---
The fungus didn't look that dangerous.
It spread across the cavern wall in pale, stringy sheets. Kind of pretty, actually, the way it caught the light from her headlamp. Warm to the touch, even this far underground. Clover Stem pressed her hoof against it before anyone could tell her not to.
"Don't touch it without gloves," Brass Cog called from behind her.
'Too late.'
That was six months ago.
---
The facility ran smoothly now. Grow chambers in the east wing, nutrient baths cycling on schedule, humidity controls doing their job. The whole place smelled like bread mixed with something metallic. Faint enough that Clover had stopped noticing it weeks ago.
The other six scientists called it progress. She called it a problem they hadn't figured out yet.
"We've ran the trials eighteen times." She leaned forward against the conference table, hooves flat on the wood.
"Eighteen times. All on earth ponies. That's not data, that's will be problematic."
Brass Cog was cleaning his glasses again. He did that when he didn't want to look at her. "The results are consistent. One serving gives complete nutrition for a full day. Seventeen percent strength increase. Those numbers don't lie."
"Those numbers are for one species." Clover's voice came out sharper than she meant. "What happens when a pegasus eats this stuff? Or a unicorn? We don't know because we haven't tested it!"
The others shifted in their seats. She knew that look. The here she goes again look.
Dr. Pale Quill spoke up, soft and measured like always. Oldest one in the room, gray around the muzzle. "We've been over this. Winged subjects are harder to source out here. And the preliminary models don't show significant—"
"Models aren't experiments. You can't publish a model."
"You also can't publish paranoia."
The word sat there between them. Clover felt it land the same way it always did.
"This fungus mutates," she said, quieter now. "Every time we change the growth medium, it adapts. I've never seen anything learn that fast. And you're telling me it's gonna behave the exact same way in a completely different biology?"
Brass Cog put his glasses back on. "What do you want us to do? Halt production? We're three weeks out from external trials. Canterlot's expecting results."
"I want us to not skip steps just because the steps are inconvenient."
"That's not—"
"When this goes wrong, and it will go wrong, I want it on record that I said something."
The meeting ended the way it always ended. Nothing decided. Everyone frustrated. Clover left first.
---
Forty miles east, the hive was starving.
The workers felt it worst. That hollow ache behind their chitin that sleep couldn't fix. Emotional starvation worked slower than regular hunger, but it killed you just the same. Day by day, the colony got quieter. Less chatter in the tunnels. Less movement. Eyes going dull.
The queen had been gone three days now, searching for food. She said she'd be back soon. The elders kept saying the same thing.
But the young ones were so hungry.
And then a scout came back with news. Something in the hills to the west—a building, hidden, full of something that smelled alive. Rich and dense, drifting on the wind. Enough to feed the whole hive for weeks, maybe.
The elders said wait. The queen would return soon. She always did.
The young ones stopped listening. Bewteen rationality and hunger, the hunger won.
---
That night, Clover worked late in her private lab.
Same simulations she'd been running for a month. Wing tissue samples. Magical conductivity charts. Infection vectors plotted out in red and yellow. The models kept spitting back the same answer no matter how she adjusted the inputs. Aggressive spread in winged species. Uncontrolled mutation. System failure.
She stared at the screen until her eyes hurt, then looked away. Out the small window, the moon hung low over the scrubland. Nothing moving out there. Just empty hills and silence.
The facility's vents hummed behind her, pushing that bread and metal smell out into the night.
She should've gone home hours ago. But something kept her here. Some feeling she couldn't quite name.
Tomorrow, she'd run the simulations again. Tomorrow, she'd bring it up at another meeting that would go nowhere. Tomorrow, same as always.
She didn't know that by tomorrow, the grow chambers would be torn open and the storage room would be empty.
She didn't know that by tomorrow, there'd be chitin fragments in the vents and something wet smeared across the floor.
That Scientist Three would be dead, or close to it—no one would find all the pieces. That Scientist Four would cut her hooves on broken glass trying to figure out what happened. That Scientist Seven would be gone without explanation.
She didn't know that she'd stand in the wreckage and realize she'd been right about everything, and that being right wouldn't matter at all.
But that was tomorrow.
Tonight, the hive was going finally to eat.