The sun had already dipped below the horizon when Daniel first heard the skittering. He had been working late at the lab again, his hands shaking from exhaustion as he typed data into the machine. But it wasn't fatigue that unsettled him; no, it was the strange sound—low and constant—like tiny claws scraping across the metal.
At first, he thought it was the air conditioning, or maybe a rat. But when he checked, there was nothing. He told himself to focus, to finish the task and go home. But the sound persisted. Closer now. A rhythmic tapping, scratching. It was getting harder to ignore.
His office was on the lower floor, a bit isolated from the rest of the building, a quiet place for research, or at least that's what he used to think. It wasn't long before the sound started to move—across the floor, under the door. The scurrying echoed in his mind. It felt as though the walls themselves were alive with it.
He was almost ready to leave when he saw it.
A small, dark figure moved across the floor in the far corner of the room. A scorpion. The sight made him freeze. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, expecting it to be a trick of the light, but when he looked again, it was still there, slowly crawling towards him. It wasn't particularly large, maybe the size of a hand, but there was something off about it. Its body was sleek, almost shiny, and its tail curved menacingly, the stinger raised high.
Daniel stood up, trying to steady his breathing. He knew that scorpions weren't common in this part of the world, and the last thing he wanted was to be stung. But as he took a step back, the scorpion seemed to pause, as if it noticed his movement. Then, with an unsettling quickness, it darted towards him.
His foot kicked the metal chair as he stumbled backward. The scorpion stopped, as if waiting for him to regain his balance. He knew, deep down, that this wasn't just a normal creature. There was something unnatural about it. But before he could even react, it turned and scuttled toward the door.
Daniel hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to follow or stay put. Curiosity won out. He moved towards the door, peeking through the crack. The scorpion had disappeared, but the faint scraping noise continued, now coming from the hallway. A chill crawled down his spine.
He opened the door cautiously, his heart hammering in his chest. He felt as though something was watching him, waiting. The hallway seemed darker than usual, even with the emergency lights flickering above. There was a heavy silence now, broken only by the sound of his own breath.
He moved toward the elevator, thinking maybe he could leave, maybe everything was fine. But as he walked, he saw more of them. Scorpions, some small, some larger, scattered across the floor, their claws tapping on the tiles in an eerie, synchronized pattern. And the further he walked, the more he saw. They were everywhere. Crawling along the walls. Sliding under doors. The hallway, once clean and sterile, now seemed alive with them.
Panic hit him like a wave. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think. He ran, pounding down the hall to the stairwell, barely noticing the sharp sting on his ankle. A small scorpion had gotten too close. He couldn't feel the pain yet, but the cold, sharpness of its touch stayed with him. The stairs felt endless as he stumbled down, his chest tightening with each step.
By the time he reached the ground floor, his legs had begun to feel weak. The air in the building had changed, thick and oppressive. The walls around him seemed to shift, pulse with something, as though the very structure of the building was changing. He could no longer hear the scorpions. They were silent now. Or maybe they were just waiting.
The moment Daniel opened the door to the street, the sight made him stop cold.
The city was covered in a thick layer of dust, but not from any storm. It was the bodies. People lay motionless, scattered across the sidewalks, their faces frozen in horror. And crawling across them were thousands of scorpions. Some were large, others small, their pincers snapping as they moved. The sight of it was almost too much for him to comprehend.
He staggered backward, the world around him tilting. How had this happened? What was going on? And how had he not noticed? His mind tried to catch up, to make sense of it all, but there was only one thing that his instincts screamed at him: Run.
He ran down the street, barely able to breathe, his heart a drum in his chest. The air felt heavier now, as though it had become thick with poison. There were no cars, no sounds of life, only the steady skittering of scorpions as they moved across the cracked pavement.
And then, from somewhere behind him, he heard it—the faintest sound of a click. It was followed by another, and another, until it became a chorus of clicks, a sound he knew all too well now.
Daniel's eyes went wide as he turned, his breath catching in his throat.
A scorpion. Not the small ones he had seen before. No. This one was massive. Its body gleamed with an unnatural sheen, and its tail curled up, twisting high into the air, as if to show off its dominance. The creature's pincers clacked together, a rhythmic noise that matched the clicking of its legs. And it was growing.
Daniel took another step back, but his body refused to move any faster. His legs trembled beneath him. The scorpion's body began to change, its form swelling as if it were absorbing the creatures around it. The air around it seemed to warp, bend, as though it were feeding on the world itself.
This wasn't just one creature. It was evolving.
With each click of its legs, the scorpion's size increased, growing faster and faster. The street around Daniel was beginning to crumble, breaking apart as the creature's influence spread. The buildings around him seemed to tremble, the ground cracking beneath him.
He turned and fled, running as fast as he could, but the ground began to move beneath him. The scorpions were everywhere now. Everywhere. They poured out from cracks in the earth, from the gutters, from under doors. The street had become a living nightmare.
He made his way to the edge of the city, but the landscape was changing too. The trees, the dirt, everything around him was withering, dying, but not in the way he'd seen before. It was as if the earth itself was succumbing to the poison.
And then, in the distance, he saw it. The scorpion, now the size of a mountain, was advancing. Its tail lashed the air, and every movement it made seemed to split the sky open. Daniel's breath caught in his throat as the scorpion's body swelled to a grotesque size, impossible in its proportions.
It wasn't just the world that was changing. It was everything.
His legs buckled beneath him. He could barely feel his body anymore, as if the air itself had turned to stone. His mind was numb, but there was one thing that stuck with him, one realization that hit harder than any other.
The scorpion had already won. It had evolved. It had taken over the world. And now it was coming for him.
His skin began to burn, his body wracked with a sudden, intense heat. He reached down to his ankle, where the scorpion's sting had struck. The venom had spread. It wasn't just in his blood anymore; it was in his body, twisting, shifting, consuming him.
He fell to the ground, gasping, the world around him crumbling in slow motion. The sky, the buildings, the very earth seemed to collapse into the growing darkness. And as his vision blurred, the last thing he saw was the scorpion, its tail raised high, towering over him.