Chapter 60: Of Partings and Psionic Pheromones—A Symphony of Departure
After lovingly oiling down Kiya until she practically purred in my hand, I set off toward the surface of the hive's upper hemisphere—intent on intercepting Kimchi before she started "motivating" the lower castes into a productivity coma via aggressive affection and wildly inappropriate pep talks.
The moment I emerged onto the exterior platform, I was met with the breathtaking sight of an organic sea—no, an ocean—of Hive bio-forms. They crawled, slithered, stalked, hovered, and vibrated across the entire visible plain, stretching to the chitinous horizon like a living skin wrapped around the planet.
No sunlight touched the ground. Only the writhing backs of millions.
"Kimchi," I called aloud, knowing full well that trying to thread a direct psychic message through the sensory tidal wave of collective hive-thought was pointless. The psionic smog up here was thicker than a corruption cultist's skull.
