-32-
I come to as I’m being dragged along the marble floor, now pockmarked and torn up from the battle. The gate that was blocking the room is still down and more importantly, a veritable sea of Zees are behind it, arms pushed through, reaching for us. Some of them are dressed in heavy Warden gear, the product of the struggle that was raging between the Zees and Skuld’s men right outside. The lucky ones, I realize, are already dead.
Dhal finally cracks the lock and the door swings open and he disappears into the blackness within.
“Stop,” I shout, but Sneak and Ret think I’m speaking to them and they halt. I clamber to my feet, Sneak steadying me as I rise. Nearby is Krantz’ mangled body and Bron, cradling his shattered arm and looking rather dazed.
“We can’t let Dhal go in there alone,” I say. Sneak nods and rushes off ahead and even the thought of keeping up with her right now is much more than a fantasy. Ret, Oleg and I finally make it into the lab and I’ve got my repeater drawn – Ret his shotgun – but it’s quickly apparent that Skuld is gone, along with most of his scientist lackeys. One or two terrified men in white lab coats remain and Sneak is already herding the stragglers into a corner. Dhal is on the ground, hovering over Master Lund’s body. The whole time he’s been with us he spoke of the old man with an almost tangible contempt, but I should have known he was only putting on a brave face.
Bron enters, cradling what’s left of Krantz under his good arm. He sets him in the corner and removes Krantz’ Keeper robe, placing it over him like a shroud.
The air in here is still electric and it draws my attention to the machine. Oleg looks as hopeless as I’ve ever seen him.
“What do we do now?” I ask, not entirely sure I care to hear his answer.
His shoulders rise and then fall listlessly. “They turned him, didn’t they?”
He’s talking about Skuld and I nod.
“And do you think he had time to–”
“Awaken the Hives before he blacked out?” My eyes dart away quickly and Oleg’s lips scrunch together.
The yellow flashing stops as does the siren. All welcome changes, until I realize the full significance.
It doesn’t take more than a quick glance through the observation window to see we’re back in a pot of boiling water. When the emergency sequence ended, so too did the need for the heavy gate that sealed off the chamber we were in. Now, thousands of hissing Zees are heading straight for us. In the lead is an old woman in a blood-smeared tunic with a dark, distorted face and she’s coming fast.
“Bron, get the door, quick!”
He looks at me from a million miles away.
I curse and stagger off to do it myself.
They’re more than half way across the chamber, flooding around where Goliath collapsed, when I see the Hive leader enter the chamber, doubling my resolve to stop them from getting in.
I get there and slam the door just as the haggard old Zee reaches out for me.
But even as it closes I don’t feel the magnetic seal yank it shut. She’s smearing her face up against the glass, her mouth opening and closing as she tries to bite me. The door kicks open an inch and I shout over to Dhal.
“How do I lock this thing?”
Panic in his eyes. “It should lock on its own.”
Bron drags over an aluminum table filled with scientific instruments. I leap out of the way, right as he slams it in place with his one working arm and wedges the other end against a row of machines with blinking lights. But the door doesn’t close all the way and it’s only a matter of time before they smash their way in.
“Dhal, fire up the machine,” I bark.
He looks at me like I’m crazy and maybe I am.
“You heard me, now do it.”
Oleg is nearby, wringing his hands like a nervous grandmother. “Tweaking the machine to reverse your condition will take hours we don’t have. In fact, it won’t be more than a matter of minutes before those things break in here and then what?” He points to a greatly diminished Bron who’s doing his best to keep the table in place. “Your own heavy weapons expert is wounded and completely out of ammunition. There must be an escape hatch hidden in these walls somewhere that Skuld and his men used.”
Oleg stops pacing when he sees the look on my face.
-33-
“Oh no, Azina, you have no intention of trying to reverse anything, do you?”
“Once Skuld gathers his strength, there’s no telling how many millions of these things he’ll be able to summon. By that time there won’t be a weapon on Earth that has a chance in hell of stopping him.”
“Except you,” Ret says, deep sadness descending over him like a cloud. He knows that for the second time in as many days, I’m about to die.
Ret hands his shotgun to Bron and begins to strap me in. With a knife in each hand, Sneak manages to persuade the two Keeper scientists huddled in the corner to be of some use. Even Dhal is flicking switches and bringing the machine back online.
Bron fires a few shots through the growing gap in the door. It’s only a matter of minutes before they force their way inside. I see the Hive leader working his way through the mass of darkened flesh, his twisted red face looming like a shark’s fin in shallow water. A moment later he’s up against the glass, trying to get into my head, using every trick in the book. My hands and feet are struggling to break free but I’m tied in place, luckily. The others around me pause when they see his red body and twisted face. Dhal looks like he’s about to shit his pants and I tell them all to get back to work.
That aluminum table’s starting to crumple from the pressure of the Zees pushing against the door.
Every time one of them manages to squeeze their hissing face between the crack, Bron sticks the barrel of Ret’s shotgun between their lips and pulls the trigger.
“Ten seconds,” Oleg calls out.
Sneak is over on my left, signing to me.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’ll be fine.” It’s a bold faced lie, but if I tell the truth they’ll never let me do it.
A shattering boom fills the room as Bron kills another Zee and glances back with that goofy smile of his, one arm hanging limp by his side.
“Seven seconds.”
“Are you sure about this?” Ret asks me. “It isn’t too late to stop it.”
I smile. “Positive.” Another lie and part of me feels like I’m about to be executed. “If something goes wrong,” I tell Ret, “I want you to be the one who pulls the trigger.”
“Three…two…”
He nods, and for a second I swear I can see his eyes tearing up before the room is bathed in deep blue light. Then the shock hits me and I hear my own voice hollering at the top of my lungs. The skin on my hands starts to blister and turn red and then slowly black. There’s a humming noise from the machines and my mind is suddenly ejected out of my body and for a moment I wonder if I’m dead. I’m looking back at myself, through a thousand sets of eyes, and this feeling is foreign and yet somehow perfectly familiar. I can see myself strapped to the machine, arms and legs splayed, my skin oil black, my body convulsing violently. Ret’s waving his arms and shouting for them to stop as the others look on in amazement. Then in a flash I realize what’s happening; I’m seeing through the eyes of every Zee around us. We’re all connected in an indescribable web. They’re a physical extension of me, a finger, a toe, an arm and a leg, and to them, I’m their mind.
A second later the machine cuts out, as do the lights. I’m back inside myself and my body falls limp, suspended by the leather straps holding me in place. We’re in darkness, but I can see just as well as if the sun itself were in the room with us. It’s the others around me and the way they’re fumbling about which tells me it’s dark. The table finally crumples from the weight of the Zees struggling to get inside and the force sends Bron tumbling onto his back, the shotgun sliding across the floor.
They’re on him in a flash, the teeth in their blackened mouths bared and ready to tear h
im to shreds. One of them is less than an inch above Bron’s face, a stream of dark drool trailing out of its mouth in a long filament, when they freeze. The lights snap back on and Ret dives for Bron’s hand to pull him away. Oleg, Sneak and Dhal scramble to stem the flood of Zees but they’ve all stopped dead in their tracks. The picture is almost surreal. We’re surrounded by more than a thousand Zees, a handful in the room hovering over Bron’s prone form, and not a single one of them is moving an inch. Not even that Red bastard outside. Why? Because a single word is pulsating inside my head over and over.
STOP!
My eyes lift and so do the Zees over Bron. Bron grabs hold of Ret’s hand and scrambles to his feet. My eyes trace back toward the door and now the Zees are backing up. The haggard old Zee I saw earlier is the last one out and she closes the door gently behind her. Now I turn my attention to that red sonafobitch. He’s not smiling anymore. Looking inside his Zee brain isn’t any harder than looking into my own, and I understand now why he wanted me so badly. He wanted a queen and he thought making me drink his blood would accomplish that. Well, in a manner of speaking, he got his wish, for that’s exactly what I’ve become, although I’m not quite sure he’s gonna like what comes next.
I give the command and the Zees outside descend on the Hive leader like a pack of wild dogs and they tear him to shreds, one chunk at a time. His beady little eyes widen with panic and disbelief. He opens his mouth to utter a guttural Zee scream, but the Zee hands are in his mouth too, ripping and tearing. It isn’t more than a matter of moments before the red smear running down the observation window is the only sign he ever existed. No one says a word except for me. “That was for Gunnar and Vasser, but most of all, it was for Jinx and Glave and Pennies.”
-34-
Ret and Sneak are the ones who untie me. Judging by the way the others are keeping their distance, I can tell they still aren’t sure what exactly I’ve become. Hell, I’m not sure. But some things are clearer now than ever. The Azina who entered the complex only days before feels like a stranger to me now. There are three parts of me, all battling for supremacy. The Azina I’ve been all my life, Azina the emerging Hive leader I was slowly becoming, and now Azina the queen.
Without all the pressure, it doesn’t take long for Dhal to find the false wall and we make our way out of here. Sneak reaches out to hold my hand and then recoils. I look down and see that the hairs along my body have become tiny spikes. If I wasn’t a monster before, without a doubt I’ve become one now. As we make our way out, Dhal’s discussing Bron’s shattered arm and his ideas for improvements. Bron pretends not to care, but even from back here I can sense his excitement. He pats Dhal on the shoulder, but the worried look on Oleg’s face brings me back to the task at hand. Skuld is still out there and so are millions of Zees, stirring awake from a slumber that’s lasted nearly two centuries. Fighting fire with fire was the only choice we had. That’s what I keep telling myself. I just hope to hell it’ll be enough.
Also by Griffin Hayes
Novels
Malice
Dark Passage
Primal Shift Vol. 1
Primal Shift Vol. 2
Novellas
Bird of Prey
The Neighbors
Hive
Hive II
Hive III
Short Stories
The Second Coming
The Grip
Fatherland
Collections
Night Terror
Nightfall
What’s Next?
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