Page 50 of Monstrous Hunt
The voices ran over each other, combining the words, but I understood. DSC. The group that had created Dynosauros.
:Our technology. Our cells. They use our own cells to hunt us. They must kill us all to control the technology.:
“Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that Sirian cells are actually mrions?”
:Modified, manipulated, sliced apart and reconstituted but derived from us.:
I carried Sirian cells now. I had Kroktl’s DNA inside me. I carried his child.
:You have others too. Many pieces. Slices. Now complete.:
Many pieces? “I don’t understand.”
Images flickered through my mind. Kroktl. Lohr. Rizan. Snryx. And finally Axxol.
Pieces… of DNA. I had sex with all of them except for Axxol.
Though he did come on my bare skin. My clothes had been stained with semen, but my skin hadn’t been sticky at all. I’d absorbed his cum. Just like Kroktl’s when he’d smeared it on me, embedding his scent—and his DNA—on my body.
:Complete. Now, you are Mother.:
A jarring sound resonated through my head, a sound of frustration. Mother wasn’t the right word, but the sound that reverberated through my skull wasn’t a word that I could even pronounce. It carried significance and meaning beyond what I could understand.
I saw tiny, marching ant-like blobs. Each individual—like a cell—but also together—like a complete organism.:Mrion.:
Then larger shapes like the thing talking to me with a rounded body and spiky, brittle legs.:Drone.:
Again, the word wasn’t quite right, but I understood it to be like a worker bee.
A larger shape, cloaked in darkness so I couldn’t really tell what it looked like, though I had the impression of wings and a soft, almost furry, underbelly that gleamed like pearls.
The others bowed down to it. Her. The mother, like a queen ant or bee. Or what Lohr had called a breeder.
Explosions and fire rippled through my mind. I saw the drones rushing to her protection. I heard their screams as they died, blasted into dust, ripped apart by vicious teeth. Crushed beneath taloned feet. Left to die. Or eaten.
Leaving her alone.
Injured, she pulled herself into darkness, hiding. Always hiding. Making herself smaller, leaving bits of her broken body behind. Those broken pieces dispersed, each carrying a part of her DNA like a message in a bottle. She crawled through a deep, dark passage. Blue lightning crackled all around her, tearing her apart, scattering her bits throughout the universe.
A planet slowly spun in my head. The familiar blue waters of Earth.
:A safe place far beyond the syndicate’s command with no remarkable technology that might draw their attention.:
People picked up pieces of her body, absorbing her DNA without even realizing it. Forever changed, they carried her forward through generations with secret codes written into their human DNA, but only incomplete fragments.
Weeping, screeching, sounds of agonizing pain.:Our Mothers are gone. Only drones remain:
Pieces of a puzzle lay before me, jagged fragments that didn’t even look like they belonged together. But the first piece slid into place inside me. I felt it snap together, a perfect joining. Another. The pieces flowed together inside of me. Changing me.
No.Completingme. That’s why I’d felt Axxol’s absence from the squad so acutely. They needed him.
Ineeded him. His DNA completed the sequence that Kroktl first connected with me.
:This is why the syndicate wants to destroy your planet. They traced the last fragments of Myrm to your people.:
The words flowed smoother, now. Nerves throughout my body zinged and sparked, a complex neural highway lighting up like New York City. Awakened, the mrion-slash-Sirian cells translated the Myrm’s communication effortlessly.
:Meanwhile, our mrion cells rebel. They sense the return of the Mother. They ignite and overcome the controls placed upon them, ready to reunite with their missing fragments. Driven to merge. Driven to find their mate. Driven to complete the Mother and breed.:
