NOW
As the vision slipped over him, Zak was surrounded by darkness so complete, so solid, that it was as if he was buried deep in fine black powder. Except, it felt like he was floating. Like his mind wasn’t in his body any more.
Weirdest. Feeling. Ever.
Zak wondered if he was dying.
No. This isn’t death. This is something else. This isn’t even real. This is all in my head. This is the vision – the thing they’ve been trying to show me.
Standing on the edge of The Chasm, with insects crawling over him, Zak’s mind joined with theirs, and he saw everything they wanted him to see. Their message came to him in a flash of images, racing through his thoughts.
He saw lights moving in the darkness below him, thousands of insects flickering and fluttering in the freezing, black depths. He saw a river of them flowing through the ice beneath his feet, swarming over each other, their legs intertwining, their wings struggling to open in the tight space. And the mind of every single insect was connected to the mind of every other insect, all of them acting together as if they were one.
I was right. A hive mind.
And now, in a way, he was part of that collective mind too. They could reach his thoughts in a way they couldn’t reach anybody else at Outpost Zero.
Because I’m different. My mind is different.
His illness weakened him; it made him vulnerable.
The insects showed him the river of seething bugs flowing away beneath the ice, flooding into a shimmering, glowing sea of them. A sea that pulsed with a fluorescent glow. The number of insects was impossible to grasp. More than thousands. More than millions. More than billions. All of their minds connected. All of them trying to free themselves from the ice directly below Outpost Zero.
BioMesa had discovered them, and now they had to protect themselves. They had to survive. They had to escape and find somewhere new – somewhere safe to hibernate.
And in the vision, Zak saw how their light was creating great heat, melting the ice that entombed them. The insects were almost ready to escape, but above them, Outpost Zero was perched on ice that was growing thinner and thinner.
Their freedom would destroy Outpost Zero. That was what they wanted to tell him. They wanted to warn him.
But what are you? Zak needed to understand.
So the insects showed him.
A blinding blast of light and heat erupted in his mind, and in that energy, a billion tiny explosions created a cloud of gas that twisted and snaked like the tendrils of a smoky giant. When the gas faded into nothing, Zak saw the cold darkness of space, he saw planets form and break apart, he saw stars burning bright in the unreachable distance.
This is the beginning of everything, he thought. This is how the universe began. Why are you showing me this?
More images flashed through his mind like a movie played on fast-forward behind his eyelids. He felt as if he were cascading among the planets, passing through rock and space and stars, gaining speed, faster, faster, until it was impossible to focus, and everything was a blur of dark, light, time, energy and—
Everything stopped.
For a second, his thoughts were blank, and then his mind was filled with an image of a planet hanging in space. Earth.
On the surface of the planet, a swirling, white-crested blue sea crashed and foamed. Above it, two spirals of light twisted around each other, a double helix of glowing insects rising up. And as the insects reached the top of the spirals, they shed their hard casings, letting their bodies fall to the ocean, decomposing into a soup of cells that split and grew and became life.
Every creature on the planet came from these insects. The information Dad found in the lab – the DNA, the genomes, the stem cells – that’s what the insects were. They were the beginning of all life on earth, and in his vision Zak saw their cells grow into mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, insects . . . everything.
When Zak opened his eyes, he was back in the ice-cavern. The insects had returned to The Chasm, but Zak felt the ghost of their presence in his mind. He felt remnants of their fleshy bodies on his face, their life-creating cells soaking into his skin. It ran warm in his veins, moving through his body, filling his mind. He felt a calming release of pressure inside his brain, and when he looked around, he saw the world with new eyes. The insects had more right to be here than he did.
‘I think I understand,’ Zak said. ‘I think I know what you are.’