- Conversation from Sina Household past

  the bug said, waving one of its legs.

  Dahlia raised a hand, pinched the little black bug off the bridge of her nose, and then flicked it into the wall as hard as she could. It was an instinctual move. A practised motion. She couldn’t immediately recall how many times her mom had made her do the same with bugs they found skittering across the house, but just this once, muscle memory had taken over before fear could—and she scrambled back, her breaths hitching as her fingers started itching where she’d touched the living bug.

  the bug said, reappearing on the ground in front of her, and she had to clamp a hand over her mouth to stop herself from shrieking. The cave cricket had to be close, still.

  The little black bug sat on its hindlegs like it was a dog, staring up at her pitifully.

  And the gentleness in the metallic voice caught her off-guard. The whirlwind of fear in her chest had refused to settle, but the instructions combined with the tone of voice brought in a flash of memories, white and black in her head—four years ago, curled up in the corner of her house, her mom kneeling in front of her. Six legs pricking her shoulder. Her mom told her to breathe deeply, so she did back then—and she did right , the sound of air whistling past her lips distracting her momentarily from the pain in her eardrums.

  Her heartbeat slowed a little.

  Fingers shuddering, she reached into her pockets and popped a little bloodberry candy into her mouth, savouring every last drop of its sweetness.

  the bug mumbled.

  “What are you… what are you doing to me?” she breathed, maintaining her breathing rhythm, much to her own surprise. The little bug tilted its head.

  the bug explained.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Deep breaths. Heavy exhales. The little bug wasn’t so close to her that she felt the gut-roiling sensation to scramble further away, and just as well, it likely knew getting any closer to her would make her react in much the same way she did just half a minute ago. It was for this reason they were locked in a stalemate, staring dead into each other’s eyes—but, for once, she felt at ease hearing that particular voice coming from that particular shape of bug.

  That small, six-legged, black teardrop-shaped body with a slightly elongated neck… she knew the name of this bug by heart, but she never thought she’d get to see another one in this undertown for as long as she lived.

  It was her mom’s most hated bug, after all.

  “... If I say no, then what will you do?” she asked weakly, lips quivering, swallowing the last fragment of her candy. “If I say… if I say I want you to get out of my body now, will you do it?”

  the bug said matter-of-factly, not beating around the bush. It stood up straight and mimed wagging a finger at her with one of its legs.

  … She could buy the idea that the little bug was a projection from the Swarmsteel the bug trader had made her swallow.

  She’d heard about it from her dad, read about it from books in the library—while most Swarmsteel were parasitic armour, weapons, and trinkets that'd bind to the human skin, there was also a higher level of Swarmsteel that functioned more like implants. Special dragonfly lenses could replace the human lenses, directly increasing the wearer’s dynamic vision. Folded beetle bones could replace entire arms and legs, and in time, normal human flesh would grow over them to hide them from surface-level glances. In that sense, it wasn’t too big of a stretch to imagine that a far more talented Swarmsteel Maker than her could’ve created something that could talk in her head.

  Besides, this Swarmsteel was something the bug trader had said he’d bring to her.

  If he was planning on giving it to her anyways, then it couldn’t possibly do any harm to her, right?

  It wasn’t a real bug.

  It was just a fake.

  “... Say I accept you, and accept this… ‘system integration’, whatever it is,” she whispered, eyes lifting as she saw a massive shadow moving in the dark. The cave cricket was still nearby. “Can you help me get out of this sewer room and back up to the town? Safely?”

  The little bug dipped its head.

  “Only five percent? That’s—”

  Eria said plainly.

  Her face fell, heavy with an unplaceable emotion.

  That quote… she’d heard it before.

  Her mom.

  Her dad.

  The little bug knew more about her than it let on.

  “... Okay,” she said. “Five percent is… okay. Dad always says it’s a five percent chance he walks out of a patient’s house having cured an ailment completely, and he’s the best doctor in this town, so—”

  the little bug said, clapping two legs together.

  “I don’t know half of what you’re saying, but can you… can you help me get rid of that cave cricket first?” she said, dropping her head to the ground as the massive shadow whirled to look in her direction. She immediately clasped her hands over her mouth, speaking in a whisper. “It won’t go away. I think it knows I’m still here. Certainty. But that ladder behind it, it’s… it’s the only way to climb out of this sewage room and back up to the lower streets. I to get up there.”

  The little bug made a big show of turning around, staring at the crickets’ gently swaying antennae.

  it said.

  She was only half-listening to the little bug as she stared at the cricket, but then she caught onto what the little bug was saying and snapped down to look at it.

  “Why would I want to fight it head-on?”

  “And do I look like I have the body to… to fight that head-on?”

  “So that’s why—”

  the little bug concluded.

  She looked, the tears in her eyes obscuring half her vision as she scanned the crates dangling on frayed ropes over her head. Then, she spotted the glints of tiny insect parts mixed in with the piles of garbage running along the walls.

  Closing her eyes, she gritted her teeth as she tried to recall where she’d seen those parts before, what insect they’d belonged to, what combinations and reactions she would get if she just stuck all of them together—and the little bug must’ve injected into her blood, because she felt a calm like never before as she exhaled with her lips pressed tightly together.

  “... There is a path,” she whispered. “I… I can kill the cave cricket.”

  Fun insect fact: the silverfish (lepisma saccharinum) is actually not a fish, but an insect species of the ‘Lepismatidae’ family and of the ‘Zygentoma’ order, which includes… firebrats and silverfish! While they are not worms by any means, silverfishes have glittery silver scales and move all fish-like, hence their name! Even more interesting, low-level electrostatic magnetic fields have a tendency to attract and induce arrestment behaviour in silverfishes, which means you can capture one pretty easily if you let a live electric coil burn in your basement!

  … Don’t do that, though! Silverfishes don’t bite, but they can cause bad allergic reactions!