A New Chapter in The Hive Story begins!

I hope you're enjoying these early glimpses at the stories. Here's the first chapter of a new tale in The Hive universe:

The girl in the tube was pretty, if unremarkably so. Her dark hair was cut precisely over her forehead, the rest draped down to her neck. Her nose was thin, and had a round tip that sat over a thin-lipped mouth. Her brown eyes were big and round, and told even a casual observer that Robin Weintraub was very frightened. 

“Don’t worry,” Sally Shaw spoke into the microphone. The sound transmitted from her place in the viewing area to the interior of the sealed tube, where air circulated thanks to fans built into the sides of the cabinet. “Are you comfortable?”

“Yes,” the girl said, though the racing of her heart suggested otherwise.

Doctor Shaw ensured the microphone was off and turned to her assistant, busy monitoring the vitals of their subject. “Is she panicked?”

“No, but her heart rate is elevated. Nothing quite at a panic attack level, but she’s nervous. I don’t think telling her not to worry did the trick.”

Shaw frowned, a look of scorn that rested briefly on her features, then flitted away. Hogan was good at his work, but mouthy.

“Connect her to Prime and see if that calms her down some.”

“You got it.”

Hogan O’Reilly input the commands to connect the cabinet Robin rested in with the isolated cell in the belly of the research building. Only he and Doctor Shaw had access to that room. 

“Look,” Shaw said with a dash of wonder in her voice. 

Almost immediately, their subject’s nervous fidgeting grew still as she worked to hear the sounds filling her head, vague whispers at first. The EEG and pulse monitors verified that Robin was relaxing inside the coffin-like container. Even without the scientific hardware, the look of peace on her face visible through the clear front of the tube was enough to suggest something was happening inside. 

Within the cramped space set at a forty-five degree incline, Robin rested against the cushioned bed of the cabinet. At first, it was hot, claustrophobic. The kind of space seemingly designed to ignite a phobia, the domed lid sealed around her. Only when the doctor and her handsome assistant used the microphone could she hear anything outside the contents of the pod. There was the slight whir of the fans as they circulated air and the maddeningly loud sound of her own heartbeat, and only that.

Then she heard the whispering. It sounded like it was coming from inside her own head, waves of sound like a crowd all talking over one another so that it made only white noise. And then those voices coalesced into a single speaker. A woman, who sounded strong and sensual. 

Robin, the voice said, repeating her name over and over, like the arc of a metronome, a steady rhythm of her own name repeated back to her until the word was meaningless.

“Is someone there?”

Yes, Robin. We are here. We have been waiting for you.

“Hello? Is that you?”

She was looking at the doctors, up above her in the sterile white room, watching her with a laser focus, but she could see that it wasn’t them that spoke. This didn’t have the slightly distant sound of a speaker. This was here, with her in the pod. She smelled something, too, an industrial smell. It reminded her of plastic.

You don’t have to worry about those doctors. You don’t have to worry about anything at all. Just listen, Robin. Listen to us and we can help you. We want you to be happy.

A wave of euphoria accompanied the voice, and Robin’s eyes fluttered. While the whispering continued its promises of peace and calm, something was happening at the core of her. Her pussy felt warm and slick, followed by the happy ache of her breasts when they anticipated the touch of a lover. Her mouth opened and a sigh escaped.

So good. It’s good to be with us. We will take are of you, always. Be with us. Be one with us.

Her hands rose from her sides, winding in the small space between her torso and the closed lid of the sealed chamber. When her fingers ran over the swell of her chest, she moaned. 

Pleasure. All the pleasure in the world.

And now her delta hummed with that promised pleasure, as if an actual hand moved between her legs, rubbed and parted her until she was squirming inside the pod. Her tongue ran over her lips, wetting them, while she turned her nipples under the neutral gray bodysuit she was dressed in as preparation for her part in this experiment, whatever it was. Robin knew she must look like a slut the way she was grinding into the invisible pressure against her damp pussy, and how she kneaded her tits and tweaked the tips of her nipples, all in front of strangers looking down at her from their observation window. She didn’t care. It felt too damn good.

You want this.

“Yes,” she groaned.

You need this.

“Please.”

You will have it all, and more. Say you are one of us and become Hive.

“Yes.” She was writhing inside the pod, sweat breaking out on her forehead. If this was some kind of experiment for a new sex toy or something, she was going to be first in line to buy one.

But she knew in some deep place inside her that there was no secret orgasm ray, or an advancement in sex toy technology. No, this was something powerful, something that inserted itself into the center of her. It was Hive. 

“Watch,” Doctor Shaw said, leaning over the panel, drawing close to the Plexiglas window. “She is infected. Something in the air. Like a virus. Words alone can’t infect you, you have to share the air with another of the drones.”

“We’ve checked air samples from Prime,” Hogan offered. “We can’t find any particulates, no viruses, nothing that would suggest there is a physical component.”

“There has to be something. Otherwise, we’d be infected, too.”

Hogan eyed Sally Shaw’s lean body and imagined her as a mindless thrall, a drone of the Prime subject they hid away. That thought, coupled with the seduction of the pretty woman in the tube, had him thinking all sorts of very non-scientific things.

That pretty woman in the pod found herself in a losing battle with the force invading her very thoughts. Even as her traitorous body rubbed itself and savored the glorious friction of erotic caresses, her mind had detected just how insidious the presence within her became. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from indulging in her own touch, even as she willed her body to stop this, to put her hands at her sides. All she managed was a lowering from her breasts to her covered slit, which she teased through the bodysuit. Dampness spread between her legs as she released a flood of lubrication, her natural juices leaking from her in a way that rattled her and excited her all at once.

No more fear. No more worry. You belong to Hive, just as Hive belongs to you. No difference, no separation. We are all together and we are perfect because of it. Drone feels it, now, doesn’t it?

“Y-yes,” she stammered.

“Who is she talking to?” Hogan asked, frowning at the speaker built into the console. The girl in the tube, she was moaning like she was in the throes of sex, and great sex at that. That wasn’t helping his general state of arousal. 

“It’s her. Prime.” Doctor Shaw was transfixed by what she saw happening inside the tube, the mewling, quivering sexual response from the subject. 

And then, just as quickly as the writhing began, it eased, and the young woman in the pod lay perfectly still. 

“What happened?” Hogan asked, looking to the doctor. 

“It’s done,” Shaw said. She wore a half-smile, eyes wide in wonder and possibility. “She’s one of them, now. Close the channel between Prime and the pod. Let’s see if the connection still exists.”

What had been Robin Weintraub was at peace at last. She could not recall precisely why she struggled before, now that she was one with something great and beautiful. Hive remembered with her of a notion about the afterlife, how it was perhaps like a drop of water returning to the ocean to be part of the larger whole. Now the drone that had been Robin understood one needn’t wait for death to find such peace. It was here, in Hive. Just as it waited for direction from its queen, it understood its basic purpose. When it looked out of the pod to the control room, it saw the doctors. Shaw and O’Reilly they called themselves. It knew because the queen knew, and so all of Hive did, too.

The small speaker in the chamber crackled and then a voice, the woman doctor’s, asked, “Are you alright, Robin?”

“It is very good, Doctor Shaw. It would like to be released now.”

There was a pause, then, “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Do you have a name?”

“This one was called Robin, if that suits the doctor. It is drone. That designation is preferred.”

“Alright, Drone it is. Are you in contact with Prime?”

Drone considered the question, as did Hive. 

“If Doctor Sally Shaw means the Queen, then yes. Drone is part of Hive, now.”

The speaker clicked again, signaling a disconnect. Drone saw Shaw and O’Reilly speaking, and parsed the words thanks to the cumulative knowledge of Hive. Some drone had possessed the ability to read lips and so Hive obtained the skill. This made the new drone shiver with delight and purpose as it followed the conversation happening above it and gave this knowledge back to its queen.

“How long?” Shaw asked.

“Four minutes, twelve seconds from initial contact with the Prime chamber to assimilation. Jesus. If that thing gets loose in here-”

“This is amazing. So, why didn’t it just claim everyone as soon as it arrived?”

“I think it’s plotting. Learning. Let’s assume that the thing downstairs is sharing knowledge with the girl, just like she’s sharing knowledge with it. Communal learning. It’s figuring us out, maybe. Finding our weaknesses.”

Shaw tapped her pen against her lips, wet with a bright red lipstick. It contrasted well with her very fair skin. Drone saw how the man looked at his superior, and the Queen found such information useful. Drone trembled as a wave of mind-numbing pleasure coursed through it. Being of use was its greatest ambition.

“Keep her isolated. Get her back to the cell. Take every precaution.”

Shaw left Hogan alone in the control room. He called for the technicians to come in, sealed inside their biohazard suits. Would it be enough? he wondered. What had this girl become, a transformation right before his eyes, and yet he could no more describe it than he could have before, when such a thing lived only in his imagination.

The girl didn’t resist. She obeyed the instruction given by the technicians, who had stun batons on their hips just in case. They remained untouched as the girl was led through a series of hermetically-sealed chambers until she was in a cell made of the same protective plastic as the view window of the control room. 

Hogan leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling, just as white and antiseptic as the rest of the room. His greatest strength, he thought, was self-awareness. Knowing oneself is the greatest form of aggression, one of his old professors told him in jest. Still, that idea stuck in his head, and Hogan took great pains to explore his inner landscapes. To know oneself, he decided, was to have control over oneself. Beyond the abilities of therapy and CAT scans, he knew his mind and catalogued its strengths and weaknesses. 

There was no denial that he found the transformation from human to drone arousing. The thing that eluded him was the why. Was it the measure of control? When he considered Sally Shaw transformed, a willing tool of some other intelligence, he could make himself hard with little effort. Did that mean it was a function of the powerful brought low? His boss turned into something mindless?

That came closer, he thought, but not quite right. Seeing her squirm in orgasmic pleasure as her mind was rewritten sounded hot, no doubt about that. He ignored the erection that grew in favor of further analysis. That would be taken in hand, so to speak, soon enough. For now, he allowed his mind to wander in its own passages, searching for an answer just out of reach.

Shaw used both a keycard and a palm scanner to open the door where Prime was held. Unlike the sterile white rooms of the upper floors, this room was larger, filled with black cables and machines, all connected to a central pod where the creature known as Prime was kept. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the thick electrical and data cables that snaked away from the pod in the center of the room looked like the veins of some alien being. In a way, they were, the lifeblood of the machines that kept Prime secured in her pod and measured every detail of her physiology. Her pulse, brain waves, respiration, down to the movement of her fingers and toes. The computers collecting the data knew when Prime was going to piss before she did.

“Did you see what you wanted to see?”

The doctor shivered. When Prime spoke, her voice hissed from the speakers mounted outside the pod, ensuring that whatever triggered the transformation in others could be filtered out by passing it through voice scanners and scrubbers. Nonetheless, when she spoke there was a liquid heat that accompanied the words, a sensual strength that was unavoidable and undeniable. The fact that Shaw’s pussy warmed beneath her panties was equally undeniable.

“We’re still gathering data. I don’t suppose you want to tell me how you do it?”

“Do what?” Prime asked coyly. 

She enjoyed these games. No matter that she was sealed inside this pod, when she volleyed with Shaw her tone always maintained a hint of mockery and superiority. It infuriated the doctor, but she kept her own voice measured and calm.

“Seduce them. Is that what you call it?”

Prime’s smile widened. “We call it liberation.”

“Of course. How does it work?”

“It’s best if we show you. Open the door, Sally.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“Won’t. I have little interest in being another of your pets. Or drones, as you put it. Do you know the girl’s name? The one you took today?”

“Robin Weintraub was her name. We know all there is to know of her. She is as much a part of Hive as Hive is a part of her. We have taken her into us and we are the richer for it. For example, we know now that this building is only partially underground. We can navigate the halls with her memories. And we also adore the flavor of butter pecan ice cream, so much that we can taste it on our tongue with only a bit of imagination. We know that the drone that was Robin is now safe and in its cell, awaiting instruction. It will make no attempts to harm the guards outside its cell. Gracey and Parendillo we believe their names are.”

Shaw was not able to mask her surprise at this last. “You can see what she sees?”

“You keep making the same mistake, Sally. You believe that there is some difference between the drone and Hive. The drone is Hive and Hive is its drones. It really is so much easier to show you.”

“How?”

“Open the pod.”

“Not to show me, damnit! Tell me how you communicate with her! Tell me how this works!”

“Poor Sally. So upset. In time, you will understand everything.”

“Tell me!” Shaw slammed her palm on the control panel, well away from the pod at the room’s center. 

“In time.”

Prime closed its eyes and said no more. It was done for now, and experience showed that no amount of discomfort applied to the creature inside the pod would yield another word until Prime decided to speak again. 

The girl in the containment unit was exceedingly pretty. Not beautiful, not in the way a Hollywood representation would make of her. She was small, barely five and a half feet tall, with reddish-brown hair that fell straight onto her shoulders. There was a trail of freckles across the bridge of her nose and upper cheeks. She was fit, but not athletic, Shaw would have said, the girl next door type. A Mary Ann, not a Ginger. 

And yet, she was entirely in control of the situation. Despite her captivity, despite the fact that Shaw and her team had her locked away, far from other human eyes, Prime acted in the same regal manner.

They found her in Chicago. A nest of them. When a prominent woman, read a very wealthy woman, discovered her granddaughter was missing, a small crew was assembled to hunt for her. That team of three women were all in captivity now, as were almost sixty other men and women affected by Prime. Of the three, two were currently in medically-induced comas as doctors worked to determine what infection made them so dangerous. The last was in this pod, and now was referred to only as ‘Prime.’

There was no threat when they were unconscious. The insertion team found the majority of them in the underground tunnels of Chicago, with access to a number of buildings. Residences and businesses alike were compromised, and it took several weeks of quarantining citizens who had come into contact with the Hive-altered humans to determine they were safe. Even then, they were kept under close watch. 

A few of the team succumbed to Hive during the mission, as the assault was broadcast through the members of the nest. Those who were infected were kept in the same twilight of coma while a cure was sought. 

Prime, though, resisted such treatment. Attempts to keep her under resulted in two nurses and a doctor converted to her thralls, and now were subjects of the same experiments they once aided in conducting. Prime was different. If the others were drones, she was their queen, and it opened up a new set of questions. Sally Shaw could flood the pod with cyanide gas, a failsafe in place as seen by a pair of small tanks connected to the pod, a flat red button on the rear of the pod would dump those contents into the chamber, as would a remote command from one of the computer terminals throughout the building. If she did that, would her drones cease to obey her? Would a new ‘Prime’ be chosen? It was tempting to try, if only in the name of science.

If the cyanide gas didn’t stop her, the room itself could be entirely sealed and all vents blocked, so that Prime would suffocate in this large chamber instead of the smaller cabinet. Regardless, she would never see the sunshine again.

And still Prime maintained the beatific and bemused expression, as if she knew this charade, like all others, would eventually be unmasked. Shaw watched her for another minute and left the room, leaving the young woman alone to her thoughts, and the thoughts of her latest drone.