“That little fox of yours sure is zealous,” Amy remarked as we watched the bot dash back and forth down the tunnel, firing rounds into the wall every couple seconds.

  “It’s not being zealous, it’s being thorough,” I grumbled. “It’s sending me the sensor feed, and the walls are absolutely crawling with those fucking mutant Model Fours. Can you imagine what would have happened if the antithesis at this hive had stayed hidden and dug towards a residential area instead of revealing themselves? They would have caused some serious damage before anyone noticed they were there.”

  “That might have been the original plan, before the incursion kicked off,” Nora replied.

  “Do the Antithesis normally coordinate their attacks like that? Activate all their hives when there’s an incursion?” Amy asked cautiously.

  “It’s not unheard of for any hives already located in an incursion zone to go active, which makes the immediate situation worse, but that’s usually it. The hives outside the area typically stay passive for months, until a search team finally locates them and puts them down,” Nora explained.

  “They don’t normally activate on a global scale or land incursions on multiple cities at the same time. That’s new too,” I grumbled.

  Amy spun on her heel and looked at me in shock. “They’re doing what?”

  “Oh, right… Didn’t we mention that before? There are attacks happening all over the country, probably all over the globe. I know it probably sounds bad, but the samurai in the other cities are already on the case,” I said. “Just put it out of your head for now. We can’t really afford to worry about other places until we get the situation here under control.”

  The girl nodded hesitantly but still turned her attention back to the tunnels around us.

  About five minutes after our first encounter with the first Model Four-S, the tunnel went from a nice linear burrow to a complex spiderweb of dense, branching corridors. Although there weren’t many dead ends to impede our progress, the strange interlocking network was like a maze, turning in on itself multiple times and making it extremely difficult to tell if we were making progress towards the hive or not. We probably would have become hopelessly turned around if it weren’t for the navigation and GPS system in our augs.

  “We’re getting nowhere, fast,” I grumbled. “It wouldn’t be so bad if we had some clue in which direction the hive was located, but right now I feel like we’re just stumbling around in the dark.”

  “It would be easier if we were attacked by anything other than those annoying wall crawlers. Normally the hive would be pumping out a ton of Antithesis to try and defend itself. Where are they all?” Nora added.

  “I don’t know. Massing back at the hive? All I know is that as soon as the Antithesis tries something more complicated than chewing our faces off, we’re usually in for a bad time.” I stared at the three identical tunnels in front of us and sighed. “Anyone have an idea on how to proceed?”

  “Can’t your Fox find the way?” Amy asked.

  “Normally, yes. It can usually detect and track minute traces of antithesis pheromones in the air and track them back to the source, but these tunnels are completely flooded with them. All the corridors smell the same. I’m sure Bandit could do it; he’s got a more advanced sniffer, but unfortunately he’s still coordinating the quarantine around the incursion zone.”

  “Then could we follow the Model Fours somehow?”

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  I glanced back at the girl as I considered her suggestion. “Maybe… but I don’t know how. Their tunnels don’t follow the corridors, and since they emit an ECM signal as soon as they wrap their arms around something, it cuts off all signals to and from that thing. Even if we tricked them into taking a beacon or something, we’d never be able to track it.”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Bob chanted excitedly as he danced around with his arm in the air. “I have an idea.”

  Everyone turned to look at him and his massive grin. “Please enlighten us. What’s your amazing idea?” I muttered, unconvinced.

  “I’ll show you!” he declared, before taking off down one of the tunnels.

  He got about fifty feet up the tunnel when a familiar set of tendrils shot out of the wall, entangling him and slowly dragging him towards the wall.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I roared.

  “Helping! Although I didn’t expect these things to be so weak. Look at this, I didn’t even engage my anchor, and one of these things still can’t drag me properly. Pitiful,” the bear signed.

  “Bob, I swear, stop fucking around this instant…” I started before another set of vines shot out of the walls and wrapped up the oversized bear.

  “There we go!” Bob declared, a second before he disappeared into the walls.

  “Bob! What the fuck!” I shouted as I sprinted towards where Bob had been standing. Just like Deadbeat before him, Bob was gone.

  “Please tell me you can track that big idiot?” I hissed at the fox.

  It just shrugged and pointed at a section of the wall.

  “They’re going that way, past the wall,” I translated. “Fuck! We need to find a way over there.”

  “One of the other branches seemed to head in that direction,” Amy said. “We’d have to backtrack a little to get to it…”

  “Then that’s what we’re going to do. I don’t know what the big idiot was thinking, but I’m not losing him like I lost Deadbeat. I only hope those fucking vine monsters are taking him directly towards the hive, so we have some idea of which direction to go,” I growled. “I’m going to murder that bear when he gets back.”

  “Aren’t you worried they’ll dissect him or something before we get there?” Amy asked.

  “It would take a seriously strong antithesis to even scratch that bear. He’ll be fine. I just wish I knew what that moron was thinking,” I grumbled.

  “I hate to interrupt, but we really should get moving. If we wait too long, we’ll lose any trace of Bob and his kidnappers,” Nora announced.

  “Right, let’s get moving,” I grunted.

  The other branch did send us in the right direction and allowed us to track the vibrations from the Fours as they dragged their heavy prisoner away for a while, but at some point the tunnel diverged from the underground burrows. It didn’t take us long to find another branch, but by the time we did, the Model Fours were too far away to track.

  “Now what?” Nora asked.

  “We keep moving towards the…” I checked my augs for a bearing, “East, and hope those stupid plants didn’t take a turn somewhere. It looks like the Fours have been traveling fairly straight, but there’s no way to know for…”

  [Stage one complete boss!] Bob’s voice suddenly announced across my command network. [About to start stage two. Hold still.]

  [Bob! What the hell are you talking about? Stage two?] I barked, but the bear didn’t answer. Instead, the tunnels started rumbling ominously.

  “What the fuck is that?” Amy asked nervously.

  “I think I have a pretty good guess,” I hissed.

  The pair glanced at me just as something smashed into the wall next to us, fracturing it. I jumped back just a second before Bob came crashing through, covered in dirt and looking quite proud of himself.

  “Mission accomplished!”

  “Was your idea really to get kidnapped, then smash your way back towards us?” I asked tiredly.

  “Well… It was to radio you and let you know where the hive was, but then I realized it would be faster to follow the command signal back and report in person,” Bob replied, quite pleased with himself.

  “Did it ever occur to you that the tunnels might collapse and bury us all in a hundred tons of dirt and stone?” Nora snapped.

  The bear cocked his head to the side. “No?”

  “How did you get out of the Model Four’s grasp?” Amy asked.

  “Those lightweights?” Bob grinned. “They weren’t anything to worry about. All I had to do was flex a little, and I snapped all their vines right off!”

  “Please tell me you at least found the hive,” I groaned as I reached up to rub my suddenly throbbing head.

  “I did! I even found the other hostages!” Bob declared.

  “And…?” I prompted.

  “They’re hanging right over the digestion pool!”

  “Go back and make sure those critters don’t drop them in the pool!” I groaned. “The last thing we need right now is Deadbeat or that Samurai dying two minutes before we get to them.”

  “Okie dokie!” he declared, before sprinting back through the hole he’d created.

  As the three of us watched him disappear into the darkness, I sighed. “It’s really hard to believe that he’s one of my best and brightest sometimes.”

  and gain access to my full backlog for all stories!

  Here's the link:

  server!

  Here's the link:

  Check out my Stories:

  Big thanks to all those people that review my draft, the chapters would be a lot rougher without your feedback!