Chapter 3

‘creak’ ‘creak’ ‘creak’

The rocking chair squeaked as I moved back and forth. It was an old chair, yet the groaning of the rails was an oddly comforting sound. The wood was a faded shade of mahogany brown that had deep creases running through the wood, further emphasizing the age, and if you took a close enough look at the armrest you could even find the traces of an old coffee stain.

What am I doing with myself? Was I a child? I let the promise of power get to my head and started dreaming a fantasy.

Imagine! I could be a superhero who goes around rescuing the innocent from the evil, attacking insects! Like the heroes out of my games.

And not once did it occur to me that power like that comes at a price. I’m so strong that I can easily lift the tractor in the barn outside. I was so fast that I ran around the acre of corn field behind the barn in half a minute. My mandibles were able to crush the porcelain sink upstairs and my exoskeleton was unmarked after I punched through the mirror and the wall behind it. I had all of this power and what did it cost me in return?

Nothing much, just everything that made me human. My body was every bit as monstrous as that Tarantulas, and I could feel my mind becoming more…pragmatic. More orderly. More prone towards logical, rather than ethical thinking.

It had been only a few hours since my outburst and I could already feel my sorrow draining away like water in a tub. I still regretted my decision, but now I could only think ‘Well, what’s done is done. No point being upset about it.’

Worst of all though was my hunger. Before the change it was a manageable annoyance. But now it was a gnawing pain gouging a hole in my abdomen. In the short time I’ve been awake I’d already ravaged the kitchen of food and drink, yet no matter how much I ate, nothing wouldn’t satiate me. I craved something more fulfilling, but I didn't know what that mystery food was.

As it were though, I still had no idea where or what I was and the only one who did know was nowhere to be found. So, now I’m studying this rocking chair, and waiting for my ‘Caretaker’ to return and discovering that the mind does the most fascinating things to pass time,

I didn’t sleep. There was no need, my body never tired. Eventually, when the wee hours of the morning came and the fog grew marginally less dim, my feelers picked up the vibrations of something nearby.

It was the Spider. It skittered into the barn, no doubt checking up on it’s tenants. I had already ripped the cocoons apart and buried those inside out in the cornfield. It was at that time that I also tested out my new body.

I waited for the spider, since I felt absolutely no obligation to go running out to meet it. No, it would come to me and answer for what has happened.

After a moment It’s movement became frantic as it ran around the perimeter of the house, no doubt looking for the culprit. Then it’s attention drew toward the open back door and without hesitating the Spider charged into the house. It saw me sitting in the rocking chair waiting for it and stopped.

Then-

‘Masteeeeeeer! You made it! I’m so happy, you survived!’ The Spider exclaimed, running around me excitedly. It clearly wasn’t very good at picking up on the mood.

I reached out and the Spider, clearly thinking I was going to pat it again, offered up it’s head to me. I felt the urge to crush it, but resisted. Instead I grabbed a handful of legs and hoisted the spider into the air.

‘M-Master?’ The Spider said, finally realizing something was awry.

“What have you done to me?” I said. Or rather, I tried to say. But when I spoke with my mouth the sounds that came out were not words. There was a lot of rasping and choked noises, but nothing that could be categorized as language.

‘Uh-umm, what did you say?’ The Spider said concernedly.

Irritated, I repeated “What have you done to me?” Same as before rasping, choking and gurgling, but no words.

‘Ah, Master your new mouth doesn’t form sounds the same way as your old one did. You should still be able to talk since your human vocal cords haven’t disappeared, but you’ll need to figure out how to form the letters differently. If you wish to speak with me though, all you have to do is think of your questions and I can read your thoughts.’

Tch, so not only have you turned me into a monster, but now I also have to re-learn how to speak? I tried to glare at the spider, but my eyes no longer had lids or eyebrows.

‘What have you done to me!’ I shouted in my thoughts

For added measure, I tried to add my anger and discontent into the question.

To my surprise, the Spider recoiled and started shivering. It turned it’s head away and tried to make itself small.

‘M-M-Master, is something not to your liking? I-I-I apologize if I have offended y-you in any way!’

‘Answer my question Spider. What have you done to me?’

‘I-I did what I said I would do master. I tied you up in my web and waited for the change to complete. I-I’ll admit, I got worried when the others started dying, but thankfully it all worked out! I-’

‘That isn’t what I meant! What happened to my body!’

‘Y-You’re body? It changed Master. You appear to have adapted to the Formicidae family, or in layman's terms the Ant family. Quite a lucky match Master, ants can-’

‘LUCKY?’ I thought, blasting my thoughts over the Spider’s ‘What’s lucky about this?! I look like something out of a B horror film and you think I’m lucky?! How am I supposed to live the rest of my life like this, eh?! How am I going to explain this to my fiance? What if the government finds out about me? They’ll scoop me up and lock me in a cage 2 miles underground, and you think I’m LUCKY!?’

The Spider was visibly hurting from the intensity of my thoughts. It clutched it’s head and made itself appear even smaller.

‘I-I’m sorry Master, I don’t know about any of that…I’m only doing what I was made to do…please, if there is anything I can do to abate your anger tell me and I will obey…’

The Spider was pleading with me. It looked pitiable, but I wasn’t in the mood for mercy. The Spider had no answers, it wouldn’t be able to tell me why any of this was happening.

It was useless.

Frustrated to the point of fury, I unfurled one of my secondary arms and raised it high, ready to slice the Spider in half. The Spider, perhaps sensing my killing intent, looked into my eyes and uttered what it thought to be it’s final words.

‘I-I have displeased you master. I apologize for that, but I beg of you, hear my last request. After my death, please…Eat me’

I’ll admit, that threw me off guard. Eat you? Shouldn’t you be pleading for your life right now?

Arm still raised high I asked the Spider ‘Why would you want me to eat you?’

‘My Master, I once told you that you have the ability to grow infinitely. The reason I said that was because of your greatest power-DNA Assimilation. Your DNA was made malleable during the change and now when you consume you take a little bit of your prey's DNA into your own.’

My arm lowered a bit as I considered what he was saying. DNA Assimilation? So will my body change based on what I eat? If I ate a cat would I grow fur and claws? That might be handy, but what if I ate a plant? Would leaves start sprouting out of my head? This thing knows about abilities that even I wasn’t aware of, and what was there to gain by eating him?

…Tch, there was still too much I didn’t know, and even though the Spider wouldn’t have all the answers, it had enough to be worth keeping alive.

I took a moment to calm myself down, then retracted my secondary arm.

‘…Looks like I can’t let you die right now, you have something I need. Listen up Spider, I’ve decided to spare your life. In exchange, you’re going to tell me everything you know about what’s been going on, what exactly has happened to me and…what has happened to the people I told you to protect.’

The spider's eyes lit up and it practically jumped for joy. The precocious Spider had gone from near faint with fear to positively elated just from being asked a few questions.

‘Oh thank you Master! Thank you for allowing me to fulfill my purpose! As your Caretaker it’s my duty to act as your companion, so answering all of your questions is part of my duty anyway! I’m also supposed to be your guide, your protector, your nourishment should you fail to find a suitable meal and your cuddle pal to ease any mental trauma you may be feeling! Serving you to the best of my abilities is what I was made for, so please don’t hold back any request you may have for me, no matter how odd it may seem!’

‘Hold on, I didn’t say anything about being companions. Make no mistake, I will kill you the moment you become more trouble than you’re worth. You’re my hostage, not my friend.’

I tried to press the severity of the situation onto the Spider, but to no avail.

“Yes Sir, Master! As you’re #1 hostage, I’ll be happy to answer any and all questions you have, so please fire away!’ the Spider exclaimed happily.

I sighed internally. This would be difficult and annoying. Best jump right into it.

‘…’sigh’…fine. Then first I want you to tell me, what has happened to the people I told you to guard?’

‘They’re all still alive! It was a little difficult keeping them that way though. They kept trying to escape that building, so I had to have my Scouts force them all to stay put. We didn’t hurt any of them though, we just frightened them. Good thing too, otherwise the Cleaners would have got them.’

‘Scouts? You mean the Wasps? You called them Scouts before, now that I think about it. And what do you mean by ‘The Cleaners’?’

‘Yes Master, the flying ones that you call ‘Wasps’ are ‘Scouts’. Their duty is to suss out worthy candidates, like yourself, for the transformation. As for the Cleaners, you’ve likely already encountered them as well. They are members of the ‘arachnid’ family, like me. Though unlike me the Cleaners lack high intelligence. They aren’t as simple minded as the Scouts, but no one would call them geniuses. Still, what they lack in brainpower, they more than make up for in sheer size and strength. A single Cleaner would have had no problems eliminating a group like your friends in a matter of minutes. Their duty is the opposite of the Scouts, they eliminate those who are too slow, stupid or weak to be considered candidates.’

‘…The Tarantulas?’

‘Yes Master.’

‘They murdered my friends.’

‘…Um, a-anyway what else did you want to know?’

It struck me that this Spider was remarkably awkward.

‘Hmph. What exactly has happened to my body? You said that my DNA was made malleable and that I can steal the DNA of the things I eat, but what does that mean? And why am I still hungry after eating every bite of food I could find in this house?’

‘It would be easiest if I answered your questions slightly out of order, so here goes! Your DNA was made malleable for two reasons. Number one-So that you can gain the best attributes of the beasts you eat via your own unique trait, DNA Assimilation. This ability will sort through the strands of DNA in your stomach and pick out abilities that will make the Main Organism, that being you Master, stronger. For some reason Candidates are expected to become immensely strong and engage in combat during the next phase of the Queens plan, and to aid this you must devour everything you see, my Master.’

‘Wait, so I’m expected to be some kind of living weapon?! To hell with that, I won’t fight humans!’

‘No my Master. While I don’t know what the Queen’s end goal is, I do know that you won’t be fighting humans. You’ll be fighting the Queen’s forces, an army of Soldiers, Knights, and Infantry-among other things. And that leads into the second reason your DNA was made malleable. For you see Master, While it’s true that you will gain the powers of everything you eat, it is also true that anything that manages to eat you will gain all of your powers-plus all of the powers you’ve collected up to that point.’

‘Wait, what?’

My head was spinning after that explanation. First off, this ‘Queen’ is going around giving people super powers and turning them into bugs, just so she can then turn around and force them to fight against even bigger bugs? What the hell was up with that? And what’s more, those bugs are going to be gunning for me, because they would get a super power up by eating me?

Well I’m not playing her game!

‘Jokes on your queen then, huh?’

‘Whatever do you mean by that Master?’

‘I mean I’m not gonna be a puppet on her strings. After I get my friends I’m leaving this fog for good. Tell the Queen that she can find somebody else to do her little experiments on.’

‘Ah…um…M-Master?’

‘Don’t try and persuade me to stay. I’m nobody's plaything.’

‘N-No Master, it’s just that…um your plan may not be entirely feasible. Do you know why we’re able to live in this mist?’

‘…? It’s because it creates an environment that’s rich in oxygen. Giant insects like you wouldn’t be able to breathe if you left the fog…’

Then I realized.

‘I’m an Ant.’

….dammit. Damn it. Damn It! DAMN IT! That f*&^ing Queen! THIS is why she made sure to change me into an insect! To keep me trapped in here! To force me to play along with her.

I have no choice now, I have to increase my strength. If I didn’t I would be eaten alive. I’m caught, like a fly in a web.

My sadness returned. Weaker than before, but still strong enough to make me fall to my knees. I was trapped. I would never get out of this nightmare, never see the sun again, never visit all of the places I wanted to see, never…

…never spend my days with my dear, sweet Delilah. She couldn’t stay in a place like this, and I can’t go out there, beyond the fog.

The Spider, perhaps sensing my despair, scuttled up to me and nuzzled my head. It didn’t make me feel any better, but it did give me something to occupy my mind besides sadness. The Spider really was quite cute. Soft, colorful fur nestled against my own hard exoskeleton and big eyes, full of tenderness gazed into my own expressionless ant’s eyes.

I didn’t feel any better about my situation, but at least I wasn’t alone.

This damned Spider, now I was regretting the way I treated it earlier. None of this as the fault of the Spider, it was just doing what it was made to do.

‘Hey…Spider.’

‘Yes Master?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘…? Whatever you want it to be I suppose. We Caretakers were never designated names by our creator.’

‘You don’t want to pick your own name? It’s what I’ll be calling you from now on, after all.’

‘Anything Master could come up with would be a wonderful name!’

‘I see, well then how about….’

I paused, trying to think of something to call the Spider. A human name would feel weird and out of place, so instead I tried thinking of something unique to the Spider.

It was certainly energetic, and ‘happy’ seemed to be it’s default setting. Plus there was the bright yellow, orange and red coloring on it’s back…!

‘Ember.’

The Spider nodded happily and nuzzled my head some more.

‘Oh yes, I quite like that! Master, I’ll be your Ember!’

‘Why do I get the feeling you would have reacted like that no matter what name I gave you?’

But the Spider didn’t seem to have heard that, as it had shifted positions and was now sitting in my lap like a dog. Somewhere along the lines I seem to have started petting the Spi-, petting Ember’s head.

‘Hey, Ember. You still need to answer my last question. Why am I so hungry?’

‘Ah, as to that Master, it’s actually quite simple. You’re still hungry because normal human food simply isn’t good enough. Your body needs a lot more nutritious food to run than your old one did. I think the humans call it ‘rabbit starvation’ where no matter how much your belly fills with food you can still starve to death if the food doesn’t have the right vitamins, minerals and nutrients.’

‘And what exactly would I have to eat to finally feel full?’

‘Meat is usually a good bet, preferably raw. Though for the highest nutritional value you should eat beings like us. If you wish it Master, I can call over a Scout right now. It won’t fight if I tell it to stay put so you can even eat it live if you-’

‘-No thanks!’

Ugh, the thought of eating one of those things was making me sick. Still, at least now I knew how to fill my stomach. If processed food was no good then that left me with whatever livestock I could dig up around here. And at least I wouldn’t have any problems eating things raw.

I discovered during my ransacking of this house that no matter what I ate or how I ate it there was no taste to any of it. Sure rice and crackers were bland to begin with, but when I accidentally ate a hunk of blu cheese without realizing what it was-and still tasted nothing, I realized that my taste buds must have vanished during the transformation.

It made sense, after all taste buds are only useful to those with discerning taste. I was made to eat everything, so there was no need to tell the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ flavors.

Regardless, now wasn’t the time to worry about that. Right now I had something that I needed to do. Return to that store, retrieve my wife and friends, and escort them out of this fog.

Though after that…

‘I guess all I can do until then is try to find some decently strong animals to steal powers from.’

Ember must have heard that, because she(I decided that Ember was female…maybe?) chimed in.

‘Ah, about that Master. You really should consider eating insects. Our abilities are far more varied and impressive than the mammals, reptiles and such. The most you’ll get from eating those guys are some sharp appendages and maaaybe some venom, if you’re lucky.’

She said this all very flippantly, as if I hadn’t threatened to kill her a few minutes ago. Either she was too naive to care about the past or smart enough to know I no longer wanted to hurt her. Hmph.

‘Are you sure you’re not just being vain?’

‘Ha ha ha! Not at all Master! Insects are born with all sorts of unique abilities, and they’re all yours for the picking!’

‘Well…being that as it may, I just can’t. It’s too disgusting.’

‘Now now, Master! We mustn’t be too picky,I’ll call over a Scout right away so you can see just how delicious the food you’re missing out on is!’

‘Gah, Don’t you dare!’ I said, amused against my will.

I couldn’t help it. Ember’s antics were lifting the fog around me, if only a little.

‘Anyway, it’s about time we head out. At the very least we need to get my friends to safety. Incidentally, how far away is the fog wall?’

‘Well, from here it’ll be about 20 miles to your friends hideout. And then from there we’ll need to walk roughly another 70 miles before we reach the maximum projected range of the ‘Phase 1’ perimeter.’

There was a lot to unpack with that, but it would keep until later.

‘Well then we had better get going. 20 miles is a long way to run, so let’s go!’ I said, picking up Ember.

She scuttled onto my back and laced her legs around me, forming an odd sort of spider backpack. As for me I pulled an old cloak out of a closet beside the door and draped it around myself, hiding my body and head.

No point in frightening everyone before I got the chance to tell them who I was.

My preparations complete, I rushed out the door and sprinted in the direction Ember indicated for me.

I didn’t know if I would even survive to find out about this ‘plan’ that the Queen had cooked up. But I did know what I could do, right here and right now.

I could save the woman I loved. And that was all I needed to keep going.