-12 hours before nuclear detonation-


    Hygieia’s twin zerglings obey my command instantly. That shouldn’t be possible. No way they can hear me through the gas mask… the seals are airtight, the material dense and thrice improve. Yet, they respond, as if my thoughts ripple through the damp, shadowed air like an unspoken whisper. A telepathic link?


    If that’s the case, then I’m a hive mind’s stepchild, somehow grafted onto an intelligence far older and more alien than I can comprehend.


    The stone walls glisten with my thoughts, bioluminescent fungi hangs from the ceiling, pooling in sickly green puddles. A faint chittering echoes from somewhere in the dark, a sound that could be water running through unseen crevices or some remnant of a fallen army shifting just beyond the edges of my vision. The zerglings crouch at my feet, their spined carapaces slick with cave damp. I study them, from enormous fangs to spines that would make a Lurker jealous.


    How did I get adopted into a hive mind? Did the orb do this? I know it split us into three beings but we were human! I wonder, giving the zerglings a suspicious glare. Not like they can see that with my sealed helmet.


    I decide to test it. Without moving a muscle, I think the command- hold out your paw. The nearest zergling obeys, lifting a clawed limb in an eerily dog-like manner. Even more unsettling, it lolls its tongue from between its daggered teeth, mimicking the dopey charm of a golden retriever.


    A laugh hitches in my throat, half amusement, half unease. Up close, their fangs, chitinous plating, and sinewy limbs are anything but comforting, but there’s something… endearing about them. Like some grotesque hairless puppy. They are starting to grow on me, cute even. Although, you probably would get into trouble if you took them to the local dog park. In the same way you’d get in trouble for taking a velociraptor to a children’s petting zoo and calling it a friendly turkey.


    I steel myself. “Do not harm me,” I command, keeping my voice steady, despite the crawling tension in my chest.


    They don’t react. No hiss, no sudden lunge, no sign that they even consider me prey. Then I swallow, pondering my next command.


    "Uh, good boys." I say, thinking only to be polite.


    In sync, both creatures begin to wag their tails, proof positive of their total allegiance.


    >Human Athena: They’re like dogs.


    Even as I type, I''m looking at ‘Human Athena’ and frowning, mentally changing it to fit our growing menagerie.


    >Terran Thena: :)


    >Matriarch Hygieia: cheeky bitch


    My nickname should set us apart, and I want to remind the other girls of our final goal, not just that I won our racial coin toss. We are here to build up, not bicker.


    Spread out. Search the bunker. I push the thought outward like a ripple through still water. I’m looking for powered armor, portable weapons, anything useful. The two creatures slink into the suffocating dark, their spined tails flashing like living whips barbed with bulbous stingers eerily reminiscent of a scorpion’s.


    They do not reply. For there is no need. I know they’ve understood. We’re linked, what they can see I am aware of. As if their senses are directly uploaded into my memory to access at my leisure.


    “Hive minds are something else,” I murmur, my voice swallowed by the bunker’s oppressive silence.


    Damp air tasting of rust and decay. Though this is only a hidden ammo cache, not truly a fortification worthy of installing air scrubbers, an eminent truth when the open mineshaft would prevent any real security. Who knows what mutants are hiding at the bottom of that vertical shaft.


    One creature peers over the edge, nudging a rock into the darkness. Two seconds pass before we hear the *plunk* of rock disturbing some fluid. I would guess water, but on an irradiated war-game world like this it could be nuclear coolant or pure hydrofluoric acid and I wouldn''t be surprised. Neither would the two creatures. I can see why we called them zerglings, they’re longer, lankier, probably nine feet long -if you count the tail stinger- and their spines rise above our chest.


    Wait, I’m the only human body left. My chest. The thought lingers, heavier than it should be, before I shove it aside. Focus.


    I frown, watching the not-zerglings prowl ahead feet barely making a sound against the concrete floor, their bodies flowing like liquid shadow. They are purely quadrupeds, possessing no back arms or hooves or facial horns, so the term is factually wrong. But calling them spinosaurus puppies, extra stingy edition, doesn’t have the same ring as zergling. It’s inaccurate, but a shorthand that tells all three of myselves exactly what we’re talking about.


    Total darkness falls as the sun sets on Syrak-9, yet they move with unwavering certainty, sniffing at crates, missile racks, the dirt-caked corners where time has settled like dust. Moving slowly, feet staying low to the ground, almost shuffling forward. Sensory perception enters my mind, we’re linked together, not really seeing through each other’s eyes, but conscious of information only they can see or sense. Somehow they’re able to detect miniscule movements through the earth, a sort of tremor sense.


    I paws to appreciate how absurdly awesome these boys are. Together we listen, half-seeing, half-hearing the artillery shells land near Juggernauts. One has been knocked out entirely, flipped upside down and blown to bits. Mommy needs whatever weapon did that! Leaving a GPS tag on that location ‘for later investigation’.


    Then the radio kicks on. Making me jump out of my skin. I jerk the trigger to the needle pistol holding it down for a half second and sending fifty rounds into the ceiling.


    One of the zerglings glanced back at me, as if to ask ‘what the hell?’.


    “Sorry.” I hiss, ducking behind some crates for cover.


    I don’t make it. A familiar voice halts me midstride. Unmistakable in the lonely darkness. Baz, the traitor, speaks in my com channel.


    “Brave soldiers of the most cherished Singularity, today marks the last day Technocracy heathens shall pollute this world! Thanks to our reinforcements from Earth we are advancing on every front, forward! To VICTORY!” Says our Field Marshal.


    I choke, dumbfounded.


    Bazzhole was drafted too.


    Except they made him a general, and not just any general, the Field marshal. The highest ranking military officer. What complete and total bullshit! Syrak-9 shouldn’t even have a Field Marshal! They command a billion soldiers, not a few thousand. Why promote him to a rank that shouldn’t exist? One frigate can carry a few thousand soldiers, even with multiple resupplies we can’t have more than ten thousand personnel on Syrak-9. A colonel should be our highest officer, why the hell do we have a Field Marshal?


    “What the hell! That’s like running a lemonade stand on Tuesday and getting appointed as Secretary of Commerce Wednesday! How?! Why?!”


    Distant impacts fade as the Juggernauts split up, six head back, wounded or empty. Repulsed by advancing Singularity forces, great news for them. Potentially fatal for me. At least one Juggernaut is heading for us. My heart thunders, but even that is picked up by the zerglings marking it as unique amongst our four heartbeats.


    Four?


    There are only three of us.


    “Find the fourth!” I hiss, coiling my body around the flechette ‘pistol’. Calling this porker a pistol is something only a cyborg could do. While it has a smooth rear plate for unarmored humans to use, the thing is an awkward brick, meant to be carried and used one handed by power-armor encased engineers as a weapon of last resort. Like a P90 SMG that’s made of stainless steel and twenty pounds heavier.


    They really should have upgraded it with space age materials-


    I freeze, feeling like an idiot. How could I forget my new powers! [-10 energy] spams within my skull three times, hitting the maximium ''improvement'' for this particular item. Less than the helmet accepted. The first spell seemed to eject gunk from the barrel cleaning the well used internals, while the second bathed it''s internal mechanisms in yellow light, lengthening the pistol by three inches and making it a pound lighter. Power swirled through steel, magnets, capacitors, and rails, augmenting them in a sort of post-manufacturing impossibility.


    The SMG trembled now a weapon of lethal efficiency. The final modification a harmonized induction loop, amplifying the velocity of each round by capturing formerly wasted energy. With each burst, the weapon would shred with storms of bladed needle-darts.


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Still worthless against a tank.


    We don’t have time to search. Nor do we have time to run. Tremorsense paints a picture within my mind. The Juggernaut’s not alone. A support crew of four technicians are jogging across no man’s land to us, one is far heavier than the others. Boots carving ruts into the mud. I pray he’s carrying wrenches and not a heavy weapon…


    Except, what if he is carrying a rocket launcher? One tech is far easier to kill than the Juggernaut. My mind races, trying to decipher a battleplan. My micro-railgun can’t take out a Juggernaut, probably can’t even damage its sensors but technicians do not wear heavy armor. That is not their job and the Novan Technocracy does not waste resources making tools better at jobs they are not intended to perform. My flechettes won’t pierce armor, but twenty or so will certainly break through the transparent polymers used in their overhead visors, a style of helmet nearly identical to a Terran marine''s overhead fishbowl.


    Cool, twenty headshots. Difficult, but Sable''s done better with worse gear. I''ll need to lay an ambush with distractors and cover. No matter what, the fourth heartbeat has become essential. Be it a sleeping Novan soldier, or an imprisoned ally. Zerglings hunt the source, not needing light to find the beating heart. God, they would be a terrifying opponent to face. Able to hunt in pitch black.


    >Matriarch Hygieia: You okay?


    The chat message makes me jump, sending a burst of flechettes stapling through crates, striking several metallic reinforcements in a firework of sparks. One zergling looks at me, teeth barred, entirely unentertained by my game of peekaboo.


    “Sorry!” I snap, unsure why I''m apologizing to the spiky killer.


    >Terran Thena: Yeah, smart doglings. Like… creepy smart. Idk if we’d love golden retrievers if they could read our minds like these boys do.


    >Matriarch Hygieia: as if dogs arent already smarter than the terminally online


    >Matriarch Hygieia: they get to live the NEET life


    >Matriarch Hygieia: free food free rent and we literally fight over who gets to raise their babies


    >Matriarch Hygieia: dogs are already smarter


    They halt before an immense, quadruple-sized crate, sealed beneath something unnatural. Not quite plating, not quite a shell, it’s shrink-wrapped in metal, the foil clinging so tightly that its like an inverted marshmallow. Round studs maintaining the exterior dimensions like the rigid bones of a square ribcage.


    -Or a cage.


    An airtight cage.


    A warning pings in my Singularity helmet every soldier I’ve found here has been human. Earth conscripts, nothing exotic, and certainly no engineered bioweapons. Just flesh and blood. Something in my gut knots tight. I sprint forward, flechette pistol falling; shovel rising. One thrust rips into the vacuum sealing, unleashing a hiss as pressure equalizes.


    “Rip open the cage!”


    The zerglings lunge. Front paws carve through the reinforced bars like rotted wood. Steel rods shriek as they snap free, fragments ricocheting off the walls, one glancing past my leg before I can even react. My pulse spikes. Another strike and they’ll eviscerate the heart we came to save-


    “Stop! Don’t hurt what’s inside!”


    They obey, claws dripping with red ruin. I swallow, praying they haven''t ended the heartbeat. It''s weaker now, faint.


    Within the cage is a stack of human bodies. Some are white skinned turning blue around the orifices. Long dead. While others leak blood. Fresher… I tear into the pile, dragging bodies and severed limbs out, searching. Blood is everywhere, my shovel scrapes through the crimson pool, the metal catching on something sickly spongy. Clotted. Coagulated. At least a day old. Gasmask filters out any scents but Sable Yurten’s flash training was comprehensive, and I can infer the stench these corpses would exude from prior experiences. No wonder it was sealed.


    Shovel connects with a steel bar thicker than my thumb. At least an inch thick, yet it bends beneath the dogling’s attack. Crap, that much strength could damage power armor! Warriors is the right name for these zerglings. Their claws tore through inch thick steel on the first pass. A hand touches my throat, activating the helmet’s external speakers.


    “Hello, is anyone alive in there? Speak up or I’ll have to leave you behind. Juggernauts are incoming.”


    Zergling hackles rise, and for an instant I wonder if they can launch those back spines. Probably not… Suddenly I remember the swelling glands beneath the spines, they most certainly can. An improvement made by Hygieia or her apparent confidant, Mr Eugenic Hitler. Which gives me pause, not sure how I feel about having ‘Eugenic Hitler’ as my cheerleader. Or what the term means. Once upon a time the name might have evoked fear, overusage turned it generic and now is as terrifying as Baddy Mcbadface.


    Crunching comes from inside the cage, chasing away dictators with gory squelches. Movement through the bodies. Tremorsense from the zerglings has somehow integrated completely into my own cognition. Together we triangulate the source, finding a heartbeat moving inside the pile. Like a giant birthday cake with a stripper inside, except way, WAY, grosser and hopefully with a different kind of happy ending…


    Because right now, I could use a friend. Someone human -untainted- who could remind me I’m not alone in this madness. Someone to keep me sane.


    I see a helmeted head bob up and down so I lunge forward, fingers hook beneath steel, dragging them out of the heap. Head, arms, torso, pelvis and one leg come free. This body is stiff and totally cold. A zergling sniffs at the stump and before I realize what he intends, his jaw unhinges. Rows of teeth unfold and clamp onto exposed thigh, biting through skin, muscle and bone in a single chomp.


    “Cmon!” I snap.


    The zergling swallows, human femur snapping twice as the monster’s throat breaks down the meat. I nearly shit myself. The femur is a human’s largest and thickest bone, yet not-a-zergling snapped it twice. I knew these creatures were strong. I knew they weren’t ordinary. But watching one reduce a femur to splinters like it was a cheap dog biscuit?


    Ignorant to my thundering heart, the ling resumes his task, darting forward to drag another corpse out of the cage. Or tries to. The corpse snags on something, probably the shredded bars but the zergling keeps pulling like a dog toy. It all happens so quickly, one second Spot the zergling is pulling, the next he is covered in blood, chunks of flesh from the bisected body clinging to his chitinous hide. A display that makes his eyes sparkle and stinger wag. He looks at me, expecting dog treats or some nonsense.


    Bro…” I mutter, unable to say anything that won’t insult my protector.


    Silence is broken like a wishbone, the other creature dragging another body out and opening a hole in the pile of bodies. I blink. Dumbfounded at what I’m seeing. There is a girl, not a teen, a child. No way is she twelve years old. The little gremlin looks to be eight years old at most. More disturbingly, she’s nude. Thrice concerningly, she is sitting in a sort of craven pocket, as if someone blended all the corpses within reach of her. A manacle around her neck, two inches thick and three inches tall, totally encircling her spine while providing anchor points for a quartet of chains. Each of which is bolted to the cage’s floor.


    Her purple eyes stare into mine, piercing the green lenses of my nightvision. She inhales deeply. Gasping for air. Pupils dilate as lungs fill with oxygen, restarting her aerobic functions. How is she still alive? For christsake! The cage was sealed and stuffed full of bodies.


    “What’s your name?” I say, retrieving the discarded railgun before I understand what my body is doing.


    Sable is trying to regain control, to execute her orders, to execute this child. I freeze, keeping the gun pointed low. Then set it down.


    Sable’s training screams at me. Shrieking bloody murder about Technocracy experiments and traps. Any Singularity soldier would gun down this girl and erase the deed from memory in a heartbeat. But I am not the flashtraining. A false personality cannot command me. There is a chance that this girl is an Earthling. A kidnapped child caught up in a galaxy of war. I push the training aside, taking her warning under advisement. Obviously the child is dangerous, a cute summary of the Syrak-9''s moral compass. Cataclysmically wrong.


    “Whaths a name?” Asks the girl, lisping heavily.


    Her mouth moves strangely. I can’t place it but the sensation of ‘uncanny valley’ creeps up my spine. Something deeply unpleasant has been done to this child, if she even is a child. Or human. Maybe Sable is right. I should gun her down right here and now, then detonate the explosives within this bunker. As if reading my mind, she slumps, glancing at both the zerglings. Side to side eye movements, in total darkness. Her purple irises contain vertical pupils, and for a brief instant her eyes reflect green light from my nightvision. This isn’t a girl, it’s a mutant, or a Technomancy bioweapon.


    “A name is what we call people- uhm… What we call our friends.” I say, snapping her eyes back onto me. “Mine is Athena Finley.”


    One zergling edges closer, positioning itself between me and the approaching threat, its sinewy frame taut with vigilance. The spines along its back graze my chest, a subtle yet deliberate signal-they’re coming. The Technomancy engineers made it into the trenches without getting blown apart. Damn, was really hoping the artillery bombardment would solve that future heavy weapons problem. Guess they missed, or we’re out of smart munitions… If Field Marshal Bazzhole deployed them. We’ve got a few moments before the engineers reach us. Besides, there is no where to run outside. Not with an incoming Juggernaut and four techs. I’m trapped. All thoughts of setting up an ambush with a fellow soldier vanish. This child can’t hold a gun, nor would I allow it.


    My hand strokes the nearest zergling. Gloves running along a heavy skull, it paws the air with claws so disproportionate I envision a circus clown like Mickey mouse. Or a mole.


    Start digging! Dig a hole you and I can hide in. The zergling doesn’t hesitate, launching itself toward the rear chasm, striking the ground with violent fervor, excavating dirt faster than I can think. One glance at the slashing paws keeps me from getting in the way. Those things are cutting through rocks as if they are snowballs, aint no way I am going near those.


    The child blinks. Alien pupils narrow slightly, surprisingly they only appear half dilated in the total darkness. Well adapted to confinement. Or cages. Can this girl even see in daylight?


    “Are you my frien?” The girl asks.


    “Sure I am. Can you tell me your name?” I spot a crate of Singularity rations in the corner, and silently order the other zergling to grab a few. I’m not really hungry, but I know there is a ‘c-bar’ in each ration box. No way is it actually chocolate, but it sure tastes good. He reaches the boxes, discovering a pleasant surprise. I can use his senses to mark them for teleportation. A small nicety that is deeply appreciated, we’ll need food, and I don’t have time to neatly pack a backpack. Not when the Juggernaut is only minutes away.


    “I donfh ave a name.”


    There it is, the reason behind the lisp. Her jaw looks human, but is split vertically through the chin. Like an anaconda’s. Complete with extra teeth that are all slightly angled rearwards. If that weren’t enough, they’re sharp, like the zerglings. This is a baby bioweapon. Ha, that reminds me of a similarly purple and equally violent girl-


    “-Kerrigan.” I whisper, not meaning to say the curse aloud.


    Unfortunately for us both, the girl child hears me.


    “Ith at my name?” Asks Kerrigan.


    Uhhhh… My immediate thought is, what the hell? NO! Don’t name a child after a fictional mass murdering queen. But then I hear the sound of a Juggernaut volley. Twelve SCUD missiles rip through the air and three seconds later a deep rumble tells me they’ve landed. Missiles at close range mean enemies and allies are nearby. I don’t have much time. So again I make a snap decision and pray lady luck doesn’t bite me in the ass.


    “Yes, your name is Kerrigan, and you’re my friend. Now lets get you out of that cage…”