In 22nd-century Britain, environmental changes had driven bees to extinction. To preserve the ecological balance, the government funded the development of mechanical artificial bees to replace bees' role in nature—a initiative known as the Granule Project. Thousands of hives were scattered across the UK. These artificial bees used solar energy and image recognition technology to fly and pollinate, and they could reproduce autonomously via the hives without human intervention. What was invented to mend a flaw in nature, however, was twisted by the darker side of humanity into another kind of tool.
On May 15, Chief Inspector Karin Parker of Scotland Yard was assigned to a bizarre case. The victim was columnist Jo Bowers, who had attracted widespread controversy for an article attacking people with disabilities. Online comments about her were mostly negative, and some even included death threats. Karin and her new assistant, Probationary Officer Brynn Colson, inspected the scene. The victim had her throat slit and was lying on the living room carpet. The scene was chaotic, with signs of a struggle, and bloodstains and Jo's hair were found on the corner of a table. The victim's husband had also been stabbed and was in critical condition at the hospital. A half-eaten cake was also found at the scene, decorated with words insulting Jo. It appeared to have been sent by an opponent, which Jo had accepted without concern.
Karin, with over a decade of policing experience, followed standard procedures and left the scene after giving instructions. To her, it seemed like a tragedy caused by marital discord. However, the young and passionate Brynn had her own ideas and disagreed with Karin's view. Brynn had previously worked in digital forensics, specializing in computer technology. After witnessing too many crimes hidden in computers, phones, and the internet, she decided to transfer to fieldwork to combat real-world criminals firsthand.
The next day, Brynn arrived early to review the surveillance footage from Jo Bowers' home but found no signs of strangers entering or leaving. Karin was somewhat annoyed by the young officer's questioning of her judgment but did not stop her. Brynn continued searching for recent tweets that had insulted or threatened Jo. The search yielded hundreds, if not thousands, of results, making it impractical to investigate them all.
At the hospital, the husband's testimony was bizarre. He claimed that during the incident, he heard his wife scream and ran over to find her frantically running around the house, scratching her head and slamming into table corners. When he tried to stop her, Jo grabbed a broken wine bottle from the floor, stabbed him, and then turned the bottle on herself, cutting her own throat. Karin believed this was a fabricated story concocted by the husband to evade responsibility, while Brynn thought it was possible—perhaps the cake had been laced with a drug that caused Jo's erratic behavior.
Karin didn't argue further. The next step, as per procedure, was to investigate the person who delivered the cake. To her, it was just routine. After eliminating all other possibilities, the only remaining explanation was that the husband had killed his wife in a fit of rage. The cake had been delivered by a schoolteacher named Lisa Bahar, who appeared gentle and refined on the surface. No one would have guessed that in the online world, she was so cynical that she had even added a "Die" hashtag to Jo Bowers' name in her tweets. Buying such a cake wasn't cheap—Lisa had raised enough money through online crowdfunding to prove that Jo was widely disliked. Toxicology reports later confirmed the cake was harmless, so Lisa's actions didn't constitute a crime. Karin could only issue a warning before closing the matter.
Everything seemed to confirm Karin's theory until another similarly bizarre case occurred. The police received a report that the renowned award-winning singer Stark had died under strange circumstances. After publicly insulting his fans, he had become the next target of online outrage following Jo. Stark also experienced convulsions and attempted self-harm. His assistants restrained him and took him to the hospital, where a shadow was discovered in his brain, initially thought to be a tumor. However, during an MRI, a metallic object flew out of Stark's head and clung to the inside of the machine.
On the third day, Karin and Brynn learned from the coroner that Jo had a small hole in her right ear canal leading deep into her brain. Deep in Jo's brain, the coroner found a deactivated artificial bee, leading to the conclusion that Jo had likely experienced unbearable cranial pain that caused her horrific self-harm.
Karin and Brynn immediately visited the Granule Company, which developed the artificial bees. The project lead, Rasmus, explained how the artificial bees worked but was equally puzzled as to why one would钻入 Jo's brain. Brynn suggested the possibility of a hacker intrusion. To demonstrate the system's security, Rasmus took them to the central monitoring room. On the large screen, they could pull up real-time status updates for every hive and every artificial bee. Rasmus expressed great confidence in his military-grade encryption system. Brynn entered the postal code for Jo's apartment, and records showed that one artificial bee had indeed gone offline near Jo's residence. Rasmus began to panic. To avoid adding to his stress, Karin agreed to return to the police station to await further investigation results. She also requested a list of everyone with system access for individual screening.
Upon returning to the station, Karin met Special Agent Sean Lee from the National Crime Agency. He was holding another deactivated artificial bee—the one found in Stark's head. The similarities between the two cases forced Karin to reconsider her approach.
Brynn started with the tweets insulting Jo and Stark. According to statistical data, these two had been subjected to online abuse for a long time, but it was only last weekend that a "Die" hashtag began appearing. This hashtag, followed by a name and a photo, seemed to be promoted by someone with a bee as their profile picture. Further investigation revealed that each of the promoter's tweets contained a video encouraging people to use the "Die" hashtag and tally who received the most tags. The person with the most tags would be "eliminated" after 5 PM that day, with such eliminations occurring daily.
On the first day, dozens of people tagged Jo with "Die." On the second day, over two hundred people tagged Stark, and the numbers were clearly increasing. Today, the person with the most tags was a girl named Clara Miz, who had sparked public outrage by taking inappropriate photos of herself at a war memorial and posting them online. Over eight hundred people had already tagged her with "Die," and the number was still rising.
Both Karin and Sean realized that if this continued, things would spiral out of control. They decided to temporarily withhold news of Stark's death from the public and find Clara before 5 PM. If Clara survived the day, the public would believe the "Die" hashtag was ineffective, buying time to catch the mastermind behind it.
Karin immediately called Clara, instructing her to stay indoors with windows and doors closed. Meanwhile, armed police rushed to Clara's apartment building to search for anyone suspicious who might be controlling the artificial bees. Brynn also contacted Rasmus, asking him to monitor for any artificial bees going offline in the area.
When Karin, Sean, and Brynn arrived at Clara's apartment, Clara was too terrified to speak. Under their escort, Clara was taken to a hidden safe house in the suburbs. None of them noticed an artificial bee crawling out from a gap in the escort vehicle. Rasmus also detected anomalies and was about to track them when the system alarm sounded. On the central monitoring screen, the previously normal hives turned blue one by one—all the artificial bees had gone rogue.
Outside the safe house, Sean saw a dark cloud rising in the distance—thousands of artificial bees buzzing as they approached. Inside, Brynn also saw the rapidly approaching dark cloud, but it was too late to escape. Artificial bees were already squeezing into the house through every crevice. Karin pulled Clara into the bathroom, using a shower curtain to block the door gap. However, the bees found their way in through the ventilation fan. Karin tried to cover Clara's ears, but a bee crawled into her nostril. They could only watch helplessly as Clara struggled in agony and died.
Inside the same bathroom, the artificial bees only attacked Clara. Brynn concluded that the bees must have a facial recognition system. Back at the police station, before Sean could stop him, Rasmus confirmed Brynn's suspicion. This was one of the conditions of government funding—in necessary situations, security agencies could request visual signals from the artificial bees. This was also why Sean, a National Security Agency agent, was involved in the case.
Three consecutive murders left the police frustrated, while the public fell into a frenzy. More people began adding the "Die" hashtag to those they disliked. On the fourth day, the game continued, with the current top target being Chancellor of the Exchequer Tom Pickering, who had cut disability benefits.
Brynn worked through the night, attempting to extract data from the artificial bee that attacked Jo to find clues about the intruder. Meanwhile, the National Security Agency tried to devise ways to protect Chancellor Tom, though none seemed feasible. Sean proposed sending the chancellor to an underground bunker and destroying all hives within a ten-kilometer radius. However, from a practical standpoint, destroying the hives would only provoke the artificial bees into, so the idea was abandoned.
Karin reviewed everyone involved in the Granule Project one by one and finally made a breakthrough. An intern working in the HR department had previously posted photos of a colleague online, claiming harassment. Later investigations revealed that the colleague had a learning disability and wasn't harassing her. The intern was heavily criticized online, suffered a nervous breakdown, and resigned. She had attempted suicide but was saved by her roommate, Garnet, who had a crush on her. Garnet had participated in the development of the artificial bees and was a highly intelligent individual. As an early developer who had left the company and moved abroad six months prior, he hadn't been included in the initial suspect list.
Meanwhile, Brynn discovered a manifesto document in the cached data of the artificial bee, authored by Garnet. The manifesto warned the public that while using technology to express anger and dissatisfaction, they must also face the consequences of their actions. A selfie of Garnet was prominently attached to the manifesto. From this selfie, Brynn extracted metadata from the phone used to take the photo, including the location where it was shot.
The location was a few kilometers from the Granule Company. Police conducted a raid but found no trace of Garnet. However, the meticulous Brynn discovered a badly burned and distorted hard drive in the ashes of an incinerator. Treating it as a treasure, she immediately took it to the Granule Company for data recovery. The hard drive contained Garnet's toolkit. Rasmus eagerly analyzed the source code to regain control as soon as possible. During the analysis, however, he found an embedded file containing不明数据. When Brynn opened it, she found hundreds of thousands of mobile device serial numbers linked to specific users. Reverse searches confirmed that these were users who had used the "Die" hashtag, such as Lisa Bahar, who had sent the insulting cake to columnist Jo. The purpose of this list wasn't yet clear, but Sean urgently demanded that Rasmus run the program in the toolkit to regain control. Sean needed to neutralize the artificial bee threat before 5 PM to save Chancellor Tom's life.
Karin sensed something amiss. Garnet was intelligent—how could he easily leave behind a photo with location data and a hard drive that wasn't fully destroyed? Garnet's manifesto, she suspected that the three victims might have been mere bait. The people on this list were the real targets—Garnet wanted to make them accountable for their online behavior. However, Sean wouldn't listen and forcibly initiated the program.
As the progress bar advanced, the hives on the large screen returned to normal one by one, and all bee swarm information reappeared. Just as everyone breathed a sigh of relief, the situation changed again. The hive displays turned red, and the swarms went rogue once more. Watching the on the screen and thinking of the millions of killer bees flying across Britain, everyone felt a chill.
This incident resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Months later, Inspector Karin Parker, who was responsible for handling the case, detailed the events to a parliamentary inquiry committee. Brynn did not attend—she had resigned out of guilt, and later, her belongings and a suicide note were found on a beach.
Heavy-hearted, Karin left the parliamentary building, passing through crowds of journalists asking questions and angry demonstrators demanding the truth, all under the protection of security guards. Then, her phone received a text message. Reading it, Karin felt a faint sense of satisfaction. She knew it was from Brynn. Brynn hadn't committed suicide but had gone underground abroad to search for the true culprit, Garnet. This message meant Brynn had found him. As for how Brynn would seek justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims, Karin could already guess.