The best type of infestation, dear reader, happens slowly.

Slow enough that it has time to morph by an inch, evolve by a tone, change by a hair, until eventually, no one realises that this new world has even come into existence. Humans took advantage of this finding, long ago. The slow creep of their own destruction was to our utter despair. Our extinction, scientists predicted, was kicked off in the 1920s, with their coal, factories, smog. Innovation, they called it, even as metal became flimsier, became plastic, and leached itself into the very waters humans had become so reliant on -- not in the way we were, but in the way humans always are, greedy, in need of those little screens, and servers and processing centers they razed our grounds for. Always thirsting after new ways to process cloth, and garments, denim luxuries at the price of their brothers and sisters in countries with less wealth than them.

The drought was thought to be the destruction of our last bastion of survival. In their eyes, we had gone extinct.

We were, from that point on, emblems, forgotten symbols of a world not saved, failed innocents on jewelled wings. there were people who tried, of course, shiny-eyed scientists with hope and naivete inequal measure. They dreamed up wild fantasies of peaceful co-existence, of shiny white high-rises with flowering plants, void of anything that made us who we were, void of our unsavoury brethren with too many legs and irritating chirpings, void of excrement and sex, wiped clean to appease shareholders and those who thought the luxury apartments of the elite would ever be open to them.

They were shut down quick enough by those who looked at an open green and saw only wasted retail space.

I will tell you this now, dear reader: butterflies do not solely subsist on the nectar of delicate-petaled blooms, and soft-scented shrubbery. We subsist on sweat and blood, piss and shit, liquid expressions of sickness and squats. And in a slum crammed full of those unable to pay their way through a society that drains you of all you have, there's a hell of a lot of it to go around.

The rain came oily in District Nine.

Runoff condensed from the city’s filtration stacks, heavy with that grey chemical sheen and the smell of rust glazed the alleys in a perfect gloss. Neon signs reflected in puddles like open wounds. Cecily stood beneath a flickering pharmacy cross and watched the men stumble out of the betting den across the street.

Drunk ones were easiest.

A delivery tram screamed overhead. The sound vibrated through her antennae, hidden now beneath the hood wrapped around her head. Gene-splicing had become fashionable among the rich decades ago. Her too-large eyes glossed black in certain light, the delicate scaling around her throat, the strange elegance of her movements–no one looked at her twice anymore. Sometimes, someone might cast her a glance, fleeting, as if the sight of what they thought to be a once rich woman reduced to a slum girl was a shameful sight, and, Cecily suspected, a secret source of pleasure.

Her wings remained folded beneath her coat, cramped and aching. They were translucent amber, veined like old leaves.

A man emerged from the building beside her, laughing to himself. Mid-fifties. Soft stomach. Corporate lanyard still hanging from his neck like a leash dropped just long enough to allow him a smoke break, before tightening again in a way so soft, he wouldn’t ever notice the collar. He paused beneath the awning to light a cigarette, cursing at the dampness.

Cecily smelled him immediately. Stress-sweat, working the kind of job to work a sickness into him bone-deep, and sterile enough to keep him asymptomatic.

Her stomach cramped as the thing inside her shifted eagerly.

The professors in the old documentaries had called it mutualism. Symbiotic adaptation between surviving insect species and human hosts. The butterflies received shelter, mobility, higher cognition through neurochemical linking. Humans received survival: and what a beautiful word that was. Survival.

As though it had ever belonged equally to everyone.

Cecily crossed the street, and the man noticed her instantly. Men always did. The city had starved everyone into sharpness, but Cecily possessed the fragile look poverty carved into women like her especially well: narrow wrists, hollow cheeks, exhaustion weaved into the very fabric of her posture.

“You lost?” he asked.

His gaze lingered too long on her mouth.

Cecily smiled softly.

“No,” she said. “But maybe you could help me.”

***

The apartment reeked of mould and synthetic lavender.

The man locked the door behind them with shaking eagerness. “I don’t normally do this,” he lied.

“Of course not,” Cecily replied.

His flat was small but private, and privacy was as good as wealth. A fan whirred overhead, and somewhere beyond the paper-thin walls, someone coughed wetly for nearly a minute straight.

The man reached for her waist.

Cecily let him.

His hands slid beneath her coat—then stopped.

“Jesus Christ.”

Cecily’s wings slowly unfolded behind her, amber membrane shimmering in the apartment’s jaundiced light. Powder drifted from them like golden ash. The man stumbled backward, hitting the kitchen counter hard enough to rattle old dishes.

“What the fuck are you?”

Cecily tilted her head, proboscis sliding from beneath her tongue in one elegant motion. The feeding tube slipped into the soft flesh beneath his jaw and warmth flooded her instantly. By the end, he barely twitched. The body collapsed sideways onto the peeling linoleum, desiccated, hollowed out from the inside like a shrivelled up orange peel.

Desiccated.

Then the bathroom window slid open.

“Still sentimental, I see.”

A woman climbed inside with the confidence of a stray cat, tall and dark-skinned with one mechanical eye whirring softly in its socket. Her wings were larger than Cecily’s, velvet black and torn along one edge.

Imani.

“You took too long,” she said, glancing at the body. “Again.”

“He had a daughter,” Cecily wiped her mouth, gesturing at a photo on the wall, caked in grime and dust.

“They all have daughters.” Imani crouched beside the corpse and searched his pockets with efficient disinterest. Wallet, ID chip, cred sticks. “Decent haul,” she muttered.

Cecily watched the dead man silently.

“Don’t do that,” Imani said.

“Do what?”

“Pretend you still think they’re people after.”

Cecily said nothing.

Imani sighed and stood. “Come on. Mother’s waiting.”

***

The Nest occupied the drowned basement levels beneath an abandoned shopping complex, mildew creeping across the collapsed marble floors, tarps dividing old storefronts into sleeping quarters with that same, oily rainwater dripping steadily through cracked ceilings into barrels arranged with ritual precision.

And everywhere, butterflies. Dozens of women looked up as Cecily entered. Young women. Old women. Women with bruises fading yellow across their throats. Women carrying babies. Women sharpening knives. A girl no older than fourteen sprinted past Cecily laughing, antennae twitching excitedly while another woman chased after her carrying antibiotics. Wings flickered in every corner of the underground like living stained glass.

It struck Cecily sometimes how normal it all felt now.

At the center of the old food court sat Mother: no one knew her real name anymore. Her wings were monstrous things, deep crimson with eyespots like open pupils. Age had made her vast.

The room quieted as Cecily approached.

“You fed,” Mother observed.

“Yes.”

“And?”

Cecily hesitated. “He had a daughter.”

A murmur of amusement passed through the Nest.

Mother smiled faintly. “And was she well-fed? Alive?”

Cecily didn’t answer. Imani tossed the cred sticks onto the table. “Enough for filters and protein packs.”

“Good,” Mother said. “The western nursery needs medicine.”

One of the younger women spoke up nervously. “There’s news from the transit blocks.”

Mother turned.

“A new redevelopment contract,” the girl said. “Three towers this time. Evictions start next month.”

Silence spread through the chamber as the Hive considered. More homeless. More dead. More potential Sisters. Mother leaned back slowly in her throne of scavenged cushions and old wiring.

“They consume everything,” she said softly. Her black eyes drifted toward Cecily. “And they still call us parasites.”

Cecily looked around the Nest, at women who would have died alone aboveground and their children sleeping safely beneath patched blankets.

Infestation, the old scientists had called it; as though survival belonged only to mankind.