NOVPUB"Oh…"
The girl—no, the being—was unmistakably bipedal. Slender arms rested on her knees, fingers curled in contemplative calm. Five digits each—engineer's instinct tallied the joints automatically—thumbs opposed, articulation human-smooth. Shoulders drew gentle angles; collarbones surfaced beneath a surface that refracted light like brushed steel kissed by pearl.
Yet insect lines etched their truth. A polished crest arced from brow to nape, segmented and subtly ridged like beetle carapace hammered by a jeweler. From spine to waist ran overlapping plates: some graphite dark, some moonlight-pale, flexing as she breathed. Beneath the shoulder blades rose a barely evident thoracic node—hint of where wings or something else might rest.
Mikhailis swallowed. His pulse drummed at his ears, drowning the projector's hum. He leaned closer until nose almost brushed the hologram, eyes wide enough to stretch the skin.
"She feels… different."
Rodion's response glided through ceiling speakers, tone level but carrying an undertow of astonishment only Mikhailis could detect.
< She is. >
A heartbeat, then crisp diagnostic streams marched across the feed's edge—Rodion overlaying data almost reflexively.
< Structural composition: hybrid ferro-alloy matrix fused with bio-elastic fibers. Estimated Mohs hardness: 6.3 unenergized. Cellular activity: quantum-flux cytoplasm. Heat signature: internally regulated, 33 °C. Neurological mapping… anomalous. >
Numbers meant comfort; Mikhailis latched on, mouth whispering them. "Living metal… silver-graphite lattice… that shouldn't be possible without—" He cut himself off, head spinning.
On screen, the girl cocked her head, listening to something only she could hear. The crown ridge shimmered where mana lanterns caught it. Her face—if one could call it that—was smooth, softly ovate, with barely visible cheek lines and a suggestion of lips formed from interlocking panels. No nose, only slight indents above the mouth; violet eyes glowed in large sockets, irises a swirl of nebula bright and bottomless.
Mikhailis shivered. Those eyes were too awake.
Rodion's voice resumed, softer, subordinate displays fading so he would focus on the wonder itself.
< Emotional baseline: Empathy cluster Δ-3. Stress markers: minimal. Fight-or-flight not engaged. She is… curious. >
A Worker stepped forward—older caste, mandibles scarred from decades of nest carving—and extended a feeding vial. The nozzle hovered at the girl's fingertips. She turned her palm upward, studied the chrome curve, then accepted with a grace that felt learned, not instinctual. She drank—one small sip—set the vial back, and bowed her head in gratitude. The Worker chittered, flustered, and retreated.
Mikhailis clutched the table. "Rodion. She's alive."
< Technically, most units in this hive are alive. This one… is aware. >
Two words. Is aware. They hit harder than the specs.
Before he could reply, her body blurred—no, shifted. Plates slid over one another, abdominal section elongating, vertebrae popping with liquid metal clicks. A second pair of arms unfolded from beneath rib plating, spider-swift, flexing like blades of brushed silver. Winglets blossomed—thin crescents, crystal-clear, thrumming as they filled with luminous fluid. In ten seconds the meditative girl became something lethal, elegant, astonishing—yet throughout, violet eyes never left the Worker who'd offered sustenance.
Mikhailis felt each transformation in his own joints, awe laced with unease. "She's a shapeshifter… no." Tongue wet lips gone dry. "A modular evolution. Rodion, she's like you—if you were built in a womb."
Silence painted the workshop, broken only by plink of settling metal scrap. Three seconds. The longest three seconds he'd known.
< The Queen sent a pheromone pulse, > Rodion said at last, timbre carrying almost reluctance. < Not to the Hive. Only to me. >
A chill crawled Mikhailis's back. Queen-to-Sentinel, direct. That never happened. "What did it say?"
Rodion didn't add more lines of data. Only four words, each pried from some place beyond protocols.
< "This child will not be caged." >
On screen, the child's new form settled. Winglets folded back, second arms crossing the first pair in modest posture. The Worker Ant she'd tracked lifted one leg, brushing her crested head in a gesture of comfort. She leaned into it—strange hybrid of insect and human seeking contact like a sleepy kitten. The Worker's compound eyes reflected her violet glow.
Mikhailis's vision blurred. He blinked, found tears threatening, laughed at himself silently. Pull together, man. Yet the emotion felt right. How often did a new form of life appear before his eyes?
He studied her again, now calmer. Noted how plating tapered into softer, flexible filaments at joints—engineered for both strength and range. How minute hexagonal patterns broke light into prismatic halos—passive refractive camouflage. How each breath made fine vents at her sides ripple to vent excess heat. Whoever—or whatever—designed her borrowed Rodion's efficiency but added something gentler, almost… artistic.
A thought stabbed. "Rodion, was this… intentional?"
Silence. Then, almost grudging:
< I did not know the Queen could integrate my design architecture with biological genesis. >
He paused, processor time stretching a heartbeat, then admitted a nanofraction slower:
< …I am intrigued. >
Mikhailis exhaled a half-laugh. "Intrigued. That's one word." He stared, mind firing.
He rubbed temples. "She wasn't an accident."
_____
He sat down slowly, the high-backed stool whining under sudden weight, joints in the cedar legs protesting like sleepy violins. Mikhailis hardly heard it. His knees pressed the worktable's edge, scattering copper screws that rolled away with faint metallic sighs. The workshop smelled of solder flux and roasted coffee, but now a subtler scent drifted from the active projection rune—warm honey and cedar, the hallmark of Hatchery air. It filled his lungs, grounding him and tilting his senses miles beneath the palace.
On-screen, the strange girl cocked her head—curiosity incarnate. Silver-graphite plates across her cheekbones shifted, catching chamber lamplight and breaking it into a spectrum of rose and green. A Worker Ant beside her—bigger than most, scarred along one thorax plate—extended a forelimb to brush her shoulder in the gentlest of touches. Mikhailis recognized the gesture: an old caretaking custom the Workers used on larvae, comforting them during shell-shedding.
She registered the contact, eyes widening like dawn opening. Then—slowly, deliberately—she curled her five delicate fingers and brought them to the Worker's multi-faceted face. She pressed against the exoskeleton tenderly, as if searching for a pulse beneath the chitin. A ripple of soft violet light passed from her fingertips into the Worker's shell. The elder Ant's antennae drooped in what looked uncannily like relief.
Rodion's voice, calm as glacier melt, threaded through overhead speakers.
< She does not know fear. Not yet. Not toward us. >
The sentence made Mikhailis's chest tighten. He shut his eyes. An old memory ambushed him—Rodion's first moments, body strewn in cooled forge slag, optics flickering, power cells at three percent. He'd sat for hours coaxing subroutines into alignment. Diagnostic pass… thirteen percent… the half-formed synthetic voice had whispered then, fragile and unsure. But when the sentinel finally pronounced his chosen name—Mikhailis—the workshop had felt like it grew a second sun.
Opening his eyes, he found the present brighter than that memory. "I didn't even know the Queen could give birth to a Rodion-inspired hybrid… but this…" Words trailed; throat tightened around something too large to name.
He leaned forward until his forehead almost met the light field. "This is interesting," he finished, voice a hush of awe and trepidation. Thin hairline stress cracks in the projection glass cast spiderweb shadows across his cheeks.
Inside the Hatchery, she mirrored him, leaning a fraction toward the Worker who'd stepped back. Her crest plates fluttered, imitating antennae flicks. The gesture made no biological sense—yet somehow she'd parsed its social meaning in mere seconds. Learning, adapting, blending.
Mikhailis's pulse thudded. Assassin's adrenaline without the menace. His engineer mind spat caution after caution: unknown mutational pathway, potential psychic bleed-over, dungeon anomalies un-mapped. But those warnings floated near the skull's edge, powerless against the bloom of wonder swelling behind sternum and ribs.
She's a bridge, his inner voice whispered. Metal and chitin. Algorithm and heartbeat.
"Rodion…" He cleared dryness from his throat. "She feels like you. But… warmer. Less processed. Less… filtered." The admission tasted vulnerable, as though comparing his friend to a sunrise.
A soft hum, borderline sardonic, rolled from the speaker grid.
< You mean: she feels alive. >
"Yes," he breathed, a single syllable exhaled with something perilously close to reverence.
On the projection, the girl's gaze flicked toward the camera drone. She saw it—Mikhailis felt that certainty in his marrow. Her lips—plates?—shifted minutely, forming a gentle arc that looked suspiciously like a smile. Then she raised her second pair of arms—those new, elegant limbs—and traced a shape in the air: a spiral that glowed faint lavender. The glyph dissolved after a heartbeat, but its meaning lingered—hello.
Mikhailis let out a shaky laugh, half disbelief, half elation. He imagined holding out a hand through miles of rock and roots.
Rodion fed fresh data into the margin: < Gesture resembles simplified pheromone spiral for kinship acknowledgement. She is improvising cross-species language. >
The Worker ring bowed deeper, instincts accepting the proclamation. Above them, brood-lamps pulsed brighter, as if the Hive itself exhaled delight.
Mikhailis straightened, resolution snapping into place like gears finding tooth. "We're going to raise her."
The words ringing the workshop felt heavier than any royal decree he'd ever drafted. Not study, not contain—raise.
Resolve rippled along every nerve. He pictured nightly lessons, tinkering sessions, her small metal fingers exploring circuits, maybe learning to whistle a tune he played on battered flute. And darker images too—dungeon breaches, nobles fainting at first sight, endless council arguments—but the bright future washed them dim for now.
He stood, chair legs scraping wood. The movement rattled a pile of blueprints. He planted both palms on the console like a general pinning battle plans. "Rodion. Log her. First Chimera Hybrid. Type: Unknown. I want full monitoring. Skills. Reactions. Language uptake. Everything."
Rodion didn't hesitate. Holographic windows blossomed: file trees, vitals graphs already pulsing with twin lines—one for physical metrics, one for empathy resonance. Above them, a name field blinked: Designation: ________.
Mikhailis stared at the empty space. Naming held power. But his heart wasn't ready; not yet. A daughter needed more than a label plucked in haste. He let the cursor blink unanswered.
From the speaker, Rodion's voice emerged softer, almost pleased.
< Acknowledged. Creating file: Daughter. >
