Dangling a thousand feet above the lake, my overwrought muscles quivering, I quickly scaled the limb’s girth to stand atop the vast horizontal highway. The redwood trunk was to my left, a dense jungle to my right. For a fleeting moment I considered hiding in the foliage—until I looked up and saw the underside of a five-story sphere, the lowest of a dozen hives attached to the tree trunk like giant jabuticaba fruit. Glowing a golden yellow, the habitat bore rows of rectangular brown openings, each a potential sanctuary.

Looking down, I saw the enraged second Transhuman Monique shrieking silently at me. The eight-legged monster was racing up the tree, the pod holding Oscar still held to the spider-woman’s back.

Sprinting to the redwood’s trunk, I grabbed a vine and began climbing, the lower portion of the sphere a good sixty feet straight up. My pulse pounded in my throat, the vine tearing into my palm and fingers as I quickly halved the distance—the second hybrid spider three body lengths away … two lengths away … one—

Reaching the bottom of the hive, I heaved myself headfirst inside the nearest opening as I was attacked from behind by the trailing insect’s probing forward appendages. On hands and knees I crawled in deeper, pausing only when I realized the aperture was too narrow for the transhuman spider to enter.

I was in a tight tunnel, the walls composed of a brown fibrous, slightly sticky porous membrane. The only exit was straight ahead, illuminated by a bright incandescent yellow interior.

With no other options, I crawled toward the light.

Halfway in, I noticed the rush of air at my back, timed with the bellows effect of the membrane expanding and contracting all around me.

ABE, continuous theorization of surroundings.

THE MEMBRANE IS LIVING TISSUE, DESIGNED TO FILTER CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE INTERIOR.

Are you saying, the hive is breathing?

CORRECT.

Reaching the end of the tunnel, I poked my head out to gauge the new surroundings.

“Holy … shit.”

It really was a hive—a transhuman hive, its dimensions maddening. The concave interior walls were honeycombed, with about a third of the outlets occupied. Dropping down from the heavily rooted ceiling to fill the central chamber was the source of the interior glow—enormous clusters of citrus, each incandescent fruit as large as a basketball.

THE ACIDIC MEDIUM OF THE CITRUS FRUIT IS A CONDUCTOR OF ELECTRICITY; THEREFORE IT CAN BE ASSUMED THE CLUSTERS REGULATE INTERNAL TEMPERATURES WHILE SERVING AS POWER JUNCTIONS, CONTROLLING THE FLOW OF ELECTRICITY TO THE INCUBATORS.

Incubators?