My mind was groggy first thing in the morning-not an unusual state for it to be in but not all that common recently. I splashed a bit of water on my face before pulling out some medicine to alleviate the mild headache that I could already feel burgeoning.

After that, it was a shower as usual--cold to ensure I was wide awake this time, as much as I hated it--followed by a bowl of cereal that constituted all of my breakfast. With that, I filled up my flask with strongly brewed coffee, got dressed into my charcoal grey suit and I was ready.

All-in-all, it took me little time to go through all my morning ablutions and preparations before I was ready to go to work. However, the whole time, my shortly-cut, unruly hair portrayed how I was feeling succinctly; stressed and nervous.

What didn’t help with all that stress building up inside my body was the ample time I had to reflect on what I had found yesterday--a long commute in the car only aggravated that issue.

Yesterday, Celest detected something strange in a hive that has been on everyone’s mind recently; the strong hive. A strong hive by itself is worrisome--initially, they emerged only every few months but now, you couldn’t go a few weeks without a strong hive emerging.

By its nature, a strong hive presented a threat, doubly so for one that has gone unchecked for so long such as this one. For the majority of people, that sense of danger was only minimal; they were not involved in the clearance of hives and they held firm belief that the G.U.G. would handle any hive before it got out of hand.

For us that actually work in the G.U.G., however, there’s a burden of responsibility weighing down that sense of danger as well. Additionally, for some users, such as the auspicious one yesterday, their innate ability to feel or see or sense hives only causes the presence of a strong hive to become an ever-present burden on their mind.

Something that I was, unfortunately, fully able to sympathise with.

However, even as much as a problem it posed for their mental health, we still had many users who wanted to work here. A fact I was exceedingly grateful for.

Such Celest. Once she noticed something strange, she notified me and when asked if she could stay later than she normally would, she promptly agreed. She stayed so late that the rest of her team had even left before she herself went back home.

And her stay wasn’t without merit either. Towards the end of her extended shift, that’s when it happened. Even now, I could distinctly remember the shock that was carved into her face as she told me what she found; a hive had metastasized. Just like a cancer, it had spread from one building into another, expanding its control.

Phenomenal. Amazing. And downright terrifying. It was unprecedented; nowhere on Earth had a hive done anything similar to that. In fact, it was a well known rule that hives only ever emerged inside a building and stayed in a building--a rather peculiar restriction on otherwise naturalistic occurrences.

Needless to say, we didn’t know much about hives; we didn’t know why they emerged, how they emerged, or even what their purpose was. We knew even less about strong hives; there was no way someone would forsake a population of people just for the mere possibility of learning something about these infestations. Once a hive emerged, it had to be cleared as soon as possible.

We were aware of what happens when a strong hive goes unchecked; Las Vegas is always the go-to example of that, but this was completely different. They could also multiply?

Obviously, as soon as I learnt this possibly disastrous information, I took it straight to the director as soon as I could but due to incredibly bad luck, he was busy the whole day in meetings of one kind or another. Even at my behest that this was urgent, it was late enough in the day that his secretary insisted that it could wait tomorrow.

And so, that brought me to today, getting out of the car in the specialised part of the G.U.G. car park for important personnel.

I strode straight on in, my demeanour less approachable and more strained than it usually was. Some people still greeted me but I lacked the energy to engage with them before than a passing greeting back.

Once I took the lift up to the floor where the director’s office was, I was greeted by the same secretary as last night. The meeting had been scheduled first thing this morning and, as such, I was let straight in once she had confirmed that the director was ready for me.

The room was large but not opulent--utilitarian would be the most apt word to describe it. Filing cabinets littered every wall and nearly ever observable desk had some sort of paper on it, neatly organised or otherwise. The main desk did have a computer on it but the director insisted on keeping the most important things analogue--for good reason, though I didn’t share his sentiment.

The man himself was a portly gentleman with short, black hair as well as a nicely-fitting suit. It was expensive but bore visible signs of wear--the sort of thing you could imagine someone fresh in an important position would buy but then realise wasn’t all too important. His nose was angular and sharp, with small, wire-frame spectacles sitting comfortably on top.

“You wanted to see me?” He asked, reading through some paperwork on his desk. All of us who met with him regularly knew he wasn’t a rude man--he was just swamped with so much work he had to take every available minute to sift through it unless something particularly important came up to halt him.

“There’s been a development with the strong hive,” I sat down on one of the two chairs in front of the desk. My lack of asking for a seat I hoped adequately portrayed the intensity of the matter.

Immediately, he brought his gaze up from his work, focusing his black, beady eyes on mine.

“Bad news, I presume?” He spoke slowly, methodically, like an intelligent man carefully pondering over his words. He didn’t get his position through nepotism.

“The hive… Has expanded.” We lacked information on exactly what happened; this was the best I could do to adequately explain the intensity of the situation.

In response, he raised one eyebrow from his usually stoic face.

“That does, indeed, sound ominous. Do we know if this is a signal that it’s on the verge of collapse or something entirely different?”

“We don’t know, but I personally doubt it could be anything but a bad sign.” As a result of rushing here first-thing in the morning, I had neglected to check in with my department on any additional developments--though I doubted there would be any; Celest, who was monitoring the situation last night, doesn’t come in this early.

“We’ve been unable to muster the manpower to clear it in the past week-and-a-half it’s been here, I imagine?” He inquired. Normally, the individual handling of each hive was left to my sister department, something he would naturally not be aware of.

“That’s correct, and it’s only gotten larger; we certainly can’t clear it now without calling in some help,” I clarified further. It was a badly hidden secret that the G.U.G. suffered from eternal manpower issues; users were a desirable caste and there’d always be better options in the private sector compared to the public one.

“So you requested this meeting because you believe that a collaboration is necessary?”

“Yes, that is correct.” Initially, my first call was to simply let the man in charge know about all of this, but the request for collaboration was something I thought about when ruminating on the issue since then.

“With how allegedly large and dangerous the hive is, I doubt any single guild would willingly try to clear it by themselves; there’d be too many injuries and losses to justify the expense” He explained out loud. There was no need to say all this except for explaining the situation at hand to me. For the man at top who handled interactions with the other guilds, he would, naturally, be the most informed of the situation and how guilds would respond.

“Has your department come with any estimates on how long we have left?”

“Not yet; I haven’t checked in with them,” I truthfully admitted.

“Go back to your job but put priority on this hive. Come three pm, I’ll host a meeting where we can gather all the information we have into one place and come to a decision.” With his commands in place, his eyesight sunk back into the mountains of paperwork on his desk, a clear indication that this meeting was now over.

With a somewhat relieved body, I stood up out of my chair and left the room.