Family members were difficult to surprise, so she took some pride in the women’s shocked faces. The pregnant woman even clutched at her massive belly, perhaps thinking she was there to remake her child in the womb.

“Who is this?” the pregnant woman asked, a note of true anxiousness in her voice.

But she was not here to catch up with her clutch mates. “Where’s the rest of the Family?” she asked.

Sohrab’s gaze flicked to the rear of the residence, past the interior courtyard, deeper, into the warm belly of the beast that sustained the Families.

“They are discussing what to do… with you,” Sohrab said. “We did not… expect you.”

“Oh, I’m sure you expected me. Just not so soon.” She raised her hand.

The pregnant woman shrieked. Sohrab fell to her knees, clutching her hennaed hands. Neither of them were conjurers, and they knew better than to try and draw weapons on her. The man outside lifted his head from his gardening. She heard the soft sound of the child padding across the tiled floor, somewhere close.

She called the bugs from within the walls. Knit them from gut to wingtip from the old organic compounds that threaded throughout the house, binding the deadtech in place. She drew on the same stuff the shifters did to remake themselves, the ancient organic matter of the derelicts that had once been siphoned off to build the world. Now it was gelatinous, mutated stuff; unstable. But still useful.

Sohrab began to intone the Surah Al-Fatiha, her pronunciation of the ancient prayer language impeccable and haunting. It had been some time since she last heard those words recited with such beauty and passion.

Locusts appeared at the center of the room, sparking into existence as if from the air itself. The swarm coalesced, a massive darkness that steadily grew outward, like an expanding black hole. There were few places one could seemingly create something from nothing anymore, and she took a grim satisfaction in it, even as the pregnant woman screamed and screamed and the man rushed headlong inside, a machete in hand.

A few simple chemicals created a great hunger in the locusts. She pushed her hands out, compelling the air and the altered chemical compounds around her to direct the insects. They swarmed over the women and man. It took just ninety seconds for the hungry locusts to devour all three bodies to the bone.

When it was done, she clapped her hands, and the locusts and the flesh they had gorged on disintegrated into its base components and rejoined the organic compounds within the derelicts. A few tatters of flesh still clung to the bloody skeletons, like shredded wrapping on some festive package.