The cage snapped shut.
My bond with Styx did not vanish. It stretched into a thin, painful thread that carried nothing but fear and the muffled beat of wings against glass.
But the rest of the swarm felt it at once: the queen had been cut off.
Thousands of swarm members in the tunnels lost the shared rhythm. The captains relayed their old commands, but no longer knew why they were carrying them out. Some broods continued towards the central chamber. Others fell upon the wounded fighters. A third group surged towards the surface, where the border workers' villages lay.
Warnings flashed across the panel.
"Coordination lost. Base instincts: feed, locate queen, establish clutch."
Kane was retreating towards the freight lift. Four basilisk rings carried the cage, keeping everyone away.
"Styx!"
She sent me an image of my palm. Then the grey egg. Then darkness.
The cage smothered even words.
I lunged after Kane. Cole caught me by the shoulder.
"Stop the swarm first."
"He's taking Styx."
"And your insects are eating people right now."
Down the far corridor, a Guild fighter screamed as a black cloud engulfed his legs. He tried to crawl away, but the paralysing venom was already taking hold.
I ordered a retreat.
The nearest thousand obeyed. The rest did not hear me, or received the command too late.
Kane knew what choice he had left me. If I went after Styx, the swarm would make his accusation true. If I stopped the broods, he would have the queen and the key.
Lily pulled the storage drive from the archive. The copy had reached only thirty-two per cent.
"We have some of the contracts and the Crown schematics."
"Get out with Mira."
I closed my eyes and entered the direct circuit.
The nearest thousand became my hands. I divided them among the captains and forced them to relay a single impulse: cold.
Ventilation shafts ran beneath the ancient nest, filled with ash-laden air. Low temperatures sent the soldiers into torpor. It did not kill them at once, but it stopped their hunger and division.
Seven captains accepted the command at first, then twelve. The rest continued to search for the queen.
I sent the thousand under my control against their own swarm.
They did not sting. They drove the disordered broods into streams and herded them towards the cold shafts. In every tunnel, an invisible struggle played out between ancient instinct and their master's final command.
The mental strain reached its limit. The walls vanished from my sight. I saw dozens of corridors, warm bodies, red trails of blood and an empty point where Styx should have been.
"Emergency protocol available," the System reported. "Swarm disbandment. All autonomous nodes lose subordinate status. Accumulated distributed evolution points are cancelled. Control cannot be re-established without the queen's consent."
If I activated the protocol, I would lose my army. The captains would stop hearing me for good. But the command to search for Styx among the humans would vanish with it.
On the surface, the first brood had already reached a workers' settlement.
I confirmed the disbandment.
The System panel turned white.
The lines went dark one after another: forty-nine autonomous broods, thirty-seven, twenty, eight, zero.
Movement in the tunnels changed: the mosquitoes stopped gathering into a single mass. Some followed the cold into the shafts, while others scattered through the forest. Several broods remained hungry, but no longer moved towards populated districts as one.
I stopped feeling them.
Only the thread to Styx still stretched upwards, towards the receding cage.
I took one step and fell.
Cole caught me. Mira opened a side airlock, and Lily held the storage drive containing part of the archive. An old drainage tunnel began beyond the airlock.
"Kane took the key," Mira said.
"No."
Lily opened her hand. A transparent plate lay in her palm.
While Kane was watching Styx and the core, she had replaced the key with a blank laboratory slide.
We still had a way to shut down the external circuit.
But the queen capable of sending the signal through the network was in Kane's hands.
An hour later we emerged by the swamp, where Guild craft were already flying overhead. I could feel Styx inside one of them.
The thread grew thinner.
Then it broke.
The System vanished with her. No points, no swarm count, no beast's name remained before my eyes.
I stood amid the grey ash and, for the first time since the dead end, heard no buzzing.
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