"I can't believe it," I whispered.

"What?" Nigel asked quietly, looking at me in concern.

"We were successfully rescued." I met Nigel's eyes, sure that my face showed my utter disbelief. "By Garmen and Havoc."

"Maddison..."

"Don't you understand what I'm saying, Nigel?!" I gripped the tall boy by his shoulders "Garmen and Havoc actually did something without screwing it up completely and getting us all killed!"

"Please...don't Jinx it, Maddison." He begged urgently, but I was too overwhelmed by the surrealness of the situation

"I mean, there are so many ways that could have turned out wrong." I continued, staring at my hands as they trembled. "I hate to say this, but I think you and I just witness an actual miracle."

"Bad-mouthing someone while sitting on their person is considered somewhat rude in some circles of society..." Garmen muttered, calmly leaning against a wall to peer around a corner. "...Or so I have been led to believe."

I stared at him in disbelief.

"As a man who unabashedly admits to eavesdropping on a daily basis..." I said, trying to break the news to him delicately.

"I don't think you're qualified to lecture anyone on polite social conduct."

Garmen frowned slightly.

"...I'm starting to suspect you have a drastically low opinion of me Miss Trampth."

Having made sure that no one was about to ambush us, Garmen rounded the corner, making his way to the elevator at the end of the hallway.

"I just call it as it is." I crossed my arms mercilessly, not giving an inch.

With a polite cough, Artemis leant forward on Garmen's other shoulder.

"I hate to interrupt, but... I'm rather concerned. I feel I must warn you, Mr Garmen... Interfering may not be the... Wisest choice..." The gentlemanly boy spoke hesitantly, obviously unsure of how his words would be taken by the giant Supervisor.

Where I was stress yapping, Artemis was becoming increasingly quiet. Sorting out his own worries silently.

"I'm sure you are aware that... Infiltrating the Shrink Program... As well as hacking your System... is no small feat..." He continued softly when no one spoke to fill his pause.

"As much as I appreciate you helping us... Antagonising them really isn't in your best interest. "

Garmen stayed silent, mulling the words over until we reached the elevator at the end of the hall.

"... I can't speak for everyone at the Shrink Program since we have yet to officially determine the identity of our attacker..." He started professionally...

"... But I personally don't give a damn who they are, and have no intention of giving them what they want." He ended in a dark growl.

Only a stubborn idiot would say something so bold...

I could respect that sort of thinking.

"But you do know... Right?" I began nervously. "That the people responsible for this are... You know... Them."

Garmen sent me a cold look from the corner of his eye as the elevator door slid open.

"Just to clarify... Who exactly do you believe they are Maddison?" He asked, the use of my first name making me swallow in sudden terror.

"Well... Don't panic... or blame me.... because it's totally not my fault..."

"The Underground." Artemis finished for me quietly, when it became obvious my self-preservation instincts were getting in the way of the truth.

Garmen stiffened, visibly wincing when the movement aggravated his injury.

"I was hoping that wouldn't be the case." He said, stepping into the elevator.

Once he was in and the doors closed, Garmen leant heavily against the wall, eyes closed, breathing deeply with the pain.

"Mr Garmen." I leant forward on the tall man's shoulder. "Are you really okay?"

After a moment, Garmen's eyes opened, staring intensely ahead.

"I'm perfectly fine. Like I said earlier, the wound is already in the process of healing."

"But... You said that the System was hacked into, and your eyes aren't glowing, so how..."

"My personal nanotechnology has a certain level of autonomy. Even disconnected to the System, it is capable of maintaining the optimum state of health, accelerating the bodies ability to heal and...Didn't you already learn all this at the orientation?"

A faint memory of being forced to go to a lesson about something before I was shrunk flittered through my mind and I blushed.

"Um... Yea, I was sort of bitter about the whole shrinking thing... So I ignored the lesson and drew rude pictures on my desk instead."

".... not the ones with that cat and the...."

"...Yea."

"....The Shrink Program turned that into a motivation poster, you know. Havoc has it up in his office."

"Uh..."

"It says Look at this whenever you feel guilty for dehumanising children, and know that at least one of them probably deserves it."

... satirical.

"...I'm really sorry..."

Garmen closed his eyes again, preparing himself to explain time travel to a three-year-old... Or in my case, a pet turtle

"Nanotechnology uses a combination of millions of individual machines that function on a microscopic scale and...."

One look at my innocently blinking eyes and Garmen surrendered all dignity with a sigh.

"... Imagine it like a colony of bees, only each bee is much smaller than a single cell. Each bee is capable of following instructions, or simply performing predetermined tasks."

"The technology inside my body is controlled by a separate machine called the core.... which is like the queen bee... This core has been surgically implanted into my body. You don't need to know where."

He sent me a look out of the corner of his eye as if I had just asked to see him naked. I raised my hands, letting him know that I had no interest in knowing where they had hidden his bug core thingy.

"The Core is programmed with an image of the body it is implanted too. A picture that shows every single detail of the person, right down to their DNA."

"The core then sends out instructions to its associated nanomachines, using them as a workforce to maintain this image."

"Ah... Could you dumb that down...? Just a little bit more..."

Garmen removed his broken glasses, tiredly rubbing his temples.

"The Queen Bee tells all the minion Bees how she wants her Hive decorated, and all the Bee's work very hard to make sure that the hive looks exactly the way it looks on the blueprint."

"More Bee metaphors....?" I muttered.

"Simile..." Garmen corrected instantly, only to stop. I gave him a disbelieving look.

Slowly, I pointed at myself.

"I want you to look at us, a group of shrunken delinquents consisting of a chronic class skipper, a guy who's been institutionalised most of his high school years, and Nigel, and I want you to explain to us exactly what a Simile is. Or..." I held up my palm in the "wait" sign as Garmen went unbelievably pale.

"You can just be grateful that I know how to pronounce the word metaphor, and we'll stick with the stuff I know, if not necessarily understand...."

".... After thinking it over, I realise you're right. It was a Bee Metaphor." Garmen surrendered, clearing his throat nervously.

"The point is, that is how Basic NanoTech works. It is what is inside my body right now, and is what will heal my injury."

"Oh, okay, good. Thanks for the lecture. It all makes sense now." I smiled at him cheerfully, giving him the thumbs up.

"I'm not finished yet." Garmen brows lowered in frustration.

"... oh." I said.

I didn't really want to sit around and learn about something that was pretty much going over my head.....But even as he spoke, Garmen seemed to be collecting himself.

If having something nerdy to focus on was going to help him work through the pain, I wasn't going to ask him to stop.

"Once nanotech has been put in the body, it only knows how to complete the task it has been programmed with."

"All the Bee's know how to do is follow the blueprint, spending all their time maintaining the hive in the exact way that the queen wants it. They don't think of new idea's to improve or change the hive, and they won't ever stop unless the queen is removed... Which rarely ends well."

"So it's pretty much a lifetime commitment." I rolled my eyes. "Bet they hide that little detail in the fine print."

Garmen lowered his gaze uncomfortably.

"...the limited functionality of the basic tech is why the System was created. The System can send new instructions to the queen bees, giving them new blueprints and telling them how they should decorate their hives. "

"... So the System is like... a super queen?" I ask excitedly.

I'm so smart.

"....yea, sure. The System is like a super queen. A super queen that we, the hives, can control." Garmen seemed less than impressed with my brilliance.

"With the super queen, we can give the bees in the facility new and far more complex instructions. Like deconstructing and reconstructing the hive at different scales."

"With the super queen, we can make the nanotech touch things it normally wouldn't, like inorganic tissue or brain matter, giving us the ability to alter clothing and rebuild the human mind without replacing it with an earlier image..."

"Okay! Okay! I get it." I cried, clutching my throbbing head.

"So someone has hacked into the Super Queen and has become like the Mega Super Queen emperor, telling the super queen to tell the queen bee's to make the bees attack the hive, which is why you disconnected from the super queen, so now your queen bee has gone back to her boring old decor design and you can't do ninja stuff any more. I get it."

What followed my grand deduction was stunned silence, each of us struggling to make some sense out of what the hell I had even said.

"Oh, bother..." Nigel murmured. "Now I really want some honey."

I punched him the arm. Hard.

Completely unfazed, Nigel sent me his sweetest smile. Ignoring him, I turned to analyse Garmen once more.

"Also... Are you sure that you're okay?"

"I just explained..."

"I know." I interrupted, pointing meaningfully to the elevator buttons. "It's just that we've been standing here for ages because you forgot to press what floor were going to."

After a moment of awkward silence in which we all realised that we were standing in an unmoving elevator, Garmen reached over and pressed the G for the ground floor.

In response to the question of whether or not Garmen and Havoc recusing us was truly a miracle...

I rest my case.