“How do you ‘lose’ bears? Aren’t they connected to some sort of network?” Sharron asked, confused.

“They are connected to a network,” I replied, with a little more snark than I intended. I took a second to calm down, “They should be able to report in, even under ECM, I added some EM hardening early on to prevent them from getting shut down by the Twelves, but the only one replying is the fox.”

Sharron sighed, “Hardening would prevent them from being shut down, but it wouldn’t prevent their radio signals from being scrambled. Although… I would have expected your newer models to have better radios.”

“Ohhh… is that so… so if the squad I sent out was one made of almost entirely Class I’s…”

“Then you only have yourself to blame,” Sharron shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Even class I bots don’t go down easy, and if there’s something out there blocking the signal we should investigate.”

I nodded, “You think it’s a Twelve?” I asked.

“Donno,” she replied, “but it’s probably Antithesis. I doubt scavengers would be lugging around some sort of signal disruptor. Let’s investigate.” She pulled the massive rifle off her shoulder and racked a round with a meaty cha-chunk.

“So… you’re going to stick to the lightly armored suit? No tanky today.”

“Naw, I want to move my muscles, and the extra armor isn’t as necessary with your boys around.” I nodded again, pulling my own, less impressive rifle off my back, and pinged the fox. It was currently holed up in a small residence a couple of streets over.

“It’s that way. I’ll have Bandit lead, just in case.”

Even though the streets were quiet, Bandit was twitchy. He kept on picking up noises from shifting debris, creaking wood, and other miscellaneous sounds. Something that was normal in a run-down town like this, but could still be indications of something moving around. Even though our advance was slow, we did make it to the location of the lost squad. The fox waved at us from a window, a pair of basic bears covering the area from behind it.

“I thought your bears didn’t have personalities,” Sharron said, staring at the animated little critter.

“The basic ones don’t, but as they grow more advanced, and have more important roles, the more their personalities develop. I’m actually dreading the day when Spooky hits Class III… I can already tell he’s going to be a real smart-ass.”

While Sharron laughed, I sent a query to the fox about what happened. What came back boiled down to ‘they were fine, something came, then they were flat,’ which wasn’t very helpful. Sensing my irritation the little fox jumped out of its hidey hole and sprinted down the street, gesturing for us to follow.

“Energetic little thing isn’t it?” Sharron remarked.

I didn’t reply. Even though the fox couldn’t get all the information across, I did get the sense that whatever happened was important. With a thought I sent Heavy barreling down the street, and the rest of the squad into full alert mode.

Sharron stopped laughing when she saw the entire squad snap to attention. “What? What happened?”

“I’m not sure yet, but that fox saw… something it couldn’t fully explain, and it thought it was important that we saw it ASAP. I’m beginning to think that there’s something much worse than a Twelve out here. I’m suspending the resource collection and calling in reinforcements until we get to the bottom of it.”

“That’s sensible. What do you think is out here?” She asked.

I shrugged as the two IFVs arrived, disgorging the squad of Class II bears along with its fox and moose. “Let's find out.”

While Heavy was doing his best to keep the fox in sight, everyone else advanced more cautiously. We were half way up the street by the time the fox stopped, and pointed to the interior of a former supermarket. Through Heavy’s eyes I could see what it was trying to tell me, the bears weren’t just damaged, they were completely devastated. One was literally embedded in the floor, chassis mangled beyond recovery. The other’s head had been torn into several pieces, which were left scattered around the area.

There was no sign of the offender.

“Fuck…” I mumbled.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“What? You see what we’re dealing with?” Sharron asked, without looking at me. She was busy scanning the area, being professional.

“No, and that’s what scares me. Something ripped those bears limb from limb, literally. In that supermarket ahead.”

We were about fifty feet away, staring at the entrance, when both Bandit and the fox sent out a warning, just as something smashed into the side of Heavy. The big bear skidded a foot or so to the left, then immediately made a grab for what was there. He latched onto… something while absorbing blows to the head and body.

In the next moment everything, including the IFVs, opened up, their rounds bouncing off both Heavy and his opponent. It was only with this sustained fire that Bandit could actually extrapolate what we were fighting.

“Fucking Twenty-One, and WAY bigger than the ones I’ve seen before! Must have had time to fully mature!” I yelled over the mass of gunfire.

“Why didn’t your foxes detect it?” Sharron shouted back, as she was busy swapping mags on her weapon.

“Experience? More evolved camo? Who the fuck knows. I can figure it out later, we really need to concentrate on killing it.”

Sharron didn’t answer, she just popped up from behind her cover, aimed the oversized rifle and pulled the trigger. There was a hiss of air as the oversized round left her gun, followed by a MASSIVE explosion. Heavy and the fox were knocked prone by the blast, but they fared much better than the Twenty-One, which lost a large section of its left side.

The creature looked our way, unbothered by the small arms and cannon fire, then slunk back into the market. It had barely left our sight when a wave of Antithesis burst from the back of the store. The mix of Threes, Fours, and something that looked like a living pincushion poured out of the backrooms, like a tide. The assault was headed by a single Twelve, bulldozing its way out of the building.

“The FUCK is going on?” I cried over the gunfire. “And if you could do that much damage to the Twenty-One, what took you so long?!”

“It’s a canister rifle, and I had it loaded with flechette rounds before, great against small stuff, but terrible against bigger things. Now I have to swap back to deal with these bastards.”

I poked my head out from behind the broken-down car I’d taken cover behind. The Twelve had taken a couple of cannon rounds to the head and gone down, so the rest of the Antithesis were running directly into the gunfire and dying. It was exactly how I normally expected them to react, unlike that ambush tactic the Twenty-One attempted. “Don’t, the bears have this. We might need your heavier round if something bigger comes out.”

Sharron paused for a moment, considering what I said, then nodded.

The flood lasted for several long minutes, before the numbers finally petered out. I stepped out from behind my cover to survey the carnage. There were hundreds of dead Antithesis. They’d flattened whatever shelving had survived until now trying to get out, only to be cut down in seconds. I poked one of the spikey models, checking to make sure it was dead. Bandit was doing the same, but instead of poking bodies he seemed to be running around the interior crushing tiny heat signatures.

“The hell is all this? Why were they all hiding?”

You want my honest opinion? Probably a stealth hive. Sometimes, instead of rapidly expanding, the Antithesis establish a hive, then go dark. Waiting for some sort of signal or secondary incursion before going active. That Twenty-One was probably trying to take care of any threats before they could discover the hive.

“Wonderful… and what exactly are you doing?” I asked, turning to Bandit. The little fox paused, then leaned down and picked up something off the floor. Even from a distance I could make out the familiar feathered worm form of a model Seven. “Great.”

“We have worms in here,” I called over my shoulder, “We might need some…” I turned, only to find Sharron right behind me, holding out a box of anti-Seven meds towards me.

“I saw. Aeonys said this might be a stealth hive, which I didn’t know was a thing.”

“Me neither,” I popped one of the pills into my mouth and dry-swallowed, “Plus, they had these things…” I added, kicking the spiky Antithesis.

“That’s just a Model Five. I’d be careful, those spines have a potent neurotoxin on them. We’re lucky your bears were already firing when they emerged, they can fire them over quite a distance.”

I stepped back a few feet, being a little more careful where I put my feet. “Noted. What do you say we check out this hive?” She nodded, chambering another round into her gun.

We left the fox, and what remained of the two squads, to clean up the remaining Sevens. I wanted the entire street swept, just in case. Heavy led the way into the back, half because he took the blows from the Twenty-One without flinching, half because he was absolutely coated in Antithesis parts and juices. Just inside the door, some stairs led down into the basement. It would have been a good place to hide, if the Twenty-One hadn’t left a long trail of gore and juices right there. It made tracking pretty easy.

The basement was relatively large, it looked like a former warehouse space, and at the far end was a hive. The Twenty-One apparently died right at the base of the root structure, trying to deliver its precious mass back to the source. There weren’t any combat antithesis left, just the headless monkey- like hive tenders, the Tens.

“What is this?” I asked, to which Sharron just shrugged. The structure was… strange, it wasn’t as root-like as the other hives I’d seen, it was more like a central mound with tendrils growing out of it.

As we got closer I started to make out details, the bark was irregular and when I squinted… I swear I could make out… faces. Hundreds of faces. Suddenly I realized what I was looking at might have been Antithesis, but it had the general shape of a pile of bodies melted together.

Looks like the Model Sevens were busy down here, Nyx remarked.

I just turned to the side and emptied my stomach on the wall.