Beau and the others patched up their wounds back inside the Dome 101. They didn’t waste time. Since neither Beau nor Tessa suffered any serious wounds that prevented them from fighting, they received fresh bandages, equipped new magazines for their Vindicators, latched themselves into their P-1 combat armor, and rolled back out of the dome with a fresh convoy of fully alert militia fighters. They rolled with ten trucks on a new mission to determine if the fortress had truly fallen and if the way to the backyard was clear. Was all the death worth it? Had they finally cleared the exit?

  The convoy rolled out from Dome 101 and soon arrived at the atrium connected to the mantid corridor. Beau sat behind the wheel of the lead truck. Tessa sat beside him, pale but focused. Her hand gripped the edge of the window frame, the other hovered just above the safety on her Vindicator.

  “It looks…quiet?” Tessa said.

  “I still see things crawling around out there,” Beau said. “But there’s definitely less of them. Maybe those are just the wounded.”

  “We decimated most of them, from the looks of it. But if I see anything, I’m blasting it. Deal?”

  “You never need my permission to kill a mantid.”

  Before driving down the corridor to inspect the devastated fortress, Beau and Tessa unlatched the binoculars from their pouches, climbed up onto the truck, and peered toward the mantid base while the other militia parked in a wide circle perimeter around them and kept their Vindicators trained on the sky.

  Light spilled through the glass doors at the corridor’s far end and highlighted the remains of the mantid fortress. Its towers either sagged or collapsed inward. Before, the whole place seemed to breathe. Now, it barely moved.

  Tessa raised her binoculars and scanned the foyer. “The backyard door is still open. No movement. We could try to push it.”

  Beau nodded. He raised his hand and motioned the others forward. One by one, the convoy of ten Black Bird assault trucks rumbled forward. Everyone knew the plan. Their goal was to reach the backyard, disperse, scout, and mark any targets. Then, they would regroup in the atrium and reassess the situation.

  But as the trucks neared the corridor’s midpoint, something shifted.

  The floor vibrated.

  Beau’s grip on the wheel tightened. “Do you feel that?”

  Tessa turned her head slowly. “Yeah. What is that?”

  “I don’t know. Something smells different. Do you see anything?”

  It started faint—like distant static—but then the noise grew. Beau heard a sound like rain on glass, but it turned out to be much worse. Thousands of ants, black and shining, emerged from the backyard and crawled through the backyard doors and into the mantid corridor. Thousands of tiny legs ticked like clockwork.

  The ant battalions funneled into the corridor with horrifying discipline, wave after wave in perfect motion. They weren’t swarming randomly—they were marching in an organized and intentional way. Beau and the rest of the convoy stopped their trucks in the middle of the corridor, a good distance from them. They gripped their Vindicators, unsure what to make of the situation.

  The front ranks of the ants soon found their way marching over the melted remains of the mantid fortress. They flowed like oil around the jagged remains. And then—without any signal that Beau or Tessa could perceive—they began to consume the organic material surrounding them.

  Mandibles clicked and sheared through the mantid’s carapace barricades and walls of their structures. They cut through the shelf fungus and curled resin like it was foam. Chunks of the mantid fortress were hoisted onto the backs of worker ants who carried them out in procession, into the backyard where more ants waited to slice up and carry away the smaller segments. They worked fast. Within twenty minutes, the entire fortress was simply gone. The entire fortress was reduced to a slimy residue on the floor.

  Beau couldn’t look away. “They erased the place like it was nothing.”

  “Better them than us, I suppose,” Tessa said.

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  The hallway, now stripped, became the staging ground for something else. The ants didn’t simply go away, they reentered the corridor and then assembled in neat and tight squares. Soldier ants stood tall at the front, mandibles raised and twitching.

  Officer ants emerged—distinguishable not by size, but by attire. Some wore caps. Others bore belts fashioned from thread or leaf straps. Some wore satchels on their thorax. One wore a button coat of golden silk.

  Tessa whispered, stunned. “They…they’re wearing clothes now. That’s just great…”

  It was all completely absurd. But it was also mesmerizing. The ant army formed five solid platoon blocks in the cleared corridor, while dozens of others crawled up the walls and dismantled the last of the mantid structure embedded in the vanity alcoves. They plucked pieces from shelves and tore webbing from the corners.

  “Are these the same ants who attacked Dome 101?” Tessa asked.

  “I don’t know,” Beau said. “But we don’t have the firepower to fight them. Unless we have more bombs?”

  “We can’t make more bombs,” Tessa said. “Not until we find more chemical compounds. We burned through everything we have.”

  “It’s going to take more than Vindicators to kill all those ants. Look at themThere are thousands.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Wait for them to pass, I guess. Maybe they’ll turn around and go back into the backyard.”

  Then, as if the strange display couldn’t become more surreal, one of the Black Bird officers in a nearby truck shouted. “Movement behind us, sir!”

  Behind them, at the end of the corridor which connected to the atrium, shadows shifted across the ground. There were thousands of random house insects assembling there—beetles, earwigs, silverfish, cellar spiders, a few wasps, and an entire battalion of native carpenter ants—emerged from cracks, vents, and the atrium fireplace, and other deeper parts of Dr. Gerben’s mansion. They gathered loosely, unsure at first, then clustered more tightly like an organized mob.

  The ant platoons by the backyard door clearly noticed because they solidified into a tighter military posture.

  Beau and his convoy were right in the middle, between both armies. He raised his hand out of the truck and shouted. “Move! Move! Back to the dome!”

  The convoy followed Beau’s truck, who sped at full speed. Once they reached the atrium, they drove around the mob by driving along the molding along the wall. Thankfully, the house insects didn’t seem bothered by their convoy. At least, not at the moment.

  “Halt!” Beau ordered.

  The convoy stopped where the atrium met the corridor back to Dome 101. Beau gave the order to pick targets, so everyone held their Vindicators level with the closest bug on the opposite side of the atrium.

  “Hold your fire,” Beau said. “Wait for my signal.”

  “Are we really doing this?” Tessa asked. “There are too many of them. If they swarm us…”

  “If they swarm, we run. For now, hold position. I want to see what happens.”

  Tessa sighed. “Okay.” She kept her rifle trained on an orb spider in the middle of the mob, easily the biggest insect in the marching group.

  The house bugs assembled a diverse army of five thousand, mostly smaller bugs but some larger ones. Moments later, the horde of house bugs marched down the mantid corridor. They ignored Beau and the other Tinylings for now.

  The horde of house bugs marched until they were a couple of human feet away from the ant platoons, then stopped. Both armies stared at each other in silence.

  From both sides, came the insect envoys.

  From the ants, four representatives approached. Each wore regalia—tiny bits of feather or colored thread. From the other side, a mixed cluster approached led by a horned beetle flanked by a lacewing and a mottled earwig with strange antennae. The envoys met in the center. Beau couldn’t hear them, but the way they moved spoke volumes. Antennae twitched and tapped. Limbs made broad gestures. For a moment, it all looked very diplomatic.

  The ant general was larger than the others, bulkier in his thorax. He wore the most elaborate attire yet, a crimson thread cape, a bottle-cap breastplate, and a small, perfectly folded golden paper cap. He walked with calculated weight. His every motion demanded attention. His antenna began to move.

  The ant general’s antenna didn’t move randomly. They twitched in a specific pattern. It was some kind of rhythmic code. The ants behind the general mirrored him, one by one. A cascade of twitching signals ran down the ranks.

  The envoy from the bug coalition barely had time to respond. The general’s antennae stopped. The nearest soldier ant launched forward from the front line.

  With blinking speed, the soldier ant tore into the envoy with such violence that Beau flinched. The horned beetle was the first to fall—snapped in half. The lacewing curled, shredded. The earwig tried to flee but was crushed. It was an execution.

  For a second, all was still.

  The envoy for the horde of house bugs had been slain.

  A vibration passed through the ranks.

  The ant army marched forward.

  The house bugs charged.

  Battle between both sides erupted.