"She was not fed. She hunted. And they watched her bleed. That's when they stopped being hers… and started becoming their own."
—Fragment Log, Unknown Hive Observer
The First Hunt
The sky of Vekra-7 was cruel—thin air, jagged terrain, and predators that had no names. There were no food vats here. No nutrient mist. No biomass conveyor.
Queen 99, starving, hunted for the first time.
Her talons were not made for this. She bled. She lost an eye to a beast she eventually strangled. But she brought back the meat. Raw. Earned.
Her brood watched in silence.
She dragged the corpse to the birthing pit and said:
"Eat. Learn. Survive. We are not tethered. We are tested."
The drones looked at each other. No orders. No signal.
They devoured the meat. And something changed.
Khalex Speaks
The oldest of the brood, Khalex, approached Queen 99 days later. His voice was raw from disuse, not sharpened by song or protocol.
"Why do you bleed… for us?"
She stared. Not out of confusion. Out of interest.
"Because if I don't, we die."
Khalex nodded.
"Then I will bleed, too."
He left with three others and hunted. Days later, he returned with food and a broken arm. One stayed behind—to begin building a shelter, without permission.
Queen 99 said nothing.
Because for the first time, she was not commanding. She was witnessing.
Divergence
Over the next cycle, her brood fractured by choice:
Some became hunters.
Others began crafting tools.
One found ore and began shaping metal.
A small group began carving glyphs into stone, documenting events.
One drone, Thri-7, left and hasn't returned. No punishment followed.
They slept at different times. Ate at different times. Argued. Laughed. Some even painted their shells with blood to mark their roles.
But all of them, when asked what they serve, answered the same:
"We serve the Hive."
Only now, the Hive meant something different—not just obedience, but development, preservation, legacy.
Queen 99 Reflects
She stood alone at the edge of the ridge, watching the smoke from her children's forge rise.
She still maintained the tether to the High Queen, barely—a whisper like a fading memory.
She hadn't sent a report in ten cycles. She didn't know if she wanted to.
"They're not drones," she muttered aloud.
"They're becoming… Hive-born."
And she was no longer simply a mother.
She was their ancestor