The door to the East Wing didn't open; it unsealed.
Victor turned the heavy iron wheel, and the air hissed as the pressure equalized. A smell hit him instantly—not the rot of the main hall or the copper tang of the basement, but something sharper. It smelled like a thunderstorm trapped in a bottle. Ozone. Static electricity. And beneath it all, the sweet, cloying scent of chlorophyll that had gone bad.
Fenrir sneezed, shaking his head as if a bee had flown up his nose.
"Stay close," Victor whispered, his voice echoing in the metallic corridor.
The Industrial Grafting Sector wasn't a garden. It was a factory where nature had been forced to punch a time clock. The ceiling was lost in darkness, crisscrossed by rusted gantries and irrigation pipes thick enough to crawl through. But instead
