Seeds Chapter 16 Page 9

you’d need to crack the island in half to open it. On the wall a small empty square socket is sunk into the rock.

Steve reaches into his pocket to retrieve the keypad. The key to the lock that would open the door and give them refuge. But it’s gone. He panics and scrambles around in both pockets as his mind searches through memory for where it could have been lost. But it’s gone, nowhere to be found, not even in his memory. Lost somewhere in the beast or in the forest as they scrambled for safety from the swarm, maybe dropped into the ocean on the way across, it could be anywhere. He looks up to a corner in the rocks and rubs away some moss and webs that have taken refuge from the elements.

A tiny glass eye stares back at them and he waves