A dull hum vibrated through the hollow silence of the underground nest.
Buzz wasn't dead—but part of him had been shed. Sloughed off like old exoskeleton. The kind of loss that didn't sting outright, but left a phantom ache. The kind you forget how to describe after a while, because naming it would make it real.
He lay still.
The honey-blood pooling beneath his broken thorax stuck to the walls like guilt. Sticky. Slow. No one came to clean it. Not even the workers.
Above him, the Queen's chamber loomed—silent, cold, and indifferent. He didn't know whether it was mercy or malice that she hadn't sent the drones after him again. Maybe she believed he wasn't worth the nectar it would cost.
Maybe she was right.
His wings twitched. Reflexive, not purposeful. That, too, had changed—intent. It used to buzz in his head like music. Now it was a flat line.
"You're alive," came a voice.
A soft voice. Familiar. One he hadn't heard since before the betrayal.
"Zza?"
The figure emerged from shadow—delicate, bent, one antenna missing. Zza limped with the memory of violence etched into every step.
"I should've left," she said, kneeling beside him. "But you're bad at dying."
Buzz wanted to chuckle, but his mandibles only opened halfway. "I'm good at... other things."
A small smile twitched on Zza's mouth. But the joke soured quickly in the silence that followed. Her compound eyes scanned him like a mother checking a wound too deep for salve.
"Did she see it?"
Buzz didn't ask who. They both knew. The Queen. The Betrayer. The once-beloved.
"She saw it and smiled."
Zza looked away. Shame curled around them like humidity. "Then we've already lost."
"No." Buzz shifted. Every movement screamed. "We haven't even begun."
He reached for her, but his limbs—six once graceful appendages—trembled with exhaustion. Zza steadied him without flinching.
"She's using the nectar to change them," Buzz whispered. "They're not drones anymore. They're...something else. Empty. Obedient."
"Soldiers."
"Slaves."
He remembered the look in Drii's eyes when the stinger sank into Buzz's side—blank. Not anger, not fear. Just absence.
Zza helped him sit. Pain stitched his body like thread pulled too tight.
"I need to get out," he rasped. "To the surface."
Zza blinked. "You're not strong enough."
"I don't need to be strong. I just need to crawl."
She was quiet.
Buzz hated the quiet now. It reminded him of the moments right before a predator struck—stillness sharp enough to cut.
"They've been spreading," she said finally. "The Queen's reach doesn't end at the Nest. I heard the beetles whispering—they've felt it too. The hunger. The confusion. Even the butterflies are nesting closer to the ash fields."
"She's infecting the whole forest."
"She's changing it."
Buzz's breath grew shallow. His wings sagged.
"She said I was never meant to be anything more than a drone," he murmured. "She made me believe it."
Zza tilted her head. "And now?"
He met her gaze. "Now I believe in disobedience."
Something shifted in Zza's posture. A quiet agreement. A flicker of rebellion. Maybe the last of it.
"We'll need allies," she said.
Buzz nodded, slow. "The Weaverworms first. They owe me."
Zza's eyes widened. "You saved them during the Molt Flood."
"And they hate the Queen. They'll come, if only to spite her."
She hesitated. "It's not just her drones anymore. She's created something new. I saw one. It didn't buzz. It didn't even blink. Just stared. Like it saw straight through me."
A cold shudder ran through Buzz. "We'll need fire."
Zza blinked. "We're insects."
"Then we'll borrow some."
She exhaled. "You've changed."
"No," Buzz said. "I've just stopped pretending."
They sat in silence for a beat. No birds. No wind. Just the quiet throb of something ancient turning beneath the soil.
Then: footsteps. No—leg taps. Mandible clicks. Multiples.
Zza's antennae twitched. "They're coming."
Buzz didn't panic. He stood—or tried to. His back leg buckled.
Zza was there, holding him up before he fell.
"Just crawl, remember?" she said, smiling without mirth.
Buzz chuckled softly this time, and the pain was almost worth it. "Crawl and sting."
They scurried into the dark. The tunnel ahead reeked of damp earth and despair. But at the far end, there was a glimmer. A chitinous shimmer. Possibility.
The revolution wouldn't begin with fire. Or wings. Or a roar.
It would begin with a crawl.
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