I ran toward the buzzing, the almost imperceptible hum of my old tormentors. The signal wasn’t exactly like I remembered, but then, the specific Nexus Unit that had worked on me, tortured me and began the integrations, who’d made me part of his Hive mind, was far from here in another sector of the galaxy. The Hive Soldiers who were here on the moon must be under the dominion of another Nexus Unit.
Not mine. They called him Nexus 2.
I would never forget it. He’d told me his name as he worked on me, tortured me, changed me to his liking. His real name.
He’d wanted me to stay. To be his.
To have his children.
To be his queen.
My stomach churned as I ran toward my past, the horror of those weeks spent in thrall of Nexus 2, fighting the dark depths of his mind, the hypnotic pull of his dark eyes on my emotions. He wasn’t like the others the Coalition fought and killed every day. He was an alien race. His skin the darkest blue. His eyes like the black inky depths of a great white shark back on Earth. There was nothing human in those eyes or in his touch. He wasn’t a drone, wasn’t what the Coalition thought of as the Hive, the warriors from other worlds controlled by biosynthetic integrations and psychic frequencies. The ones who traveled in threes.
No. Nexus 2—my Hive nemesis—was something else. One of the Hive core. He controlled millions, perhaps billions of minds. And he’d wanted mine. He’d wanted me to give myself to him willingly.
As if.
“Lieutenant, where are you going?” Governor Rone’s voice was in my ear now. “You are off the grid.”
“We were wrong. They’re here. I’m close. I can hear them.”
Radio silence, then all of them were yelling at me at once.
“Stand down, now! Wait for backup.”
The governor. Yeah, ummm, no on that.
“No, Gwen! You will not. I forbid it.”
Forbid? Sorry, Mak. I don’t know that word.
“We’re twenty minutes from your location. Wait for us!”
Marz. Wait? That might be smart, but then they’d all want to play, and I wanted to kill every single one of the Hive bastards myself. To be done with them, until the next mission. To keep Mak safe on this one so he could be free.
“What the fuck are you doing, female?” That was Vance, and he was the only one who said anything worth responding to.
“I’m going to kill me some Hive, that’s what I’m doing.” I checked my timer, took stock of the level of buzzing inside my head. “You should arrive in time for clean-up, boys. I’ll try not to make too big of a mess.” Lie. I was going to stain the ground with their Hive blood like a warrior goddess. “I’m out.”
“No!”
I turned off my radio. Seriously, did not need to hear all the shouting or have them pick up on anything I said or did.
I had an advantage, something none of them knew. Not Marz, not Vance, not Mak and not even the governor. Something I’d never admitted. Not when the Intelligence Core questioned me for days after I showed up alone in that Hive ship. Not when the doctors poked and prodded me for hours, running hundreds of tests. Not when I looked into Mak’s eyes and felt the urge to reveal the truth I carried to someone I trusted.
But I kept my secret, because Mak wasn’t mine. Not really. We’d made a bargain. Fucked and agreed that we would go our separate ways. He was leaving the Colony. Leaving me. Therefore, he didn’t need to know.
Shoulders set, I did the one thing I hadn’t let myself do since I escaped the Nexus who tried to own me. I went full Hive. Yeah, it was a thing, a thing I had a feeling others on the Colony couldn’t do. It was like being Bruce Banner and going all Incredible Hulk. No one—at least no one but those from Earth—would understand that reference. In alien-speak, it was like going Atlan Beast, but better. I was already ridiculously strong. I didn’t need to let the beast out. I needed to let the Hive out. Or, let them into my mind. Into my body. I could use their technology, their plans for me against them. I’d connect to the Hive Soldiers I now knew I’d find over the next rise on the lunar surface.
The buzzing in my head went from dull ache to chainsaw scream in a matter of seconds, but I just gritted my teeth and didn’t fight the flow of information they were giving me. I was like a moving super-computer, processing on-the-fly data and information. Running toward them, I filtered out what I could around the massive migraine making my eyes feel like they were literally about to pop free from their sockets.
A warm dribble of liquid slid from my nose to my lip and I tasted blood. My brain was literally full. Overflowing.
So be it.
I ran faster, as fast as the bio-synth fibers in my new body allowed. And I was fast, rocks and dust flying under my feet as I passed the landscape in a complete blur. The faster I got to them, the faster the pain would stop, the mission would be finished. I’d take the fuckers down.
Just as I’d anticipated, the Hive were waiting, lined up, three-by-three in triangle formation. Nine in total, they all had their weapons pointed at me as I came to a dead stop a few steps before them and cleared my throat. I wasn’t winded at all, yet adrenaline coursed through my veins, making me shake, making my heart race too fast. I would have worried about it bursting, but it wasn’t wholly human anymore either.