Writing Soundtrack: Ad Infinitum - Oh the City

I don’t think I know the words to truly express my feelings in this situation. Many people would probably call it terrifying, maybe even describe it as watching death approach, but there really aren’t words with the necessary gravitas and nuance to truly express how I felt in that moment.

Time seemed to slow as I stood there, dumbfounded and horrified, utterly unable to move, watching this massive truck of a beast run towards me. I could see pieces of my life flash before my eyes, broken bits of the lives I remembered anyway, until new things added in, more scenes I didn’t know from the perspective of people I didn’t know.

But those new ones all shared something: They were the memories of soldiers, or fighters. I didn’t know if it was from one or more people, honestly at that moment I couldn’t care any less if I tried, but a small part of my mind was amused at this new puzzle piece I couldn’t use.

Until my body moved.

This wasn’t the way instincts from the Hive-Mind took over while I was out, this was my body, my… training, for lack of a better term, taking over. I could remember the drills I did, the fights I had, the time I sunk into bettering myself.

At least I could see flashes of those.

Faster than I would have assumed I could, I managed to get out of the way, brought down my weapon, and fired, once, twice, thrice, before I ran towards the cover of a corner.

Something was off tho. These memories, these instincts, they were made for a human body, not my anatomy, and before I could get to the corner I wanted, I stumbled, my gait uneven and not used to the additional appendages.

Gamma quickly came over to cover me, simply holding down the trigger of the rifle and pointing it into the general direction of the gorilla-rhino.

I got up then made my way back to the spot I had been running towards, this time slower, more deliberate, and took cover.

A scream rang out and I could see Beta trying to get away from the giant thing, her tail caught in its massive hands, and used as the handle of some weird whip, smacking her into the walls again and again until she lay still.

I could feel the connection to the body break and her consciousness return to the greater whole. It was such a weird feeling that it distracted me for a moment. I was separate from the Hive-Mind, no? How could I feel that?

I was broken out of my confusion as a piece of debris landed next to me, thrown at Gamma and me by the giant gorilla-rhino. Alpha was cut off from us, the giant beast between us, but it seemed Gamma had no interest in helping. Probably preferring to save me.

I really didn’t know these things well, hell I barely even knew them for more than a few days, but they were my best chance to survive, and truth be told I didn’t want to be alone again. Something nagged at me to go and help Alpha.

I took a few deep breaths and despite everything screaming at me to run away I dashed out of cover and towards the giant beast.

“Hey fucktard! I’m here!”, I yelled before shooting at it from nearly point blank, three bullets hitting it right in the side, with two more going wide.

The beast turned around with a massive swing of its massive arm and roared in frustration, smashing me into the next wall, before it turned around and grabbed Alpha by her left arm, trying to pull her closer.

She however wasn’t having any of it, with one swipe of her clawed hand she separated her own arm and left it for the beast before retreating further back, all the while firing until her magazine clicked empty, at which point she threw the weapon at the beast. To little effect.

Gamma had caught up with me by then, wrapping her tail around me and pulling me back, while I tried to get the world to stop spinning. I could feel one of my arms being ruined, one claw-arm smashed, and my tail and left leg broken. Honestly, there was a whole lot of other stuff wrong with me at that moment, but I didn’t have the time nor the motivation to catalogue them all.

I could vaguely hear Orion’s voice in my mind, but it took me a moment to even focus enough on it to understand what he was saying.

“...round that corner, at least that should be the fastest way. With a little luck this giant thing won’t fit into the maintenance tunnels, they are rather small after all, but don’t depend on it.”

An arrow overlaid itself with my vision and showed me the way to go. The route led straight past Beta’s corpse and behind the giant gorilla-rhino, around a corner where apparently there should be a small door.

“Ugh… We need… to leave…”, I said to Gamma, breathing hard, before trying to pull her into the right direction.

Even speaking hurt, a burning agony flaring in my chest with each breath of air.

Gamma didn’t answer but followed my directions, starting to pull me with her as walking was nigh impossible for me. However, as we came across Beta’s corpse, she started dragging it with her, despite how much it slowed us down.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I was just about to protest when I heard another scream and saw the gorilla-rhino rip off Alpha's tail who it had in a deathgrip.

My mind raced, was there any way for me to save her? Something I could do?

The only option was magic and I had no idea if and how dangerous that would be to Alpha, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter.

Despite the agony running through me I concentrated on my magic. In my muddle state I didn’t care much for which to use and just wanted as much carnage as possible, so I decided to go with Antimatter Bullet.

Just as we rounded the corner and the maintenance hallway came into view I shot off the Antimatter Bullet straight at the gorilla-rhino’s face.

At first there wasn’t much of a reaction as the small pea sized bullet flew off and I was started to be disappointed, until it impacted its target with a roaring explosion. Gamma and I were flung into the maintenance hallway, the door having been busted open long before our arrival thankfully.

I coughed and groaned in pain, my entire being feeling like I was just pulverised, but I desperately tried to hold on to consciousness. I tried to call out for Alpha, but I’m not sure if I managed.

The last thing I remembered before my mind faded and everything went dark was the feeling of getting dragged further into the tunnels.

Interlude - Hive-Mind, Alpha

Writing Soundtrack: Never Fade Away (SAMURAI Cover)

It took us a long moment to get back up after the pressure wave rushed through the room. We ignored the aches, the pain, and the missing limbs, immediately looking out for more threats, but found none in the immediate vicinity.

The beast that the Prime had shot at was missing most of its upper torso and head and lay still in front of us. We gave it a quick once over, wanting to take it all with us as it was a lot of biomass, but we weren’t capable of doing that, at least not with only one body, and none of us wanted to leave the Prime alone.

We could pick up some of the body, however, so we took two of its massive arms and a chunk of its remaining torso that was easy to rip off.

It wasn’t much, but it should help the Prime recover and make more Hatchlings.

We regrouped deeper into the tunnel the Prime had led us to. There weren’t any immediate threats and we had found a small room with various materials inside that would work as a makeshift lair, at least for the next few days until the Prime had recovered.

We set out to find more materials, while the body that Prime had designated “Gamma” stayed by his side to protect him, as it was the one still the most functional. The body designated “Alpha” was barely capable of traversing the hallways unhindered.

But that didn’t stop us, we needed to find more biomass. The last fight had shown just how utterly outmatched we were. We couldn’t let the Hive die so soon.

But it hurt, it hurt so badly. Each step was worse than the one before and we had to shift our consciousness so that overall efficiency wasn’t impeded.

They had to shift consciousness… It was a weird thought to have. We understood quarantining part of the multitude to shield the greater whole, but we had never been on the receiving end of such. Now we knew how the drones felt that were cut off. It was… lonely. The chatter of the Hive was nothing more than a background noise instead of the familiar all encompassing conversation.

We… no, I, knew it was the best for the Hive. The injuries endured by this body were too severe to be able to just ignore them, I could feel the pounding headache and the agony messing up my insides, and the more I focused on them, the more it crippled me.

Ever since the Prime had woken us up I was constantly surprised by his actions, some didn’t seem to make any sense, others seemed to come automatically. Now, for the first time since being awoken, I could feel some sympathy for the struggles of the Prime, cut off from the multitude and always alone with his thoughts.

I steeled myself, it was my task to delegate between the Prime and the Hive, so it was my duty to understand both sides. With steely determination and dread overwhelming my entire being I cut off the connection to the Multitude as much as I could. This was an opportunity to understand the Prime and hopefully with that I would understand his oddities and eventually could help him better help the Hive.

As I made my way down some stairs I could feel a wetness on my face and reached up, confused. I had seen the Prime do this before, but I didn’t understand what it meant. My eyes were leaking… I would have been panicked if I hadn’t seen it before, the Prime didn’t seem too bothered and simply carried on. It also seemed to be a temporary phenomenon, so perhaps I should wait for it to be over?

It compromised my vision to a degree, so perhaps I should best tread carefully.

With a groan I sat down on the stairs, taking deep breaths, and trying to stop the leakage as well as doing my best to ignore the pain. But that wasn’t as easy as I had hoped… It hurt so much…

Despite not wanting to, I seemed to have slipped into unconsciousness. It was a strange feeling, one I normally didn’t experience, however, the state of my body seemed to have some influence on my cognitive abilities with so much of my connection to the Hive cut off.

I could still get some feedback, I knew the Prime was safe and slowly recovering, but that was all.

It was all I could do to cling to my previous determination to not let the fear and loneliness creep in. I had an objective to complete.

First things first I did Inventory, checking over what exactly was broken and how best to fix it.

As it turns out I had a lot of things broken, most of them would require either Evolution or the help of the Prime to fix. But I did figure out that I can prevent making it worse if I don’t stress some of my body parts.

Walking felt strange with a missing tail, it was hard to keep balance as I started to make my way downstairs again. The Prime had said something about a “generator” whatever that was, but it appeared as if he needed it for something. I sent off an inquiry to the Multitude, purposefully keeping it distant and as unobtrusive as possible, to see if they knew what a “generator” was.

It took a moment before I got a return, they did not either. They also inquired as to the purpose of me cutting off my connection nearly entirely, to which I replied my reasoning.

While that was taking place I continued to walk, finding a lot of empty rooms or locked metal slabs, “doors” as the Prime called them. I didn’t have the tool the Prime had to open them, so I simply ignored them.

It took me a long time to map out every part of the downstairs area, with its many hallways and locked “doors”. I would need the help of the Prime to open these.

I did find a lot of different materials, some I didn’t know about, some that I knew could be helpful.

I bundled up a report and sent it to the collective, politely asking them to inform the Prime of my findings once he awoke.

It pained me every time I had to close the connection again, feeling as if I was ripping part of me off repeatedly. But if it was the best for the Prime and the Hive then I will endure.

We always endured.