As the larva on the ground in front of her continued to shake and judder to wakefulness, Lucy waved her appendage wildly through the water, ushering the last scattered pieces of her cilia out the door to disperse into the currents beyond.

Her membrane was scraped smooth and raw.

I always hated shaving, she thought numbly. The experience, while unpleasant, hadn’t hurt as badly as she had expected for some reason. Which was good, because as committed as she had felt going in to it, she wasn’t sure if she could have finished if she’d been in agony the whole time.

She wondered if her sensation of pain was modulated by her System or Awareness skill when she was injured, since she didn’t actually have any nerve receptors or a physical system that could communicate such sensations.

It still hadn’t been pleasant. She’d had to reform her appendage in multiple locations over her body to make sure her membrane was absolutely smooth, and in doing so had gotten a good view of what she had lost.

Her upgrades kept the bladed fore-limb from tearing her outer membrane apart at least, but…

Overall, not fun.

It had served its purpose, though. She looked, as far as she could tell, like any of the other microbes herded by the bugs.

After scraping her membrane smooth, she’d tried to form her appendage into a fin, but had ended up with something more like a ping-pong paddle, and for the past few minutes had been waving it around like a frenzied ape, trying desperately to empty the room of evidence before the larva woke up.

As the last tiny stubbling bits of her cilia floated away into the current, Lucy heaved a sigh of relief and turned, only to find the larva staring right at her.

‘Staring’ wasn’t the right word, of course, because he didn’t have eyes. But she didn’t know how to describe the complicated motions he was making with his mouth and the wrinkling of the face above it.

Gaping blankly, maybe. That blow might not have killed him, but…I wonder if there’s a unicellular equivalent to concussions.

Eventually, he spoke.

“I thought you had hairs?”

The voice was slurred, coming out more like “though’ you…airs?”but Lucy could understand the organism, which was a shock in itself.

“And is that…a proto-appendage?” he asked woozily, swaying heavily even in the still water of the room.

Lucy stared at him for a moment, then realized that her arm was still out! In a flash, she retracted and tightened her outer membrane until it was as smooth and flat as before.

Smoother, I guess, she thought with a pang. The harsh scrape of the blade had left her hazy with pain and emotionally raw as well, and she supposed she probably didn’t look too steady on her feet either. Even the rush of energy she’d got from Oxidizing the concentrated sulfur had begun to fade.

I could really use a nap right about now.

As the larva began to give her increasingly suspicious looks, Lucy tried to open her mouth, only to find her membrane channels opening instead.

“No.”

She tried to speak the word aloud, but the only thing that happened was a few tiny yellow molecules drifting out of her membrane and into the water around her.

The larva opened his mouth and made a sniffing noise, then waved his arm and exclaimed, “Ach! Typical. None of that protozoic nonsense-talk now; I’ll not have you stinking up the place!”

Despite his words, he took a long, deep sniff of the water around him, apparently trying to get a better picture of Lucy.

He seemed satisfied afterwards that she was normal, and Lucy let out a sigh of relief. The suspicious look disappeared from his face, replaced by extreme concentration as he examined her, muttering to himself in a half-slurred voice as he poked and prodded with his proto-hand.

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“Don’t know what I was thinking. Appendage. Ha! I’m the only one with an appendix around here…”

His wide mouth frowned, and he tried again, pausing his examination.

“Appendix. Aplendage. Apps…n’ dip. Appendage. Heh, there we go. I must’ve hit the brew-juice pretty hard last night, eh—oh.”

He looked around the room and gulped in water a few times, apparently confused that he was talking to Lucy rather than another larva.

Lucy noted to herself that there were some strange things going on in the microscopic world right now. Brocks Microbiology definitely never mentioned one-celled bug creatures who drank.

The larva was staring at her suspiciously.

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with the herd?”

Lucy’s breath would have caught. Surely it couldn’t be this easy. That blow must’ve knocked some serious cytoplasm loose.

“Wait, no. You’re the new test subject. Yes, I remember now…” he trailed off and paused completely for a long enough time that Lucy started to think about just floating out of the room.

But, finally, the larva spoke again.

“Well, there’s nothing very interesting about you, is there?” His face loomed critically at her as he gulped more water.

“No, you’re very boring. One of the more boring specimens I’ve ever seen, in fact. Why are you…”

He paused, seeming a bit confused about why she’d been brought to him.

If only you knew, buddy, Lucy thought wearily. She’d let her spike dissolve, but with a full reservoir of energy she was prepared to make a new one in case the larva decided some kind of surgery would make her more interesting.

She started to form one in her cytoplasm just in case, and eyed the bladed cane on the ground.

“I’ll just take my sample then and you’ll be off, I suppose,” he said doubtfully.

With that, he reached into a fold of his pale, wrinkled membrane and pulled out a tiny, hollow spike. He jabbed it straight into her membrane with surprising speed, clearly something he’d done many times before, before ripping it out carelessly and tucking the piece of Lucy’s flesh that came with it back into his membrane folds.

This was all rather bewildering, but Lucy put up with it. If she could join the herd without leaving a very suspicious body behind, why not? A tiny bit of membrane was a small price to pay compared to what she had already—

“Ouch!”

Quick as he’d been before, the larva had pulled out another hollow spike and stabbed it straight through Lucy’s membrane and into her cytoplasm.

This one, she saw, had some sort of liquid-filled sac on the back, which the larva-doctor began to squeeze, describing his actions as he did like he was lecturing to a student.

“And next we give the Spiromastix…”

Oh hell no, that does not look FDA approved!

Lucy yanked herself back with all the force she could muster, but the doctor-bug was fast, and she had grown so used to using her cilia for propulsion that she found herself wriggling ineptly as he administered the shot.

He continued to gesture as though he were talking to a student, though no one else was in the room. “Fascinating fungi…parasitic, of course, but, well, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Hah!”

Lucy had pulled back, but the larva had been too fast, and the liquid from the shot was already inside her. She could feel it writhing horribly as it entered her cytoplasm.

Lucy gripped the cold stone floor to get as far away as she could as the doctor dug around in his wrinkles, presumably for the next parasite he would administer. The spike had finished forming inside her, and she prepared to bring it out.

Alright, fuck this, I don’t care if the guards find his body, I’m not gonna let him—

Something sharp sliced her membrane as she rolled over it, and Lucy saw the bladed staff lying on the ground. She wasn’t sure what had prompted it before, but the larva was clearly obsessed with the thing somehow, and had spent an inordinate amount of time picking it up from the ground.

Alright buddy, last chance to leave me alone and not get stabbed.

As she got ready to take the spike out and use it, Lucy nudged the cane forward with her membrane until it was just in front of the larva, then she spoke.

“Oh no! You’ve dropped your cane!” she exclaimed, “what a…disaster!?”

All that came out were more of the same tiny yellow molecules, but it was enough to distract the confused doctor, who withdrew his empty hand and waved it through the water around his face.

“Ach! Stop that! I’ll have you filleted for my dinner if you keep—”

At that moment, he drew in a deep breath, and for the first time noticed that his cane-blade was lying on the ground in front of him.

“What?” he muttered. “What’s this? Why would I have thrown my cane on the ground? Can’t have been an accident, of course...”

His pale, flat face looked up at Lucy and he took a suspicious gulp of water to taste his surroundings. Then he began to chortle as he continued murmuring to himself.

“Of course, of course…new member of the herd…” he looked over his shoulder at a student who wasn’t there. “Better to put some fear into them from the start, hah!”

His chortling ratcheted up a notch, burbling the water around him into a tiny whirl as he shook out his appendage. He looked up at Lucy for a moment and paused.

“Prepare to be amazed.”

As the larva doctor writhed and contorted in a twisted dance to pick up the dropped cane, Lucy moved to slip out the door, but paused halfway through leaving.

The spike was nestled in her cytoplasm, ready to go. It would be the work of a moment to have it out and kill the organism contorting before her.

Was it worth the risk of leaving him behind? His memory was clearly shot, but there was still a chance he would remember her. On the other hand, if she left a body behind, Bug-Man might come poking around.

In the end, despite his threats and obvious lack of concern for her well-being, Lucy couldn’t bring herself to kill the larva as he writhed pathetically on the ground trying to pick up his cane, and she left without a sound.