Taiko clung to the trunk, his fingers screaming in protest. He watched with a mixture of bitterness and relief as the children, bored by their search, wandered past his tree without looking up. He was trapped. His muscles, exhausted by the climb, refused to obey.
Then came the wasps.
They began to blanket his body, crawling over his skin, their frantic buzzing a deafening roar in his ears. Paralyzing, primal horror took hold. He was ten meters up, surrounded by stinging death, with no way down and no one to call for help. The sheer pressure of his own mortality triggered a violent chemical surge in his brain.
Adrenalin flooded his blood.
At first, it was just a pinprick of heat in his palms. Within seconds, it became a searing, white-hot focus that burned away his fear. There was a sharp, localized crack—not of wood, but of air—followed by a concussive pop. The entire crown of the majestic tree, weakened by some invisible force, sheared off along with the hive.
The "bacon-girl" turned just in time to see the heavy mass of leaf and wood descend. The hive struck her directly. In the chaotic aftermath, the Queen Bee, driven by a shattered instinct for survival, sought a new sanctuary. She crawled into the eye socket of the unconscious girl, forming a grotesque, symbiotic bond. The other children's screams were cut short as the swarm descended, covering the girl in a living shroud of vibrating wings.
Then, the forest fell silent. Even the birds ceased their songs.
Taiko awoke to the smell of ozone and damp earth. He was buried under a pile of broken branches, his skin a roadmap of scratches. For a moment, he saw a familiar mustache through a gap in the wood before darkness claimed him again.
When he finally opened his eyes, he was back in a hospital—but not the one he knew. The room was dim, illuminated by humming fluorescent lamps. There were no windows. The walls were reinforced concrete.
Taiko sat up, touching the treated abrasions on his arms. He looked across the room to find Dr. Garaki sitting at a terminal, his goggles reflecting the glow of several monitors.
— So, you've returned to us,— Garaki said, his voice devoid of its usual clinical warmth. His gaze shifted to a glass jar on the desk. Inside, floating in formalin, was the Queen Bee.
—I would be very interested to hear your version of the events, young man.
The atmosphere in the room was suffocating. Taiko felt a lump form in his throat. This wasn't the kindly Head Doctor; this was a man who saw the world as a dissection table.
— I... I just...— Taiko stammered, hiding his shaking hands behind his back. He felt exposed, his every insecurity laid bare under the old man's piercing stare.
He thought of the girl. He realized with a jolt of cold realization that she was gone. She would never pester him again. The blood on the jar told him everything his vocabulary couldn't yet process.
— Taiko, what you did was grave,— Garaki said sternly. Taiko braced for a lecture on murder, but it never came. — You broke our rule. You left the hospital grounds without supervision.
The boy blinked, stunned. His "father" cared more about the breach of discipline than the horrific fate of his playmate.
— I was... curious, —Taiko whispered.
— Curiosity... —Garaki's tone softened slightly, —...is the most dangerous and beautiful of hungers. But had you not indulged it so recklessly, this specimen wouldn't be sitting in a jar.
He gestured to the Queen Bee. —Quite a fascinating mutation, isn't it?
Taiko stepped closer, drawn in by the pulsating, disproportionate abdomen of the insect. — W-what happened to the girl?
— There was a stir at the hospital,— Garaki said, wiping his lenses. —To avoid the prying eyes of the police, I redirected the narrative. I suggested she wandered off into the deep forest and got lost. They were all too happy to believe it.
The scientist stood and beckoned Taiko to follow him. They passed through an automatic door into a deeper sanctum of the lab.
The light flickered, illuminating several surgical tables. A girl lay on one of them. Taiko tried to ignore the white-sheeted beds, from beneath which a pale hand protruded. Obviously that of a long-dead adult. A used syringe with a large needle lay in a nearby trash bin. A drop of some substance still hung from the tip of the needle.
He returned his gaze to the girl. Her skin was the color of ash, and where her eye had been, there was an empty, bloody void. She wasn't breathing. The distracting noise had died away forever.
Taiko froze. — What did he do to her? Why is she... like that?
— Are you afraid?— Garaki asked, watching the boy's reaction with clinical precision.
Taiko fought the bile rising in his throat. — She didn't deserve this. Even if she was... annoying.
— Deserve?— Garaki's voice echoed against the cold walls. —Deserve has no place in biology. There is no God to judge us, no cosmic scale of fairness. Rules, Taiko, are invented for one purpose: to control the herd and retarded people. The only truths in this world are knowledge and the strength to wield it. You will only be truly powerful when you stop letting the 'will' of others impose rules upon you.
Taiko stared, the words feeling alien, yet strangely resonant. Seeing the confusion in the boy's green eyes, the old man pressed a button on the wall.
A heavy steel gate slid open, revealing the roaring, orange maw of a crematorium. The intense heat hit Taiko like a physical blow. The girl's body was slid into the furnace. Through the thermal glass, Taiko watched as the flames impartially reduced his first "friend" to gray ash.
He was mesmerized.
Deep down, questions burned as brightly as the furnace. How had he survived that fall? And Garaki, watching the boy's hands, was already calculating. That "explosion" that had felled the tree—it wasn't a coincidence. It was the birth of something.
— A spontaneous awakening,— the scientist thought, his eyes gleaming behind his goggles. — It's time for the Third's first real lesson.