Ana Salinas

It began not with a bang, nor a shriek of tearing metal, but with a subtle wrongness in the air, a scent too sweet, too cloying, like overripe fruit rotting beneath a humid sun. Professor Aris Jonasson, a man whose very bones were composed of empirical data and sceptical gristle, was the first to notice. He stood within his beloved greenhouse, a grand cathedral of wrought iron and leaded glass, when he heard it. It was a whisper, not in his ears, but vibrating within his very thoughts: a soft,