The next morning, Artyom’s mother found the room empty. The computer was off. On the desk sat the biology workbook, completed in beautiful, slanted handwriting.
He didn't know the difference between a monocot and a dicot. He didn't care. He just needed the answers so he could sleep.
Artyom paused, his pen hovering over the paper. He looked at the next page in the PDF. It was a photo of the "Photosynthesis" section, but the diagrams were wrong. Instead of sunlight hitting a leaf, the drawing showed a shadowy figure standing over a sleeping boy. The label didn't say Chloroplast . It said Witness . The next morning, Artyom’s mother found the room empty
Artyom froze. His hands shook. He hadn't entered his name anywhere on the site. He reached for the power button on the CPU, but his fingers felt heavy, as if they were turning into wood. He looked down at his arms. Small, green veins were surfacing under his skin, branching out like the root system of a gymnosperm.
She opened it to the last page. There, pressed between the leaves like a dried flower, was a single, perfect leaf that looked hauntingly like a human hand. He didn't know the difference between a monocot and a dicot
Artyom clicked. The download bar crawled forward. 10%... 45%... 98%... 100%.
As he copied the answers, Artyom noticed something strange. In the margins of page 54, the handwriting changed. It grew smaller, more frantic. Artyom paused, his pen hovering over the paper
"The answers are free," the chat box scrolled, "but the biology requires a specimen."