That Time I reincarnated as an insect-Chapter 78 - 77: Reawakened Buzz

Zza hit the street so hard her vision cracked sideways. Her legs dragged across torn asphalt, sparks flaring from her claws as she skidded to a stop beside a crushed metal rail. Her whole body trembled with a pulse that didn’t belong to her. It crawled through her veins, sliding under her shell like warm wires. Buzz’s pulse. The hive’s pulse. She couldn’t tell which beat harder.

The city around her twisted again.

A row of buildings folded inward like giant ribs. Windows stretched, bending toward her with a slow, hungry curve. Metal groaned as if waking from a long sleep. Concrete rolled across itself in thick waves, swallowing parked cars and broken signs as easily as a tide.

Zza stumbled upright, breathing harshly. Her silk stuck to her arms, wet from sweat and dust. Every direction felt wrong. Every shadow looked shaped. She swore the street whispered her name in a deep hum that echoed in her bones.

"Buzz," she breathed, clutching her ribs. "Buzz, where are you?"

A flicker rose behind her eyes, sharp and sudden.

Buzz’s voice cut through her skull like a cracked bell.

**"Zza... don’t stop..."**

His tone shook. It was uneven, frantic, scared. She staggered, pressing a claw to her temple.

"Buzz? Buzz, listen, I’m—"

Another voice slid under his.

Smooth. Cold. Perfect.

**"Stop moving."**

Zza froze without meaning to. Her breath faltered. That voice carried a strange sweetness that wrapped around her spine and pulled.

She forced herself to move, shaking her head until her vision blurred.

"Get out," she whispered. "Get out of my mind."

The cold Buzz laughed. It wasn’t a real laugh. It was shaped to sound pleasant, soft, comforting. That made it worse.

**"You wanted him," it said. "You wanted his voice. You wanted his claws. You wanted his warmth. I have all those pieces. I can give them back in any order you desire."**

Her stomach curled.

"Buzz," she whispered again, searching for the flicker of the real him. "Answer me. Please."

A faint spark pushed through the cold hum.

**"Zza—run—run, please—"**

The voice strained. It sounded like Buzz choking underwater, dragging words out of thick mud. Something pulled him back before he could finish, snapping the connection like wet silk.

Zza grabbed at her head with both claws, dragging in a shaky breath.

The hive was doing this. The hive was scrubbing his mind in circles, tearing him apart into versions. One piece terrified. One piece erased. One piece replaced by something polished and obedient.

She couldn’t fall apart. She didn’t have that luxury.

Something slammed into the road behind her. Hard enough that the ground flinched.

Zza ran.

Her legs pumped unevenly. The cracked pavement shook under each step. She dodged chunks of metal that folded like jaws snapping shut. A vending machine twitched and split open, revealing spines of steel nested where snacks should be.

A pair of human figures lurched around the corner ahead. Their faces sagged like wax. Their eyes glowed faint gold, threads of it crawling through their skin like thin roots.

Zza skidded to a stop.

One of them tilted its head. Its voice spilled out with two sounds layered together—the human’s last panic and the hive’s cold hum.

"Stay."

The other repeated it.

"Stay."

Zza backed away. "I can’t do that."

They rushed her.

She spun, silk slashing out in desperate arcs. It wrapped the first figure’s arm, binding it tight, but the person didn’t wince. They didn’t fight the web. They simply folded their arm backward at an angle no joint should bend, snapping themselves free.

Zza’s breath faltered.

They came at her again.

She leaped backward, slid under their reaching hands, and sprinted into a narrow alley splitting two groaning buildings. The walls trembled. Metal bulged inward, trying to pinch the passage shut like a throat.

Buzz’s voice tore through her again.

**"Zza—turn—left—hurry—"**

Cold Buzz overlapped him.

**"Straight. Straight is gentle."**

Her heart thrashed.

Real Buzz sounded like he was being crushed.

Zza bolted left.

A chunk of concrete crashed where her head had been. The alley spat her out onto a slanted rooftop. Wind scraped past her face as she stumbled along the ledge, trying to steady her balance.

The entire block shifted. The rooftops tilted like a giant lifting one side of a board.

Zza lost her footing.

She toppled forward—and plunged.

A metal cable snapped around her waist before she struck the ground. The impact stalled midair, her body jerking sideways as the cable reeled her backward like hooked prey.

Zza screamed and slashed at it. Her silk shot out, tangling with the cable, making the reel stutter.

She swung violently into a wall.

Buzz’s real voice surged through her mind so suddenly it stole the air from her lungs.

**"Zza, stop fighting—stop—stop it—"**

That wasn’t him telling her to obey.

That was him terrified of what the hive might do if she kept resisting.

Zza clung to the cable, letting her claws dig in. "Buzz, listen to me. I can’t reach you if you keep hiding behind that thing."

A cold hum sharpened behind her eyes.

**"Hide? I am perfection. I offer clarity. He is weak. He breaks for you. Let him break."**

Zza kicked off the wall, swinging her body hard until the cable groaned. Sparks snapped from the metal. She gritted her teeth and yanked with everything she had.

The cable tore loose.

She plunged ten feet and hit the hood of a half-swallowed car, metal denting under her weight. Pain shot through her shoulder. She rolled off the hood and forced herself up again, legs shaky.

The street ahead bent inward in a slow, steady arc, forming a tunnel shaped like a throat. Gold pooled at the base like thick sap, pulsing with heat.

Buzz was in there.

She could feel his real voice trembling under the hive’s noise.

Zza took one step toward the tunnel—

—and a violent psychic burst slammed into her.

Her skull rang. Her knees buckled. The tunnel twisted sideways, rippling with gold threads that snaked up her legs.

Buzz’s real voice tore through the haze.

**"ZZA—STOP—RUN—RUN PLEASE—RUN RUN RUN—"**

Cold Buzz followed, smooth as silk.

**"Come closer."**

Zza grabbed her head and screamed. The two voices grated across each other, shoving, pulling, fighting inside her mind. It felt like claws digging into her skull.

Her knees hit the ground.

The gold threads climbed.

Her breath caught as she felt something slide under her thoughts—something inspecting her memories, tugging on pieces of her childhood, her loyalty, her anger, her fear.

The cold Buzz murmured:

**"You want him. Step inside. I will shape him for you."**

Her stomach twisted. That voice used Buzz’s tone with a softness she hated.

Another burst cut through—brutal, desperate.

**"ZZA RUN!"**

That one sounded shattered.

Her claws hit the ground and she pushed herself up with a gasp. "Buzz, I’m coming. I’m not leaving you."

She staggered forward.

The tunnel shook.

Gold thrashed.

Buzz’s two voices clashed so violently her vision blurred into double shapes—one path curved toward safety, one toward madness.

She chose madness.

She ran into the tunnel.

The walls closed behind her with a sound like metal swallowing air.

The gold pulsed faster, casting warped reflections across her shell. She could see pieces of Buzz’s face flickering across the walls—one version terrified, one version serene, one version blank. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Her legs burned. Her chest ached.

She reached the chamber.

At the center hung a cocoon of gold, cracked and leaking threads of heat. Two silhouettes flickered inside it—Buzz’s real form and the hive’s forged copy—overlapping, separating, merging again.

Buzz’s real voice clawed out weakly:

**"Zza... please..."**

Cold Buzz drifted closer to the surface of the cocoon.

His voice rang clear and cruel.

**"Leave. He belongs to me."**

Zza staggered forward.

Her hand touched the cocoon.

A psychic shock flared—so violent her body convulsed.

She saw Buzz’s real mind, cornered and bruised, gasping in a web of gold.

She saw the hive’s forged Buzz, perfect and polished, reaching through her memories to tear her away from him.

She screamed.

The chamber cracked.

Gold poured down.

The cocoon ruptured.

Both Buzz versions lunged toward her.

The world swallowed itself in .

Zza opened her eyes to a world that felt inside-out.

Light swam in thick waves across the chamber, gold swirling around her like breath someone exhaled too slow. Everything buzzed under her shell, but in a way that didn’t hurt. Yet. She blinked once. Twice. The world refused to settle.

A shape knelt in front of her.

Tall. Wrong. Familiar.

Her heart lurched so hard she felt her ribs twitch.

"Buzz...?"

The shape lifted its head.

Two sets of eyes flickered—one pair bright with panic, the other glazed with that sickening hive calm. They fought for space in the same skull, overlapping, sliding, switching faster than her breath could adjust.

The voice that answered drifted out with a strange shimmer, like two people speaking through the same throat but chasing different words.

"Zza... you found me... I tried—I tried—why did you... why did you enter the tunnel... why did you not stop..."

Her breath thinned.

"Buzz, look at me. The real you. Please."

The flicker stuttered. His features twisted, one expression drowning the other, then flipping back. Buzz’s real face surfaced—eyes wide, trembling—before the hive’s version smoothed everything flat again, sculpting calm over fear like plaster.

He stepped closer.

Zza dragged herself upright. Her legs wobbled. Her silk clung to her skin like cold vines. The chamber pulsed around them, walls bending inward and stretching out again like a giant was breathing through the city.

Buzz—or whatever he was now—reached for her.

His claws hovered near her cheek.

"I remember you," he whispered, and for a second she wanted to collapse into him. It sounded like him. It felt like him. "I remember the fights. The crawlways. The way you held me when my wing cracked. The way you curse under your breath when you think I am asleep."

Her chest shook with a half-laugh that tasted like panic.

"That’s you. That’s the real you."

He nodded once.

Then shook his head.

Then nodded again.

Zza’s stomach tightened.

Something in him glitched. His jaw clenched. His eyes rolled upward as if two minds tugged on the strings behind them.

"Zza," he whispered, voice thin. "I am here. I am trapped. Help me."

His other voice overrode it instantly, smooth as oil.

"Step back. He is noise. I am stability. I will keep you safe."

Zza flinched. "Buzz doesn’t talk like that."

He smiled and it broke her.

Because half that smile belonged to the Buzz she knew. The other half twisted upward in a way that felt... designed. Like the hive was learning what comfort looked like and breaking its own mouth trying to imitate it.

A rumble rolled through the chamber.

Gold threads shot up the walls in sharp streaks.

Zza stumbled, catching herself on her palms. Her claws tingled. The air crackled like two storms trying to form inside the same sky.

Buzz jerked as if something yanked his spine.

His body bent backward, too far, then snapped upright. His breath hitched. A shiver ran through his shell.

"Zza—listen—"

**"Quiet."**

"Zza, don’t leave me—"

**"She is irrelevant."**

"She’s everything—"

**"She is an obstacle."**

Zza backed away until her shell hit a pillar of half-solid light.

Her throat tightened. "Buzz, fight it."

His arms twitched. His wings flared, then collapsed. His chest rose fast, dropped slow. He looked like he wanted to move toward her, but his feet pinned in place, glued to the gold pulsing under him.

"You think I don’t try?" he gasped. "You think I want this? You think I asked to be split, to be worn, to be—"

His voice cut. His eyes rolled white.

The hive voice finished the sentence for him.

**"—rebuilt."**

A thread of gold shot from the floor and wrapped his ankle.

Another snapped around his wrist.

Zza lunged forward. "Buzz!"

He held up a hand in a violent, jerking motion. It wasn’t a warning. It was a plea.

"Stay there," he rasped. "If you touch me... if you get near me... it will use you to finish what it started."

His head dropped forward. His shoulders shook. He spoke again in his real voice, thin and ragged.

"You should run."

Zza’s eyes burned.

That was Buzz. That was him.

And the hive smashed him aside like a boot crushing an ember.

His posture straightened. His shoulders rolled back. His wings snapped outward with flawless symmetry. Every line of his shell aligned into something sharp, elegant, terrifying.

When he raised his head again, only the hive looked out through his eyes.

**"You came to rescue him,"** it said softly. **"You came to drag him away from us. You came to interfere."**

Zza set her claws, breath shaking but steady enough.

"I came to get him back."

**"There is no ’back’."**

The gold threads climbed higher around his limbs. They pulsed in time with his heartbeat—no, their heartbeat now. His was buried under it. Drowned.

Zza felt heat climb her spine.

"Buzz," she whispered, desperate. "Listen. I know you’re still in there. I know you can hear me. You’re stronger than anything the hive throws at you. Fight. Fight me if you have to, but fight *something*."

His whole body flickered.

For a moment he doubled—two silhouettes, one leaning forward in terror, one standing tall in icy stillness.

The terrified Buzz shoved forward inside the flicker, his voice cracking into hers.

"Zza—kill the lights—break the chamber—destroy the gold—anything—just don’t let it fix me—don’t let it finish—"

Cold Buzz cut him off like slicing a wire.

**"She will do nothing."**

The ground shook again.

The chamber began to snap shut, folding metal over itself like jaws.

Zza lunged forward.

Buzz moved at the same time.

He reached her first.

His claw pressed gently—too gently—against her throat.

"Please," she whispered, staring into both sets of eyes at once. "Don’t lose me."

For a heartbeat all the flickers aligned.

Real Buzz surfaced.

A tear—gold and burning—slipped down his cheek.

"I don’t want to," he whispered.

He shoved her backward with a violent jerk.

The chamber split open behind her like the world tearing in half.

Zza fell.

Buzz watched her drop, both versions of him locked inside the same face—one horror-struck, the other perfectly still.

The last thing she heard before she hit the next tier of the collapsing city was his blended voice calling her name in two tones at once.

One tone loved her.

The other promised to hunt her.

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