A story by John Aegard

The last remaining video feed, from Geneva, had dissolved into static several hours before.

Doctor Kelley clicked the screen off. Biting her lip, she carefully inserted her launch key into the console and twisted it counterclockwise, per the posted instructions.

The ascending missile rumbled the bunker faintly. Minutes later, it exploded high in the stratosphere. The hook-fanged Predator mutant tribes far below were none the wiser to its contrail of hardened seed, to the lurching, three-legged doom it had sown.

“Godspeed, Triffidus lux,” the botanist murmured. In just three months, the first sprouts’ laser emitters would begin to glow.