CHAPTER 65: CHAPTER 64: THE CAGE WITH WINDOWS

Zza didn’t move for a long time.

Her claws stayed pressed into the dirt where Buzz had stood. The earth was warm. Still humming. Still holding the shape of him, like the world hadn’t realized he was gone yet.

The coalition formed a loose circle around her. No one spoke. The Scarabs held their claws against their chests. The Centipedes coiled like mourning bands. Glowbeetles dimmed themselves almost black. Even the Elder’s silk sagged, slack with grief.

The newborn Queen stood very still.

Her wings were lowered. Her mandibles parted just slightly, like she had something to say but didn’t remember how to form it. She stared at the empty space where Buzz had been, eyes shaking.

Zza lifted her head.

No tears. Just a hollow so deep it scraped bone.

"You took him," she whispered.

The newborn didn’t respond.

Zza rose, slow and deliberate. Silk dragged behind her, catching leaves and twigs. She didn’t bother untangling it. Her claws curled, knuckles white.

"You took him once. You took him again. You keep taking him and calling it destiny. You think we’re all supposed to bend just because your blood is gold."

The newborn’s throat clicked. A tiny sound. Almost confused.

"I didn’t want this," she said.

Zza laughed. A sharp, broken sound. "You don’t *want.* You consume."

The newborn flinched — not in fear, in recognition.

Like Zza had spoken something she had tried not to believe.

Her wings trembled. "He chose—"

Zza cut her off, voice cracking like a wing fracture. "He chose *freedom.* And you couldn’t stand it."

The newborn stepped back.

The scarabs leaned forward.

The air grew sharp.

Centipedes uncoiled. Glowbeetles flickered awake.

The coalition was seconds from war.

Then a tremor rolled through the clearing.

Every head snapped up.

Not a psychic ripple.

Not a memory echo.

Not the forest.

**Something external.**

Footsteps.

Distant.

Heavy.

Many.

Zza turned toward the ridge — expecting humans.

It wasn’t them.

It was the **hollow** where Buzz had disappeared.

It shuddered.

Split.

And a pulse of sound tore through the forest — a frequency that didn’t belong to insects or roots or Queens.

A **human** frequency.

The newborn’s wings shot open. "He’s alive."

Zza’s heart stopped. "Where?"

The newborn didn’t answer.

The forest did.

Trees twisted their branches toward the horizon, all pointing in one direction.

South.

Past the rivers.

Past the valley.

Past the hive ruins.

Toward the concrete world.

The glowbeetles flickered the message into the clearing.

**He has been taken.**

The humans didn’t fail to capture him.

They succeeded.

Zza stumbled forward. "No— no, no, no, they don’t know what he is— they’ll dissect him— they’ll use him— he won’t survive in there—"

The newborn’s voice went quiet and small.

"He won’t survive **without us** either."

The coalition didn’t argue.

This wasn’t a battle.

This was a rescue.

---

#### *Buzz woke up cold.*

The world around him had straight edges.

Metal.

Glass.

White light humming overhead.

His body felt wrong. His wings were folded against a hard surface. Needles pushed into his shell. Something buzzed near his blood — a foreign current testing him, mapping him, learning him.

He tried to sit up.

His body didn’t move.

His mind slammed back into itself like a door shutting hard.

Someone nearby spoke.

"He’s stabilizing."

Another voice, deeper. "Be careful. Last specimen linked to the neural network nearly wiped a research wing."

Buzz’s vision swam. Shapes moved beyond the glass.

Humans.

He tried to speak. His mandibles clicked, but no sound came.

The tall human leaned closer to the observation window.

He was young. Hair tied back. Sleeves rolled. Gloves blood-smeared. Something surgical but frantic in his eyes.

"And there you are," the man murmured, voice heavy with awe. "The one they call Buzz Windbreaker."

Buzz’s heart froze.

He understood him.

He understood the words.

Not by translation.

Not by instinct.

**He understood human language.**

The man smiled. Not cruel. Not kind. Just fascinated.

"We finally caught you."

Buzz tried to move again.

His claw twitched.

Just a millimeter.

Just enough.

The man’s eyes widened.

"Oh," he said softly.

"You’re still in there."

He sounded thrilled.

Buzz felt sick.

The man turned to someone off-screen. "Prep the resonance monitor. If the hive reacts to this one’s neural output, we’ll have proof of directed psychic field coordination."

In other words:

They were going to **use his mind** as a doorway.

And the forest would hear him even if he didn’t want to call.

Buzz tried again to speak — to scream — to warn them—

His mandibles finally caught air.

One word scraped out.

"Zza."

The man froze.

He stepped closer to the glass.

"What did you just say?"

Buzz tried again.

The word was a wound now.

"Zza."

The man’s expression changed.

Not confusion.

Recognition.

He knew that name.

He turned to the others.

"Notify the command division. The Queen won’t attack yet. She’s bonded. This changes the strategy entirely."

Buzz’s blood ran ice.

They knew the bond.

They knew she would come.

They were **baiting the forest** with him.

---

#### *Back in the clearing*

Zza stared south, chest heaving, silk trembling in ragged strands.

"He’s calling me."

The newborn stepped beside her.

"Then we answer."

Zza looked at her — really looked — and realized something horrifying:

The newborn wasn’t manipulating her.

The newborn was terrified too.

They needed each other.

Not alliance.

Not forgiveness.

Something more desperate.

Zza nodded once.

"We go now."

The coalition moved.

Scarabs first.

Glowbeetles rising.

Centipedes uncoiling.

The Elder tightening its silk like armor.

The newborn stepped forward.

Zza stepped with her.

Something huge woke in the forest.

A war march.

A rescue.

A reckoning.

They didn’t know what waited.

But they knew one thing:

Buzz wasn’t gone.

He was **held.**

And they were coming.

Not quietly.

Not patiently.

But like a storm that had learned how to breathe.

The march south didn’t feel heroic.

It felt like dragging grief behind you by the teeth.

The coalition moved through the forest in staggered waves — scarabs clicking tired rhythms, centipedes hauling broken bodies, glowbeetles flashing soft signals that dimmed more each hour. Zza stayed near the front, silk trailing behind her like she’d forgotten what upkeep was. The newborn Queen walked beside her, quiet, wings folded like she was trying to pretend she didn’t know how to be threatening.

Which was funny, in the worst possible way.

The creature who once tried to consume her entire hive now looked like a kid kicked out of class and told to stand in the hallway and *think about what she did.*

Zza would have laughed, maybe, if her chest didn’t feel like someone had scooped out the center of her with a spoon.

She kept replaying Buzz’s last look — the moment before everything shattered into light and roots and silence. He hadn’t looked afraid. He’d looked... resigned. Like part of him had expected this ending the whole time.

She hated that.

She hated *him* for it, just a little.

And she hated herself for understanding.

The newborn Queen finally spoke, her voice low, almost quiet enough to disappear in the brush.

"I didn’t know humans were still here."

Zza shrugged, claws dragging across bark as she walked. "They live everywhere. They build walls and then pretend the world outside those walls is an idea and not a thing that can walk up and knock."

The Queen stared ahead. "When I was being made—before I opened my eyes—I heard them. I thought it was a dream memory."

Zza snorted. "Yeah, no. They’re real. Loud. Smell like chemicals and arrogance."

Glowbeetles buzzed at that, like a tired laugh that didn’t want to be a laugh.

The newborn’s wings swayed. "Buzz spoke their language."

Zza’s jaw clenched. "Buzz speaks *everything.* He always does. He just... figures it out. That’s the problem. He adapts. He bends. He tries to make things fit. Even when it hurts him."

The Queen stopped walking.

Zza didn’t.

She only stopped when she realized the footsteps behind her had gone dead silent.

The Queen’s eyes were not glowing or burning or commanding.

They were just **sad.**

Which Zza really did not have the emotional capacity to deal with.

"I don’t want to consume him," the Queen said softly.

Zza turned fully, claws halfway raised because emotional conversations were honestly worse than fights. "Cool. Congrats. Want a medal? Because he still disappears every time you show up."

The Queen flinched. Just a little.

Enough to show she had *learned that flinching existed.*

"He’s the only memory I didn’t inherit," she whispered. "Everything else in me is... pattern. Instinct. Roles. But him? I only know him because I saw him. That means he’s mine by experience. Not programming."

Zza stared at her.

For a second, the world didn’t feel like war.

It felt like two extremely tired women standing in a hallway of an overheated dorm, realizing they were fighting over the same guy who absolutely did not deserve this level of emotional investment.

"...He’s not yours," Zza said finally, voice raw. "He gets to *be.* He gets to choose."

The Queen lowered her head.

Which was when the ground changed.

The trees thinned. The air lost its damp, moss-soaked heaviness. The world widened into an ugly open stretch of cracked dirt and struggling grass.

The **wall** stood ahead.

Metal.

Tall.

Cold.

Too straight to belong to anything alive.

Zza’s heart slammed into her ribs.

"Oh gods," she breathed. "They built a perimeter."

The coalition drew tighter, wings folding, claws sinking into mud for leverage. The glowbeetles dimmed instinctively, blending into shadow.

Scarabs began their slow, ceremonial drumming — not for battle, but for mourning.

Someone in this story was about to die.

The newborn looked up at the metal plating like she was seeing a coffin lid.

"They cage what they don’t understand."

Zza nodded. "Yeah. And they call that research."

---

Behind the wall, Buzz lay still.

His shell pressed to cold glass.

His body pinned by restraints.

Wires looped through the cracks in his plating.

The lab wasn’t loud. That was the worst part.

It was quiet.

Clean quiet.

Sterile quiet.

A quiet that didn’t care whether something was suffering as long as it was still intact.

The man with the tied-back hair adjusted a monitor near Buzz’s head. His voice held the tone of someone narrating to himself.

"Neural lattice synchronization is increasing. He’s responding to shared memory stimulus."

A woman leaned in beside him. "So the hive bond is real."

"Oh, extremely." He smiled. "And now we can test how far it reaches."

Buzz didn’t move.

Couldn’t move.

But he *heard.*

And he didn’t hear through his ears.

He heard through the forest.

Through the roots.

Through the leaves.

Through the coalition marching toward this very wall.

He heard **Zza.**

Calling him.

Searching for him.

Trying to hold onto him through sheer force of will.

He tried to move his claws again.

They didn’t respond.

The man noticed.

"Oh. There you are again."

He sounded delighted.

"I’ve always wondered how consciousness operates in eusocial systems. Are you an individual with access to the hive? Or are you simply the voice the hive chooses to present when it needs one?"

Buzz didn’t speak.

The man smiled wider.

"Let’s find out."

He reached for a dial.

Buzz’s vision flickered white—

—and the *forest screamed.*

Not metaphor.

Not memory.

Actual sound.

Trees bent.

Soil buckled.

Insects howled in chorus.

The network surged like a tidal wave.

Outside the wall, Zza staggered.

Her breath punched out of her lungs.

Her vision fractured.

She tasted Buzz’s pain like it was poured down her throat.

The newborn Queen grabbed her shoulder to steady her.

"What is happening?" she whispered.

Zza forced herself upright, claws shaking.

"They’re forcing him to call us."

The coalition froze.

The newborn’s expression twisted into something that was not rage and was not grief but something viciously in between.

"They want us to attack the wall."

Zza nodded. The world spun.

"They want a war they can record."

The newborn turned toward the metal.

Wings rising.

Mandibles parting.

Voice dropping into a tone that made the dirt ripple.

"Then we give them something they will never survive."