The queen suddenly stopped moving. She turned her huge head and looked around the room with her many eyes.
The clones flattened themselves as much as possible against the wall, but they realized something had changed—being tiny insects wasn't keeping them hidden anymore.
Each of the queen's eyes fixed on their exact positions. There was intelligence in that gaze—an awareness that no normal thaid had—and it sent chills down their spines.
"It knows we're here," a clone said.
"Fuck…"
"The earlier behaviors make sense now," another clone said. "The bugs weren't just getting smarter—they were being guided."
"What do we do?"
"We mus—"
The queen's mandibles shifted, producing a series of complex clicking sounds. Somewhere in the facility, the other bugs heard it and answered the call.
A giant bug warrior showed up at the main door. It moved differently from the others—more planned out, in a sense. Two more of them came right after. They spread out around the room, blocking all the exits.
The queen's attention remained on the clones' position. She then made a new series of clicks. It almost looked like a language. This thing used to order the other bugs around.
"We need to leave," a clone said. "Now. The others need to know what we've found."
"The hole!"
They darted toward their entry point. The problem was that the queen had noticed them while they were shapeshifted into bugs, so she likely knew about the hole they had drilled. She issued another order, and warrior thaids converged on their position.
"Fuck! They are chasing us!"
No matter how small, dark, or invisible they made themselves, the thaids tracked their every move—the queen somehow made sure that the other bugs never lost them.
The clones squeezed through the hole one after another, coming out on the other side. They could hear the creatures' legs skittering around and getting closer to their position.
"Split up," one clone said. "We meet outside. The others must be warned. We need to get the hell out of here."
The skittering intensified. Fighting hundreds of these creatures was something a couple of thousands was also manageable if they could go all out, but hundreds of thousands of them without using everything at their disposal? It was just suicide.
The clones went each their separate way. On their way out, they also saw the queen's influence over the bugs. The way they moved, the way they coordinated, the shocking efficiency of their actions—all of this changed.
Their findings were serious. The Silver Line Corporation created something far worse than just a powerful bug—they had made one that could create and control its own army. Besides, this queen bug could think, learn, and even teach other bugs to be smarter.
What was worse was that they started understanding why thaids spread. Most likely, they created many more creatures with the same ability, or at least they created pairs that reproduced.
The question was why. What was the point? To get more specimens? To see how their abilities would evolve?
Whatever the reason behind the Silver Line's actions, they had unleashed a catastrophe on humanity. By creating an intelligent thaid able to breed specialized variants of its own species and controlling armies of monsters, they had set in motion a chain of events that threatened human survival across multiple continents, and of which they were still paying the price of.
The clones came out from different points of the building almost at the same time. The facility's ancient walls loomed behind them.
They shapeshifted back into humans. The others saw them and noticed their alarmed expressions.
"What happened?"
"They found us!" a clone said. "The whole nest is—"
A loud cracking noise interrupted him, and then thousands of bugs came out from every door, window, and vent in the facility.
They poured out in waves and swarmed out like a tide. Clicking their mandibles as if making a war cry. It sounded like metal scraping against stone, and the more they poured out, the more deafening the noise became.
Emily raised her rifle, but her hands froze when the wall of the facility exploded outward. The queen came out through the debris, dwarfing her children.
Emily's face drained of color, and so did the faces of all those present. "Holy shit..."
"Amber, get ready to teleport us out!" Mira said, backing away slowly.
The queen's segmented body uncoiled to its full length. The Silver Line Corporation's brand stood out on her thorax. Everyone saw it; everyone understood.
She moved with impossible speed for something her size, crossing the distance between them in seconds.
"We won't make it," a clone said. He turned to his brothers. "We need to buy them time, or they will die."
They nodded, and then ten of them broke away from the group, charging toward the queen. Their bodies morphed as they ran, growing armor plates and weapons of all kinds, even multiple limbs, to get faster and stronger. They changed their muscle mass, their body weight, and their mass.
"No!" June said. "Don't—"
The queen struck with blinding speed—faster than any of them could have anticipated. Her foreleg tore through three clones as if their bodies were made of paper.
The remaining clones attacked from different angles, but the queen's movements were simply too fast for them.
She impaled two more with her spiked forelegs, crushed another under her bulk, and bisected three others with a single swipe of her bladed limbs.
The last clone struck her armor, barely scratching it, before she pinned him to the ground.
The rest of the group reached Amber, whose hands crackled with energy. The queen whirled toward them, mandibles spread wide.
"Now!" Mira screamed.
The queen almost caught them, but Amber's powers started working just in time. Everything around them blurred and twisted as they teleported. Before they disappeared, they saw the queen's eerie, intelligent eyes staring right at them.
In that moment, they all realized something terrifying—she would remember who they were and come looking for them.
They came out of the cave, but not too far. There were simply too many clones for Amber to bring them outside the cave system. She was gasping and shaking.
The clones were shaking more than Amber, whose trembling came from exhaustion. The sacrifice of their brothers weighed heavily on them.
"What the hell was that thing?" Emily asked, her voice trembling.
"The source," a clone said. "The reason those bugs exist. She's controlling them all. And she bears the Silver Line Corporation's mark. It's like the human abomination. It is what killed those people above centuries ago."
"We need to warn the others," June said. "If that thing moves against us, we are dead meat."
The Novel will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!