The haze of infrared cast phantasms in the dark. Horrors played at the edge of Bee’s vision, lurking in the corners and invading her imagination. Then, the sudden bark of gunfire, filling the levels above this tunnel, sent them back into hiding. As the beast that invaded her mouth died, the air that sustained her grew choking thin, and her lungs burned. Panic seizing her, Bee struggled, but her limbs were too tightly constricted by the wet resin.

Hypoxia overcame the child, and carbon dioxide saturated her blood. Still, she whined against the ribbed tubing forced down her throat. Then her body began to twitch and seize against her control. Her head was swirling. Her blood was boiling. But then something in her tripped. The sensation of a taut wire snapped between her ears, and she felt the reverberation through her skull and chest cavity. Something awoke in her, and suddenly the pain was replaced with the urge to sleep, rest, and wait. So her struggling stopped, eyes drooping, a thrumming in her chest casting aside all urge to breathe.

Eventually, out of the depths emerged a hunchbacked freak. Unlike the crawling serpents, this one crooked its head, attracted to the distant sounds of battle. Asymmetrical and swollen, skin mottled and patchy with spots of red infection, his eyes shone white, mirror bright in the cool infrared. The knuckles of one massive arm dragged on the ground as it lurched closer, stopping to peer and taste the air with his antenna before continuing. He rasped, mandibles working, but Bee couldn’t hear what he said through the mucus around her head.

With its smaller arm, the freak patted down the wreckage that Bee was cocooned within. She distantly thought she should shrink back and try to scream, but her new reserve was impossible to overcome. So the child didn’t struggle. Instead, Bee saw a momentary surprise come over the monster as he looked upon her face, emerging from the silicon flesh that filled the collapsed tunnel. Then he stepped back again to survey the scene.

With its massive arm, the creature took hold of the resin around Bee’s neck and pulled. The strength of its biomechanical limb was tremendous, causing the structure she was affixed onto to groan and rattle with strain. Finally, with a wet crunch, it came away, freeing her head and chest with a wash of slick biogel. Then its little hand seized the object down her throat and pulled. Inch after inch of artificial gullet and trachea emerged from her mouth. An entire foot of it was eventually loosened, and Bee gasped and retched as she was free of it. Last came her tongue, pulled taut from her mouth, latched to the intrusive tubing. Its bladed tip detached from a metallic catch, free at last.

Wriggling free, then falling, Bee tumbled down to touch the floor of the city. Her throat burned as she took in the foul air around her. Energy and alertness returned to her, and she pushed herself to a sitting position with one hand. Looking back, the wreckage of the giant that she was bound to shred, torn apart with powerful weaponry, reminding her of the damage done by the scavenger’s waraugs.

“Oh no, no... What’s this? No, no...” The freak muttered to itself, unstable. Then, Bee met his gaze, grimacing at the freak’s state as he stood there twitching and glassy-eyed.

“Will you-... Will you eat me?” Gurgled the freak before her. “Please... Please eat me.”

Bee tried to stand but felt suddenly off balance. Sprawling on her arms and knees, she looked down at herself. The first thing that she checked - one of her hands had not regrown. Yet her remaining hand was longer of finger now, larger overall, if still slender in shape. Her arms, too, were longer, and their plates smoother. The wings on her back flicked, spraying biogel away. Unsure, Bee held herself, the dimensions and proportions of her body wrong to her. She had grown too much, too quickly, and it filled her with a sense of dissociation. Bee patted down the curving plates of her chest and legs as if they were some foreign object before looking back at the freak. Then, with revulsion, she realised he was still muttering to himself, barely coherent.

“Love you,” He said to himself. “Love you.... Love you.”

Bee instinctively tried to answer. Yet a quivering came over her nose and lips. The long siphons on her back sucked in the air then so did her mouth. Finally, before she could stop it, Bee sneezed out a spray of mucus onto him. Surprised, he fell back onto his haunches.

“Sorry,” Bee sniffled as she felt another twitch in her nose and a quivering in her abdomen. Her mouth salivated uncontrollably. “I didn’t mean to do... To do...”

Again, her belly seized. This time the spray from her throat was more substantial, a wave of slime that splashed over the freak’s head and upper body. Disgusted and confused, even this demented monster had the sense to flee. But, unfortunately, he didn’t get far.

“Wait! Don’t!” Bee called after him, shielding her nose and mouth with her hand, crawling forward. She coughed and spluttered, the acrid taste of chemicals filling her mouth and nose. “I need your help!”

Despite her pleading, the pale creature stumbled and fell. Flesh sloughed from the freak’s body as he howled and then died. Bee crouched in the dark, unsure of what she had just witnessed. Did she kill him? She didn’t mean to. It was an accident. Trembling in shock, unable to help herself, the child let out a desperate whine.