The gleaming shape took off, wings glistening in the remnants of emergency lighting. Hawk only got the barest of outlines...but it was enough. She knew that anatomy. "Fuck." She whispered.

Alex, eyes widening, said, "Wait, Honey, don't—"

She took off. There were threats and there were threats, and what she'd just seen activated emergency response instincts she hadn't known she had. I need a cup, she thought. What she'd seen seemed to be about the size of her palm, so it'd need to be a big cup. The first employee station didn't yield anything useful. The second one, nearest the door, held a large gas station cup. Some piece of Marvel movie tie-in swag. Too bad it wasn't Spider-Man. It held about an inch of liquid in it. She dumped this out quickly, yanked the straw from the lid, and grabbed a piece of laminate plastic, slowly shedding squares of organic paper ash.

And then she raced outside. Please still be there. Be where I can get you. Please, oh please, stay where I can find you.

A glint of movement in the sidewalk brought her eyes down, and there was the shape she'd seen, alright, an insectile shadow with two pairs of cellophane wings. It moved delicately, the antennae on its head moving back and forth as it felt over each plant. Enormous mandibles crushed their way through the remnants of grass. Two large compound eyes scanned the world, as did the small trio of eyes, the ocili, centered in its forehead. Six legs attached to the mesoma, the trunk, and then the petiole joining thorax to gaster. It was an ant, and it was winged and the size of Hawk's palm.

Mandibles were in proportion to its head; it was a female. And as Hawk watched, horrified and thrilled in the same moment, the female alate reached back with two long and lovely legs, and snapped off the first of its four wings.

Alex, who had followed her, said, "Oh, holy shit. That's bad, isn't it?"

"What's..." Em's voice, which immediately trailed off. "That's the size of a fucking pigeon. Why is there a Queen ant the size of a fucking pigeon?"

It didn't race away as Hawk approached, cup in one hand. Nor did it make any effort to dodge as she brought the cup down. If anything, it stepped forward, making it easier to capture. A little maneuvering with the piece of stiff plastic file cover she'd taken, and then she could put the lid on and look.

It was exquisite, a gorgeous blend of gold and blue and red on its carapace. It seemed almost gilded. Small gold hairs decorated the gaster, and as she watched, it snapped off another wing.

"Okay." Alex said, as he stared at his wife with the cup. "Is that an ant?"

"Yes." She said. No hesitation.

"It's the size of a fucking kitten, Hawk." He said.

"And it's an alate that is snapping off its wings. Which means somewhere nearby there's a whole nest of these things, and it's having a nuptial flight. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit."

"So what? The energy is changing the ants, too?" Alex said.

But Dyson and Em looked equally pale. "Let me see that," Dyson said. Hawk handed over the drink cup. The ant inside was busying itself with its own wings, bringing up its legs in an attempt to snap them off entirely. He turned even paler. "There's never just one, is there?"

"Hawk. I don't get why you three look like you're about to vomit. Explain." Alex said.

"It's a queen ant snapping its wings off. Alex, you've been with me during Anting season often enough to know what that means." She waited. He still looked confused. "It's a fertile Queen, Alex. Fertile. And it's the size of a small bird."

And she looked down at the large Queen in question. Alates are ant reproductives; in most species, they're winged. Males and females both have large bodies, with the Queens being larger than the Drones. The primary difference is in antennae shape—a Queen will have long, graceful antennae similar to a worker's. A male's will be stubbier—and in the male's tiny jaws. Most male ants, in fact, look as if they've been partially decapitated. Both alates get one flight in their lives, the mating flight. Then the males die, usually from their own organs exploding during mating, and the females snap off their wings and go to ground. A female alate snapping off her wings isn't guaranteed fertile, but it's typically a very, very, very good sign.

Ant colonies put out hundreds of alates, if not thousands.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"It's not possible," She whispered at last.

"Hey, the monkeys found robes and loin cloths in twelve hours. Mutated ants could fly?"

"It's too late in the season," She said.

"These are mutant ants. Who says they work the same as your ants?" Alex said.

Em handed the cup back. "Maybe the domestic colony was ready for flights."

"Which means maybe we're lucky and the majority of them will be at the Prism. We have to go there, now. Before these things have a chance to spread too far."

"Bit above our pay-grade don't you think, Hawk?" Henry Dyson said.

"RIFAs." She said.

The Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis Invicta, was one of the bigger worldwide catastrophes created by invasive species. They were everywhere, on nearly every continent and most of the islands, and they created millions of dollars of damages, annually. Not to mention they hurt like hell if you fell into one.

"Honeypots aren't inbreeders," Henry said, with feeling. "They won't mate in their own colony, which means whatever these big mutants are—"

"We're assuming they're honeypots. We're assuming that they all somehow survived their trip in the Prism. We're assuming that fucking time works the same way in the rifts that it does out...oh, my god." Hawk trailed off. "That's it. That's what we're looking at. Time works faster inside the rifts."

"Hey, you want to talk about massive assumptions—" Dyson said.

"Well, what if it does? What if it works fast enough that we could get generations of breeding, of genetic drift of—of—of fucking evolution."

"In what? Twelve hours, you think apes evolved sentience and ants turned giant?" Dyson said. "That it's fucking Narnia inside of the rift around the Prism? Are you that kind of demented."

"I'm holding an ant the size of a bird so if it didn't evolve in the giant hole of mystery energy I want to know how it got here, Henry, and I want to make sure it can't make more of itself somewhere where I can't put it and all of its offspring into a freezer!" Hawk shouted. Took a deep breath. Made herself calm. It was hard, with the giant ant squirming in the drink cup. "Alright. Let's just go to the Prism and get it over with."

She walked to the golf cart, set the cup down on the floorboard, and settled herself in for the ride.

It was a short trip. The hoots in the distance got louder, less muted, and damage to the ashes was more visible, but they never ran into one of the ape-creatures on the rear maintenance paths. The only change was in the atmosphere. It felt...more. Hawk wanted to say more alive, but it didn't feel alive. This was electricity as it shoots through dead flesh or cold wire. It gathered in the back of the throat like strangling roots—why strangling? Why roots? Why did it feel this profoundly wrong? Hawk knew in her bones she was coming nearer to something deadly. Was it purely psychosomatic? The little golf-cart wirrrr sound continued. Did this stuff feel like life's antithesis because she knew it was? Or did some part of her biology understand it better than she did?

There were fewer bodies here. They'd had less time to react, to run. She tried to imagine what it had been like. Maybe a flash of light, and then a glowing wave of aural spikes sweeping over green, lush grass and the myriad shades of human flesh. Maybe the people this near the monkey house hadn't even had time to scream.

Then they reached a barrier. Several trash cans and a bike rack had been dragged across the walk and padlocked together. Not a bad way to keep employees out. There was even a second golf cart here, with a small pile of ash topped off by a uniform and set of keys. Beyond the barrier, four more piles, likely the oldest collection of ash here at the site. They wore the black outfits they'd all seen in Kaiser's video. They'd died here, trying to escape. Had Studdard told them they had time? Or had this been an informed decision with suicidal volunteers. Either way, Hawk hated him. This was where it began. All the beige. All the ashes. All the death. All of it began right here.

There was radiance just beyond their line of sight. They were blocked by the remains of the monkey house. Remains, because even from this auxiliary entrance, Hawk could tell the building was in bad shape. Every window she could see was blown out, and there was rubble inside. It seemed like the roof had part-way collapsed onto the checkerboard tile within. Not good.

"It looked like most of the building got sucked down by the Prism on the sat-map," Alex said.

"You really think it's worth it, getting a look?" She said. It felt like her guts were all melting.

"Do you?" He said, and she could almost believe his bravery, except his voice broke on the last word.

She was about to say, no, and then something large dropped between them. Alex jumped back. Hawk jumped for it. Pure instinct, and driven more by avarice than bravery, because this winged shape was something else she recognized. She grabbed one of the polyester jackets off the piles of traitor-ashes and dropped it down on top of the thing...which, retrospectively, was completely useless. It was already halfway dead.

"Holy shit, is that a male?" Dyson said, from safely behind the barrier.

"Yeah. And it's dead." Hawk lifted the polyester. The male was less flamboyantly colored, more of a dull gold and brown. Its wings sparkled with iridescence, and its own ocili stared up out of the center of its forehead.

"From What?" Alex said.

"Mating," Em said, with a ghost of salacious grin.

"Yeah. They're flying and mating. We have to see what's behind this tree line, Alex. We have to be able to warn Kaiser and whoever else about whatever these survivors are." She finished wrapping the dead male in the polyester vest, then set the bundle beside the cup with the still-living Queen inside of it. Then she brushed her hands off on her pants and started to turn back to the shell of a monkey house.

Stopped.

There were four of the ape-creatures standing behind them. They were each roughly the same color brown, and garbed in loin-cloths and archaic wrap shoes. That was not what drew Hawk's full attention like magnets to the sun. No, that was reserved for the weapons all four of them held. They were weathered, worn, well used, the spear tips metal and bright, with well-milled edges, and all four spear tips were aimed directly at Hawk.

They'd been spotted, after all.