I remembered the day when commander had called me out to that junk place near the mound with grey smelly water to tell me the truth or our colonies biggest taboo.

“Actually it’s related to the queen.”

The commander spoke looking older than his usual self; probably because of having conflicting emotions and thoughts about whether he should open the Pandora’s Box and tell me the truth or not.

“The queen?” I asked him and the captains standing at the side nodded their heads, looking dull and out of energy,

“Yeah.” Commander answered, acting a little spaced out, but a minute of looking toward the mound later, his mind returned back to the present to start the discussion and make me a member of their little secret club.

“Actually do you know how the relation of a queen and the colony grows?” He asked me, and I for once had no idea what he was getting at, even though my wisdom and intelligence was probably way greater than him.

But to show that I wasn’t completely incompetent, I replied with full confidence as if there was nothing that I didn’t knew… Kind of.

“The queen lays eggs and we protect her.”

His face turned stiff and the smile on his face went somewhere far away and didn’t return after that until our conversation ended.

But seeing his ‘The fuck?’ face, I couldn’t help but renew my answer. “I mean the eggs grow into us and then we are further divide according to our talents and then some become workers and some become soldiers…”

I looked around to see if anyone was agreeing with me but seeing the captains unmotivated faces made me a little sad.

“Well, you are not technically wrong…” And I took a breath of relief, but commander didn’t stop at that and continued with, “but do you know how or why the queen lays eggs? Or why we don’t leave the colony after growing up and stay behind to protect the queen? Why the female to male ratio in our colony is so damn low? And finally, why there is only one queen in our whole colony? Do you know these things?”

It would have been better if he had asked me those questions one by one, but it was alright. With my intelligence and wisdom there was no way I could have forgotten them.

‘Hum, the answer…’ I lamented about the various possibilities, whether all the questions had the same answer. Whether they were related or not? And after much thinking and taking into mind the answer that the commander wanted to hear, I came to a solution.

“Umm, because we are ants?” I answered with a confuse face because even I had no idea what he was getting at. My intelligence and wisdom and failed me.

But proving me wrong, the commander once again answered with, “Well, you are not technically wrong.”

The thought to punch him n the face and run away did come to my mind, but I let it g and perked my antennas to hear what he had to say.

“Ahem.” The commander cleared his throat, looked into my eyes and spoke after nodding his head once.

“You are right. All of those answers can be answered by that. Actually…” The mood suddenly turned serious and I understood that the juicy part was coming so I put all of my attention on him.

“Actually, everything is related to the queen. You see our queen, no, every queen has a skill called [Hive Mind] which allows her to keep an eye on everyone and everything in the hive or the colony.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” I stopped him in the middle because I had a sudden revelation hearing that.

“By everything you don’t mean everything right?” But when the commander replied with ‘yes’, I knew where this was going.

“Haha… okay, I understand. So because the queen has this [Hive mind] skill which allows her to keep an eye on everyone, you want to kill…”

But before I could finish my sentence a hard punch on my head knocked my world and made me yell out in pain. “Ete, Ete, Ete- The hell you doing boss!”

“Firstly…” he lifted my body with his telekinesis or something and straightened me up. Then lifted my head to meet his eyes. “We are not trying or going to kill the queen, understood?” and I nodded my head.

“Good. Secondly, [Hive Mind] has one more function. With it queens can influence the thoughts or relay her instructions to any of her subjects.”

I asked him what he meant y subjects and he smiled before pointing at me, then himself and then the other and saying, “Us. We are her subjects and there is no place in the colony that we can hide from her control. Unless…”

“Unless we grow resistance against her skill.”

“Very good. He replied. “Okay enough about that, now I am going to tell you how a queen is chosen.”

I actually knew about the process. Though I was more interested in where off this was leading to, but I let him be.

“Actually it is not much. You see, once every hundred thousand, a female novice ant gets the option to evolve into a princess upon reaching the tenth level.”

I thought about my upcoming evolution for a second and returned back from the dream land to listen to the commander.

“And Upon mating with a second or higher ranked male, the princes evolves into a queen.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant by mating, but seeing everyone’s flushed faces, I decided to wait and ask Bill later.

But then the thought, whether two queens can live in one colony emerged from the depths of my intelligent brain and I asked the command who happily replied with, “No.”

“A colony can’t hold two queens. After a princess evolves into a queen she has to either leave the colony or kill the previous queen.”

“Ah!” A light bulb lit up in my mind. “So that is what you want to do.”

The commander asked me curiously what I was thinking.

“So that is why you want to kill the queen. You want to impregnate the princess and make her evolve…”

*DUN*

Another smack on my head and a glowing swollen pimple later, he made me listen to the fate of the most damned ant.

“This is the last time that I am saying, so don’t make me repeat myself. We are not going to kill the queen. And in am not mating with the princess.”

I asked him why and he said, ‘Because I don’t want to die.”

“What!?” I yelled and some of my spit landed on the commander’s face, who folded his antennae to smack me once more, but then took a deep breath and sighed.

“You…”

“I don’t even know what to say.”

I apologized for my behavior making puppy eyes, but it didn’t work on him. If only I could make puppy eyes like Tiny, never mind. I remembered that the queen was trying to give my hand to the princess.

And I once again yelled out.

“What now?” the commander asked me wearily.

“If everyone who mates with a princess dies…Then why was the queen so adamant on me mating with the princess?”

*Pfft*

He spurted out the drop of water he was drinking and sloppily looked at me before asking, “That happened?”

I nodded my head and he collected himself before relying with a grave voice full of evil and darkness.

“I see now. If remember correctly then you was able to resist queens influence during your reward ceremony, am I right?”

I nodded once again and he smirked.

“That’s your answer.” He said.

“Because I resisted her influence she decided to get me killed?”

“Yep.’ He replied and I heard the captain’s murmur about something. I didn’t care much about what they were discussing and got on point with the commander.

“So what does her behavior show? Does she want me dead or what? I don’t understand anything anymore.”

He said, “Its actually more complicated than that.” And I replied with, “I am all ears.”

But maybe I shouldn’t have said that. They were involved into too many conspiracies and Hersey. And although, I was a daring soul… who am I kidding my heart pounded like a bull against my thorax with excitement. I was too in tune with wherever the story was gong and didn’t care who I would be facing or what I would be doing.

I simply wanted to collect eh corpses of all of mine opponent, loot them to their bones and made sure that taxidermies would be made from their skin.

I slapped my face so hard that blood leaked out from the corner of my mouth.

“What happened?” the commander asked in bewilderment, but I shook my hand and asked him to continue, while I thought about the reason on to why Greed’s influence on my mind had suddenly grown so much stronger.

The commander continued to say things, but I didn’t listen to anything and when I came to be, he was finishing his story.

“So you will disable her and then we will come to act against the king.”

I hurriedly asked him what was going on. Why would I kill the queen and he looked surprised at me for a second.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? The king is controlling the queen from the shadows. So in order to make sure that our mates would stop acting against us, we have to disable the queen. That would break kings mind control over the colony and give us enough leeway to kill him.”

“Umm…” my antennas moved on their own, as I once again asked the commander.

“Who was this king again?”

“…..”

“….”

The captains looked at me in bewilderment, the commander looked at me in shock and I looked at them with my puppy eyes. Hoping that he wouldn’t get too mad at me.

But instead of sending my head flying in two different directions, the commander patted my back.

“It’s okay to ask rather than nod your head like fools…” for some reason the captains standing at the side lowered their heads when they heard that.

“Humph. Never mind, like I said, the king is controlling the queen and he doesn’t want to get find out. So he is hiding somewhere in our mound. Because we know that he is mind controlling the queen which is only possible if he is close to her, I am sure that he is hiding somewhere near the queen’s quarters.”

“Wait, wait… I said wait!”

“Now who I this king? Why is he controlling the queen? Fuck that … how is he controlling the queen? How is that even possible?”

*Sigh*

Commander sighed and looked at the sky because he knew the hard times were coming. And after waiting for the suspense to build up or simply thinking it through, he the lifted the veil from over the biggest mystery,

“The king is queen’s mate.”

“Huh…” And the answer shocked me. Not because of the big reveal because just some sentences ago the commander had said something completely different about a mate’s fate.

“But didn’t you say the mate always-…””

“Yes, the always die after mating with the queen.”

“Then how is he controlling the queen’s? Is he… a zombie?”

*DUN*

And another fist to my head and a swollen lump later he replied with his jaws twitching.

“Because he is alive.”

“But how is he alive?” I asked

“Because he is special.” He replied.

I wanted to smack the commander on his head. I thought that a notification would come and say I have become dumber than before after hearing his replies, but it didn’t come and that astonished me.

I massaged my forehead and took slow and deep breaths because this conversation was turning weirder and weirder by the second.

“So he is alive?” I asked him and he calmly replied, “Yes.”

I also nodded my head in sympathy to my delusional commander.

“And not only is he alive, he is controlling the queen from the shadows? Am I right?” I asked and he confirmed my question to be true once again.

“Yes, you are right.”

I nodded my head and stated walking toward the mound.

“I think I am done. Please find someone else to solve this delusion of yours. I’m out.”

But before I could run away, my brute captain James lunged at me and caught me.

“Let me go. Let me go!”

I yelled, but instead of letting go, he instead picked the helpless me up and took me back in front of the commander.

“What happened? Didn’t you understand what I was saying? The colony is in danger and you are running away? Are you even sane?”

“I am sorry for my impudence commander, but I believe you are delusional. Did you even think before saying all those things to me? Who would believe something like that? A guy who should be dead, is controlling the queen? Are you for real?”

He shook his head, and gave me reasons to believe that he was telling the truth.

“The proof you can see for yourself. You know why there are so few female ants in the colony versus the males?”

I had no idea.

“Because he king is trying to create an army. He thinks the females are weak and they don’t make good soldiers. Therefore the queen now only births females to keep the colony in the darkness.”

“How is that possible?”

“Everything is possible. The queen can actually control whether the egg gives birth to a female or a male.”

That was a crazy assumption and the horrible thing was that it was also true.

“Why do you think he is controlling the queen? He is simply too ambitious.”

“Okay, I get it.” I was already too tired of all the blabber, and wanted to get inside the mound and sleep.

“The king wants an army and is controlling the queen. The queen can see everything in the colony so she is working as his radar and keeping him up to date with everything that happens in the colony. Am I right?”

And everyone nodded their heads. I only had one question left to ask and maybe it was the important one too.

“But why didn’t he die.”

“The thing is… he is special.”

My mind returned back to the present after going through the memory lane, and I found once again looking at a overly excited queen who was staring at me as if I was a toy for her to play with.

Though I didn’t believing in commanders laments at the start, but now that he or the king had already proved of his hidden presence, was there any need for me to let him leave?

“Oh so you know me?” the king asked me and I happily replied.

“Who don’t know you? You were the shining star of your generation. The best an ant could be. Rose quickly with your first ranked strength as a variant blue ant who had control related skills. And in a year you earned your second evolution which was some kind of a parasite ant that could leech off of others and the third evolution… no one actually knows about that. Mated with Princess Leila who is now the queen and then died. Well, at least that’s what the whole colony thinks, other than a select few personals.”

I couldn’t hide my smirk anymore and a healthy smile blossomed on my face, seeing the queens smiling face crumbling and her expression turning extremely serious.

“What are you trying to do… boy? You think you know me? The fuck do you know about me? That’s nothing, you don’t know shit about me. I had fucking dreams. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to enjoy my life to the fullest. But no…”

The queen grinded her jaw so hard that even I heard the sound clearly.

“NO, no, no, that mother fucking queen had plans of her own. She wanted me to mate with this whore and die for the betterment of our colony. She said it’s for the future, our future… Fuck her and her future. Nobody asked me what I wanted! Nobody cared about me dreams, so I staged a plan…”

Smile once again returned on queen’s face and the fury, the anger, that the queens voice held dissipated as a slow, evil and poisonous undertone replaced the former wraith.

“Thanks to my first evolution I had all the resistance required to resist the queen’s influence. But I still fucked her. Why? Because my third evolution allowed me to. So I fucked the princess and… and killed the queen. Yes, I killed her with my own fucking hands, and gained control over the colony. Haahaa…”

Her eyes opened wide as evilness replaced her former disheveled appearance. Kings maniacal mind overpowered queen’s childish self and made me see a scene where the once sweet and sound queen was roaring around like a crazy ant.

I actually couldn’t understand what The king was trying to do. Was there any need for him to go out of his way to justify what he had done?

“They didn’t let me roam the world, so I decided to use the colony as…”

He was going on and on, but I couldn’t handle it anymore and attacked the queen’s chest with a low powered air bullet.

*Smack*

It struck her and she whelped in pain.

“Hey…What did you do that for?” She asked.

“No reason” I said and attacked once more.

I snickered hearing the sweet voice threatening me and stood up.

I looked into her eyes and declared, “Now… You are going down. I am going to liberate my colony from your control. The days of you using the queen as antennae to spread your thoughts are over. Now, you are going to bow to me.”

“Wait, what? What antenna... anyways, I don’t think you are an idiot. Didn’t that little commander of yours told you about my ability to mind control?”

I continued to stare at him and started walking toward the queen.

“What? You not going to listen to me? Then handle this!”

And hundreds of threads slowly came out of His mind. I had seen the threads before. They were attached to everyone mind like a wire.

This was the connection between a queen and her subjects that commander had told me about. And the king had found a way to apply his mind control on anyone using these threads.

“I see.” I mumbled to myself.

The light blue colored, but otherwise invisible threads moved disintegrated the moment they touched my head and the queens face crumbled into disbelief.

My resistances were too high to be bothered by an attack of this level. Their level didn’t even increase by on even after talking the all out attack by him.

The extraordinary confidence that he had broke the moment his attack failed to deliver the result he wanted and the queen yelled out.

“Workers, get him, Kill him! He is trying to harm your queen.”

And hearing her command, order or plea, the workers who really didn’t like my presence in the room, lashed toward me like beasts.