While Chen led the people outside to freedom or death, I turned and raced down the tunnels. The two Diggers I’d commandeered followed along, drawn by the sweet scent of our healthy Queen coming from my skin.
The farther down I ran, the more my blood boiled.
This Hive’s old, sick Queen was enraged. Her smell was the color of fire now, orange and red. She could smell me. She knew I was here. The scents she was secreting filled the deep corridors with bitter wrath. I squinted my eyes shut, inhaling her fury in the darkness. The tunnels of this place were well-worn by years of ‘Mite feet, leaving their scent trails everywhere. I didn’t need to see. I knew exactly where I was going, down the empty, back tunnels that led straight to the larva pools.
A single Soldier burst out of a tunnel just ahead of me. No doubt it could smell me, smell my Queen on me. But the advantage was all mine. It expected a slave. What it got was a madman.
The machete caught a glint of the dim glowstones as I raised it and charged. The Soldier didn’t have time to whip its tail around before I launched myself straight at its head. The power of my jump and the sharpness of my blade combined into one savage stroke. The Soldier’s head dropped neatly from its thorax. Its mandibles clicked and its body thrashed for a moment before falling still.
I took a moment to chop straight into its tail. A sharp, acid scent filled the air as I coated my blade with the dead Soldier’s paralyzing venom.
The two Diggers behind me scuttled over the body, clicking in alarm.
I could smell that my hold on them was waning. Far below, the hated Queen was spewing her own acid stench, red rage filling the tunnels. The Diggers were getting fearful.
They should be afraid. Of me.
“Follow!” I clicked, and bolted down the corridor.
I took a zigzagging path, hoping to throw the Soldiers still in the Hive off my trail. Nearly all the Soldiers had obviously been drawn out to the Forbidden Zone where I hoped Mo and Lexis were holding them off long enough for Chen to get the rest of our people clear. This detour was never part of our plan, though. If they detonated their escape screen and fled over the hills while I was still down here, all the Soldiers would flood back into the Hive. I could slip away through the rivers, but Kinni’s brothers would never be able to follow me. They’d be paralyzed, and even if I could get them down to the open water, I would never be strong enough to tow them upstream to a safe pool.
Hurry. No time.
The Diggers followed me down and down. At the bottom of the tunnel, the familiar splash of the shallow pools echoed around the walls. The nearest pools had been cleaned out since I was dragged through, my belly laden with eggs. The dead husks of seals and humans were gone, and the first pool was empty. In the second one, I found the boys.
“Matthew? Martin?” I whispered. They couldn’t nod, but their panicked eyes told me everything. The eggs on their bellies hadn’t hatched yet, but the next few pools held seals that weren’t as lucky.
Sticky white goo glued the eggs to their skin. I dragged them up out of the water and scraped the eggs onto the floor. The smell down here was overpowering. We were so close to the Queen. She knew it and was white hot fury, trapped in the room she’d grown to fill. I could hear her thrashing in the next chamber, and smell the red summons she emitted. Her Soldiers would be here soon.
“Pick up,” I clicked to the Diggers. “Bring.”
Matthew and Martin were dead weight. I couldn’t possibly carry them, but the Diggers could. They scooped the boys up and I stepped back, crushing one of the sticky eggs on the ground with a wet pop.
It smelled like her inside. Sick. Yellow. Full of anger and pride.
Red haze clouded my eyes. I stomped through the room, popping eggs, grinding the half-developed larvae inside under my bare feet. Sticky goo squished between my toes and its touch drove me insane with the need to kill. The scent enraged my Hive sense. And the memory of being left down here to die, sucked dry for another generation of sick Yellow ‘Mites, made me rage for the generations of slavery that took my identity away.
Human. I was human. Not a Lowform. Not a Feral. A human, and even more than that, the first human member of a Hive. The blood of both species roared in my veins.
When all the eggs from the boys were squashed, I raced to the next pool and ripped the larvae off the seals that lay there paralyzed. Stomp and squish. They tried to wriggle away but I was a tornado of hatred. My legs were caked up to the knees in the guts of my enemies, and still I was not sated. The smell of the nearby Queen’s rage mixed with my own, and my ears rang with a screaming din, blood pounding in my veins.
When I finally looked up from my furious destruction, both of the Diggers had backed into a corner, holding the limp boys close to their bodies.
And three Soldiers, along with the Hive’s King, burst into the room.