Free Hive III by Griffin Hayes

the irony that I’m the pinnacle of what our Keeper ancestors attempted to create, two centuries ago. Surely they never imagined we would look like monsters. Surely they never recognized our full potential.
    Plak and the other councillors from Sotercity are by my side as we enter Newton’s Temple. It’s cool and spacious, with incredibly high ceilings, decorated with images of planets and stars. Behind the altar, a shaft of natural light illuminates a solitary apple tree.
    A detachment of Wardens spill out from the cloisters and begin firing right away. I wave the Zees forward, watching through each of their eyes at once. And I can’t help but think of Newton again, since this is the closest to a god any man has ever been, and the feeling is pure intoxication. On they charge, scrambling over pews and up the aisles. The Wardens fill the air with lead, but these men have never fought Zees before and their bullets riddle their bodies, ignoring the heads. The first Zee to reach their lines is a woman, dressed in a baker’s apron, and the mere act of shifting my awareness toward her lets me see her entire history laid out before me. Two bright children and a husband she loved dearly. All of them working hard in the family bread shop in Sotercity. One step up from a Grinder, with dreams of a bright future. She was the first to turn, when that sorry excuse for a city was invaded, and at once she attacked her husband. And when he was dead, she finished off the children. But she had traded one family for another. A much larger family. One which would never disappoint or try to hurt her.
    She leaps through the air and la nds on a terrified Warden who’s scrambling to reload. She tears a mouthful of flesh from his face and keeps gnashing with insatiable hunger. The man beside them shouts and brings the butt of his rifle down on her head and opens her skull. She stops moving at once, but right behind her are hundreds more, just like her.
    Bodies pile up around them and a young Warden lieutenant sounds the retreat, except it’s too late for that now and the wave of Zees are on them before they can turn their backs to flee.
    Directly benea th the temple are the catacombs, which contain the bodies of the first Keepers. But it’s what lies under those dried and porous bones that really interests me. As powerful as I’ve become, I can feel the Queen’s mind, pulling at my own, delicate fingers snaking through my thoughts like the electrified wires in one of engineer Lund’s creations. The feeling is strange and somehow euphoric, and there isn’t any doubt that when I tear her limb from limb, that feeling will fade and be gone forever.
    But I must strike soon, before she’s able to emerge completely from her sleep. Otherwise, all these Zees , held so tightly within my grasp, will shift their allegiance at once and visit upon me everything I’d planned for the Queen and more.
    Off the South Transept is a gate over a set of stone steps. A handful of infected Wardens rise and join us, their flesh now brown, their eyes glowing faintly. I approach the gate, grab the bars and rip them from the wall with as much ease as tearing a page from a child’s book. Down we descend, through the catacombs, past bones cloaked in dusty red robes, staring back from nooks carved into the hard stone wall.
    Some of the corpses get snagged in the flood of rushing Zees and tumble to the ground. At one time, I might have seen this as a desecration. Today, it’s nothing more than poetic justice. Our ancestors’ eternal rest is being undone by the very creatures they created. The very creatures that will help them do away with the old world and rebuild a new one in their own image.
    At last we arrive before a dirt wall with a steel door, dull now with the passage of time. The sight reminds me of when the scholars from the old world discovered the tombs of the ancient pharaohs. Those too were set in limestone. It’s only the metal door that kills the