interactions he'd have today. He passed the Forest Science Complex, a modern beast of a building paneled with alder and glass, and entered Richardson Hall.

According to the directory, Chari's office was on the second floor. An adjunct waved at him in passing, and Holden lifted a hand in response. He visited the faculty offices a lot, given the adjuncts shared crusty desktops and there was no accountability. Hell, he understood. None of them were paid enough to be accountable.

He took the stairs and traveled the length of the hall. Across from the water fountain, Dr. Chari's door waited for him. She had no cute or quirky posters on her door like the surrounding professors—no ironic Hang in there! kitty signs like he'd seen a dozen times across campus. And her mailbox was empty.

Maybe she wasn't even here. There was only one way to find out.

Holden rapped his knuckles against the door.

The response was faint. "It's open."

He turned the knob and entered. The lamp on the desk glowed dimly in front of closed horizontal blinds. A scattering of house plants topped mismatched file cabinets, but other than that, the room was sterile.

Dr. Chari sat at her desk, her dark braids piled atop her head. She didn't bother to look up, but paused in feverishly typing out an email to point in his direction. "Tip's on the table."

Holden cast a glance at a crumpled ten-dollar bill atop the table near the door. "Excuse me?"

Chari finally turned her attention toward him and frowned. "Ah. I thought you were my Thai."

"Sorry to disappoint."

Her eyes dipped to the drive he held, and her face hardened. "I thought I told you not to come here," she said. He suspected she had been thinking about their chat encounter as much as he had.

"Just hear me out," Holden pled. "I need your help—I don't know who else to contact. CalTech hasn't called me back, and my only other option is to take this drive to the university police. Or the real police."

Dr. Chari didn't so much as twitch her lip, but still managed to project blistering irritation toward him. "The police? What makes you think I want anything to do with the trouble you've gotten yourself into?"

"Not legal trouble." Holden raised the drive. "Life-threatening trouble, for a woman named Dr. Siena Dupont."

"I told you already that I don't know her. Who is she to you?"

"I..."

When Holden hesitated, Dr. Chari raised her eyebrows.

"A stranger, but it doesn't matter. It's my job to make sure I delete nothing important off this drive. Most of Dupont's audio files are corrupted, but the ones I could listen to were pretty—I don't know—distressing, I guess. She found a body in the woods. And then one of her team members died. I just want to report this if need be— Hey, are you okay?"

Dr. Chari looked like she'd swallowed a live roach. "Did... did she make it out?"

"I mean, someone did if I have the recording, unless she had service—"

"There is no service in Deadswitch."

"I—I don't know, then. Can you at least look at the key contacts sheet for this study? Maybe it'll spark something." Holden shuffled the drive into his other hand and passed Dr. Chari the folder, surprised when she grasped it from him and flipped it open. She licked her thumb and sifted through the pages, and after a few moments, nodded. "I know a few of the folks on this list, not from this study, but another on Deadswitch. My department pulled me off the project prematurely."

"Why?"

"My institution at the time thought it was a hoax. We were studying lodgepole pine seedlings that matured more quickly than any other species in the world."

She said this with a gravity that surely was supposed to mean something to Holden. He stared at her blankly. "How quickly?" he finally asked.

Dr. Chari closed the folder and rested her hands on top. "Two days."

He didn't understand. "I'm sorry. When you said matured, I thought you meant matured into... uhh... trees."

"That is what I meant."

Maybe this was Dr. Chari's way of fucking with Holden to get him the hell out of her office. "So, you're saying you planted seedlings, and they fully matured into pine trees in two days."

Chari swiveled toward her file cabinet, unhooking a set of keys from her belt and unlocking the bottom drawer. She dug through files until she slid one free, handing it to him.

The file was clearly old, cardstock so thin it felt like the whole thing was going to disintegrate in his hands. He carefully opened it and found faded photos inside, almost sepia tone, as though Chari had taken them forty years ago. Which was strange, considering Dr. Chari didn't look a day over forty-five.

Orange time stamps in the corner of each print spanned the period of a week, the first photo of a forest edge. The one underneath, taken six hours later, was of the same forest edge with several saplings that weren't there before. He flipped it over to a photo of the same area twenty-four hours later, the saplings over thirty feet tall, new saplings scattered in front of them.

"We did not plant these seedlings," said Dr. Chari. "They propagated themselves."

The other photos captured different groves—bird's-eye images showing a cluster of trees multiplying by the hundreds and crowding an empty field in a matter of days. Holden finally understood why the institution had thought this was a hoax. It looked like a hoax.

"You don't believe me," said Dr. Chari.

Holden shut the folder. No, he didn't believe her. He couldn't. A forest growing at this speed would have overrun more than just a field, but roads and towns, too. He would have heard about something like this happening. The entire world would have.

But Dr. Chari seemed so sincere. So convinced. And that was the most fascinating part of it all.

"I will believe you," said Holden. "If you help me."