They were bigger than their males, but they were also slower. And they fought exactly the same way.
I’d just killed fifty-one of her closest friends. I knew how they moved.
If I’d been trying to kill her outright, I’d have lost before I’d begun. But I didn’t need to kill her. I just needed to slap the explosive to her body, somewhere in the middle, and move out of reach before she sliced through my body like a blade through water.
I slipped under her slashing claws and spun, slamming the explosive on her back as I went. Staying directly behind her—or at least in the direction I knew they lumbered slowly, I ran out of its reach and straight at the second female.
The first bellowed in rage and turned to follow me. When she moved, the second answered.
I’d been counting on this as well. Each of these creatures seemed eager to kill, and willing to fight their own kind for the chance to do so.
Vicious fucking things. No wonder the Hive wanted to utilize them so badly.
The bomb-laden creature stopped, waiting to destroy me if this one failed. I repeated my movements almost exactly. Duck the swinging claws, run beneath them. Get behind the creature. Slap on the second explosive. Run!
Right onto the claw of number three.
Too fucking smart.
She must have watched me with the first two and anticipated my movements. Sloppy. I should have anticipated this. But I was too tired. I looked down at the tip of the claw embedded in my gut and I felt nothing. No pain. No fear. The clarity in that moment was a surprise, but then, I’d never watched myself die before.
Methodically, purposely, I removed the last two explosives from my armor. One I tossed toward the opening of the base. It wouldn’t destroy the base completely, but it should do enough damage to trap the Integration Unit inside. With the creatures all dead, it would be easy for a ReCon team to finish the job.
The last explosive I held in my right hand. With my left, I pulled the blade from its holster on my thigh and waited.
I’d seen this ending before as well. Piercing strike to their prey. Inspection. Once the prey item was deemed edible, the creature would raise its second claw and slice me in half. The bottom half would fall to the ground and be pierced by that second claw literally the second it hit the ground. They used their claws like eating utensils.
This time, I was lunch. But she was going to swallow a bomb. All I had to do was wait for the slight movement of that second claw to activate it.
Dangling in mid-air, I stared into the creature’s eyes, all six of them on this side of her skull and waited. Too long. She should have sliced me in half by now.
Pain. Sharp, agonizing pain roared through me. Pain from so many injuries I’d lost count. From her claw. The hundreds of small bruises and cuts on my body. The despair of losing Stefani.
We stared at one another, two monsters, neither moving. The liquid silver in her eyes was not her own. It was Hive. I knew exactly who was watching me, not this poor wild thing, but the true monster hiding inside the base, using these creatures as his puppets.
“I’m sorry.” I spoke to the female creature I was about to burn alive from the inside out, not the Hive mind inside her.
An explosion sounded behind me. Gore rained down from above, the goopy leftovers from the first monster’s carcass. The second exploded. The shockwave strong enough to shove my body farther onto the creature’s claw.
Her free arm lifted.
I set the timer on the incendiary device for two minutes. I wanted to be deep in her gut when it detonated. There would be nothing but ash left, of either of us.
Her claw swung toward my hips.
I thought of Stefani. Her scent. Her skin. Her screaming ‘no’ like I imagined she did when I abandoned her. When I failed her.
Her voice. It sounded so real.
The explosive I’d thrown a few moments ago exploded at the base’s entrance. The creature holding me stumbled sideways from the shock of the blast. She lowered her free claw to steady her large frame. Stood once more. Lifted that same claw to finish what she’d started.
Her head exploded right in front of me. The creature went rigid. Dust from the rock around the base’s entrance rained down in a fine powder, coating me in a layer of dust that stuck to the gore already covering me from head to foot.
She fell and I fell with her, landing on my left side, still impaled on her claw.
I looked to my right to confirm I still held the last weapon. Fire. An inferno. I had to see the disk because I could feel…nothing.
It was there. I wrapped my hand around the device as tightly as I could manage.
