// the little cousins keep them dreaming // said Second. // they will be safe until we are ready for them to awake. //

“I’m ready for them to be awake now.” I turned, leveling a narrow-eyed glare on her. The horror of her face and form had worn off during our walk; now she was still terrible and strange, but she was also my sister, and we were having our first real family fight. Goodie for us. “Tell me how to wake them up, or I’m going to start ripping things out by the root.”

// remarkable how violent this garden is // she said, with almost-academic fascination. // touch the tendrils of the little cousins. they will know their job is done. they will withdraw. //

The little cousins had to be the flowers that had rammed their vines into everyone’s noses. I bent to touch them, and stopped, considering my options.

My instinct was to wake Graham first. Of all the people on the ground, he was the most important to me, and he was a scientist; he might take all this in stride. Of course, that also meant that if the little cousins had done something to damage my friends—something Second might not know about, being such a newcomer to the wonders of human biology—I would be learning about it from, again, the person most important to me. It seemed like a bad risk.

Toni was a wild card. Sometimes she was on our side and sometimes she wasn’t. but she was also a scientist, and David was big enough to hurt me if he panicked, and Mandy …

Mandy had been Lucas’s friend before she was mine. The sight of him, laid out and feeding the flowers, might be more than she could handle.

Decision made, I leaned forward and touched the vines running into Toni’s nose with one trembling finger. They twitched at the contact, before beginning to pull away.

They moved with surprising speed for something that looked so much like an Earth plant, unwinding themselves from Toni’s body inches at a time. The second surprise was the sheer length of the vines. They seemed to go on forever, first slick with what I assumed was mucus, then with something darker and more viscous. I didn’t know what kind of fluid that was, and I didn’t want to ask.

The last of the vines slithered out of Toni’s nose. Her eyes snapped open, and she sat up with a gasp, hands convulsively clutching the mossy soil beneath her. She looked around, eyes getting wider and wider as she took in everything around her. Finally, her gaze settled on Second. Her lower lip began to tremble. The skin around her eyes twitched.

She screamed.

“Toni!” I flung myself into her field of vision, cutting off the line of sight between the two of them. It didn’t help. I leaned forward and clapped my hand over her mouth, smothering the sound. She looked at me, eyes rolling wildly, chest heaving with the effort of continuing her scream.