Consider as well the infestation of the Undersiders/Travellers in to the city. They are setting their hooks in with little intention to leave.
Hm, yeah, I guess that works. It’s not really the meaning that comes to mind when I hear the word “infestation”, but looking at the word, it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s its origin. Let’s check…

Hm, well, not quite, but invading a host is one of its meanings.
And this comes right after an Arc called Parasite… hm. I wonder if we’ll have a parasitic theme going forward in this portion of the story, or Wildbow just happened to use two closely related bug terms in a row.