Arborvoid

It started as scattered whispers. Grainy footage from shaky cell phones, blurry clips uploaded in bursts to news stations already struggling to keep up. At first, no one knew what they were seeing. The angles were bad. The reports were conflicting. But the pattern was undeniable.

Across Earth, something was descending.

Insect-like craft, sleek and angular, cut through the atmosphere in eerie silence, bypassing satellites and air defense systems without a trace. They moved strategically, selecting only dense forests—Amazon jungles, Siberian taigas, North American woodlands—places where the trees stood ancient and unbroken. There were no bombings, no casualties. Just harvesting.

The news struggled to explain it. Governments were silent. Officials scrambled behind closed doors, likely just as confused as everyone else.

Emma stared at the monitor, pulse hammering as the latest broadcast crackled through her lab. The reporter's voice wavered, laced with barely contained panic.

>"Unconfirmed reports are flooding in of… unusual aerial activity. Witnesses describe insect-like craft engaging in unprecedented harvesting operations."

She barely registered the hum of machinery around her. **Her breath came shallow, measured, as if her body hadn't yet accepted what her mind knew.

Beside her, Chloe sat rigid at the desk, fingers hovering over her keyboard. The glow of the monitor reflected off strands of her violet hair, giving her a ghostly, unreal quality. Her usual sharp, quick-witted energy was gone, replaced by cold realization.

Neither of them spoke.

The disbelief that had clung to them just hours ago, thick and suffocating, had evaporated. There was no room for doubt now. It was happening.

The same infiltrators she'd encountered in the forest were everywhere.

Emma swallowed hard, forcing herself to think beyond the shock. What next? What now? Her hands clenched into fists, nails pressing into her palms as she ran through every possible move.

"Doc," Chloe finally breathed, barely above a whisper. "This isn't localized. This is… global."

Emma exhaled slowly, trying to steady herself. She needed to think fast. "They're clearing the trees," she murmured. "Stripping them clean. Not just cutting—they're taking something. Extracting something."

Chloe's fingers tapped rapidly against the keyboard, pulling up forestry satellite data. More blips. More pulses. More activity than should have been possible this fast.

"They're stripping the Amazon at speeds that defy explanation," Chloe muttered, eyes darting across the data. "We're talking acres gone in minutes. That's not just logging—this is something else entirely."

A dull, creeping feeling settled in Emma's chest.

She turned to her desk, to the wood samples still pulsing faintly beneath the scanner's light. The strands of energy deep within them hummed like something alive. The same frequency she had picked up before—the resonance.

It wasn't just wood they wanted. It was what was inside it.

The thought tightened around her throat.

"Chloe." She met her assistant's gaze, eyes sharp, voice steady. "We need proof."

Chloe nodded, already understanding. "Something undeniable."

Emma grabbed the nearest sample, gripping it tightly as she processed the truth unfolding before them.

They weren't just witnesses to this. They were standing directly in the path of something far larger than they had ever imagined.

And now, they had no choice but to act.