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SNEAK PEEK!

Chapter One of Invasion of the Bee Girls by B,S. Lewis. Preorders available through the kickstarter link below:

Deep beneath the expansive grounds of the Brandt Institute, hidden below layers of alternating earth and concrete, exists a small chamber room.

This room is not found on any blueprints nor in any governmental backlog. For all intents and purposes, this small chamber room does not exist. Inside of this chamber that should not exist, a series of empty mechanical pods light up and whir to life.

Lights flicker. Machines hum. Numbers and letters flash across screens in sequences of green and black. Fifty yards south of these pods, a set of heavy double doors beeped and whooshed open with the scanning of an ID card.

With the type of detachment usually attributed to someone who had been drugged, Rita Calder felt her limp legs being dragged along the smooth polished tiles of a short hallway. The tiles were cool to the touch and the space between them grabbed at her sensible Dansko work clogs and threatened to tear them from her flaccid feet.

Minutes went by in a daze. Rita felt her weight shift as she was dragged around a corner, then another, then another. Eventually, she lost track not only of her sense of direction, but she also lost track of her shoes, noticing only when her bare toes began to click across the tiles and send shivers up her calves. She tried to blink the fog away and remember just when she had lost her shoes, shed and discarded like an old skin somewhere back in the twisting corridors of the Brandt Institute. However, she could remember nothing.

The air thickened as she was guided deeper into the chamber room. The chamber felt hot, humid, stifling. The air buzzed with a low-frequency thrumming sound that wasn’t quite mechanical in nature. The buzzing was constant and pulsing and, much like a heartbeat, she felt it in her chest as she was dragged further into the room.

With a sense much like falling, Rita found herself being lowered to the cold floor by a set of small hands. She blinked rapidly, trying to regain her bearings. Above her head she sensed more than she saw a looming dark shape, smooth and solid. A tingling sensation brought her arms back to life and she wiped at her eyes until she was able to read clearly the sign affixed to the front of the dark shape:

Transmogrification Pod #3B.

Rita’s drugged mind could barely make sense of the words but somewhere off in the back of her mind, faint alarm bells went off. The tingling sensation worked its way down her torso and through her legs. Her whole body felt like it were resting on a bed of pins and needles. She tried to speak but her mouth didn’t cooperate. Her lips felt heavy and alien to her. She tried to use her tongue to speak but it just rolled around lazily, feeling like it were filled with sweet honey.

"I see the sedative is wearing off," came a soft voice beside her. Rita turned her heavy head and saw Dr. Susan Harris standing near her, a familiar yet cold smile on her face. Dr. Harris spread her hands and gestured about the room. As she did so, her white lab coat spread open like an insects wings. "This is a room that very few people have ever been granted access to. You should feel special. You were chosen. Not all of us are." As Rita continued to open and close her mouth silently, Dr. Harris pressed a few buttons on a Didactic Three Push Button Electrical Automatic Trainer.

The room about them suddenly seemed to brighten. The buzzing sensation grew louder and a cool breeze wafted over Rita as the hidden doors to the transmogrification pod opened. The inside of the pod was peppered with honeycomb-shaped alcoves, which glistened with a fine layer of goldenrod mucus. In the center of the glistening pod, a woven cocoon seemed to be eagerly waiting. The gold and silver strands of the cocoon shimmered like oil on water. It seemed almost alive.

Rita was all pins and needles and fear and confusion. "N-no," she protested, her tongue and gums vibrating as the effects of the sedative left her. "This isn't right. I..I didn't sign up for this. You can't do this to me." Dr. Susan Harris nodded and smiled, acknowledging Rita's words but doing nothing about them aside from pressing another couple of buttons.

"I'm sorry if this isn't what you wanted," Dr. Susan Harris said, although there was no shred of sorrow in her tone. "You might not have wanted this, but it isn't up to you. It never was. That's the case with our bodies, isn't it?" Dr. Harris flipped a switch and the buzzing in the air intensified. "Haven't you always noticed how men look at you? You pretended not to notice it but you did, didn't you?" More buttons pushed. More code entered. The buzzing continued to intensify. "You see, it's simple biology. We can't help being what we are. And you, well, you're a very beautiful woman. You may not choose to use that to your advantage, but you have an effect nonetheless. So now, with the help of these pods," Dr. Susan Harris paused a moment to wave her arm towards the pod like she was a model showing off the latest sports car or speedboat, "your power will become our power. In time, you will understand and be grateful."

Rita tried to crawl away but her limbs failed her. As she flopped on the floor like a fish out of water, Dr. Harris finished her sequencing and turned her full attention on Rita. Dr. Harris prepared an injection that looked like thickened honey mustard. As Rita's eyes widened at the sight of the needle, she then noticed the other women already in the room. They stood at attention in a tight semicircle around the room. They were all completely naked, save for a pair of hexagonal sunglasses sitting atop their noses. Their skin was smooth, flawless, luminescent. Although their mouths didn't smile, they still seemed somehow to be emanating triumph, buzzing with jubilation.

Dr. Harris pointed the tip of the syringe towards the bright light overhead and flicked the barrel with a long nail and an audible click. She pressed on the plunger and a couple drops of a thick liquid crawled from the tip. It was an unnatural color, gold in nature. The shade fell somewhere in the space between Golden Poppy and Urobilin, or Mikado Yellow and Lemon Glacier depending on how the light hit it. It didn't drip like a true liquid, it crawled like a semisolid. Like frozen molasses. Or an ambered drop of honey. Rita hadn't noticed the other women move, yet she was suddenly aware of dozens of hands lifting her from the floor. The overhead light glinted off a myriad of hexagonal lenses.

Rita screamed as she was entombed in the sticky cocoon. Pairs of naked hands poured palmfuls of a warming resin over her. It was thick like honey. It was hot like wax. As her eyes disappeared below the hardening honey, darkness enveloped her. She tried to scream. The cocoon enveloped that too.

Then there was only silence. Silence and darkness.

Then, a light.

Not from an external source, but from her. She felt the light inside of her.

And it began to buzz.

It started behind her eyes: a stabbing pressure that spread about her head, curling through her skull like smoke. Her heartbeat slowed, stopped, then restarted. It sped up to an inhuman degree. Rita could feel her heartbeat increasing tenfold, from one hundred beats per minute to a thousand. She wanted to scream, but the golden syrup filled her throat and choked her lungs. Rita felt like she was suffocating, yet she found she didn't quite need to breathe.

Panic ripped through her mind anew when her skin began to burn and itch over every inch. Her skin began to crack and reform, break and reshape like clay on a wheel. A legion of little golden filaments formed beneath her flesh. As her joints popped out of place and her bones twisted and stretched, her pores wept with honey.

Rita felt a tingling in her ovaries. They began to swell and mutate. Rita's pheromone glands elongated and pulsated. She felt her entire being reprogram itself. Rebirth itself. Behind her fluttering eyelids, she saw a kaleidoscope of shapes. She saw gridlines of green fade into orange stacks of squares. She watched as these fizzed and dissolved into bursts of purple and green spots. She felt her world streamline itself. No more would she be concerned with social media, with Hollywood and daydreaming and career paths and friendships. Everything reduced to instinct and purpose. Seduction and multiplication. Her head swum and buzzed with a trio of natural orders:

Obey.

Seduce.

Kill.

Time passed, although she had no clue how much. Minutes, hours, days, it could have been any of the above. Time passed until it was time. When it was time, the cocoon cracked. Rita found herself hatched into the same world as before, only now she saw things differently. Now she saw things in shades of green, blue, ultraviolet and grey. Rita stood tall, naked. Proud. She felt her internal buzz.

Rita opened her mouth to speak but rather than words spilling forth, she emitted a low droning hum. Something about her mouth felt different, yet she found she could still use her tongue if she focused.

"You're ready," Dr. Susan Harris whispered sweetly in Rita's ear. Her breath smelled like honey and milk. The doctor placed one hand on Rita's shoulder and pointed towards an open doorway with the other. "Go," the doctor hissed. "Find a man. Show him what true devotion looks like."

Rita smiled and inhaled. She could sense one nearby, She could practically see neon runways leading the way. It was time to hunt. It was time to pollinate. She put on a pair of hexagonal sunglasses to hide her eyes from view. Her eyes were now afflicted with a sectoral heterochromia. Her eyes glowed black and gold.

 

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Martin Gruber’s boots slapped against the linoleum tiles, his footfalls echoing down the deserted corridor like the drumbeat of a retreating army. His flashlight flickered in his hand. He cursed and smacked it back to life as he ran. Sweat stung his eyes and poured over his upper lip. He rounded a corner and paused to catch his breath.

Nervously he looked to his left and his right. His frightened eyes stayed peeled for any sense of movement off in the darkness. Something had shorted out this section of the buildings power earlier in the night. The cameras ran on a backup power source but they were still down for over three minutes during the transition time. Before the monitors cut out, Martin had sworn he'd seen something. Women. Naked women. At least two or three of them, judging from how much ground they covered in such a short time. He caught a glimpse but he didn't believe his eyes. That is, until he found the footprints. There were footprints sprinkled across the tiles of the restricted genetics wing of Building 2A. They were sticky, faint outlines of a female foot that was dipped in honey.

With his breathing slowed down, Martin was ready to continue on.

He wasn't even supposed to be here. Not tonight, and not this deep into the research halls. Patterson had called off, said he had to go to his daughters ballet recital. Lying asshole, Martin thought when he saw Patterson on the Jumbotron at the Sacramento River Cats game. Now, here he was. In over his head and out past his security clearance. He clicked his walkie again, checking for a signal. There was still some kind of interference, some type of static. He couldn't get any backup or management on the line. He would have stayed in his office if it wasn't for the buzzing sound.

It was faint at first, but grew stronger, more insistent the longer he tried to ignore it. It didn't sound mechanical, it sounded alive. He had to find it. He had to follow it. Now, it was so loud that he could feel it rattling in his teeth. And it made him want to run. Even more so when he saw the footprints again.

The sticky footprints ran all along the floor in a zig-zag pattern. Then the trail took a sharp left turn and ran directly up the wall. The flashlight flickered again as Martin waved the blinking beam all along the walls and ceiling of the hallway. They were all covered in those honey-dipped prints.

“Oh my god," Martin said in a wavering voice. "She’s…she's not human.” The flashlight flickered again and went out. He smacked it a few more times but it did little more than flash once and stay dead. He tucked it back into his belt loop and then continued to run. He rounded the far corner and then came skidding to a halt.

There she was. She was beautiful, pale, luminescent. She was completely nude, save for a pair of hexagonal sunglasses on her button nose. She took a step forward and smiled. The buzzing grew louder in Martin's ears and he dropped to his knees. She leaned over him and tilted down her sunglasses. He saw her eyes. Familiar, yet different.

"Rita? Ms. Calder, is that you?"

Rita smiled. In one smooth motion she brought her sunglasses back up to their proper spot, and then she leapt.

She slammed into Martin with unimaginable speed. His vision blurred. His body began to tingle. The very air between them seemed to shimmer and wave with pheromones. Martin knew he had only seconds to act. He threw his body sideways, tumbling through an emergency exit, which set off an alarm and a flashing red light. She was on him in a second, her hands already closing around his sweaty neck. Her palms pulsated and secreted a sticky substance that felt both like fire and ice. Her mouth hovered an inch from his own. Her breath smelled like honey and wildflowers.

“No, please!” he gasped, trying to squirm his way free. Her tongue brushed the length of his cheek. She ground her pelvis into his with malevolent intent. Then came the sting.

He didn’t see it. He felt it, something sharp and wet sliding into the soft base of his skull. Her body vibrated at a high frequency until he felt his muscles seize and contract. His neural pathways all fired at once, every nerve, every sensation, every pleasure center in his body, they all ignited at once in an ecstasy so powerful that it felt like agony.

Martin Gruber screamed. He screamed until he stopped. Then he never screamed again.

Rita slowly rose to her feet. She adjusted her sunglasses and stepped over the twitching corpse of her now former co-worker. Her work finished, she vanished back down the corridor like a ripple on a dark sea.