Tunnels 05 - Spiral

warm. Much of the interior, lit only by the occasional tripod-mounted luminescent orb, was in gloom.
    And across the factory floor were three hundred hospital beds arranged in a grid, each bed with a person stretched out on it in a state of unconsciousness. The scene resembled some mass dormitory of slumbering humans, consisting of Topsoilers and Colonists, and even a handful of New Germanians who had been brought in to make up the numbers.
    Rebecca One stood before the group of women. “This is . . . ,” she began to say, but then noticed most of the Styx women weren’t paying any attention whatsoever to her. Drawn by the irresistible, primal drive present in each of them, many were already edging toward the beds. Rebecca One held her hands high in the air and addressed the women at the top of her voice. “This is one of the greatest moments in our long history, and we’re proud to have been able to . . .” She trailed off as she realized it was useless; the assembled group of women were barely listening as their eyes darted over the beds.
    “Once you’re done in here, you can move on to the other two warehouses, where the rest of the candidates will be waiting for you,” Rebecca Two added. “Don’t worry if you can’t manage them all: More of our sisters will be joining us later.”
    “We’ll try to leave them a few scraps,” Alex said. A ripple of muted laughter ran through the group, but most of them were too full of anticipation to join in.
    “So let the Phase begin!” Rebecca One proclaimed in a shout.
    The women fanned out across the factory floor, some running in order to claim the humans in the outlying corners for themselves.
    “We’ve come a long way since Romania,” Rebecca One said. “It’s so much easier now that we have the technology to scrub their minds,” she said, referring to the intensive Dark Light treatments the people on the beds had been subjected to.
    “Yes, it’s far less messy than hobbling them. Even with their ankles shattered, they might still try to resist,” Rebecca Two said breathlessly as she watched Alex approach one of the nearest beds.
    As the Styx woman sidled up to the senseless human, she shed her jacket, then her blouse. Straddling the body, Alex arched her upper body and threw her head in the air, unleashing a primordial and piercing shriek that rose to the corrugated roof and seemed to fall back down to the factory floor again.
    There was already blood on her back. But as she’d begun to shriek, two slits opened up across the upper edges of both her shoulder blades, the flesh tearing apart.
    From these slits, jointed insect legs pushed out. They twitched as if they’d just been born and were taking their first breath, then they snapped open to their full length.
    A pair of insectoid limbs, black and shiny and glistening with blood and plasma, and covered with small bristles.
    Alex was still shrieking, but the sound was swelled by the other women as, astride their victims, they began to shriek, too. They shrieked until the combined volume was unbearable in the confines of the factory, the sound resonating through the very fabric of its walls.
    Then, as Alex threw her arms forward at the insensible human, the insect limbs also whipped over each of her shoulders. With their pincers they gripped the man’s temples on either side, holding him steady for what was about to come.
    Alex was breathing in staccato bursts as she lowered her head closer to the man’s and stuck her thumbs into his mouth, stretching it wide open. A tube suddenly burst from her mouth. More than a foot and a half in length, it immediately found the man’s gaping mouth.
    “It’s a wonderful thing to behold,” Rebecca One slurred, intoxicated by the spectacle before her. “We’re so lucky to see this.”
    The fleshy tube was similar to the ovipositor found at the tip of the abdomen of many insects for egg laying, but far larger. And Alex’s pulsated as something was squeezed down it by the peristaltic movement of the muscles.
    It was a pod the size of a box of matches. An egg case.
    As the tube pushed farther into the man’s mouth and forced its way down his throat, a reflex action made him cough and he tried to move his head. But, with a final slurping sound, the egg case was deposited deep inside him, and he became still again.
    Alex’s insect limbs unhooked themselves from the man’s temples. She raised her arms and stretched them elegantly, then slid from the man.