Chapter 4: Whispering Vines

The feeling of being watched intensified, no longer a vague paranoia but a certainty. The entire forest felt aware, waiting, judging its new potential host. Every shadow seemed too deep, every flower too bright, every rustle of leaves a potential predator.

The journey through the jungle was less a hike and more a constant, tense negotiation with an environment that actively resisted her passage. Standard ERA jungle survival tactics felt woefully inadequate here. Trails didn't exist; Aris hacked her way through curtains of shimmering leaves and dense, rubbery stalks with her vibro-knife, the blade humming protesting against the unnatural resilience of the alien plant matter. Orb-E floated diligently ahead, its blue sensor beam cutting through the gloom, constantly adjusting their projected path to avoid detected bio-energy spikes or zones saturated with the psychoactive pollens IRIS had warned about.

The air remained thick, heavy, pressing in on her like a physical weight despite her suit's filtration system. Sunlight struggled to penetrate the dense, multi-layered canopy far above, creating a perpetual twilight broken by random shafts of piercingly bright light and the eerie, internal bioluminescence emanating from the flora itself. Everything pulsed – tree bark glowed faintly, fungi throbbed with slow violet light, even the ground cover seemed to ripple with captured sunlight. The ambient hum from the jungle resonated in her bones, a constant background vibration that set her teeth on edge.

And the scents. Even filtered, the air carried waves of overwhelming perfume – sometimes...