The creatures of the museum all fought to get access to the targets. All of them felt the links in their minds, pushing them forward, telling them to…

  “Save them!”

  But their efforts were fruitless and they were trapped within their enclosures and unable to do what they were Guided to do. Something swelled within the creatures and they changed. Changed in the way that their minds believed would help them break free.

  “I wish that you would all just DIE!”

  Some broke free immediately and started attacking to the humans in black that they knew were in the main lobby of the building. The mind on the other link even while unconscious fed them the vague impressions and scattered information that they needed to know where the closest group was.

  They fought and rippled again when the targets stood strong and were still not defeated. And all of them became more. More dangerous. But all in their own ways. The bird’s claws were sharpened, the rats claws dripped with poison that would paralyze their prey. The little lizards acid grew ever more powerful so it could sear through defenses.

  The creatures rippled and grew ever more powerful as they attacked. Each with their own refinement and growth as the power swelling within them compelled them to fufill their mission at all costs.

  “Somebody has to save them!”

  Four of the targets were resistant. Claw, teeth, acid, none prevented them from recovering and continuing their fight against the varied horde. Two of the regenerating humans left the building and a large portion of the horde went out to chase after them. They spotted others that they knew must also be targets. The ones behind the terrible tradgedy and swell of emotion that they could all feel pulsing on the other end of their connection to the originator.

  All of the creatures worked on their own, yet were all on the same mission. And as they failed over and over again to kill the regenerating humans, their forms rippled with power again and again and improved.

  The buzzing insects were peculiar among the others. Most enhanced something about themselves. Made themselves more poisonous, become bigger, something else internal. They burst out of their enclosures and flew of scattered off in hunt of the targets sent to them through the link. All their simple minds knew was that the humans in black must be eliminated while those in green must be protected. No more nuance than that could be understood by their small minds.

  Yet the centerpiece of the exhibit was different. The massive ant supercolony did not seek to escape its confines just yet.

  It could not. In the simple minds of the ants, there was only one thought to them. If it could even be called a thought. How did their forms benefit the larger colony? Not all members of the colony could be soldier ants, big and strong and meant to fend off the intruders. Not all could be Queens.

  The tunnels of the nest must be widened, adjusted, changed based on how many workers crawled through them. The chambers where the food was brought and where leaves were fed to the fungal gardens must be done as part of the larger whole.

  No ant worked on its own, but only did so in the larger context of its simple instincts and a complex network of pheromone trails and other biological signals.

  So when the ants could not escape their enclosure to reach the enemy that they felt, they did not grow bigger or stronger like all of the others.

  Instead they all wished for external things. Things for the colony. To build more efficient and defensible nests, better organization among the workers so that not one scrap of food was lost. The ability to work together and improve the colony rather than themselves as units of the larger whole.

  And so when the rippling improvement washed over the millions of ants in the colony, that’s what it did. The ants were externally unchanged, but they were more somehow. Their movements more purposeful, more organized. Each little component of the colony grew just slightly more intelligent and aware of how to better work with their fellows.

  They started moving the corners and cracks of their enclosure and started hunting for weaknesses that they could start tunneling through to the wider world. But they found no weaknesses. Their new intelligence brought no strength with it. For in the ants minds their overdriving purpose was executing and coirdinating with the colony. What importance could their own individual attributes have in comparison to something as important as that.

  The colony rippled three more times, growing more and more intelligent each time and the wandering ants soon crashed and moved like waves as they started digging into even the smallest cracks and gaps to help break free and reach the enemies sent to them over the link to the originator.

  “Stop them, please!”

  They were on the cusp of something greater, and all the ants rippled as one as they were improved one last time. And when it was over… Something had changed. Within the ant queens at the center of the colony there was a glimmer of true intelligence.

  They were usually nothing more than the factory of the nest, continually giving birth to the young ants eggs and remaining motionless in place and being fed simultaneously to continue production. But unlike the usual workers or soldier ants, they did have another desire beyond just its base function.

  The Queens wished for their offspring to better able to serve the colony, to perform better in their roles. To know instinctively how many of each variant to produce to conserve food. For the ant eggs they gave birth to to mature faster and require less food to create.

  And so all of these things were done and improved with each iteration, and the intelligence alongside it to manage all of these new things. And so the Queens rapidly outpaced the intelligence of the lesser drones of the colony.

  The ants now had a great enemy to fight. And the soldier ants wouldn’t be enough. Along with the Queens new glimmer of intelligence, came another mutation. One far more mysterious than all of the others combined. The newly intelligent ants and colony didn’t understand their enemy. They didn’t understand how they were still trapped in these tubes and eclosures still despite the colony working together more seamlessly as they ever had before.

  And so the link to the originator… widened. And the colony received information in a deluge like they never had before. Thousands, millions, trillions of thoughts and concepts that they could never understand.

  They all fell to the ground as one and started twitching from the confusion and overload of information.

  But then their forms rippled again and they somewhat understood. Not as a human would, and not with words of any form. But they understood the information in their own way, and understood their enemy somewhat better.

  No claw, acid, or massive bulk had defeated these enemy creatures yet in human history. Yet the ants still had their task, and they must accomplish it.

  Finally, a single weakened joint on one of the tubes on the ceiling was found. It took over five minutes, but eventually a hole was bored through the material and provided a method for the colony to escape.

  Half of the ants and soldiers immediately rushed off to the main lobby to join in the assault on the remaining two… ‘Immortals’ shaped like humans in the main lobby.

  But the other half remained behind as they widened the exit and started spreading out in a spreading mass of scouts.

  Because the ants instincts and new intelligence told them that these creatures would not be easy to defeat. It would be a long war, like if the old form of the colony was to meet another.

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  The newly intelligent and altered Queens must be protected within a nest. And the current nest was completely inadequete and weak compared to what they could build now.

  The half that went to attack the two thrashing Immortals was fruitless. Their bites and attacks didn’t harm the Immortals in the weakest bit. But the most interesting thing happened as a few workers wandered back to the colony with little blobs of wet flesh held in their mandibles.

  Food for the Queens.

  The Queens continued to rapidly produce more ants, the creatures hatching from their eggs into full drones in less than a minute after being laid. And they required so little food to create that it was pracitaclly transforming the food the Queens were given directly into new members of the colony.

  As more members of the colony died amongst the chaos in the main lobby, crushed by the other creatures or flailing Immortals alike, the minds of the colony shifted perspective.

  The ants that had been formerly attacking the two Immortals began shifting their mission. Where the blood or severed limbs and chunks of flesh fell on the floor, the ants swarmed and took small chunks for the colony. And they walked back through the museum and ferried it back to the Queens continued to rapidly swell their numbers with their newfound rapid production of new young for the colony.

  The drones that the Queen produced were faster than the former drones. What limited the colony now in their scouting was time. They could only move so fast, and at their size the journey to and back to the colony from the main lobby took over fifteen minutes round trip.

  The scouts and pheremone trails were far flung across the museum by now and nearly three quarters of them hadn’t returned to the colony yet to share what they’d found with the larger colony.

  The ants rippled again and their intelligence grew again. The Queens gained more refinement of the eggs they laid and imbued them with ever greater speed and metabolism for scouting and aquiring food from the Immortals being brutalized by the other creatures.

  Some time passed, until finally several of the faster ant variants returned and reported their findings in puffs of pheremones and body movements. They had found a location that was suitable for a colony.

  Larger swarms of hundreds of ants followed the pheremone trails of the scouts, ready to establish a presence in a more secure location.

  After some back and forth as the large groups of ants found the best location for the new nest. Members from each group would face each other and fight or puff angry pheremones at each other until one backed down. After enough of this, the location that made those who saw it most defensive and passionate was chosen.

  Over a quarter of the ant swarm shifted and went to the location of the new nest upon the decision being made. Thirty minutes later, they were done digging the new nest. It was far away, deep in the bottom of the three sub levels of the museum. The place was made of hard gray concrete except for a few cracks here and there. And right near the bottom of the building in a dark corner was a particularly large crack with abundant soil beneath it. Best of all it was near an elevator that had a shaft that led up to all the other levels of the building. And this elevator opened into a hallway just off the main lobby. There was no better location as the large group of ants started digging into the crack and digging their tunnels and defensive nest.

  After the nest was fully prepared and established, the Queens were cafefully moved. Away from the exposed nest contained in a box of fragile glass and into the secure nest deep in the ground.

  The nest underground grew, the ant Queens were established in their chambers and being fed from the abundance source of food above.

  The Queens considered the situation now that they were settled. They were now intelligent enough to think, even if it was a slow, instinctive form of thought. The numbers of larger beasts above were slowly dwindling. All were larger, deadlier, more poisonous each time they rippled. Yet nothing seemed to make any progress in killing the two Immortals still left in the building.

  The ants knew through their link to the originator that the humans might come to take the Immortals away eventually. That there might be others out there involved in what had happened.

  The ants couldn’t allow that. They were completely unable to kill these Immortals now, but they would be able to eventually. They must be able to.

  “You have to protect them!”

  And they may hurt the ones in green if they escaped. The colony couldn’t allow that.

  It had been long enough that the Originator had woken up. The information fed through the link to the colony provided urgency. It had been hours since the initial attack, and there were at least six of these Immortals that had been part of the attackers. The normal humans meant to go in and take them away soon.

  The other beasts were unintelligent and unable to see the futility in their furious assault. The ant colony must take possession of at least one of the Immortals. Not only would their biomass strengthen them, but it would prevent them from being taken by the other humans.

  The ants must gather as many of them as possible before the humans arrived. The information from the originator told them that the humans were planning on taking them away soon. And that the ants would be likely destroyed if they were spotted. They must make sure they were not visible and hide away until the humans were no longer on as high alert as they were now…

  A majority of the ant swarm left the colony and surged up through the elevator shaft, the stronger new ant variants borne from the new Queens managing to wedge open the elevator doors to make room for their prey.

  The beasts still fought each other and attacked the screaming and flailing Immortals. The ants swarmed over to the closest Immortal and as one covered their entire body and started dragging towards the open doors to the elevator shaft. The elevator box itself was at the top floor at the moment, so it was a clear drop to the bottom once they managed to drag the Immortal inside.

  The collective effort of the ants managed to slowly drag the Immortal’s body towards the open doors. The other beasts kept fighting and attacking the Immortal, crushing ants by the hundreds as they uncaringly kept attempting to damage the Immortal rather than bother avoiding the ants covering the Immortal’s whole surface.

  As the ants and the flailing Immortal grew close to the elevator shaft itself the horde of beasts began to split. The vast majority gradually fell back and turned to attack the other Immortal closer to the center of the room.

  All the creature’s rippled, and everything but the ants increased in size or grew more dangerous in seconds. The ants grew more coirdinated and intelligent instead.

  The few beasts who remained attacking the Immortal now barely a few feet from the elevator shaft grew even more enraged and tried to latch on and drag the Immortal back closer to the center of the room. But the ants persisted in the tug of war for a few moments before succeeding and tipping the flailing humanoid form into the black elevator shaft downwards.

  The Immortal fell several stories and landed on the ground far below with a heavy and gruesome thump, killing most of the ants coating their body.

  The beasts above lost interest and went back to the center of the room and started brutalizing the other Immortal for now.

  A new variant spat little bursts of slightly acidic liquid onto the concrete in the bottom corner of the elevator shaft even as they bit at the stone. And with the help of the acid they managed to carve slightly into the hard concrete with each bite of their mandibles, even if they occasionally splashed themselves and shriveled and died as well.

  The Immortal shook their head and sat up and looked confused as they looked upwards to the single point of light shining far above them and the single beams coming through the closed doors of the exterior elevator floor doors.

  The Immortal only started to panic as the first of the swarm finished crawling back down the elevator shaft and climbed over the Immortal’s body again.

  The hole through the concrete was opened just wide enough that the Immortal who was now flailing again was able to be stuffed through with the efforts of the swarm of ants.

  The Immortal was carried through deep underground through their evergrowing tunnels and into the massive chamber that the Queens had overseen the construction of.

  The Immortal was placed inside as the Queens retreated to their other appropriate chambers with their task complete.

  The Immortal… was placed in the feeding chamber. And the ants started to feed, to provide more flesh to feed the Queens who grew the colony ever larger with every passing moment.

  The main swarm went back to retrieve the other, but stopped as they saw humans fighting the other beasts inside. The ants must not be seen or the humans would know to hunt and eliminate them.

  With some effort, the swarm managed to close the open elevator doors again, an action that was completely ignored in the chaos of the battle.

  They retreated back downwards and into their nest and filled the hole in with soil behind them to mostly cover their tracks.

  The colony grew with a single Immortal in the center as its source of endless biomass. They dug deeper and wider.

  And with each ripple and wave of improvement across their bodies, the colony grew stronger. The waves slowed down a little more each time, but they still came. And the colony and nest grew ever deeper beneath the surface.

  They had an endless source of food and the Queen’s new biology allowed them to recycle that flesh with near perfect efficiency from dead ant and Immortal alike.

  They had no need for an exterior source of food when they had an endless one in the center of the nest. So they burrowed ever deeper, ever wider, their only need for tunnels to the surface to be for air to sustain them.

  They would wait and grow their strength. Give the Queens some time to understand the information entering them through the connection to the originator. They would wait, and find a way to kill this Immortal eventually. They would find a way to kill all who had been involved. It was its purpose.

  “Somebody has to save them! Somebody, Anybody… I wish that you would all just DIE!”