 Item number SCP-439 Object Class Euclid Special Containment Procedures Specimens will be kept at Armed Research Site 45, Hazardous Lifeforms Wing, in a sealed, locked, 38-liter, or 10-gallon Type-G containment unit with connected oxygen supply. Specimens will be fed through Feeding Tube 16A with approved nutrient substance X-F. Handling is available to level 2 personnel and higher. In description, SCP-439 is an insect of unknown origin, somewhat resembling a grayish, semi-translucent forbicula herbicularia, common airwig, approximately 2.5 cm in length, originally located and obtained in mainland China and the ██████ province. No other specimen has been found as of yet. SCP-439 is relatively harmless when encountered on safe terms, aside from the ability to deliver a firm, painful pinch with its abdominal forceps. The true hazard of this creature poses lies in its habitat construction and reproduction, which is initiated when the specimen enters the mouth of a sleeping human. This will only occur with humans. Other lifeforms have been presented to SCP-439 and have been uniformly rejected. Upon location of a suitable host, the specimen will hide itself in the immediate vicinity and wait until the victim has fallen asleep. While it is able to determine the state of sleep is unknown, but it has shown to be accurate in ██████ times out of ██████. Upon entering the mouth of the new host, SCP-439 will travel down the trachea and take up residence in one of the victim's lungs. In approximately 48 hours after awakening, the host will complain of chest pains and shortness of breath, followed shortly by abdominal cramping. The tightness in the chest will increase as well as a favor until the host is incapacitated. It is around this time that the onset of fibro-displasia of Cifikin's Progressiva occurs, or FOP, a disorder that is normally genetic in nature that promotes growth of bone and to muscle tissue. Since the production of new bone growth is so rapid, the procedure is also quite painful for the subject, with new bone spurs occasionally protruding through the flesh. While this is happening, the host will become compelled to seek shelter in a darkened and closed space, such as inside household cabinetry, closets, or heating ductwork. Within the first three days without treatment, the host will become completely withdrawn in a mobile due to extreme pain and new bone growth coupled with difficulty breathing. At this point, the subject's body will begin the final stage of transformation into a bone hive. Having concealed itself in its new home, the body of the host will huddle in a fetal position. Entire portions of the skeletal structure will shift along ██████ until the host's body is roughly spherical in nature and reduced to ████ its original size. New bone protrusions will continue to grow, and if possible, anchored the body permanently to its new location. The skeletal structure is almost completely unrecognizable, having been converted to a round CAGE to protect the internal organs and colony. At this point, transformation is complete. The original queen that entered the host will have produced twenty to thirty thousand offspring that function as workers, drones, and warriors in a typical insect hive hierarchy. Since only the queen is capable of reproduction, the rest of the hive's inhabitants are fortunately harmless, safe for large, strong, abdominal forces of the warriors. The interior of the original host is nearly unrecognizable as a human body. Certain organs are removed and used as food, while others are modified by the worker insects to serve as egg incubation chambers. An ingenious method exists of using the host's own digestive system to process pieces of organic materials collected by the warriors into a nutritive slurry that feeds both the colony and sustains the host-hive structure. After four to six months, a new queen will emerge from within the ranks and choose a drone to mate with. At this point, the colony will destroy itself by rupturing ████ upon which the majority of the insects die. Warriors and drones are unfit to survive outside the host-hive, and warriors will abandon the site, wandering away. Their task is complete. No food will be consumed by warriors that isn't nutritive slurry produced by the hive of origin. The new queen will venture out, fertilize, to search for her own new hive. Incredibly, the trauma of evacuation is not what finally causes biological activity to cease within the hive, but starvation. Addendum ████ in a particularly disturbing development, Dr. ████ performed a range of experiments to determine the extent of damage to the host's body after it has finished the transformation into a hive. While it had been previously discovered in autopsy that portions of the brain are hollowed out to serve as food, others are left intact, presumably to regulate what bodily functions continue. During the last round of experimentation ████ took the opportunity to examine a hive at close range shortly after transformation. While the eyes are eventually reached and used as a food source, at the point ████ performed her examination, they were still intact, opening the eyelids and examining them in the flashlight ████ discovered that the host's eyes followed the beam. Experimentation was terminated and no further testing is scheduled.