Chapter 573

The Auckland humidity felt oppressive on Maya's skin, even this late into what passed for summer in New Zealand.

Twenty-four years old and feeling every day of it, she told herself, swatting at a mosquito the size of her thumbnail. Her small flat offered little sanctuary from the heat; just thin walls and the drone of the refrigerator.

Tonight, however, was worse. The TV was silent. Her flat felt wrong, alive in a way it never had before.

It began with the scratching. A soft, persistent sound that pulled her from sleep. She thought it was rats, maybe even possums nesting in the roof again. But it was below her, deep in the foundation. A sound with too much calculation, too much precision for rodents.

She told herself it was just the old building settling. Concrete cooling. Plausible excuses that felt thinner each night.

The scratching turned to scraping. She pulled up floorboards near the source, discovering nothing but earth. Red, dry earth.

Her flat smelled different. A sickly sweet scent, like overripe fruit mixed with metal.

Maya found the scorpion in her shower. Small, black, seemingly lifeless against the tile. Common in the subtropical Auckland climate. An annoyance. Usually.

Except this one wasn't still. Its claws twitched as she got closer. Then it lifted its stinger, a droplet of viscous liquid forming at the tip. Its black eyes seemed to fixate on her.

"Shoo," Maya muttered, trying to appear unfazed. She grabbed a slipper and prepared to squash it.

But she didn't. The air, thick with that sickly sweetness, grew heavier. A low hum resonated around them. The scorpion shifted. Then, it spoke.

Not aloud. Not in a way Maya understood with her ears. But inside her head. A feeling more than a sound.

Leave me.

She froze, dropping the slipper. Hallucinations? Heatstroke? Too many late nights grading papers for her literature students?

The scorpion didn't repeat its demand. It retreated back down the drain.

Maya tried to write it off as a trick of the light, as exhaustion taking its toll. But the unsettling smell wouldn't go away. Neither would the image of that scorpion, with its knowing eyes.

The next day, objects moved in her apartment. A book slid off the shelf. A spoon rattled against the sink. Small annoyances that compounded to become unbearable.

Then the note. Scrawled on her mirror in what looked like mud: Serve.

That night, she saw more scorpions. Dozens, swarming in the small green patch beside her building, flowing from cracks she hadn't seen before.

They moved with an unnatural speed, a terrifying purpose. There was something akin to organization. An army gathering in her backyard.

A voice, cold and clear, formed in her mind. Louder now, demanding, not requesting. You will serve. You will bring us food. We are hungry.

Maya found herself obeying. Compelled by a force she couldn't understand, couldn't resist. She stole meat from the butcher, loaves of bread from the bakery. Anything to quiet the awful voice.

Her nights were sleepless, filled with visions of endless desert, of obsidian towers rising from the sand, of scorpions the size of cars. Dreams that felt like memories.

The creatures grew bolder. One climbed her leg while she was doing dishes, its stinger pressing against her skin. She didn't dare move, offering scraps instead.

The message was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. It became evermore apparent that she was losing. Her freedom. Her mind. Her world was now about feeding those things. And it had gotten out of control, bigger and worse,

They started taking neighbors. Small children and feeble pensioners disappeared during the night. No signs of forced entry, no sounds of struggle. Just gone.

The police seemed unconcerned. They blamed it on the usual urban issues, gangs and drug problems. They wouldn't listen to Maya's increasingly frantic warnings. She knew she sounded insane.

One night, a detective came by. "We've had reports, Miss…," he squinted at his notepad, "...Blake. Concerning unusual activity on the premises?"

She swallowed hard, staring at the floor. "It's scorpions," she blurted out. "They're... they're taking people."

He chuckled, a patronizing sound. "Scorpions, eh? Big ones?"

Maya shook her head, tears blurring her vision. "They talk. In my head."

The detective's expression hardened. "Right. Maybe we should get you checked out, Miss Blake."

That night, the scorpion Queen - she was becoming self-aware, she realized with increasing horror - gave Maya her task. The most gruesome task so far. "Bring us… authority." The Queen's was even more horrifyingly present now in Maya's mind. "The one who disbelieves."

That detective who wouldn't take anything she said seriously?

He lived on the next street. A brick bungalow that was tidy. Normal. A stark example of how the rest of the world was operating outside Maya's bubble.

Maya told herself he wouldn't listen anyway. Who would believe her story? It was the end of humanity, after all. She could see it on the edges. So many others dismissed it all, as the detective did, or didn't want to get involved and feigned ignorance, and those were now going to feel the terror that had gripped her.

He didn't. Maya stood outside his door for a long, dreadful time, sweat on her brow as the Queen grew more and more impatient in her skull, and with a sigh, a wave of defeat washing over her as the last vestige of herself expired, she turned to go.

That's when a group of the scorpions appeared. Dozens. And they surrounded her. It was clear that she would not have a say in the matter anymore.

Maya knew, now, what the change really meant for her. Her mind. Her individuality. Her soul was no longer hers to control. As she brought him back to the hive, she could already feel the influence that she held fading in every part of her body.

Weeks turned into months. The scorpions increased their hold over the area. Cracks erupted in the pavement, obsidian towers sprouted, and other insects were drawn in from far beyond Auckland to swell the colony.

What the spiders thought of this development no one knew, though Maya's new awareness of the insect consciousness knew that this did not create peace in the landscape. A scorpion spider alliance could come later. Alliances would be needed to take on what would come next.

Rumors spread of a "Scorpion God" ruling in the shadows. Desperate souls made offerings, bartered with what they could, attempting to stave off their end.

The news would have mocked them not too long ago. But the scorpions took on more prominence. At first, police wrote off the missing people, claiming they ran away, went to the outback, or claimed they must have succumbed to foul play unrelated to the others.

But soon even they were getting taken. This was not the act of local thieves. Something powerful was stirring. The entire South Pacific and beyond were now under threat.

Even that turned, after many protests and delays into an effort to keep things under wraps, until that, too was swept aside.

The rest of the world watched on news as chaos overtook the country, fear creeping into every home as people realized what waited in the night. In their cellars and yards, growing and swelling and waiting.

A unified fighting force was planned, but the plan would soon get cut short as every military tactic and advance in arms proved to do virtually nothing against a species acting as one body, working in unison towards a similar and single-minded goal of universal and unrelenting death.

Maya, long gone, was forgotten to history. Lost in service to her Queen.

Except the Queen wasn't happy. War raged across the earth as humanity desperately battled back against the scorpion horde. The Queen found the battle distasteful and the need for endless numbers of soldiers and new creatures too strenuous. It all came at a high cost that she sought to bring down in any way.

Human ingenuity and tenacity were proving far more problematic than predicted. The Queen grew frustrated with the slow progress, the endless slaughter. She required greater efficiency. A new weapon.

The memory, that human consciousness within the deep place of the scorpion mind that was still in its infancy, rose once more. Just like the dreams. Only more like whispers. More lucid now.

She remembered her human life, and realized, at first dimly and then at a fever pitch, her purpose now.

There were other… specimens, but Maya was proving particularly amenable to suggestion and… unique alteration.

The Queen took Maya, or what was left of her, into the deepest chamber. And did something horrific.

A transformation so unwholesome that none who were forced to watch as an act of obedience ever dared to speak about the memory for as long as they still served the colony.

The Queen did her darkest workings and wove her dark spell. The new form screamed in silent anguish the second it burst free.

A final tool. Ultimate betrayal. Perfect synthesis of human intellect and scorpion ruthlessness.

She wanted victory. And the last threads of Maya Blake, she of Auckland, New Zealand, Literature Degree, was to become the tool for humankind's downfall. And while what was left of Maya felt the pain of what her actions led to as the rest of humanity was to pay with its freedom. And their lives.