Chapter 7: Found

The scream cut the silence to shreds as it echoed through the corridor, announcing their position to everyone and everything this side of the hive. "SHIT!" - Libby grabbed her gun, aimed for the spot where the tentacle erupted from the wall, and pulled the trigger twice. With two loud bangs, the intruder was seperated from the wall it protruded from. Claire was free. Tears in her eyes, the blond girl pulled her still twitching tormentor out of herself and jumped away from the niche in the wall. No further communication was necessary. Libby, Claire and Magda all knew that the two aliens they had hidden from were surely coming back. So they ran. Almost blindly, they hurried down the dark corridor, not knowing where they went, hoping to find some way to lose their pursuers. Claire almost stumbled when remains of the tentacle still clinging to her leg up to that point dropped to the floor, but she caught herself and they went on unhindered. The floor was smooth and warm and wet under their feet and their footsteps echoed as if the three of them were running on water, but somehow it offered perfect grip, as if the surface of the hive itself was embracing the thouch of their bare feet. Each step made Libby's unsupported breasts bounce up, only to inevitably come crashing down again moments after. Cursing her bosom, she tried to hold them in place with her hands, only to find herself quickly losing speed due to the resulting lack of arm movement. She had no choice but to let them flail around as if they were mocking the situation. Better a sore chest than a hole in it. Glancing to her right, Claire must have been having similar problems – and more: Judging by her breathing and the color and expression of her face, she would not be able to run like this for much longer. Had they lost their pursuers yet? 'How could we have, there hasn't been a single fork in the corridor the entire way!' "WAIT!"

Now there was. The corridor continued, but another sphincter-shaped door led to their left, and an opening in the wall to their right. The door didn't look inviting, but the hole in the wall was below waistlevel and so dark that after a few feet that there was no way to say where it led. Claire was out of breath, and unsure. "Should we go on?" 'Should we?' Would their persuers expect them to take the door, or to continue following the corridor? "No", Libby said. 'When you are fleeing, changing directions is the best tactic. Or is it?' She was unsure, but made sure to appear as if she wasn't. "Wait, do you hear that?", asked Magda, who didn't seem to be much better of than Claire when it came to stamina. "Listen!"

Now, Libby heard it too. Was that... music?! It was hard to tell because the sound was muffled by the door to their left, but it seemed as if a women's choir was singing loudly behind it. That didn't make any sense. Libby was fascinated by the unexpected melody. Before she realized what she was doing, she had touched the door, opening it with a wet, slurping noise.
A warm gust of wind welcomed them to a gigantic hall the size of which Libby had never seen. A patch of the hive's flesh led down its middle like a bridge, connecting this door to another one multiple hundreds of feet away. At both of its sides loomed an abyss. From the entrance, Libby was unable to make out its ground, be it due to its sheer depth or due to the thick fog that erupted from the deep. In irregular patterns, huge, stone-like spires towered up from the below between the bridge and the hall's walls, which in turn were at least a hundred feet away from it. At a first glance, the spires seemed to be wriggling somehow. The second revealed the source of the movement: Women. Hundreds of women, thousands maybe. Naked, they were bound to green, fleshy pylons that held them in place with slimy tentacles around their extremities. 'Is this how we looked back in our small incubation room?' No. These women were worse off. There was an unnatural movement in the bellies of most of them, inflating them to the point of tearing the skin, only to go flat again thereafter. And they weren't singing. They weren't singing at all. Screams of agony, and gasps of fear echoed through the hall like a permanent symphony of anguish. Only now did Libby realize that there were women on the far walls too, and more still all over the ceiling, hanging down with their arms and legs entombed in the alien walls and ceiling behind and above them, naked victims dangling like a thousand drops of water from a thousand leaves. 'The amount of young women in this chamber alone could fill a small stadium', Libby realized with horror.
Claire made a step into the hall, eyes wide, but Libby held her back. "No", she said, "don't. Down there", and turned back towards the dark hole opposite the door. It was not inviting, but entering this expanse of suffering was suicide. There was only one bridge here that went in a straight line for hundreds of feet and no cover to hide behind. It would have been a shooting range.

At least Magda seemed to understand that fact, nodded towards Libby and jumped down the dark chute first. Claire looked overwhelmed and afraid, but, after Libby gave her a push, followed nonetheless. When Libby stepped in front of the hole, their pursuers were just catching up with them, signaled by a gunblast that missed her head by only a few inches. Without another thought, she jumped, and darkness engulfed her. The chute went on for a long time, and, having the same surface as the rest of this place, the ride felt almost as if she was gliding down a bumpy, slimy waterslide. She could hear the voices of the two aliens quickly echoing away behind her. But much to her dismay, they weren't cursing or calling for backup. They were laughing.

She landed with her head on some warm, pillowy breasts. "Claire! I'm sorry! Are you alright?" But when she looked up, it wasn't Claire she saw, though the girl Libby was lying on looked very much like her. Blond hair, about the same, young age. But this one's eyes were both blue and unseeing. She was dead. In shock, Libby pushed herself off the girl sideways and found herself gliding down a slope that was mostly composed of warm, smooth skin, but also of something sticky. She tumbled a few feet further before she finally dared to stand up and turn around. What she saw almost made her vomit. There were girls and women, unmoving, dumped here on top of each other like a large pile of waste. Some only had blood between their legs, some had their entire pelvis shattered and others were completely snapped in two, their naked torsos in one place, pairs of legs in another, guts often still connecting them. Libby knew almost instantly what had caused this carnage. All of them had given birth to the enemy; all of them had died for it. And they were still warm.