It was in the midst of this madness that the Queen initiated the final phase of her takeover: the transformation of the surface animals. Under her direction, the Queen’s chief scientists developed a hormone derived from the chemicals they had used to breed the Alphas and keep Hymenoptera alive. The ants injected the potion into the water supply. The hormone had an effect on birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. Meanwhile, the ants constructed their nameless island in the Atlantic, along with hundreds of dirt towers on every continent, from which they broadcast signals that only the animals could hear, and that their rapidly growing brains would absorb. The frequency contained subliminal instructions on how to read, how to use tools, how to fight, how to organize societies — basic knowledge the animals would need.
The Change manifested itself on the first dose of the hormone. The animals first became self-aware, which often compelled them to flee their confines. They could now see the world beyond mere survival. For some, it was a horrifying moment. Many died leaping through windows or running through traffic. But for most, the experience was liberating, like the discovery of an elusive formula.
Within a day, the physical advancements were considerable. Their larynges extended, enabling the animals to form words. For those that did not have hooves or wings, the front paws grew into hands with opposable thumbs, and the hind legs were able to support the weight of the body. Once again, there were poor reactions among certain animals. Early in the experiment, for example, there was a pack of wolves so shocked by their new appendages that they bit them off. This behavior was an aberration, however, falling within the Queen’s projection of a 4–9 percent failure rate. Now the animals would do what the Queen’s loyal daughters could not. They would pull themselves up to greatness, as she had done.
Many animals understood immediately that they had been the slaves of cruel masters. A new front in the war opened, this time in homes, farms, laboratories, and zoos. Now the humans had to deal with their own pets, livestock, and test subjects standing before them, sometimes wielding weapons, staring with determined eyes. For many animals, this confrontation was the first time they would speak, forcing out the newly discovered words in an awkward stutter: “Indeed, yes, affirmative, I have come to kill you, sir.”
Soon the animals formed a rapidly growing army. Some former pets were conflicted about this, but the evidence against the humans was overwhelming. The humans, after all, ate the animals, stole their milk and eggs, encroached on their land, and carved up their bodies to make them more suitable pets. The Queen, on the other hand, offered a sense of purpose, and a future. Like the Alphas, the animals would know who had raised them up. They would know that there was a god on earth.
THE CEREMONY FOR the Alphas was nearly complete. The workers gathered in a horseshoe shape facing the Queen, awaiting final approval before shuffling off to their destinies. There was only one daughter left to hold, one who was smaller than usual, yet active and squirming in the Queen’s arms. Whereas the new soldiers seemed emboldened by their duties, the Queen was exhausted from reliving the story. These few moments with her daughters were more than she had enjoyed with her own mother. She did not wish to think about it. The continued rumbling at the surface reminded her of what was at stake: centuries of planning, an entire world for the taking, an implacable enemy pushed to the brink of extinction. She could not fail her people as her grandmother had.
The Queen’s antennae probed the young one. The story began again in her exhausted brain: the wars, the sandaled men, the oily smell of death. And then the Misfit Queen, the Abandoned One, reaching out to her through time. The Queen gave it all to this soldier, including her mother’s last moments alive, when Hymenoptera had to do her duty by murdering her.
Another thud against the ceiling. The workers waited for the Queen to hand over this last daughter. But Hymenoptera was not convinced that this latest brood understood the price that had to be paid. The price she had been paying for generations now.
And so she lifted her child to her jaws and crushed its skull, sending a crunching echo throughout the chamber. Everyone remained still. No one dared even to tilt a head or extend an antenna. Whatever pleasure this act brought the Queen was short-lived, replaced almost immediately by a heavy loneliness. She was the Colony. But she was not of the Colony. Perhaps her experiment would do more than produce mere talking creatures, and instead create beings worthy of her and the Misfit Queen. But until then, she was alone.
After she had swallowed what was left of her daughter, she made the workers stand at attention for a long time before finally dismissing them. When they were gone, she sat in the darkness and thought of her mother.
Chapter Three: The Red Sphinx
Two months. Two months he searched for her. Two months in and around the ruined city. Two months investigating every breeze, scanning every footprint, every discarded can of food, hoping to find her scent. But he couldn’t find a trace of her.
And how long had it been since he had eaten? Sebastian couldn’t say. A few days, most likely. He still had the energy to climb the stairs of a gutted skyscraper every morning, where he could get a 360-degree view of the skeletal city. The building was a steel-and-glass obelisk in the heart of downtown. Many of its windows had been blown out, leaving gaps in the reflective surface whenever the sun rose. It made the building resemble a mouth missing a few teeth. From these gaps, Sebastian would scope out the city, a lonely king surveying his worthless country.
He marked the days on a dry-erase board left behind by the humans who had worked there. Those people were like him, he supposed. They enjoyed a routine that they assumed would go on indefinitely, and then they were running for their lives. Maybe they deserved it. Maybe so did he.
Time passed by in vivid moments, with blank spaces in between: dressing the infected wound on his side. Then blackness. Trudging through the streets, inspecting abandoned cars, on more than one occasion finding a human who had shot himself in the temple with one hand while clamping the steering wheel with the other. And then, more blackness. Breaking open a can of tuna, devouring its rancid contents. Plucking a fat cockroach from the debris and swallowing it whole. Then blackness once more. Merciful sleep and forgetfulness and oblivion.
All the while, Sebastian was learning. He could now tell the difference between the knowledge he acquired and the information that had somehow been bestowed upon him. By reading old newspapers and listening to a looped emergency broadcast on a windup radio, Sebastian confirmed what Daniel had told him about the war, the ants, and the animals. The broadcast concluded with an uninterrupted block of songs, all with lyrics about love, all happy and ignorant of the impending destruction. And then the loop would begin again, with a stern masculine voice warning of doom.