Page 7 of Doom

“Yes,”I replied, both excited and awed.

“Err … Are you guys doing that telepathic thing?” Victoria asked.

“Yes, we were,” I said. “Apologies. Let’s go get your partner.”

Turning on my heels, I led the march towards the hospital.

“Congratulations, my brother,”Legion said with genuine affection.“May others among us also—finally—be so blessed.”

The others echoed the sentiment. My chest warmed with love for them. Legion, Chaos, Rage, and Wrath—who was piloting one of the evacuation shuttles—were my closest friends. We’d all been born out of the first batch of bio-engineered Xian Warrior embryos. We came out of our incubators within minutes of each other.

But now, as we were approaching the front of the hospital, wasn’t the time to reminisce. Adrenalin pumping, bloodlust rising, the sight of so much prey before me claimed my attention. From where we stood, we could clearly see one of the hovering platforms Victoria had mentioned.

Such a pretty and appropriate name for a delightful female.

I chastised myself for this passing distraction and refocused. That our scanners weren’t detecting them meant there could be other Breeding Swamps in the city as well. We would need to do another thorough sweep after we’d pushed back the Kryptids. Knowing that they required warm and humid environments for the larvae to thrive would help to pinpoint their location with thermal scans.

Considering the large number of Kryptids, we threw in some flash grenades to blind them and even the odds. While the humans paralyzed with the Mexlar distributor implants would find it unpleasant, it wouldn’t hurt them. Careful not to hit any of the humans, we thinned the Kryptid ranks with blaster fire and poisoned darts, which we regurgitated from pouches at the backs of our throats. The lethal venom coating them would kill our targets in seconds once it managed to reach the soft tissue beneath their chitin armor.

And, at last, we initiated hand-to-hand combat, or rather scythe-to-bladed-pincer combat. The Kryptid Soldiers grew battle appendages on their forearms as we did. But while ours looked like scythes, theirs resembled pincers with bladed inner edges. Our scorpion tails—which they didn’t possess—allowed us to inflict serious damage and even kill them when they got close enough. It was like having two extra hands to stab them while they had to use one of theirs to hold their shield up and one to fight with.

Nothing excited me more than the sound of chitin shattering beneath the violent assault of my tails, of my scythes, or of my darts. Well, except for their screeches of agony. My opponent, thinking himself smart, kept ramming me with his shield. He was looking for an opportunity to strike me with his pincers while hoping for backup from his buddies. I spit acid at it three times back-to-back. I didn’t need to see his armband’s control panel to know the shield was depleting rapidly from the heavy damage caused by my acid. As soon as it collapsed, the spikes of my scorpion tails did a one-two punch at the same spot on his armor, bashing it in. I spit more acid in the opening before the fool could cover it. The divine sound of his dying squeals only made me hungry to add more Kryptid voices to harmonize with it.

My brothers and I moved forward, operating as a unit. Something about this invasion bothered me. Despite the great number of Kryptids present, General Khutu was clearly throwing his weakest Soldiers at us. They were young, barely out of basic training. Many hadn’t come into their full adult strength. Why throw away so many troops? Before our arrival, it made sense. Even young, these Soldiers far surpassed human strength. But the Kryptid General knew they stood no chance against us. Why sacrifice them?

It took us a little over twenty minutes to wipe them out in the area surrounding the hospital. Our scanners indicated the various wings of the large building were empty. But we had every reason to believe the missing population had been hauled inside, hidden from detection by some disruptor.

“We’re going in,” Legion said, gesturing at the hospital with his head.

“I’ll stay here and secure evacuation for them,” I replied, indicating the pile of humans with my chin.

“I’ll help,” Rage offered.

Legion nodded and, accompanied by our eight other brothers, he walked into the hospital.

“Wrath, we have a few hundred humans to be transferred to the safe zone. All implanted. Sending you coordinates,”I mind-spoke to him.

“Area safe?”he asked.

“Outside, yes. The rest of the unit is clearing the Swamp inside the building.”

“Acknowledged. The shuttles will be there in ten,”Wrath replied.

I ended the communication and gave Stran the all clear. By the time he and Victoria turned the corner onto the hospital’s street, Rage and I had already removed the implants from a dozen humans. My skin warmed then tingled with pleasure at the sight of my woman. Her fiery mane, held in a single thick braid, framed her delicate face. I longed to feel her hair spilling over my chest and to run my fingers through it.

But Victoria didn’t come to me and even resisted Stran’s attempts to lure her our way. She was looking for something—or rather someone—in a street adjacent to the one where I stood.

“I’ll be right back,”I mind-spoke to Rage.

He nodded, his gaze weighing on me as I jogged towards my woman. Her head jerked my way when she noticed my approach, an air of guilt laced with worry descending upon her features. It struck me that I was still in my battle form. I hated that my presence could trigger any type of fear within her. Without stopping my advance, I shifted back to my natural form.

Victoria stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes all but popping out of her head as they widened in disbelief, her thin lips falling open in shock. I welcomed the slight burn in my back as my spiked frills and scorpion tails resorbed back into my skin, as did the defensive spikes on my arms, legs, and forehead. My fused scales thinned and parted with a crackling sound, freeing my hair, and my scythes faded.

I stopped a couple of meters in front of her, fighting to suppress the smug smile that wanted to stretch my lips. My hearts soared as her aura finally took on the pink hue I had been hoping for. It didn’t surprise me that she enjoyed the view. Dr. Xi had designed us to be appealing to the human aesthetic in our normal form. Victoria’s gaze slowly roamed over me, lingering on the natural loin plate covered in scales that preserved my ‘modesty’—if I even had such a thing.

“Wow,” Victoria breathed out. “That’s … That’s different.”

I snorted. “Not in a bad way, I hope.”

---