Chapter Five: The Voice
We didn't stop running until our lungs burned.
Not because the Hiveborn were gone — they never just give up — but because I couldn't keep my shift stable. The plates in my skin were sinking back, leaving raw patches that stung with every movement.
I dragged the man — no, boy — into the back of an abandoned laundromat. The place smelled of mildew and rust. Rows of empty machines gaped open like toothless mouths.
He yanked his wrist free the second I shut the door.
"What the hell are you?"
My throat was raw, my words sharp. "Quiet. They're still close."
"I saw—" He stopped himself, glanced at the door like he expected something to crawl through it. "They weren't human, were they?"
"No."
"And you're not either."
I looked away. "Not exactly."
The hum had faded, but only just. It hovered at the edge of my hearing, like static under my skin. My mark still burned, and every few seconds a faint wave of metallic sweetness rolled through the air. They were still searching.
Then the other voice came, low and steady, like someone speaking right into my ear.
> You have less than five minutes. Head west.
I flinched. The boy noticed.
"Who are you talking to?"
"No one." Too fast, too obvious.
> Take him, the voice said again. He's important.
I clenched my fists. "Why?" I muttered under my breath.
The boy frowned. "Why what?"
The voice didn't answer directly — it never did. Instead, it sent me something else: a flash, a memory that wasn't mine.
A dark tunnel. The air thick with resin and heat. Hundreds — no, thousands — of Hiveborn marching in perfect silence, their eyes catching the dim light. And in the center, on a raised platform of packed earth, the Queen herself.
And next to her… him.
The boy in front of me.
My stomach lurched. I didn't know what that meant — or why the Queen would keep a human in her nest. But now I understood the voice's urgency.
If the Hiveborn caught us, they wouldn't kill him.
They'd take him back to her.
And whatever happened after that… I had a feeling it would be worse than death.