The Hive 6 - Chapter 5

This is it until the final release, so I hope you enjoy this last tease of The Hive 6: Dollhouse!

5.

Charlotte watched Harlen closely as he flitted about his room. It was luxurious compared to the other personnel pods. There were thick blankets and plants and wet bar on a silver tray. It looked just like she thought it would – expensive. Charlotte didn’t enter the domes with an intent to land a rich husband, something that would have pleased her mother to no end, she had enlisted with the purest of motives. Until she met and worked alongside Dani Takaki, she fancied herself a very good scientist. Maybe not great, but very good. She had the prestigious degree and doctorate to prove it.

She believed her greatest asset was her ability to understand her place. Just as she was not the head of her class at said prestigious university, she was not in the lower end of the bell curve, either. She was, however, beautiful. Especially when compared to the other women in her class, she was practically a model. Sure, her curves were a little too pronounced to be an actual model, but among the other students in her field, she was perhaps the most beautiful. Certainly in the running. And that meant she had boys falling over themselves to help her.

When she applied for the dome project, Charlotte was sure to include a picture of herself that displayed her healthy bustline. That had no effect on her ability to perform her scientific duties, but one must use all of ones natural talents to succeed. Her selection was a surprise, but a welcome one. Until she was placed beside Dr. Takaki.

Dani was quiet, which came across as rude to many. Charlotte understood that her silence was a result of her brain working quickly. She was lost in a pool of her own mind, surfacing only to announce a conclusion she had reached or to issue an order to gather more data. And so Charlotte found herself in the role of assistant to one of the most inventive scientists she’d ever met.

Discovering that your assumptions about yourself are untrue is difficult. Made more so when it meant the imagined arc of your life was not to be. Charlotte would never be the scientist Dani was, but she could distinguish herself as a woman who was most desirable among the nerds of the world. When she saw the way Harlen looked at Dani, and Charlotte on occasion, she saw a way for her to become something more than an average scientist. She could be the scientist wife of the billionaire whose project she staffed.

“They won’t hurt her. Or it. Whatever it is. We get out, we seal the whole place and have some real trained experts come in and bag these things. Who knows what we might learn from them?”

“It’s a once in a generation opportunity,” Charlotte agreed. She kept close to his side, allowing Harlen to sue her as the sounding board for whatever crazy ideas might come to him. You just had to know who the winner was going to be and make sure you were standing behind them.

“Colby and Will, they’d destroy them if they could. We can’t let that happen.”

“Definitely not,” Charlotte agreed. She took a risk and ran her hand over Harlen’s chest. He didn’t seem to notice. He was working himself into a frenzy.

“So, we’ll take matters into our own hands. We’ll find one of these things ourselves, secure it, and then and only then we will open the doors to this place.”

Worry crept into Charlotte’s thoughts. Her plan seemed so good before, but what if she’d thrown her lot in with someone who had promptly flipped his lid?

“That sounds a little dangerous,” she offered, her hand pausing in its exploration of Harlen’s impressive pectorals. “Maybe we should wait here. I’m sure I can think of something we can do to pass the time.”

He was gone, moved far down the road from sex in his room with the busty Charlotte, and well on his way to a new vision of the future.

“Don’t worry,” he laughed in a way that made Charlotte’s worry becomes something closer to fear. “I have this.”

He opened a small safe set into the wall. Inside was a gun, a handgun with a clip and the bullets held neatly inside foam in the case. Harlen lifted the gun out of its hard-shelled container like it was Excalibur, and he had been appointed new ruler of the British Isles. He thumbed the bullets into the clip while he spoke, and Charlotte was now certain that the dialogue was meant for Harlen alone.

“You stay close, now. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

“It’s just us, we need more of the seal-“ Colby stopped dead. When the doors opened, she expected to see four pairs of eyes pointed at them, but it was only Will. He sat on top of the table they shared their meals at, turning away from the bank of monitors.

“He’s got a gun, now,” Will said, genuine amusement in his voice. “I really thought he was more of a coward. Last mistake I’ll ever make, I imagine.”

“What’s going on?” Kelly asked. Colby thought she had a pretty good idea.

“They all left,” Will said, accompanied by that same amused tone. “Got it in their heads that they had something better to do. I’ve been watching the cameras since. Merlin went in his room a while ago and hasn’t come out yet. He’s either compromised or hiding there. Considering how charged up he was to save Dani, I expect he’s in a little rubber bag just like she was. Harlen and Charlotte left together, and now she’s tagging along with him with no pants on like she’s straight off the cover of some science fiction book.”

“We’ll get them back here,” Colby stated.

“Welcome to try. I’d open the front door and leave if I didn’t have some stupid idea about trying to keep these whatever-they-are from infecting anyone else.”

Colby placed herself between Will and the monitors. She hadn’t counted on him being the one to go soft on her. Kelly was showing some steel while this poor, optimistic fool was on the verge of sobbing. Worse, she suspected he was on the verge of martyrdom.

“We need to get on the move. The ag dome is sealed up. It’s safe. We do the same for the other two, seal those things in the access tunnels, and we walk out the front door. But first we have to save these idiots from themselves. Ready to go?”

Will was sweating, his face glistening, but awareness was stealing back into his eyes. He looked present again. “Yeah. Yeah, we should get moving.”

Colby threw a look at Kelly and Kelly understood. She slipped an arm around Will for support and guidance. His moved under him, and he wasn’t babbling anymore, but the fissures in his mind would take some time to heal.

No one was watching the monitors and so no one was there to see the encounter long before it happened. Harlen moved down the corridor toward the now-empty command room. The gun was held pointed at the ceiling, in a stance more accurate to an action movie than field experience.

Charlotte followed a half-step behind, frequently reaching out to tug at his clothes to slow him or stop him completely. Mostly she did it to remind herself there was someone here to protect her.

The danidrone moved fluidly from the overhead vent, its descent aided by the green tentacles that twisted around it like a new pair of arms. It landed gently on rubbery feet, the slippery appendages winding around it, waiting for a command from their host. It had only one directive now. Assimilate. The numbers were tilting in Hive’s favor. More of Hive than human soon. And their Queen would reward them all once Hive was complete. The Queen could feel the humans coming toward danidrone, and listened to their breathless words. danidrone listened with the rest of Hive until the Queen urged danidrone forward. It would meet them and it would claim one. Which made no difference. They would all be Hive in the end.

Harlen regretted leading the way. He was beginning to regret quite a lot of things when it came to his improvised plans. Once they’d left the relative safety of his quarters, he felt very exposed. For the first time in his life, Harlen felt like prey. His mouth was dry and sour, hand very heavy with the gun. He had to keep reminding himself of the lessons from his very expensive shooting instructors. Do not aim at a thing unless you have the intent to fire your weapon at it. If Colby or Will or Merlin came wandering into view, he was not sure that he wouldn’t aim and fire.

That worry was quickly dispelled. When he saw danidrone rounding the bend between he and Charlotte and the command room, Harlen had no interest at all in shooting the thing. Harlen wanted to run, and then he was running. The gun was still in his hand, heavy as his fist pumped while he ran, fleeing back to his room. He’d be safe there. He should never have come out.

He never looked back to see Charlotte, nor had his former companion made any sound at all since Harlen turned on his heel. She wanted to scream for a moment, but that faded fast. In one instant she was clinging to Harlen’s arm, in the next his arm, and the rest of him, was gone. Standing before her was something that had been human from the shape and size of it, but it was no longer.

Charlotte opened her mouth to scream for help, for Harlen to come back, but her scream was stolen by one of the green tendrils coming off of the thing. It was a thick tube, pulsing in her mouth. She grabbed it, pulled at it to come free, but the tentacle was too powerful. It wouldn’t budge. Another was wrapped around her waist and she felt the odd sensation of going weightless as the grip on her lifted her off the floor.

She writhed and twisted in its grasp while it coiled around her, stilling her with every jerking tug to free herself. The animal need to escape was being overridden by the hum in her body, beating in time with the tube in her mouth. It vibrated her from within, a sensation that reminded Charlotte of her first explorations into sexuality when she rode the lid of a washing machine. This was similar, only a million times more intense. She couldn’t remember what all the struggling had been about. It was so much nicer to feel that happy pulse flow through her and make her pussy quiver and leak.

Always looking for a home, danidrone spoke, words that needed no lips to form in her mind. It was like being suspended over a giant dark pool, Charlotte thought, and she could see others beneath the surface. Merlin and Chambers and Dani, and something else. Something so wonderful. She twisted once more, not with fear, but as her mind breached the surface of that dark pool and found a new cascade of thoughts rinse over her own. It was a bit like seeing a sandcastle erode as the tide comes in to reclaim it, Charlotte thought. The Hive agreed and ingested the comparison, made it their own. Charlotte would find no fear of acceptance here. She would never be average again. She would be exceptional in her subservience to the Queen who whispered into her brain.

Her limbs were glued to the side of the dome by more of danidrone’s juices, and the charlottedrone suckled at the mind-numbing goo provided by danidrone’s tendrils. The light faded as charlottedrone’s eyes were covered, and the Queen went about the task of making her perfect, inside and out.

Colby was tensed to strike. She felt the kinetic energy in muscles, her body shivering while she held her ready pose, waiting. All three heard the sound of the footfalls, ringing hollow on the metal walkways as they approached. It sounded like one person at least running full out. If it was one of the rubber things, Colby was going to take its jaw off.

It was Harlen. His face red, wet with sweat, eyes wide and red-rimmed.

“It got her!” he cried. He stopped a dozen feet away from the others, regarding Colby first, then Kelly and Will.

“Got who?” Kelly asked, but Harlen kept going, racing past such details.

“We have to get out of here! Fuck this place. And these people or whatever. We have to go!” he had a child’s single-minded intensity. Colby started for him, sure she was going to have to give him one across the mouth to wake him out of his panic. Before she made it to him, she saw a thin line of some viscous and dark-colored stuff stretch from above onto Harlen’s shoulder. She followed it up to the now-open grate where two slender black rubber arms extended like talons.

“Harlen, look out!” Colby cried, already in motion. She swung at the hands reaching for Harlen, who cowered away from the open vent above him. The assault on the hands found only air, and Colby spun with the force of her attack. She had to plant her foot to keep from turning a full one-eighty. She looked up into the vent, expecting the thing to be gone, but it wasn’t. It was staring back at her, it’s face was smooth and hooded. The darkness of it was overwhelming. Colby felt the suction of it, a call to emptiness that was nearly impossible to resist. Harder still when her fingers lit up in a fire of honey sensation. The same fingers that touched the goo before, now giving her no reason not to want more of it, to be swallowed by that feeling.

Kelly looked to Harlen for help, but he was scurrying down the hall, away from them and back toward the command room. She yelled after him, part entreaty and part accusation.

“Will!” She cried, looking behind her. The thing that had been Dani found its way behind them. Now, Will was locked in an embrace with the thing. His face was obscured, melting as it met hers. The green tendrils moved quickly o wrap him up in streams of rubber, most of his body now coated in the stuff.

Alone, Kelly let out another scream, this one primal and deepIt was rage and terror and hopelessness rolled tight into one sound, and that shook Colby from the reverie of the Queen above her long enough to regard Kelly. Thin, black fingers wrapped around her face while Colby looked at Kelly. The expression was plaintive apology.

“Run,” she said.

Kelly made for her, to steal her away from the monster in the vents above, but it was too late. In a blink, Colby was lifted off the ground, pulled into the vent where her long body disappeared with a clatter. Kelly stood in shock while she heard her loved carried away through the vent over her head and then was gone. All that remained was the wet sound of Will’s encasement.

With another scream of anger and frustration, Kelly chased after Harlen, hoping that she had a chance to kill him before the rubber things got him.