The insect creatures’ research science, though, was laughingly primitive. Carving off limbs, then slapping living entities in noisome fluids... It smacked of butchers’ work on her home world.
A team worked at the table in the centre of the room, piled high with guts and gore. Creature after creature were borne in on the backs of the mechnobots, writhing and squealing, unstrapped and lifted onto the table, while the locusts worked with efficiency. Never had she witnessed such a variety of organisms. The insects had evidently invaded and inhabited many worlds and had some means of transporting themselves to and from their respective environments on their habitable worlds. A veritable parasite network. How their hub had once connected to Rogos was beyond her. Apart from the fact that it was still operable after so many ages and she and the human had passed through it. A pity. Rogos would have been a perfect haven to settle down with the human who could give her endless pleasures.
A new locust arrived and reached pincer to unhook the hose from the feeder’s navel and the aqua-coloured creature hunched before Audra, sated. The second locust swiftly inserted the tube into its own abdomen and began to feed.
A stir grew in Audra’s belly—premature birthlings rose and fell inside her. She convulsed.
The vestiges of a smile crawled over Audra’s face. Her tentacles fluttered in response to the birth pangs, like the streamers of a jellyfish. The birthlings would not tolerate the confinement for long. The enclosure was too small. The young would rebel and fight tooth and nail to escape their cage. Or, the insects would have to open the tank to relieve the pressure. Her abdomen swelled and she quivered in anguish as a seal-like thing surged under her skin like a predacious worm.
The locust creature that was feeding, jerked and tore the wire from its belly, clearly in pain. The others working at the table wheeled about.
She grinned. Easy to absorb the seal-like things and ingest them back into her, but these little horrors could perhaps work to her advantage. The locusts had not thought the situation through. Two of the insects clacked over, forceps and calibres clutched in flesh-dripping pincers, and they fiddled with the wire-to-stopper mechanism.
A stir of glee fluttered in Audra’s breast, but she rejoiced all the more when the stopper unlatched and the water began to roil and foam with an ominous possibility at escape.
* * *
Miko cut his way through a band of fiends that had caught sight of his flickering figure and had taken pursuit. His half-invisibility had hindered and helped at the same time: on one hand it allowed him to sneak up on their hunching forms at a point before his body blinked back to visibility, on another, it hindered him when the annoying crackle and stench of electrical discharge had given his location away. The scalpel had done its grisly work. He hid the bodies in a garbage chute, kicked away what dark blood he could from the floor, then wiped his boots on the corpses before his visibility finally slipped away. He pushed through the opposite wall, using his bodiless will, then descended to a lower level of the compound, or whatever that was. He could not keep up this hide-and-seek game forever. Sooner or later the insects would catch him, either his being one second too slow, or a searing ray ripping into his vitals.
The walls in this section were richly woven with odd symbols: what looked like insectoid skulls surrounded by wavy lines and stars and crosses. The patterns shimmered in his eyes, and made his head swim. A huge locust head peered down upon all, in full carved relief—like some god. This section seemed excessively secured, with electric trip wires and security posts stationed everywhere. The place reeked of hostility. Every symbol, every cross feature hinted of locust supremacy.
Audra’s rough handling had not killed him thus far, so surely a few alien skulls and parasitic gods would not unnerve him.
Miko had an ominous feeling that there were more hideous surprises waiting around the corner.
He found himself in a vast echoing chamber, interminably high. It rose into plum-grey shadows like a dark cathedral. Bzt. He was back in his body again—with no pain from previous wounds.
He looked up into the dim haze as a low hum filled the air. Mournful. Sinister. Vibrations of unknown source. He stalked forward, emboldened by his recent kills. He felt he had reached the centre of the compound, for the size of the auditorium astounded him, as if he were walking in the lair of some bio-mechanic god.
Lights showed ahead, tiny twinkles and shadows that teased his imagination as they stretched to infinity. A small movement caught his eye—a fan of pinprick light rising to the ceiling far overhead. On both sides, levels or bays rose with piping and scaffolding: and stairs gave locusts access to the bewildering structure. He swallowed hard as he saw heads embedded in the weave—animal-like, human-like, of every genus and species imaginable. Each gory member could be reached from the access ramps connecting to the scaffolding above. Miko was on the very bottom.
A chill horror rippled through his heart.
On a high landing the flit of locust pincers caught his attention, a glint against the plum-grey gloom. Or perhaps it was the sharp cutting edge of a metallic instrument? Miko quieted his approach. His feet were still driven on by a morbid curiosity. He stopped with a
