The Infestation of Improperly Filed Vermin Complaints (And the Department of Pestilential Paperwork)

The morning after the beetle incident, Mia woke to silence. No paperwork fluttering overhead, no courier pounding at her door, not even the usual low murmur of neighbors arguing about whose garbage golem had clogged the street drain. For a moment she thought the world had ended and the Bureau had mercifully collapsed with it. But when she stepped outside, the silence resolved into something far more ominous.

Everywhere she looked, shutters were drawn. Curtains quivered as people peeked out. Not a single hawker shouted their wares. The baker’s stall—normally brimming with loaves by dawn—was locked, with only a hastily scrawled sign reading: CLOSED UNTIL THE SINGING STOPS.

Mia frowned. The beetles had been jarred, tagged, and locked in the Bureau’s containment vault. She’d overseen the paperwork herself, triple-stamping each form. There should not have been a recurrence. Unless, of course, someone had cut corners. And in Eldoria, cutting corners was practically a cultural sport.

By the time she arrived at the Bureau atrium, chaos was in full bloom. Clerks ran in circles, carrying stacks of complaint forms that shed sparks. Harrington shouted into a speaking tube, demanding clarity from subcommittees who offered none. Severin stood calmly at the center, ledger open, scribbling with the poise of a man watching a house burn and making note of improper firewood stacking.

Mia pushed her way through. “What now?”

Harrington turned, his face gray with exhaustion. “They’ve spread.”

“Who?”

“The beetles!” Harrington cried. “Hundreds of them, swarming the Ministry of Timetables. Entire office paralyzed. Trains can’t depart without approved time-slots, and the beetles have… harmonized the schedule.”

“Harmonized?”

“Every clock struck a different hour simultaneously. The station collapsed into an argument about whether it was dawn, dusk, or tea-time.” Harrington threw up his hands. “Now the beetles are infiltrating other ministries. They’ve taken a liking to ink, apparently. Reports vanish beneath them, devoured before anyone can sign.”

Mia’s stomach dropped. Containment vault breach. Either negligence or sabotage. She turned to Severin. “And your report?”

He didn’t look up from his ledger. “Not yet complete. But preliminary notes suggest administrator oversight led to insufficient jar enchantment checks. Probable cause: misplaced faith in humming as an operational solution.”

“You smug little—” She caught herself, jaw tightening. “Where are the beetles now?”

Severin closed his book with deliberate care. “According to latest dispatch, they have migrated into the Bureau archives.”

The color drained from Harrington’s face. “The archives?!”

Mia swore under her breath. The archives were the Bureau’s beating heart. Every form, every decree, every cross-referenced file was stored there in labyrinthine stacks. If the beetles were allowed to sing freely among that much paper, Eldoria’s bureaucracy would unravel into dust.

They raced down stone corridors, the hum intensifying with each step. By the time they reached the archive doors, the sound was deafening. It wasn’t mere humming anymore—it was a chorus of thousands, layered and pulsing. The great oak doors shuddered as though struck from within.

Two guards tried to hold them shut. “Too late!” one shouted. “They’re inside everything!”

Mia shoved past. The sight nearly broke her.

Shelves towered into the gloom, every surface stacked with scrolls, codices, ledgers. And upon them, in swarms, clung the beetles. Their jeweled backs pulsed with light, glowing in rhythm with their song. Pages flapped open on their own, lines of ink crawling into new shapes. Whole decrees warped mid-sentence. A once-clear edict on grain tariffs now declared itself in verse, rhyming couplets lamenting the plight of wheat.

“This is…” Harrington gasped. “Unprecedented!”

Severin’s quill scratched. “Correction: this is a Category Six Bureau Integrity Failure.”

Mia swore again, louder this time. “Exterminators!”

The squad rushed in, nets and wands ready. But every attempt met resistance. Spells fizzled as beetles harmonized in counterpoint. Nets dissolved into strands of music. Even the cheese bait lay untouched, as though the beetles had matured beyond such crude inducements.

Mia forced herself to think. Beetles, music, resonance. Last time, matching pitch calmed them. But now the swarm was too large, too complex. No handful of exterminators humming would suffice.

She turned to Harrington. “Do we still have the Bureau Choir?”

“The Choir?” Harrington blinked. “They were disbanded after that incident with the Gregorian Codices.”

“Reinstate them. Now.”

Within the hour, a ragged group of Bureau singers was assembled, dragged from retirement homes and dusty side offices. Some had forgotten lyrics to the Bureau anthem; one insisted on carrying a harp. But Mia had no choice. She lined them up before the archive entrance.

“All right,” she said. “You’re going to match them. Layer by layer, harmony for harmony. Think of it as… form duplication, but with notes instead of ink.”

The Choir exchanged nervous glances. But when the doors opened and the wall of sound poured out, instinct took over. Their voices rose, shaky at first, then steadier. Sopranos countered shrill beetle cries; basses rumbled against drone-like buzzing. The archive shook as two choruses collided.

Mia watched, sweat on her brow. The beetles faltered, confused by the mimicry. Their glow dimmed slightly. But then they surged louder, bending their song into dissonant twists. Shelves cracked, scrolls burst into flame.

Mia shouted over the chaos. “Severin! Join in!”

He looked horrified. “I am not—”

“Do it or every regulation you worship will burn!”

His jaw clenched. He inhaled. And then, impossibly, he sang. A single, unwavering baritone, perfect and mercilessly precise. His note cut through both choirs like a blade, aligning harmonics in an instant. For one breathtaking moment, all voices locked into balance.

The beetles froze. Their wings quivered. Then, as if conceding defeat, they collapsed into silence. Thousands of jeweled bodies dropped to the floor, lifeless, glittering like spilled gems. The archives fell still.

Mia collapsed against a shelf, lungs burning. Harrington wept openly, clutching a rescued ledger. The Choir leaned on each other, pale and drained. Severin closed his ledger with a snap, his face unreadable.

“It will be recorded,” he said simply.

Mia dragged herself upright. “Record this too: if we survive another infestation like that, I’ll personally feed every form in the Bureau into the nearest bonfire.”

She expected Severin to rebuke her. Instead, for the first time, he almost smiled. Almost.

Later, back in her office, Mia documented everything in painstaking detail. She noted the Choir’s effectiveness, Severin’s contribution, the beetles’ alarming evolution. At the bottom, she wrote: “Recommendation: Establish Department of Harmonic Control. Bureau must be prepared for future sonic infestations.”

Her quill hovered, then added: “Also recommend hazard pay for administrators forced to sing.”

When she finally set the report aside, the silence pressed in again. Too deep, too absolute. She didn’t trust it. The beetles were gone, but silence in Eldoria rarely meant peace. It meant something worse was coming, and the Bureau would, inevitably, file it in triplicate.