Although I’d seen images I didn’t realize exactly how uniform, and fusing, the tunnel work actually was. Even with Bandit leading the way towards the hollow, I decided early on to keep a small copy of the map up in my augs at all times to prevent me from getting lost.

  After about an hour of walking I realized that Jesse had been particurly quiet. “Are you doing alright back there?” I asked.

  “I’m fine…” he grunted. “I’m feeling a little custrophobic, but I ha.” I saw him g me through his ically rge infrared goggles. “How far is this first chamber anyways?”

  “Not much further,” I replied as I referred to the map. “Maybe ten more mihen we’ll take a quick break ahe foxes see if they find any traces.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  We fell bato a fortable silence, and quickly advaowards our destination. It didn’t take long for the tuo open up into a massive hollow space. The cavern was much more impressive in person than it had been on camera. This particur one had to be close to twenty feet high, and a hundred feet across. There were numerous pits and crevices in the floor, which probably had root systems running through them at oime, but now just made the ter of the area treacherous to travel through.

  “Seems strange for the antithesis to dig out a chamber like this,” Jesse said as he wandered over to check out one of the rger fissures.

  “My squirrel wandered into one absolutely full of some sort of root they were using as a food source, before it got destroyed. I assume these other hollows were used for a simir reason,” I told him as I slowly meandered around the perimeter.

  “They do that?” Jessie asked.

  “Not normally, no. This group seems to be making a lot of unorthodox, aively smart, moves,” I replied.

  While we were talking, Bandit and the other fox were crawling all over the rubble, looking for any trace of the antithesis. The pair stuck their heads in gaps, grabbed random rocks, and performed other random things that I could only assume was helping them search.

  They’d barely started searg when I felt a familiar pull in my brain. Bandit was staring off into one er of the area, at peared to be empty space. I immediately raised my rifle, and ordered the bears into a fighting formation.

  “On your feet Jesse, I think we have pany,” I said quietly.

  “What? Where?” the big man asked as he grabbed his rifle. To his credit he seemed calm and collected. He just slowly ran his gaze around the perimeter, appraising the situation.

  “Far er. I don’t see it either, but Bandit, my fox, does.” Jessie immediately focused on that area, still sing. Nothing moved, which meaher Bandit made a mistake, or the thing was just watg us. I didn’t like either of those options. “Bob, go introduce yourself,” I said to the big bear.

  “Got it boss!” he replied. I noticed Jesse g the big bear as he passed.

  Bob casually walked towards the far side and, following Bandit’s dires, wound up and pu a part of the wall. Seds before his ponderous blow nded, a se of wall blurred, and slipped away. The glitchy, liviure avoided the punch, but was still caught by the huge wave of debris that exploded out when Bob’s pile driver activated aroyed the wall.

  “Fuck me!” Jesse procimed, “What the fuck is that?”

  “A Model ealth model. Shoot it!” I cried. As I took aim the model ruggled to stand, spasmed, then fell limp. I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t going to take any ces, and a momehe space was filled with guhe Nine’s body jerked from the weight of gunfire. My heavier rounds blew ks out of it, while the bears and Jesse filled it with holes. In a matter of seds, it was unreizable.

  Ohe firing stopped Bandit immediately spriowards one of the far tunnels, the other fox only a few steps behind. The pair stopped just ihe entrance, exging a gnce, and taking up defensive positions.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Jessie asked, fog on the opening. “More hostiles?”

  “I don’t think so… Gimme a sed,” I replied.

  While Bob stepped on the Nine, just to really make sure it was dead, I sent a quick query to Bandit. The little camoufge wearing fox looked dowuhen back at me, before sending me a few images as a reply.

  The first image was the Nine, as it attempted to disengage, nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I could tell. The sed image showed the the moment of its spasm, where there was something clearly emerging from its back. Finally, the st image showed peared to be a model seven flying away, dowunnel Bandit and his buddy were defending.

  “What the fuck is this? A flying Model Seven?” I asked quietly. I could see Jesse’s puzzled face, so I shot him a copy of the file.

  “It’s not flying, it’s beiracted.” Nyx said taking trol of Spooky. “That’s a trol worm”

  I stared at the bear for a sed. “I have no idea what that means,” I admitted.

  Nyx wandered closer, so they could address both Jesse and I. “As you know most early antithesis models operate almost entirely on instinct, they’re not smart enough to use tactics. That being said, the swarm has developed ways to keep these early models in line. Among these anders, the smartest is the Model Sevehey don’t just direct the other models, but assume direct trol.”

  “Using the worms?” Jesse asked. “That doesn’t make much sehe worms struggle to even move the host post zombification, never mind carrying out plex orders or tactics.”

  “Normally you’d be correct,” Nyx said. “However the trol worm isn’t a separate entity, it’s ected directly to the Seventeen. Check out that st image again, the worm isn’t flying, it’s being pulled by a thin fiment.”

  I pulled up the image again, and tried to focus on the fleeing worm. It did appear to be attached to a line, but one so thin I would have dismissed it as a spiderweb at first gnce.

  “So the Seventeen is literally ected to all its troops at once?” I asked.

  “Correct. That makes it an exceptional ambush predator, but this level of trol does have its downsides.” Nyx decred, putting its paws behind its back.

  “The string…” Jesse said as he caught on. “If we had known about it, and mao follow it back, we could have elimihe tral body. That’s why it retracted the worm.”

  “The Seventeen is also able to sever the e from its side, in the case of emergencies. It must have had further use for the worm,” Nyx expined.

  “Wonderful,” I mumbled. “How many units a Seventeen trol?”

  “If they just wao direct the lower models in a dire, as a horde, they could handle fifty at once. For fine trol, they’d hit their limit around thirty five.”

  “Are Seventeens smart enough to pa Jasper, then force a horde to retreat?” Jesse asked.

  “They are, although I’m unsure what they would be after, besides biomass” Nyx admitted.

  “There would have had to have been hundreds of these things to trol a raid that rge,” I said, rubbing my head. “Are they really that on?”

  “No, in fact they’re usually specialist units, and hives o be directed to create them,” Nyx replied.

  Jessie gnced my way. “I don’t like where this is going,” he said.

  “Me either,” I replied. “I better report this to the others. I’m guessing the group in Jasper already has their suspis, but I’ll let them know too.” Just before I started reying the information, a thought popped into my head. “Hey Nyx, do we need special prote against the trol worms, or will the pills be enough?”

  “Seventeens prefer to trol other antithesis, but if they do attempt to directly trol a human the Model Seven pills will be just as effective as they are against the base Model Sevens,” Nyx said.

  “Great, at least that’s something,” I mumbled. “Do you have access to something that get rid of that corpse?” I asked Jesse. The big man shook his head, so I just turo Nyx, “Give him a flesh melter, I o make some calls.”

  As Jesse and Nyx wandered away to deal with the corpse, I started to remotely ee bears. I didn’t think we’d have to update everyone so soon after entering the tunnels, but I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the st time.