I never incited muttering in my old life. I was the one who muttered. By that, I mean that I never held a position of power or leadership, so others were the ones who had to break the bad news to me and my peers. Sitting a room full of people while an old guy stands up front and says something awful or shocking, then muttering some curse under my breath or sharing a look with my neighbors. That was my experience.

Of course, the only useful experience I had from my old life was browsing the internet for random facts or something. At least, that’s how it felt like, floating in front a massive crowd of bees buzzing with concern after I explained that many of them would be forced to leave the Kin Link.

The most striking thing? I felt relatable to the fucking old guys who I used to hate. How horrible is that? And the reason I felt like that was because I suddenly understood a fraction of why they were fine with crushing the spirits of the regular employee: they didn’t understand said regular employees. Those people who had to make hard decisions were in a completely different position. They thought about different things. They didn’t know what it was like to be born as an intelligent bee to a monstrous, unnatural hybrid mother who automatically included them in an involuntary psychic familial Link.

Hm. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions. My situation was just a bit different from those guys.

The point is that I felt as if there was distance between my experiences and that of the bees. And that was making me feel worse for forcing them to do this. All I really knew was that they loved being part of the family. In fact, they live for it. And if bees are always included in the Kin Link as soon as they’re born, this was such a drastic change.

“Too true. My own experience even doesn’t help, considering I was born in a completely different situation. I also feel bad. However, in this desperate situation, we should probably try to steel ourselves and take the mindset I might have had as a bee. This is to benefit the queen, and therefore the hive, and so it must be done. Yes, we must think this way… to preserve our sanity, if nothing else.”

I don’t like that. Not one bit.

Ultimately, though, Queen was right. So, after the muttering and buzzing subsided, I floated forward to ask the looming question, before Beatrice could ask for me.

“Will anybody volunteer? Think carefully about what this decision will entail. We’re going into this blindly. It’s completely unknown what lies beyond the Kin Link. The consequences of leaving are unknown. The chances of returning to it are unknown. The probability of success is unknown too. If the volunteer proves that it won’t work, then we’ll have no choice but to do something else, and that bee might be left alone. Forever.”

That last part got them. I could feel their enthusiasm prior, their eagerness to sacrifice themselves for the hive. But being alone, out of the hive forever? It was a terrible fate for bees. Practically a death sentence, if not worse. And for the more forward-thinking bees, an even more terrible truth was apparent. If they volunteered, and ended up being left out of the hive, they wouldn’t just feel tortured and alone, no sir. They would be useless. Any potential usefulness they could bring to the hive would be lost and wasted, cast aside for a sacrifice that could be pointless.

I could feel it through the actual Link. Their hesitation. Their brains working. Some of them were actually thinking of other solutions. Some were thinking of better possible reverse Kin Link methods, others imagined a different alternative entirely. Many were trying to decide between the need to protect the hive and make their entire lives useful. It was a strange sensation, considering I rarely paid much heed to the thoughts of the younger bees, and that was the main demographic of bees that would be removed from the Link. Not that I was trying to neglect them or anything, of course! But it was just overwhelming to do the thinking of hundreds of bees.

“What do you say? I’ll only choose from those who volunteer, so if you come to a decision, come forward,” I said after a few moments. Beatrice gave me a look, but I reassured her. Someone would be chosen regardless.

In that instant, just after I finished silently assuaging Beatrice’s fears, two things happened. First, the hardness of my heart cracked and nearly broke. And second, a wave of emotion washed over me as the bees all screamed:

“”I’LL GO!””

Whatever steel I had forged into my heart was pretty shitty, because the damn thing was crumbling to pieces. In fact, it was such bad metal that I think it was turning to liquid and leaking from my eyes. And as all the bees clamored to be the one chosen, a single thought entered my mind.

How the hell was I supposed to choose someone?

______________

“And you know exactly what to do if your thoughts turn to mush?”

“Yes ma.”

“And the program is still working?”

“Yes ma.”

“And-“

I kept bothering him until I was satisfied, which took… a hot minute. Beatrice was preparing the other bees to take the dive immediately after we confirmed the efficacy of the reverse Link, so that we could put this whole situation to rest as soon as possible. And our brave volunteer was as ready as he would ever be. As for who the unlucky bastard was?

Bench.

Who was Bench? Until just a few minutes ago, he was an unnamed warrior who was all too eager to sacrifice himself. Again. Because he had already been involved in a dangerous operation as one of the warriors who helped attack Yiwi. He reminded me of a smaller Bend, with more scars and fewer muscles. He hadn’t sustained injuries as bad as Bend and his dismemberment, but he was still among the most battle-hardened warriors we had. A bit more of the silent type than Bend and his bros, but a capable guy nonetheless. Honestly, it would not have been my first choice to remove a proven warrior from our ranks, especially since there was a possibility the removal could be permanent. But I had made the choice to leave things up to fate. Somewhat.

Basically, I just made a condensed list of candidates and made a B-box randomly pick a bee. I didn’t have the willpower to pick a bee for a thing like this, but I did do the bare minimum of selecting a few volunteers. I owed them that much, at least.

Very few of the bees who were allowed to volunteer had names. And by very few, I mean none. There were plenty of named bees who would be removed to create the Reverse Link, like Belle’s underlings. But Beatrice decided that any and all named bees were exceptions to a general rule, where most bees were not named. So then, why were we allowing a bee named Bench to go?

Well. I hadn’t exactly told anybody that I already decided on his name. It was a private thought, more like a coping mechanism for myself. I told myself (and Queen) that if Bench succeeded in this task and proved the reverse Link could work, while still being a part of the hive, then I’d give him a proper name.

“Mother. It is time,” Beatrice said as she rested a claw on my shoulder. I appreciated it, but did she have to sound so cliche? Maybe we were making this a bigger deal than it was.

“See you on the other side, ma,” Bench said, and before I could think about it any more, I removed him from the Link. It was as easy as imagining the string that connected us fading away, replaced by a feeling of hollow pain.

The change was instant. A spark of… something faded from Bench’s eyes, and the ever-present voice I had never really noticed before was gone. He suddenly started buzzing, looking around at the bees and flying erratically. There was no familiarity in his actions, no sense that he remembered us. He began flying away, and some bees moved to stop him, but I commanded them to stop. He hadn’t begun creating the reverse Link yet. We had to trust him.

In fact, I could already feel him trying. A trickle of Mind leaked from him, evidence that he was tapping Mind, though his capacity would be limited. It was probably even more limited than it normally was for a non-Mind based warrior like himself. But whatever. The program was working! I say program, but it was more like a lingering command contained by a B-mail that worked exactly as a program would. When he was removed from the Kin Link, Bench would use his Mind to follow the exact steps laid out in the reverse Link guide contained in that B-mail, whether consciously or not. After the first one was completed, the command would wait for some time to figure out if it worked before beginning to try the second method.

As for the two reverse Link ideas… The first, which the departing Bench was trying to complete, came from the combined brainstorming of Beatrice and Belphegora. An unlikely combo perhaps, but a frightening one, if I was being honest. The method was based on one of Beatrice’s ideas from back when she was trying to develop a reverse Link on her own time. Belphegora, upon receiving the ‘documentation’ of Beatrice’s early attempts in our brainstorming, had been captivated by a particular idea and ran with it. Later, she had asked Beatrice for help personally, and they ended up with this idea.

Essentially, this was the ‘reverse engineering’ route. Beatrice had studied the inner workings of the Kin Link to the best of her and Beck’s Ability, and tried to manually recreate the Link stemming from herself. She had failed, but she also hadn’t tried very hard to bring it into reality. With some insight from Belphegora, who was one of the most talented Mind users in the hive, they developed a completed version of this Kin Link copy as a Lock called the Queen Link. Not my favorite name, but fine enough. It was pretty much the exact same as the regular Kin Link, except that since the Link was created in reverse, it would grant me the control.

The only problem is that it was complex. Terribly so. After all, the Kin Link wasn’t something I came up with myself. It was something naturally granted to all queen bees upon being born, and the entire thing was completely automatic. I could only assume it was some system put in place by the Bee god to make the whole hive mind situation easy and effortless for your average bee.

The second method… was a bit shaky. Whatever testing we had done wasn’t comprehensive enough to know if it would actually do anything. A Lock of Beck, Beckham, and Becky’s design, the second reverse Link method was closer, in my opinion, to an Ability. They took inspiration from Abilities, after all. What Bench would have to do in that case would be to tap an extraordinary amount of Mind to imagine an arbitrary connection between himself and me. And the kicker: he’d have to relinquish all control of himself to me, as it would be in a Link. Fittingly, they called this Lock ReLinkuish. If nothing else, Beck was far more creative about their names. This option was far less complicated, but it required a degree of sentience and creativity that made me nervous about how well it might work.

Bench was nearing the end of the clearing now, and I quickly floated over. I wasn’t going to let him leave, of course. But I also didn’t want him to become distracted or stressed. However….

“I don’t think Queen Link is working, Beatrice. His Mind usage has felt steady without much change, but there hasn’t been any noticeable connection being made to me.”

“It is still too early to tell. But… we knew this one would be difficult to perform with a limited amount of Mind.”

As if ReLinkuish wouldn’t be equally difficult. If anything, I had less confidence in the second method because of all my aforementioned gripes. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t even know if everything was proceeding according to plan until it either worked, or enough time passed that it was clearly a failure. It was strange. Every moment that I followed him, I expected to feel the emotions of frustration and annoyance, or at least some sense of concentration from the scarred warrior. But I felt nothing. Seeing a bee and not feeling their thoughts? I did not like that. The only hint I had was from my senses, including my sense for Mind.

Once we were in the thick of the dead forest, just a little ways out of the clearing, I felt a pause. The Mind being tapped completely receded, and now all I could do was see Bench wandering around. At the end, I had felt a wisp of something, but upon closer inspection, there was no connection. Queen Link failed.

Bench’s buzzing became more frantic, more unfocused. He started moving away more rapidly, and I had to put a bit of effort into following him. I could feel dozens of bees following me, though I wasn’t sure which ones they were, and once again, the flow of mind began to arise from Bench’s body. All our faith would have to be placed on ReLinkuish.

This time, I felt something immediately. It was almost like a voice crying out into a dark expanse, more of an echo than anything else. Was that Bench? Was I hearing his voice already? He was using a ton of mind, though it was only a ton compared to whatever he was using before. He didn’t seem to be exerting himself as hard, but that was probably because of the less complex and more arbitrary way the second method should work. However, we were already nearing the hive’s outer wall, and I didn’t want him to go far past that. If I had to, I would restrain him personally. To hell with my Mind Collapse or whatever. But he suddenly began to slow down.

All at once, he stopped. The little voice began to rise in volume, and I could feel Queen trying her best to listen. So I did too. Both of us worked as one, straining to hear the voice of our child. To listen to his voice. Slowly, he turned around, and I watched as a string of Mind snapped into place between us, shining a striking white rather than the gold of my own Kin Link. And then he spoke.

“Mo…ther?”