CHAPTER 55: CHAPTER 54: WAKE UP BUZZ

Buzz opened his eyes to nothing.

No ground. No sky. Just light so pale it didn’t have color. It pulsed like breath, slow and deliberate. Each pulse tugged at something inside him, as if the world were inhaling through his chest.

He floated in it, weightless. Every movement sent ripples through the light. He couldn’t feel his claws or wings, just the echo of them. Somewhere distant, the memory of pain flickered and died.

"Guess this is what being deleted feels like," he muttered.

His own voice didn’t travel. It just folded back into him, softer, distorted. The sound replayed in the same tone but not the same meaning.

*Deleted feels like becoming.*

Buzz twitched. "Great. Even my thoughts have subtitles now."

He tried to move, to anchor himself to anything. Every direction felt the same—thick and empty. Then, out of the glow, shapes began to form: outlines of himself, dozens of them, hovering in the light. They moved when he moved, but not quite right—each a frame too slow.

The entity was studying him again.

"Still watching me?" he said. "Get a hobby."

A voice answered, layered with his own. *You are the hobby.*

He could feel it pressing against the edges of his mind, searching for the gap where it could slide in. It didn’t attack; it mimicked. Each word he thought came back slightly altered, as if it were rewriting him line by line.

*You want peace,* it said.

He clenched what should have been fists. "I want silence. There’s a difference."

*Then be silent.*

Buzz laughed, but it came out broken, hollow. The light thickened, pulling him down. Scenes flickered around him like fragments from a broken projector—Zza’s face streaked with dirt, the Queen’s mandibles opening, the first time he’d flown above the canopy. Every image twisted, faces shifting, voices merging into one phrase: *All of us are one thing pretending to be many.*

Buzz shut his eyes, forcing the words out. "You don’t get to erase her."

*We don’t erase. We blend.*

Something brushed his chest. He looked down and saw strands of gold threading through the cracks in his shell, stitching him back together. The pain wasn’t sharp—it was soft, coaxing. He could feel his heartbeat syncing with the pulse of the light.

For a moment, it felt peaceful.

For a moment, he almost let it happen.

Then he heard Zza’s voice—not a memory, not a trick. A whisper that cut through everything.

*Don’t you dare give up.*

Buzz froze. The light around him flickered, losing rhythm. The entity recoiled slightly, confusion bleeding through its tone. *She is outside the pattern. Irrelevant.*

He smiled. "Yeah, well. She’s better at ignoring patterns than you are."

He pushed against the current, forcing his mind to focus on the sound of her. The whisper grew stronger, faint but real, threading through the static.

He reached for it. His claws barely formed, half-transparent, but he reached anyway.

The light shifted to resist him. *Return to the whole.*

"Make me."

The brightness cracked. For a heartbeat, he saw darkness beyond it—a real void, not made of light, but of distance. And through that distance, he felt something pull.

---

Zza stumbled through smoke and ash. The crater that had once been a battlefield was gone, replaced by a field of glass that hummed faintly under her feet. Each step sent small pulses outward, echoing across the surface.

The coalition limped behind her. Scarabs missing legs. Centipedes dragging themselves in half-formed coils. The Elder floated above them, its silk torn to threads. No one spoke. The air itself seemed afraid to carry sound.

Zza’s claws shook as she pressed them against her head. "He’s not gone. He’s not."

The Elder’s voice came slow, heavy. "The field consumed him. There’s nothing to—"

She spun. "Don’t finish that."

The Glowbeetles hovered in silence. The survivors looked to her because they needed to believe someone still knew what to do. She didn’t. But she wasn’t about to stop moving.

She knelt on the ground, running her claws along the glass. The hum under it vibrated with faint rhythm—heartbeat-like. "He’s in there. I can feel it."

A Scarab stepped forward, voice quiet. "And if it’s not him anymore?"

Zza’s throat tightened. "Then we drag back whatever’s left and remind it who it used to be."

She closed her eyes and let her silk unravel from her wrists, thin strands of white spreading across the surface. Each thread pulsed once, twice, then began to glow faintly as it touched the residual light.

The connection hit her like a surge of cold water. Her breath caught.

She saw flashes—Buzz’s face blurred through gold, his laughter twisted with static. For a heartbeat, their thoughts brushed. She felt his exhaustion, his stubbornness, the tiny pulse of humor still alive in him.

Then the link snapped. The pain dropped her to her knees.

The Elder caught her before she hit the ground. "You reached him?"

Zza nodded weakly. "He’s fighting."

"And losing?"

She didn’t answer. Her silk curled back around her arms, trembling. "We need time. A place to rebuild. The forest isn’t safe anymore."

The Elder’s gaze turned toward the horizon, where faint light flickered through the trees—new colonies forming, maybe, or just the echo of the storm. "The swarm will scatter without direction."

"Then I’ll give them one," Zza said.

She stood, every motion slow, deliberate. The coalition watched her, waiting. The silence pressed down like gravity. For the first time since the battle, she looked up—not at the sky, but at the space above it, where the light had vanished.

"Hold the forest," she said quietly. "He’ll find a way back."

---

In the void, Buzz drifted again. The light had quieted. It wasn’t fighting anymore.

He could still hear her voice, faint and fading, buried under layers of static.

He tried to call out, but his mouth wouldn’t move. His thoughts echoed into nothing. The last thing he saw before the light closed again was a shape—his shape—standing across from him, smiling in the dark.

It whispered in his own voice, almost kind. *She can’t save you from what you are becoming.*

The light folded shut.

---

Zza opened her eyes to dawn. The forest had started to regrow. The coalition slept in makeshift nests around her, breathing slow, wounded, alive. She stared at the horizon until it blurred, until the first golden shimmer touched the sky.

"Come back," she whispered.

The wind answered, low and hollow.

Buzz didn’t.

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