The march was silent in the physical world, but Frival could sense the rapid, unnatural communication between the BCUs. It was incredible. It was terrifying. Up close, he didn't even need to send his mind into the etheric realm to feel it.

His exo-suit trembled under the grip of his captors. The four-armed creatures held him fast, their elongated fingers wrapping around the reinforced plating of his suit like living chains.

His heads-up display flickered warnings servo resistance detected, motor functions offline, external override engaged.

He was powerless.

Ahead of him, the seven remaining members of his crew marched in lockstep, forced forward by the same monstrous captors. Their once-pristine armour was dented, scorched from the battle, but they moved without resistance. Not a single one struggled. Not a single one spoke.

The BCUs had disabled their suits.

Frival had seen many battlefields. He had commanded clones across planetary surfaces and fought in undersea installations against or for rival clans of the Triumvirate.

But nothing had prepared him for this.

The clones had betrayed them.

That was impossible. It was bred into their genetic code, reinforced by control chips, and burned into their very being to obey all Grithan species.

And yet, he had seen it in CT-2214’s visor. That complete and total indifference.

They were never here to save us.

His suit’s internal oxygen recycler hummed softly in his ears, masking the distant sounds of movement. His breathing was steady. Controlled. He wasn’t dead yet.

Think. Observe. Learn.

They were descending. The terrain was changing.

At first, it had been like any other lunar quarry—exposed mineral veins collapsed tunnels from previous mining operations, scattered remains of abandoned Valurian excavation drills.

But the deeper they went, the more the landscape shifted. The rock walls became uneven and wrong.

Then came the first traces of the anomaly.

At first, it looked like a strange rock formation. Then his suit enhanced the image, and he saw the entire passage coated in a dark grey pulsing mass.

Not rock. Organic.

His stomach tightened.

The BCUs hadn’t just burrowed into the moon.

They were reshaping it.

The deeper they travelled, the more suffocating the environment became. The air though artificial in his suit felt thick. The walls shimmered as if something beneath the surface was shifting. Breathing. Watching.

Then they reached the first barrier.

A massive organic door loomed before them, fused into the tunnel’s walls. It pulsed as if sensing their arrival. Then, slowly, it split apart into six sections, folding inward like some grotesque mouth.

He was dragged inside.

And he saw the truth and it was horrifying.

The enemy was here in full force. BCUs, thousands of them, moving through massive corridors like blood cells in veins. They didn't stop to stare.

They didn’t acknowledge him or his crew.

Likewise, they simply moved. Endlessly. Efficiently.

The etheric communication in this space was overwhelming. Information flowed in nanoseconds, vast streams of data exchanged between the creatures. And yet, despite the thousands of minds working as one, he could sense only one true intelligence.

One entity.

The BCUs were not individuals.

They were its extensions.

His mind recoiled at the realization.

This wasn’t a hive. This was something worse.

The tunnels deepened. The further they went, the more the moon itself seemed to change. The ground became slick, not rock but something softer, pliable. The walls weren’t just lined with the strange grey material any more they had become it.

Not just an infestation. Not just a biological incursion.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

This was infrastructure.

The BCUs weren’t just controlling the moon.

They were turning it into something else.

The deeper they went, the more Frival’s mind screamed that this was wrong.

Frival forced himself to think logically, to analyse rather than succumb to fear. With each new horror he witnessed, he repeated silent reassurances in his mind, a mantra to keep the rising panic at bay.

The tunnel sloped downward, leading them into a vast chamber.

Frival’s breath caught.

The ceiling stretched impossibly high, curving into a dome made of flesh and rock fused. Huge, twisting structures grew from the floor, somewhere between bone and chitin. Strange, fluid-filled pods pulsed within their recesses, something moving inside them.

Then the BCUs stopped.

Frival’s captors released him, but his exo-suit remained locked. His servos refused to move.

Another BCU stepped forward.

It was different.

Taller. Stronger. It moved on four legs, but its upper body was humanoid if such a term could even be applied. Four primary arms, two smaller ones folded against its chest. A massive, segmented shell covered its torso, etched with deep crimson markings almost ritualistic. From its back, ten tentacle-like appendages shifted.

Unlike the others, which had moved with mechanical efficiency, this one studied him.

Its head tilted, six black eyes locking onto his visor.

Then, slowly, it raised a single hand and pointed at his crew.

The others began separating them.

Frival’s jaw clenched. His pulse slowed.

One by one, his soldiers were dragged away into separate tunnels.

No words. No struggle.

Their suits remained locked prisoners in their armour.

Frival tried to move. His servos protested. His systems refused to obey.

“No.”

A pointless word. He could do nothing.

His crew disappeared, swallowed by the black corridors.

Then he was alone.

The tall BCU stepped closer.

Its movements were slow. Deliberate. Its four arms moved in synchronized gestures, fingers curling, shifting in patterns too precise to be random.

With deliberate precision, it pressed two of its large hands against his helmet, its six black eyes locking onto his own through the visor.

A shift in the etheric field followed a slow, methodical intrusion, tendrils of unseen force curling around his mental barriers, testing them, probing for weaknesses.

Then, without warning, the assault came.

His mind screamed.

A silent shockwave detonated inside his skull, a frequency beyond sound. It burned through his thoughts like an electric current, searing, distorting, unravelling.

Images. Fragments. Coldness. Rage. Change. Voices. Hunger. Knowledge.

His defences strained, splintered, then shattered entirely. His mind lay exposed, vulnerable, consumed.

He felt himself unravelling his very essence drawn into something vast and insatiable.

Flashes of images assaulted him places he had never seen, knowledge beyond comprehension, raw fury, endless calculations, and the cold finality of death all shifting, colliding, and overwhelming him in mere seconds.

He saw it.

The tunnels stretched for miles beneath the surface.

The moon’s core, cracked open, pulsing like a beating heart.

The walls shifting, expanding, evolving—

And then, he saw the thing waiting below.

Not a structure.

Not an infestation.

Not a machine.

A presence.

The moon wasn’t just being reshaped.

It was growing.

Frival’s vision blurred.

His suit’s sensors glitched.

His mind moved slowly

The moon is alive.

A final thought whispered through the void of his breaking consciousness.

And then, the darkness swallowed him whole.