The pale, wrinkly microbes dragged her for what felt like miles; down strange tunnels overgrown with layers of plant tendrils that eventually covered the stone entirely.

The smell of the place was different too, strong and almost putrid.

Dazed from her capture, Lucy hung helplessly in the net as they carried her along, and watched her energy levels drop steadily.

[Energy: 8/100]

The silky material of the net was stronger than it looked, and when one of the guards had seen her sawing at it with the tip of her spike, she’d been poked and threatened until she let it go.

So Lucy waited for an opportunity, hoping it would come before her energy reached zero.

***

Lucy did not enjoy being herded. Hated it, in fact.

Something sharp poked her in the back, prodding her along.

[-1hp]

No, I don’t just hate it. I despise it. I loath, abhor, reject completely the idea of bodily subjection in all its forms and—

[-1hp]

“Grrrglgrrrgl.”

Lucy glared at the speaker, the same wrinkled, blobby white thing that had cast the net over her. It wriggled an eyeless face at her, its mouth hole flaring like it could taste her defiance.

So far, she had not had an opportunity to escape. But she was working on it.

She knew from experience that it was telling her to keep moving. The voice was alien and vaguely bug-like, but without the full, droning hum of the winged creature that had got her into this mess. Lucy wondered if the blobby creature was a microscopic larva of some sort, the child to the adult winged form with the mesmerizing eyes. She had never heard of such a thing at this scale, but she supposed she'd never heard of actual gods either.

Finally, she moved on, satisfying herself with continuing to glare backwards with her Awareness. Until she bumped into someone in front of her.

Still getting the hang of that.

Lucy, and all the others like her, had been herded into some sort of…processing station, as far as she could tell.

The ground below her was a mat of twisted roots and fuzzy vines, all of it a yellowish brown color that put her in mind of rotting leaves.

The walls and ceiling had stretched until she couldn’t make them out around her. The only difference in the water she noticed was a sharp, pervasive smell she couldn’t place. She made a mental note to find a way to upgrade her Awareness skill.

Because right now, improbably, all she could tell was that she was waiting in a line.

The organisms in front of her shuffled forward, as docile as drugged dodo birds. Lucy couldn’t see what was going on at the front of the line, but she didn’t intend to stick around to find out.

On either side of the line, a row of the larva-like creatures stood on the ground. Two or three held coiled ropes ready to throw, made of the same silky hair material as the net that had captured Lucy in the first place.

As she watched, one of the nets began to dissolve in the water, and that guard clumsily reached its arm-nub down to its underside and coiled up a new one from the strand emerging there like a spider emitting web.

Homemade, I guess.

The rest of the guards were unarmed, except for their arms. Which were more like short, stubby spears of hardened flesh. There were perhaps a dozen on either side, probably enough to slaughter everyone there in a few seconds, if it came to an open revolt.

But the rest of the organisms in line were placid things. They looked like Lucy, but she supposed it made sense that they didn’t act human. The only one who had been harmed so far by the guards was one who hadn’t stopped wandering out of line to examine something on the other side of the room.

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

After the third time, the accumulated proddings had apparently been too much for its membrane to bear, and it had popped, spilling yellow cytoplasm into the water.

A waft of it had drifted over to Lucy.

Is that what I smell like? It’s not bad, it’s just—

At that moment, a swarm of…something had swum over, gobbled up the cytoplasm, and darted away again.

All of it happened so fast, she barely noticed what was happening before it was over.

No, Lucy did not intend to stick around to be bug food.

She went over her plan in her head. It was simple, really.

Step one: shove the guy in front of her out of line.

Step two: shove the guy behind her out of line.

Step three: cheese it!

Fatigue may have been clouding her judgement, but Lucy honestly thought she had a good chance of success. It wasn’t the most complicated plan, but complicated wasn’t always good, right?

Maybe I should have read The Art of War. Causing chaos is good, right?

Hunger still rumbled in Lucy’s core, but she ignored it for now.

The larva-organisms seemed to prefer standing on the brown, plant-covered ground to swimming, and there was enough open water above her that Lucy should be able to just swim up and away in the ensuing confusion.

The organisms with the nets were the real threat, but she counted only three of them in range of her Awareness, and right now, she was equidistant between the last two, as far away as she could get.

Which means it’s go time.

Not bothering to waste the precious energy needed to form appendages, Lucy simply barreled into the organism in front of her, sending it flying across the room.

Well, bobbing at a moderate speed across the ground, but good enough! Sorry buddy!

Two guards had already stepped out of position to prod the organism back into line when Lucy knocked into the one behind her, widening the gap of occupied guards.

With a surge of her cilia, she floated into the open water above the line, wincing slightly as she saw the guards stabbing with their arm spears. She felt kind of bad for doing it to the two microbes, especially since they looked just like her.

Lucy took a short moment to reflect on what that said about her personal psychology and worldview, but had to cut her introspection short when she saw one of the rope-wielding guards winding up to throw.

Alright, Lucy, full focus. Time your dodge just right and—

Ha! Sucker’s got a noodle for an arm, that wasn’t even close!

The net-guards were apparently more suited to close range work, and as Lucy dodged the second net thrown at her a sense of giddy lightness came over her. She soared over the rest of the line like a balloon set free from a parade.

Freedom! Oh, it’s sweet. I’ve never minded standing in lines, but when there’s guards it really kills the feeling of orderly progression.

Just when she thought she’d made it scot-free, she realized that the ceiling of the room was a lot closer than she thought, and it was also covered in the strange plant material.

Then a dreadful buzzing sound filled the water above her, and Lucy’s membrane went rigid with fear as something began to crawl out of the plants in the ceiling.

If that’s the guy with the pretty eyes again, I’m fucked.

It was, or at least another creature that looked just like the one she’d seen before. Lucy supposed it didn’t matter, since either way the thing’s pincer-hands could end her life in a moment.

Stilling her cilia to slow her flight through the water, Lucy ran through her options, fast.

She would try talking, she decided. She knew from experience that the bug was far, far faster than she was, and somehow she had understood when the bug had spoken before, so it was worth a shot.

Lucy tried to say, “Hello. Please don’t kill me.”

But what came out was…nothing. Her membrane channels opened slightly and some water was exchanged, but no words were communicated at all. Just a few little molecules that slowly drifted away.

Guess the ‘talking to another organism’ package costs extra, she thought, somewhat panicked as the winged bug bore down on her.

She tried to make placating gestures as she saw the pincers reaching toward her, and she scooted herself backwards in the water to get back in line.

Okay, okay! I’m going! No need for any prodding or—

When the pain came, Lucy didn’t even try to scream. The shock of it was too sudden, the intensity so all-encompassing that all thoughts fled her mind like drops of water sizzling on a red-hot stove.

With movements faster than her Awareness could follow, the bug-creature described a sphere of slicing agony around Lucy’s body. The only thing her suddenly blank mind could fathom other than the immensity of the pain was the evil, rapid clacking of clawed hands.

Until she saw thin, hair-like filaments begin to drift down in the water around her.

At first, she didn’t realize what they were. Couldn’t connect the dots of something she had chosen to have on her body becoming separate.

Her cilia were a part of her; it didn’t make any sense for them to be drifting down into the current, even as the pain of their severing whispered the truth of it deep into her mind.

With a few final snips and a look that reminded Lucy horribly of a hairdresser checking their work for mistakes, the bug-creature raised a long, segmented leg and curved its foot to fit Lucy’s body.

The foot’s hind-claw dug into Lucy’s membrane, but the pain was nothing to the feeling of hard chitin pressing against the raw edges of her severed cilia.

Before its kick sent her crashing into the ground where she would lie still in shock and pain, the bug-thing leaned in close, its eyes shining once again with the shimmering rainbows that seemed to flow like liquid across the many facets of its compound eyes.

As she stared into the galaxies of color reflected there, shining from within and putting her in mind of magic and things entirely beyond her conception, Lucy heard the stone-on-stone sound of the bug’s plated mouth clenching and grinding before it spoke.

When it did, it spat the words with a hatred that would have stung Lucy to the core, if she’d been in any state to notice one more jab of pain.

“Mutant.”

The bug’s eyes dimmed once again, charcoal embers fading in the cold, and it gestured to a line of the larva-guards that had appeared behind Lucy without her notice.

Oh, she thought, numb. They swim faster than I thought.

Then the bug kicked her to the ground, where rough spears of hardened flesh stabbed into her on either side, pulling her back up, away from the line of her brethren, and the bug spoke once more, the venom in its voice replaced by cold indifference.

“Destroy this one,” the voice buzzed. “Before it can corrupt the herd.”