she feared. I spoke again and clumsily tried to change the subject.
“Listen, do you want to get a drink and maybe talk somewhere?”
“I was hoping it wasn’t that,” she said, then walked away without another word, leaving me openmouthed in the middle of the room. Before I could gather myself, my elbow was gripped from behind and I was walked toward the exit. A slim hand of soft tanned skin reached out to press the door release button and I walked out into the thick, humid air of the night which had chilled rapidly.
“In terms you can hopefully understand … If you’re hoping to code that particular subroutine,” said the rich accent from behind my shoulder as I turned, “you should probably realize by now that she needs a female to female hardline connector …”
I stared down at Cat, trying to figure out what she meant. My eyebrows disconnected above my nose as my eyes went wide with the sudden understanding of what she had said. I had no answer, literally nothing to say, so the silence stretched out as her smile grew wider in fractions until she finally let out a laugh at my discomfort.
“I had no idea …” I said, feeling foolish.
“She’s not your type, anyway,” Cat said with comedy dismissiveness.
“Oh,” I answered, “and what is my type?”
She seemed to hesitate, showing a crinkle in her smooth brow in the low light coming from bulb above the shelter entrance. “I would have hoped your type was smaller and darker,” she said hopefully as she stepped closer and looked up toward my face.
Mesmerized by the moment, everything else forgotten, Annie chose the best time to interrupt proceedings. My flash on annoyance was destroyed, however, and replaced instantly with sudden, urgent, and gut-churning fear.
“Movement, three hundred meters, large body approaching.”
~
The screams of the woman, now stripped and beaten just enough to force her compliance into the thick ropes which bound her wrists and ankles, echoed loudly throughout the jungle and bounced back irregularly. Her screams might attract The Swarm, or they might not, but either way Tanaka would be amazed if she survived the night.
He had done this once before, with a servant who had stolen food from him if he recalled correctly, and although The Swarm had not come the servant was nonetheless found dead the following morning without a mark on them. His people had claimed that their soul had fled the body in cowardice, leaving behind the empty meat and bone.
This night though, he fancied that he could already hear the shrieking, deafening chirping noise that they made when they came toward them.
Waiting less than an hour, during which time the screams had faded into only sporadic bursts of wailing sound, The Swarm found their offering and rolled over the body of the woman like a living, crawling blanket. Her screams, much renewed by the arrival of the bugs, were drowned out with such suddenness that the change in pitch from hysterical fear to agonizing pain was almost imperceptible. The pulsating, roiling mass of shapes each occasionally flashing an oily reflection from their armored bodies, rolled over the woman in minutes until her flesh had been consumed and only the disorganized bones were left among a patch of darker earth. The Swarm moved onwards, leaving nothing behind and moving past the high walls of the Springs as though they were programmed to ignore them.
“Yes,” Tanaka said with evil relish, “keep going that way,” as he raised his eyes to the darkness, in the distant direction of Three Hills.
~
“Drones are up,” Annie snapped into our radios, “all non-essential personnel have been instructed to stay inside.”
Hendricks, along with his entire team, converged on the central three pods as planned. Others joined us there, me arriving first as I had already been outside, and we waited for the report from the aerial footage, as much as that could tell us.
“Okay,” Annie said, “two large groups converging from the same direction, one hundred meters apart, two hundred meters out. Painting them now.”
With that, two drones surged toward the incoming swarms and deployed a payload of IR-visible paint which cascaded over the individual bugs and gave a better sight picture through the goggles and the optics of the drones.
“Automated gun systems are operational, on standby,” Annie added.
We waited, everyone breathing at differing rates and making the tension in the air thicker than the humidity.
“They’ve reached the walls,” Annie said before pausing, “staying at ground level, moving around the perimeter … approaching the