The sun hung low over the overgrown remains of the Blackwood Estate, casting long, jagged shadows across a garden that had forgotten the touch of a human hand for decades. Elias pulled his phone from his pocket, the screen cracked but glowing with a strange, neon-green hue. Most people used PictureThis to figure out if their backyard weeds were poisonous or if their hydrangeas needed more nitrogen. But Elias wasn’t using the version found on the app store. He was using the "Overgrowth Edition," a modded APK he’d found on a dark-web forum dedicated to "botanical anomalies."

He aimed the camera at a nearby rosebush. The app instantly bypassed the surface image, using some sort of modified lidar to see through the petals. On his screen, the rosebush wasn’t made of wood and sap. It was made of calcified bone and pulsing nerve endings. "What did they do to this place?" Elias muttered.

He stepped toward a thicket of vines that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic violet light. He opened the app. The interface was stripped of its friendly branding. The bright white background was now a deep, obsidian black, and the shutter button looked like a dilated pupil. "Identify," Elias whispered.

When he finally reached his car and looked back, the Blackwood Estate was silent. He looked at his phone. The screen was black. In the reflection of the glass, he saw a small, bright green sprout beginning to grow from the corner of his own eye. He didn't need the app to identify that.