Stung

Dr. Elias Carrow glanced at his watch for the third time in the last five minutes. The sterile white of his lab reflected the sharp fluorescent lights above, but nothing felt clean about the situation he found himself in. His foot tapped a nervous rhythm on the concrete floor as he waited, his eyes flicking to the metal door at the far end of the room.

Lang was late. Again.

The door hissed open, and Lang swaggered in, all casual confidence with a faint grin playing on his lips. He wore a leather jacket this time, a far cry from the work gear he’d worn at their first meeting. Carrow felt his chest tighten. Lang hadn’t been a problem before. He’d been a solution—a way to plant hives outside the lab, to see how the engineered bees would fare in the wild. Now, he was something else entirely.

“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” Lang said, sliding into the chair across from Carrow, leaning back as if he owned the place.

“We need to talk,” Carrow said, his voice strained. “I’ve been seeing reports. News stories about addicts in rural areas. People talking about ‘stings.’”

Lang’s smile didn’t fade. “Yeah, well, news moves fast. That’s what happens when you’ve got a good product.”

Carrow’s stomach churned. “That’s not what we agreed to.”

Lang raised an eyebrow, his grin widening slightly. “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”

Carrow stood, pacing in front of the table, his hand reaching for his glasses, cleaning them with shaking fingers. “You were supposed to distribute hives to controlled areas—test sites. We were supposed to monitor their behavior in nature, track how well they adapted. Not—” He turned sharply, eyes locking with Lang’s. “Not flood the entire country with them.”

Lang shrugged, leaning forward now. “Look, doc, you wanted to see if your bees could survive outside your fancy lab. They’re doing more than surviving. They’re thriving.”

Carrow’s voice trembled with rising anger. “People are getting addicted, Lang. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Lang sighed, sitting up straighter now. “Oh, I know exactly what I’ve done.” He rolled up his sleeve casually, revealing the faint red dots along his forearm. “I’ve been stung. I get it. Hell, I was hooked after the first one. But so were a lot of people.”

Carrow’s eyes widened as he took in the sight of the marks. “You—”

“Accidentally, of course.” Lang cut him off, a smirk still tugging at the corner of his mouth. “And that’s what they’ll all say. Anyone who gets caught, anyone who’s questioned. They’ll just say they stumbled into a hive on a hike or while working in the fields. Who’s gonna prove them wrong? The bees are everywhere now.”

Carrow sank into his chair, his mind racing. He had known this was dangerous—engineering bees to produce a morphine-like toxin instead of venom—but he’d convinced himself it would be worth it. A revolutionary alternative to pain relief. A natural solution that could undercut Big Pharma. But this… this was a nightmare.

“You distributed more hives than we agreed on,” Carrow said weakly.

Lang’s smile disappeared. “I saw the potential. There’s a market for this, doc. People want stings. They don’t need doctors or prescriptions. No paper trail. Just a quick, private fix. And if the hives are everywhere, no one can pin it on anyone. They’ll just assume it’s nature taking its course.”

Carrow’s hands trembled as he stared at Lang. “Do you even hear yourself? You’re creating addicts.”

Lang rolled his eyes. “Big Pharma’s been doing it for decades. They slap a label on a bottle and rake in billions. You think they’re any better?”

“That’s not the point,” Carrow snapped, his voice rising. “This isn’t controlled. It’s spreading. There are black markets popping up, and now people are starting to notice.”

Lang stood, placing his hands on the table and leaning in close. His grin had vanished, replaced by cold, calculating focus. “You’re missing the big picture here. I’m setting up infrastructure, a network. We’ve got distributors, people who manage the hives. It’s a self-sustaining system, doc. The bees do all the work, and the clients get their stings whenever they need them. Nobody’s going to trace this back to us. We’ve got deniability.”

Carrow shook his head, eyes wide. “Deniability? People are going to die, Lang. Do you get that? These stings aren’t just for pain anymore. They’re for the high. You’ve turned my research into… into some kind of drug empire.”

Lang stood straight, looking down at Carrow with cold indifference. “And you didn’t see this coming? You built a bee that stings like morphine and expected people not to want more? That’s on you, doc.”

Carrow’s breath caught in his throat. Lang wasn’t wrong. He had been so consumed with the idea of disrupting the pharmaceutical industry, so eager to prove his work could change the world, that he hadn’t considered how quickly things could spiral out of control.

He slumped in his chair, his mind a storm of regret and guilt. “We have to stop this.”

Lang laughed softly, shaking his head. “It’s too late. The hives are already in every major city, in every backwater town. People are hooked. And as long as they’re hooked, I’m making money. You can either accept that or get left behind.”

Carrow felt a hollow pit form in his chest. “What have we done?”

Lang didn’t bother answering. He grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, leaving Carrow alone with the steady, mechanical hum of the bees. Just before he left, Lang paused in the doorway, looking back.

“You’ve got one choice, doc. Either help me keep this thing running smoothly, or watch it all burn. But either way, the bees aren’t going anywhere.”

The door slammed shut behind him.

For a long moment, the only sound was the low buzzing of the engineered hives, a constant reminder of how far things had gone—and how impossible it would be to turn back.