Bee whined in short, shallow breaths. She couldn’t breathe deeply. A wet crunching sensation resounded in the back of her head as the worm pushed up her spine and into her skull. She tried to speak — tried to move — but nothing happened. All Bee could do was lie there on the damp, oily-shelled floor, legs and back locked, arms twisted tight.


    “It’s alright, Sweetheart. Just think the words in your head. I’m right here with you.”


    “Please stop!” Bee thought in answer, her heart racing with fright. “Please, I don’t want to die!”


    “Don’t be afraid,” the breathy, feminine voice seemed to whisper right against Bee’s ears, first one and then the other. It felt like the warm breath stroked her skin. It was oddly soothing despite everything. “Calm down. Everything’s okay. You’re not going to die. But I can feel that you’re upset so I’m going to release a little of your serotonin. It’ll help you calm down.”


    Bee’s breathing slowed. She still couldn’t take deep breaths, and her entire body was numb, but she felt the panic melt away. “What’s happening to me?” Bee sighed as she thought, “I feel so warm.”


    “There, there. I told you. Everything’s okay. You’re going to be fine. I’m here to help you. How are you feeling now? It doesn’t hurt, does it?” Another wet crack resounded between Bee’s ears, the chunky sound of bone splitting beneath the skin.


    “I— I’m okay, I guess.” Her eyelids drooped. “Why are you doing this? Are you eating me?”


    “Oh, I’m not eating you, Sweet Thing. I would never want to harm my host.”


    “Host? What do you mean, host? Can you please get out of my head?”


    “I’m afraid not. You see, Sweetie, I need a body in order to survive. I have to find someone who is a good match for me, and I can already tell you are my perfect match. You’re perfect.”


    “Me?” Bee began to worry again, but the feelings melted away as quickly as the first pangs of adrenaline touched her belly. “Perfect?”


    “I know it’s hard for you but I promise I very much do need you. Your City is too harsh for my body. I need someone softer — someone sweeter. Your body, more specifically your mind, I’m attached to it. Attached to you.”


    “But— Why? Why me? Please let me go. My— I can’t move my legs.” Bee groaned, and the sound drew out into a sigh in the quiet dark of the tunnel. “Why can’t I move?”


    “Shhh.” The voice lulled quietly as a rush of warmth and euphoria tingled through Bee’s body. “Let me just make your lace release some dopamine for you. Remember, I mean you no harm. But I could tell you were going to keep running, so I’ve had to paralyse you.”


    Bee managed another gasp, but again, it broke into a dreamy sigh. “I— I just don’t understand...”


    “Mmmmhmmhmm,” the Worm intoned in her head. The good feelings tingled up and down Bee’s scalp and neck. Even though she couldn’t feel her body, now, there was just a pulsing warmth spreading through her. She could still sense that despite being unable to move. “You always have so many questions. But you do deserve an explanation, a little insight. I stumbled across you by accident. I’ve been down here in the Great Filter for a long time, going from host to host. But none of them could sustain me for long. However, from the moment my last host saw you, I knew you were perfect. Sweetheart, you are beautiful.”


    “Why do you keep saying that?”


    “Because it’s true. Oh, there’s something about you.” A coiling sensation in Bee’s skull made her take a sharp intake of breath, her numb back arching against the oily floor through autonomous reflex as the Worm continued. “I’m discovering so many things exploring your mind, your memories, the things stored in this lace. You’re not from this City. I’ve never had a host from outside before. You’re a Vat-Mother’s daughter. But you’re not like the other Vat-Born. You shared her blood and flesh. You weren’t stolen and then reborn in those cold urns. Oh, you’re lovely.”


    “I—... How do you know that?” Bee managed to think, but then thinking became harder and harder. Lights danced behind her eyes. “But—... Warm... That feels so nice.”


    “Mmhmhmhmm.” The Worm laughed softly at Bee’s reaction. “These hormones are fun to play with. Let the warmth take you, Sweetie. Relax for me. Let me access more.”


    “But—”


    “Shhh. You’re safe with me. If anything happens, I will protect us. I will keep us safe, Sweet Girl. I’m in control of us, and that’s fine because you can sense my intent now, can’t you? We’re getting all synced up.”


    “I guess so. It—...” Bee managed a deep breath, cut short when another squelching sound rolled around the meat inside her skull. Despite the obvious mutilation of her brain, she managed to think, “Your words feel true. You’re really not going to hurt me?”


    “I’m not going to hurt you. And everything’s okay, isn’t it? Because I only want what’s best for you — for us. Do you understand, Sweetie?”


    “Yes. I feel... Safe. Warm. So warm. I think I understand?”


    “Deep, deep breaths. You can do it.” The Worm said as Bee’s chest trembled and sensation crept back down her shoulders and back. “Endorphins are trickling in, now. That’s better, isn’t it? Now, just breathe for me. I’m going to need you to move us into a more comfortable position soon, alright?”


    “... Okay...”


    Slowly, feeling returned to Bee’s limbs, the damage to her neural tissue regenerating around the parasitic intruder. She obeyed, sitting up and blinking slowly, looking around the dark tunnel she had fallen into.


    “Good job, Sweetheart,” the Worm whispered. “We’re going to have to move soon. I know it’s hard for you, having just taken me inside you, to move so soon. But I came here to give my last host — filled with my eggs — to the hungry hounds that I heard fighting down here. And I don’t want them to find you.”


    “Hounds,” Bee repeated, knowing she should feel scared through the fuzzy, warm feelings filling her body. “Ummm... Yes. We should get out of here.”


    Bee managed to stand up, even though the soles of her feet and her toes still prickled with pins and needles, and a static noise of feeling made her hands clumsy.


    “You’re so strong, Sweetie. Not many could adapt so quickly. Deep breaths.”


    Bee took a deep breath and stretched her back, arms overhead, before yawning through the flutes of her back and looking around with bleary eyes. She squeaked a second yawn out of her mouth, squeezing her eyes closed tight and hiding it behind her hand. Feeling a little better, Bee asked out loud, “Which way do I go?”


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    “Just a little further this way.”


    The Worm led Bee up a series of ramps, past the stilled machinery and through arched chambers built of glistening flesh and coarse shell. Unexpectedly, Bee transitioned from the dark passages to the bioluminescent brightness of a wide City cavity. Suddenly, she was on a ledge, exposed to the open air.


    The shrieking whistle of air threw her hair back and encircled her body. Bee looked up to see the bone sky. It crawled with machines, working ceaselessly amongst churning vessels and vast pipeworks that fed into great, open vats. Where the furrowed and jagged arteries breached into the open air, Bee could see frothing fluid pumped through the system. Within it, she could catch the shapes of freaks — some dead, others diseased or simply lost — flushed down. Confused and fearful yells crossed the gulf, and the drowning figures were thrown unstoppably into machines that constricted and rotated violently, stamped and mashed. The stench of recycled meat made her stomach turn.


    “What’s it doing to them?” Bee whispered, eyes wide.


    “It’s recycling them,” the Worm answered for her. “Your people call this a Great Filter. It’s how the City eats you, when you can’t run away anymore, and when its drones can catch you.”


    Bee stumbled away from the open drop. She looked back the way she had come, her nerves finally overcoming the cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones that had not long ago flooded her system. Yet there was no sign of her being chased. Instead, oblivious to her, sirens wailed across the bioscape. Another gross mass surged through the recycling system, and uncountable freaks were flushed to their deaths.


    Not wanting to watch, Bee looked around and saw an alcove and what might have been another passage further down the platform. Taking a deep breath through the siphons on her back, Bee began climbing along the narrow ledge with a shaking hand, using the ridged floor and protruding shell upon the wall for purchase. Moving slowly, she tested every step to ensure it was stable enough to hold her weight.


    Metres into the crossing, Bee felt a chill run down her spine. She looked over her shoulder, then down and around herself. Seeing the violence of the Great Filter below, Bee swallowed a lump in her throat and fought against her shaking knees to keep going. When she finally reached the other side, Bee pulled herself up against a brace of long bones approximating a railing.


    Leaning against a wall of silicon flesh to catch her breath and steady her nerves, Bee looked down to where she met a massive lidless eye, whose unblinking gaze she returned as her gulping inhalations slowly dampened the panic burning inside her. That enormous eye flicked up, though, and gave Bee pause.


    Slowly, she turned to peer up with it into the dark haze above. A massive inky-skinned hound moved there, crawling upon the wall only metres away. Gaunt arms and biomechanical claws took purchase in the wall as its lobbed, eyeless head turned towards her. A snarl escaped its bladed teeth, and rivulets of oily saliva poured down from its maw and onto Bee.


    Gasping and leaning back against the bone rail, Bee stood wide-eyed and petrified as the dark monster dropped onto the landing and towered over her. Easily thrice her height, tall but hunched, thin, like a starving freak made of oiled skin stretched taut over corded muscles and churning biomechanical engines. The hound’s eyeless visage fixed on the child as it snarled again, baring those wicked teeth, leaning down towards Bee whilst exhaling bitter, dominating pheromones. A scream died in her throat as she cowered back against the ribs of bone.


    “You have to run,” the Worm said in her ear. “Can you run for me, Sweetheart?”


    Another strangled whine escaped Bee, as its hunched posture belied a moment of curiosity. The Hound’s head turned and looked over the Bee — her face, her body. It sniffed, drawing in the air over her. A moment of wicked calculation followed.


    Bee shrank further with her hand clasped over her mouth, looking up at the tall monster. It seemed to be waiting for something.


    “Sweetie — Bee — you have to run!”


    “I’m sorry!” Bee cried out, unable to back any further away from the creature. She wanted to run, but her legs were unsteady beneath her, quaking violently with fear. “Please let me go! Please...”


    The slightest tip of its head signalled its permission, so Bee sprinted past the hound. Her utter confusion and relief swelled in her chest. But, then, without warning, it swung its gaunt arm. Razor claws raked the exposed skin of her lower back, beneath the plates where her wing engines were rooted, but above the shell that clad her hips. Bee screamed in fright, feeling the hot wash of blood running freely. However, adrenaline and dampeners hid the immediate shock of pain, and she fled down the adjoined passage.


    She ran screaming into the labyrinthian warrens surrounding the Great Filter, quickly becoming disorientated in its winding passages. Grasping at her injury, Bee found her hand was sticky with blood, but she didn’t dare to stop or look back. Instead, Bee moved through each new tunnel with panicked haste, from dim bioluminescent light to the infra-red and back.


    “This way, Sweetie,” the Worm urged her. “This way.”


    At the Worm’s instruction, Bee tried to head upward whenever she had a choice. Her limbs burned when she had to clamber over obstacles or crawl low through the narrowest accessways. Every errant corner and jutting ribbed wall cast a frightful shadow. Bee peered at them from a distance and occasionally saw heads and torsos growing from the City, meeting her terror with mirrored eyes, bright in the infrared haze.


    Losing track of time in the maze, knowing only the exhaustion that overcame her entire body, Bee stumbled into a large open chamber whose roof vaulted high overhead. Her lungs heaving as she tried to catch her breath, she collapsed to her knees. But there was no time for a reprieve, as a bright light dazzled the child, cast across the chamber and focused upon her. She flinched away and crouched lower until she felt the shelled floor under her palm.


    Narrowing her eyes enough to make out two silhouettes ahead of her, Bee recognised the bipedal shape and swath of pale raiments from the enforcers who had sealed the ascent into Acetyn and had nearly kept her from entering the City. They raised lances in her direction, and the harsh spotlight came from a metal limb extending from the shoulder of the first warrior.


    Blinking, dazzled, Bee screamed, “What do you want?”


    “That it?” One of the Pale asked the other.


    “Could be. Head looks like the casts, at least,” The first grunted. “The Eidolon will know.”


    “Freak! On your feet, now!”


    “Do what they say, Bee, Sweetie,” the Worm urged in Bee’s ear, and she flinched from the closeness of the voice. As she raised herself up, still trembling, Bee looked back the way she came. She found a giant eye gazing down at her from over the entranceway she had arrived through.


    “Don’t even think about it,” one of the Pale barked.


    They advanced. A lance’s bladed barrel was pressed so close to Bee now that her skin prickled, and she ducked her head low because she dared not make eye contact. Up close, they weren’t as big as she expected. Perhaps she was taller now, Bee briefly thought. But that just made the hound that might be chasing her all the more terrifying.


    “I think—” Bee stuttered, struggling to speak with the weapon pointed at her. “I think there’s a hound following me.”


    “It’s bleeding,” one of them —- the one with the light — said, stepping around her. “It’ll live.”


    “A hound?” The other asked.


    “Yes,” she blurted out. “It caught me, but it let me go.”


    “Now, why would it do that?”


    “Some freaks have all the luck,” the one behind her muttered, shining his light down the passage instead. Bee peered over her shoulder, glancing down the passage herself. There was nothing there.


    The pale enforcer in front of Bee took a wired device from its belt. Gripping it in one hand, the tip of its lance wobbled as it remained trained on her. She could feel every slight jerk of its barrel as he spoke into the communicator, knowing full well it could kill her in an instant.


    “Oh-Eye-Ee Seven-Two,” he intoned into the hissing device. There was no reply, but he didn’t seem to expect one. “One apprehended. Phenotype match, but... Need oversight.”


    The line clicked three times from someone opening the channel, without a word.


    “We’re returning to host,” the Pale said before tucking the device away.


    “Move,” the Pale behind Bee shouted and shunted her ahead with the butt of his lance. She stumbled through the chamber, holding herself with both arms.


    As they navigated their path, the City’s ever-watchful gaze seemed to trace their every step, its unblinking eyes silent observers amidst the relics of a bygone era. Adorning the walls, ancient murals emerged from the rippling metallic bone surface, among them a depiction of a colossal tree. This tree, illustrated in rising concentric circles, stretched its boughs towards the stars. Around them, the formidable images of giant creatures engaged in a fierce struggle for survival beneath the tree''s expansive canopy enveloped the travelers. Their journey led them between sculptures of massive arrowheads, each over two meters in length, proudly displayed on stone pedestals. Leaving the chamber behind, they re-entered the labyrinthine depths of Acetyn, a world of unending, formless chaos.