“You do know what we’re getting into, right?” We had made it to a wide, open field, with the glistening, tall grass clearly distinctive of a lack of care. It was empty, with trees outlining the perimeter and buildings overlooking the expanse.

I hesitated in my reply before half-heartedly affirming. My experience wasn’t null but only one didn’t really make you a veteran; I knew what they could be like but even that was minimal.

“Well, okay; that’s good,” She twisted on the spot, a couple of metres away from me, apparently struggling to say the next thing. “Can you fight? Do you have any experience in fighting.”

At first, the question took me aback and only wordless exhalation exited my mouth.

“It’s fine if you don’t; not everyone-”

“I can fight,” My voice was small but the desolate field combined with the soft breeze carried my voice just fine. She replied with a nod.

“Okay, so… Have you used a weapon before? You know… A knife and what-not.” She began to walk away with large, lumbering steps like walking through boggy marshlands.

“No, not at all.” Again, a quick and incisive reply impulsively left my mouth.

“That’s fine,” She waved, “If all goes well, there’ll be no fighting.”

Seeing how she was getting further away, I trailed to follow, quickly catching up and matching her pace, albeit if still slightly behind her.

Our destination was unknown but she made a beeline straight through the plain, heading towards a clustering of towering, coniferous trees a fair distance away from us.

“Where are we going?” I eventually ventured a question upon our approach to the tiny forest.

“Actually,” She began, slowing to a crawl to fall alongside me, “I’m hoping you can tell me about that.”

“How can I tell you where we’re going?” You’re the one leading me. “I don’t know where any hives are.”

“Not yet at least,” She crouched down behind a tree, a hand placed on the bark as she leaned forwards to observe a small clearing in front of us.

There were a handful of rusted and dismantled cars strewn about the place making the whole thing a veritable tetanus minefield. There was one small, run-down shack made predominately of wood, though calling it a shack was a rather favourable name in lieu of its dilapidated condition.

“You can ride a bike?” She asked without looking at me.

“Yeah,” My voice was soft and quiet; the situation seemed to call for discretion, for some reason.

“Good. Come on,” With an abrupt start, she briskly began to make her way forwards. She moved through the undergrowth with a feline-like agility, her motions far move graceful than I expected. Far smoother than my own, as well.

Hiding within the boot of a rather old and unrecognisable body of a car were two bicycles. They were clearly inexpensive, with paint flaking off and the metal rusted just like the vehicle it was residing in. One was also considerably smaller than the other--I was unsure whether it call it a child’s bike.

She pulled them both of them out and set them against the car, her breathing unexpectedly lax. She’s stronger than she looks, I thought, her clothes covering any indication of the physical condition of her body.

“Um… Here,” She gave me the small bike uncertainly. “Sorry about the size; I don’t have a bigger one.” Evidently so.

“It’s fine,” I replied, taking it from her hands. It was heftier than I thought it would be, not having ridden in a while. “I’m used to small things.”

“That’s lucky. Well, we’ll just ride around a bit.”

Unfortunately, we couldn’t really ride the bikes through the heavy grass so we just had to carry and drag them back the way we came. Surprisingly, I was actually grateful that I had the smaller bike.

Eventually, when we made our way back to the strange, metal apparatus representing the entrance to this field, she held her hands on the handlebars, as if prepared to ride off at any moment.

“Here’s what we’re going to do; we are going to look for a hive. Any questions?” She began with a self-confident tone

“Yes; how?”

“It’s simple; all you have to do is activate your Specialisation, look around for a hive, and then take me to it.”

“But… That’s not going to work; if I’m looking for something, I need to know what I’m looking for,” I replied, my face impassive.

“Are you sure? Think about it; when you wanted to look for a train, you didn’t see a train, did you? But yet, you knew it was a train-”

“I knew it was a train because I was looking for a train.”

“So look for a hive. Simple.” Her face was plastered in a smile, probably because she felt she had landed a convincing blow.

“But that’s ridiculous! We were at a train station; I knew it was a train and I knew where to look. How would I know where to look for a hive, let alone recognise it as such?” I couldn’t help myself as I raised my voice. Her plan felt ill-formed silly.

“Relax; I’m sure it’ll work. Besides, it’s like you said: you ‘didn’t have anything else to do’”,’ With that, she hopped on her bike and began to ride off, precluding me the opportunity for a rebuttal.

Annoyingly, she was right; I really had nothing else to do--nothing that I wanted to do, at the very least--and so, I reluctantly hopped on my own bike, feeling slightly uncomfortable with the size--and followed.

Where we had exited from the field was a narrow, but long, straight street lined with houses and cars--the typical residential road. It took no less than a minute before I arrived at the intersection where the street connected to a larger road running perpendicular. I also arrived at a woman waiting rather awkwardly on her bike.

“Why stop? I thought you knew where you were going?” My tone was no different from how it always was, but a small smile was on my face.

“Well, I thought it was just a wonderful sight,” She began, not gesturing towards anything except the distinct and polluted metropolitan area in front of us--with dusty, dirty streets, unclean air, and the annoying, cantankerous din of cars whizzing by in front of us. Yeah, a ‘wonderful sight’ indeed.

I activated my Blossom of Fate and within an instant, my vision overflowed with a viscous, thick fog clouding the road, the dull but multicoloured hue to it barely distinguishing it from the darkened sky.

Although the visuals change, the audio didn’t and a discordant, dissonant sound filled my ears. Before me, I saw a multitude of cars, and more I just could faintly recognise as cars--the sound would surely be immense and overwhelming with the deafening thrums of engines--but, yet, the sounds did not match up with the image.

I could only stand the dissonance for a few seconds at most before I deactivated my Specialisation, feeling the sweat drench my arms and a splitting ache in my head threatening to strike a physical crack.

I leaned forwards, hunched over and placing my weight fully on the handlebars. My eyes closed, I sought to refamiliarise the sounds with nothingness at first, before adding back the present sights.

Consciously, I regulated my breathing, focusing only on the rhythmic sounds of breath before incorporating the ever-present buzz and hum of cars.

“-Okay, Charlotte?” I caught the tailwind of a sentence when I opened my eyes, hearing my name called. I nodded, too tired to vocalise a reply. “We can take a rest if you want. We’ve been doing nothing but walking so far.” I shook my head before taking in a big breath.

“I’m, I’m fine. I’ll try again.” And, this time, I closed my eyes first.

Next, I brought my mind back to a few days ago. I brought my mind back to those red, disgusting tentacles weaving their way through the walls, through the floors. How they flowed through cracks like a liquid but steamed from mere room temperature, solidifying instantly as they claimed the building as their own, like a non-Newtonian liquid when subjected to pressure.

Their organic but simultaneously paradoxically unnatural form imprinted itself upon my mind so vividly I felt the urge to retch upon a simple, mental image of them arise in my gut.

When I finally opened my eyes, Blossom of Fate was activated and rather than the amorphous, consuming fog representing a hive of interconnected and interspersed activity, I saw nothing but the present day.

“There’s nothing nearby,” I finally said, letting out the breath I didn’t even know I was holding, the nauseous feeling in my chest still there.

“Then, I suppose we go somewhere else?” I nodded.

Thankfully, afterwards, I managed to prevent any similar incidents from happening. Intermittently, we would stop cycling and I’d close my eyes, ready my mind mentally, and look around. I don’t know what I was looking but I did it anyway. I was okay with being unsuccessful; the simple act of cycling was enjoyable enough to make this venture a worthwhile endeavour.

The city is large, as any city has to be to necessitate that designation, but, thankfully, efforts have been made to effectively incorporate the usage of bicycles and so, we managed to cover a lot of ground and scout out many different areas.

However, the results were primarily the same; nothing but the present assaulted my senses. That is, until we arrived near a museum.

[t%+ 247 seconds]

In a near instant, the beautiful, ornate, grand museum morphed into a vile, desiccated building, infused with and imbued with an aura of revolt and disgust as the organic limbs ripped through the structure, travelling and growing at a frightening speed.

Seeing the process before my eyes, the sudden subsumption of a magnificent structure houses so many memories and refine artefacts into an abhorrent mass of limbs, tentacles, and bricks sent a frightening shiver down my spine.

I fell backwards, tumbling off my bike and scraping my hands off the hard, rough pavement but my mind ignored the pain, overtaken with what I was seeing.

My eyes were wide and I could feel the clamminess of my back, of my arms, growing by the second. I became more aware of the stickiness all over me and I could hear my heartbeat resounding in my ears.

Like an overclocked machine, the steady beats were so fast I could barely differentiate between them and my gaze was glued to the flaking, hardly recognisable building in front of me.

I couldn’t help but not stare, not pull my gaze away; it was like something was pulling me to stare at this monstrosity. The only thing that made my turn off Blossom of Fate was the two, far too-real hands clamped on my shoulders, trying to pull me up. Once I felt those, the sight vanished and was replaced with the resplendent museum that I had always known once again.

“Are you okay, Charlotte? It happened again?” It took me a few seconds to register what she was saying, my eyes unfocused and I was trying to anchor myself back to reality. It didn’t happen.

“No,” I finally managed to get out, having walked back to sit on a step to a building to steady myself. “There’s a hive. At the Museum. Four minutes from now.” My voice was like a staccato, my throat dry and uncooperative.

“Shit, it’s a large.” She said, talking to herself mostly., sitting down beside me but holding her head with her hand. She didn’t say anything else.

“We-We should tell someone,” Against my will, my voice was wavering and uncertain.

“You can if you want.” Why did I ask her?

My question left unanswered, I pulled out my phone and typed in the number everyone knew for the G.U.G.

“Government User Guild. What service do you require?” A pleasant and steady voice answered from the phone.

“Hive. There’s a hive. Four-Three minutes.” I rushed out, the words jumbling into one another but mostly coherent, thankfully.

“You’re saying there’s a hive? Where’s the location?” It amazed me how she could stay calm while I was in a fit of panic.

“Stockton. Stockton Museum.”

“Can you give us any more details? What’s the size and strength. What aspect?”

“It’s-it’s large. I don’t know the strength. Don’t know aspect either.”

“Thank you for calling. We’ve dispatched a team and they will arrive in five minutes.”

I hung up there, my hands shakey, and put away my phone.

“I don’t suppose you’d want to stick around?” Her voice was gentle, her gaze residing on me during that conversation.

“No.” I swept my sight back to the Museum. It was still normal. Gradual, my heartbeat began to lessen, and I started to regain my calm. “Let’s go.”

“Sure.”