CHAPTER 67: CHAPTER 66: THE FOREST AND THE CITY

They moved slowly.

Not because they wanted to.

Because if they moved any faster, Buzz’s breathing might stop.

Zza walked at the center of them, Buzz against her chest, his weight slumped into her silk like someone asleep in the middle of drowning. Her claws stayed locked around him, one under his thorax, one behind his head. She didn’t notice her arms shaking. She didn’t notice how many times she tripped. She didn’t notice she was bleeding again.

She just kept whispering, over and over, like repetition could build a bridge:

"Stay with me. Hey. Buzz. Stay here. Stay."

His breathing didn’t answer. Not steady. Not gone. Just *lost.*

The newborn Queen walked beside her, matching her pace so carefully it felt unnatural — wings tucked tight, mandibles shut, head bowed. She didn’t take her eyes off Buzz once. The guilt sat inside her like a stone someone had swallowed and couldn’t dig out no matter how hard they clawed.

Scarabs cleared the way with slow, heavy steps, claws scraping brush aside. Centipedes formed a living circle around the group, their movement steady like practiced ritual. Glowbeetles flickered faint patterns overhead, low and warm and steady — a guide tone for anyone on the edge of breaking.

It should have felt like safety.

Zza only felt hollow.

The forest didn’t vibrate. Didn’t whisper. Didn’t speak. The network was quiet — not dead — just holding its breath like something huge was coiled inside it, waiting.

Buzz twitched in her arms.

Just a fraction.

Just enough to make her freeze.

His mandibles parted — slow — like someone waking from underwater.

"Hey— hey," Zza breathed. Her voice cracked in half. "I’m here. Buzz, come back to me. I’m right here. Please."

His eyes opened.

Not fully.

Just slivered.

But they were not Queen-lit this time.

Not drowning in gold.

Not glazed with network static.

Just... exposed.

Raw.

And there was something behind them that Zza had never seen.

Not fear.

Not pain.

**Memory.**

His voice dragged out of his throat like it had to crawl through broken glass to get there.

"...too...fast..."

Zza pressed her forehead to his. "What is? Tell me. Say it. I’ll help you. Just—stay with me."

Buzz’s breathing hitched. His body jerked once — a tremor that ran from his mandibles to his abdomen.

The newborn flinched toward him like instinct wanted to take over.

Zza snapped at her without thinking. "Don’t touch him."

The newborn pulled back. Not offended. Not angry.

Wounded.

Zza didn’t apologize. Couldn’t. Didn’t have space inside her for that.

Buzz’s claws twitched weakly against her arms, like he was trying to hold something that wasn’t there. His voice came again, a stutter between breaths:

"...I was...running..."

Zza swallowed. "Running from what?"

His eyes flicked — unfocused — searching something far away.

"...lights...crowds...noise..."

The words were wrong.

They weren’t insect memories.

They landed in the air like foreign objects.

The newborn’s wings stilled.

The scarabs stopped walking.

The centipedes froze mid-coil.

Even the forest leaned closer.

Zza whispered, "Buzz, what were you running from?"

His mandibles opened.

And his voice changed.

Not in tone.

In *shape.*

The sounds didn’t click.

They *formed.*

Syllables.

Human ones.

"Stop—! I said I’m fine— I said— I said let me— go—"

Zza didn’t understand the meaning.

But she understood the *hurt.*

Buzz’s chest seized. His shell pulsed hard — once — twice — like something underneath was trying to break out. Gold flared along his cracks, then flickered out, like flame losing air.

Zza held him tighter. "Breathe. Buzz. Breathe. I have you. I have you."

His breathing didn’t steady.

It broke.

Into sobs.

Not loud.

Just one sound — the kind someone makes when they realize something they lost a long time ago is coming back whether they want it or not.

The newborn watched him like she was watching the shape of her entire existence shift.

"He remembers," she whispered.

Zza shook her head. "No. He’s confused. He’s—he’s injured—he’s—"

"He remembers," the newborn repeated — softer this time. "Not everything. Just the pieces that hurt the most. Those always come first."

Zza didn’t want that to be true.

Buzz’s voice cracked again:

"I was running."

Zza smoothed a trembling claw along his shell. "Okay. Running. Running where?"

His breath hitched.

"...street..."

The word meant nothing to her.

But the newborn stiffened.

She knew.

Zza’s voice went thin. "What is that?"

The newborn spoke carefully — picking each word like handling something sharp.

"It’s where humans move. Their ground. Their path."

Zza stared at Buzz.

His past wasn’t a metaphor.

He wasn’t symbolic rebirth.

He wasn’t born here.

He **came** here.

Buzz Windbreaker had lived before.

As something else.

Someone else.

Someone who ran.

Someone who would rather burn out than slow down enough to feel something.

Someone who would rather die than be held.

Zza’s chest ached so deep she thought something cracked inside.

She looked at the newborn — the creature she had fought, hated, blamed.

The newborn looked back.

And said something Zza was not ready to hear:

"He didn’t choose us."

Zza clenched her claws.

The newborn’s voice stayed steady. Gentle. Cruel only in honesty:

"He ran here to get away from something worse."

Silence spun out.

Scarabs lowered their heads.

Glowbeetles dimmed to a faint hush.

The Elder silk swayed like mourning cloth.

Zza answered, voice rough:

"Doesn’t matter. He’s ours now."

Buzz whispered something — too faint to understand — and went still again, breath slowing into a fragile rhythm.

Zza curled around him, silk wrapping them both.

The newborn didn’t try to speak again.

The coalition walked on.

And far behind them — back in the broken facility, past the smashed wall, past the scattered research tools — one screen was still glowing.

The drone footage feed.

Still transmitting.

Still sending.

Still carrying Buzz’s image.

Toward a city that did not remember him—

—but **someone there did.**

And they had been waiting a long time.

The drone didn’t stop.

It skimmed treetops, dipped through fog, crossed farmland and river and road as if the entire world had been flattened into a map someone forgot to label. The screen feed remained open the whole time — Buzz’s broken body, Zza’s silhouette wrapped around him, the newborn Queen’s stillness like a blade waiting to drop.

The drone arrived at the city just before dusk.

Skyscrapers rose like polished teeth. Billboards flickered colors that didn’t belong to anything alive. Cars crawled like insects with wheels, honking rhythms that sounded like language without meaning.

The drone flew straight toward the tallest building — a smooth block of mirrored glass that reflected a sky already graying.

Inside:

A room of screens.

Rows of white desks.

People with headsets and bored faces.

And one man who didn’t look bored at all.

Dr. Carian Holt.

Senior Cognitive Architect.

Director of Neural Interface Research.

He didn’t look up when the others noticed the incoming feed. Didn’t look up when technicians scrambled. Didn’t look up when someone yelled across the floor:

"Sir — sir, we’re receiving unauthorized field transmission from Zone 7 — the... the samples have escaped—"

Carian raised one hand.

The room snapped silent.

He kept reading the page in front of him — a faded report printed years ago. Edges creased. Words circled. Ink smudged where a thumb had rested far too long.

Then the drone video reached the central screen.

Buzz’s body.

Zza holding him.

The newborn walking beside them like grief given bone.

Scarabs, Glowbeetles, Centipedes — all moving with purpose, with coordination, with something dangerously close to *unity.*

Only then did Carian lift his head.

Everyone watched his expression the way people watch weather — hoping it means sun, bracing for storm.

His breath left in one slow exhale.

"...It’s him."

The room froze.

Someone whispered, "Sir?"

Carian stepped toward the screen.

His voice was very quiet. The kind of quiet that rearranged the floor under your feet.

"He’s alive."

No one spoke.

No one moved.

Because this man didn’t sound surprised.

He sounded like someone who had been waiting for a ghost to knock on his door.

The youngest technician swallowed. "But sir, we archived the record. The report said he died in the initial event—"

Carian didn’t look away from the screen.

"The report lied."

The feed zoomed — Buzz’s face flickered huge across the wall.

Carian’s hand rose. Hovered. Stopped — not touching the screen, just close enough to shake.

A memory slipped through him, sharp and bright:

A boy sprinting across a street at midnight.

Laughing.

Sweat in his hair.

Breath heavy.

Eyes wild.

A shout behind him — someone calling his name.

**Kai.**

Buzz twitched in Zza’s arms at that exact second.

Like he *heard* the memory.

The projector feed crackled.

Carian closed his eyes.

"You were always running," he whispered.

The room didn’t understand.

But Carian wasn’t talking to them.

He turned suddenly, sharply, terrifyingly calm.

"Prepare the urban perimeter. All districts adjacent to the southern preserve go to reinforcement protocol. And get me a field extraction unit, non-lethal loadout. We don’t damage the specimen."

The youngest technician stammered. "Sir, that’s— that’s a full-scale city defense lock. You’re calling alert level—"

Carian didn’t shout.

He didn’t have to.

His voice dropped.

"Do you see what he brought with him?"

Everyone looked at the screen again.

Zza’s claws locked around Buzz like she would tear the world open before she let go.

The newborn Queen’s wings half-spread, waiting for someone to challenge her right to exist.

The coalition — **not a hive**

but **an army.**

Carian tapped the screen.

"Those aren’t insects anymore. That’s a sovereign network. And he’s the anchor node."

Silence.

Not confusion.

Fear.

*Finally.*

Carian stared at Buzz’s half-open eyes, voice softening for one breath:

"Don’t make me cage you again."

---

### **Meanwhile — Back in the Forest**

They had stopped in a clearing deep enough that the sky was nothing but a thin circle of pale light. Moss cushioned everything. The air smelled like damp roots and the faint exhale of night-blooming spores.

Zza sat with Buzz against her chest, his head tucked beneath her mandibles, her silk wrapped around them both. Her claws never stopped moving — tiny adjustments, smoothing shell, tracing his face, grounding herself in the physical.

Her voice stayed low.

Steady.

Alive.

"You hear me? I know you do. You stay with me until I say otherwise. I don’t care what memory is clawing at you. You stay here. You hear me, Buzz?"

His breath was shallow.

The newborn Queen watched from a few feet away, wings folded like she was holding herself still by force.

Scarabs stood perimeter.

Glowbeetles dimmed to night-light glow.

Centipedes pressed tight around the clearing edge, segments overlapping in a breathing barrier.

No one spoke.

No one wanted to be the one to break this.

Then Buzz moved.

Not much.

Just a tiny curl of one claw around the silk at Zza’s arm.

Zza froze.

Her breath caught.

She didn’t dare look down.

Buzz’s voice came as a rasp.

"...Zza."

She bent fast, forehead touching his. "Yes. Yes. I’m here. I’m here."

His next words were not insect sounds.

They were **human.**

A low, exhausted, fraying voice pulled from the bottom of memory:

"Don’t... let them... take me again."

Zza didn’t understand the words.

She understood the meaning anyway.

Her answer didn’t shake.

"I won’t."

The newborn closed her eyes. Her voice was almost a prayer.

"They are already coming."

Zza didn’t look up.

She didn’t need to.

She felt them.

The city wasn’t waiting.

And the forest was already **rising** to meet it.