I stared blankly at the spot the Assimilator had just jumped from. Honestly, I probably should’ve seen that one coming. It’s not like it was going to politely wait around for me to kill it.

A wave of nausea washed over me, and it took all I had to stay standing. From the way I was feeling, I definitely had a concussion. I’d need extraction ASAP, to get back to the med bay at Camelot. I glanced over at the smoldering wreck of the Merlin. Well, I wasn’t getting out that way.

I strode towards the destroyed gunship anyway. There was the emergency medical kit in there that I could use to patch up some of the damage and, more importantly, I had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t quite done here. As I walked, I turned my coms on and radioed Adelaide, figuring Camille might have her hands full.

“Hey, thanks for the rescue. Is everything okay?”

She responded immediately, “No. Are you still combat capable? Your vital monitoring systems are malfunctioning.”

Oh boy. This was going to be fun.

“Yeah, I am,” I said, lying through my teeth, “What’s going on?” I picked up the pace a little, ignoring my pounding head. I was not looking forward to when the adrenaline wore off and I’d feel the full brunt of my injuries.

“The Assimilators broke through the southern flank a few minutes ago. Camille is holding them off with the drones, but she can’t keep them there alone, and the northern flank has their hands full.”

I frowned in confusion, “But what about the lure plan? Weren’t you supposed to… oh shit.”

I stared at the very broken gunship. Right. I started to jog towards it.

“Exactly. With the Merlin down, we have no way of getting the Matriarch out of Sterling,” she said, guilt seeping into her voice, “I am sorry, I saw your situation and panicked, I didn’t even think of the consequences –“

“Adelaide, you saved my ass. I’d be dead right now if you hadn’t helped,” I cut her off, “So don’t worry about it, and thanks.”

I reached the Merlin. It had come to a rest on its belly, and it made me want to cry to look at the poor thing. It was completely torn up, both wings snapped off like twigs, the paint scarred and tattered. Miraculously, the front windshield had stayed in one piece. I circled around the back, to the ramp that lead into its cargo hold.

“Hey, how big is the larva?” I asked. The ramp was shut tight, so I reached for my sword to cut it open. My hand closed on air, and I remembered that the goddamn Hive Lord had taken it for a dip.

Adelaide considered her answer, “Roughly a foot and half in diameter. Why?”

“Well someone’s gotta get it out of Dodge, right?” I replied.

I stowed my shield and popped the blade on my knuckle out, cutting a deep slit into the rear door. I shoved my metal-clad fingers into the opening and heaved, tearing the metal open. My shoulder was very upset at that move, but I mentally told it to shut the hell up. It told me to go fuck myself.

The emergency lights were on inside the Merlin, casting an eerie red glow over the cargo hold. In the center of it, held down by a metric fuckton of netting, was a perfectly spherical shape, more like a really big egg than a larva. It was pitch black with red veins that ran up and down its surface. It looked like it was sucking in all the light around it. I shivered. That thing was evil incarnate.

So I walked right past it, my boots echoing loudly on the metal floor. I wasn’t going to deal with the hellspawn until I patched myself up a bit. I didn’t bother getting out of the Paladin either, I just let the metal around my arms split, revealing my gloved hands underneath. I grabbed the medkit off the wall, and took out the medical foam shit, then applied it liberally to the gash in my shoulder and the other various wounds all over my body. It wouldn’t fix the Paladin’s damage, but it would allow me to fight without bleeding out.

At this point, my head felt a lot clearer, but that was probably just an illusion. So I gave a mental command to the Paladin, and the metal across my chest screeched open. I took out a short, squat, syringe with a bright red caution sign and terrifyingly long needle, and after a moment’s hesitation, stabbed myself in the chest with it and depressed the plunger. Immediately, a bright rush exploded in my brain. I gasped and dropped the empty needle, my mind erupting with activity again.

“Are you okay, Sam?” said Adelaide over the coms worriedly.

I grimaced, “Just peachy. Fuck me, stims are intense.”

“Stims? Why did you have to take stims?”

I pointedly avoided question, focusing on the rush going through my body. The stims would counteract the concussion temporarily, and mask a lot of the pain that I was feeling, but it wouldn’t last forever. I had maybe fifteen minutes before I was back in the land of excruciating pain. Now that my brain was functioning again, I realized that I did not have time to be loafing around like this.

The Paladin sealed up as I spun on my heel, facing the Matriarch larva. Even clear-headed, that thing was creepy as fuck. But that was the job. I tore the netting off of it and reached out to grab it. I stopped at the last second, hand hovering over the larva.

“Uh, is this okay to pick up?” I said gingerly over the coms.

I could almost hear Adelaide’s eyeroll, “Yes. Please stop wasting time.”

Everyone’s a goddamn critic. I picked up the egg-larva-thing and was surprised at how heavy it was. It felt like it was made of pure lead. But the Paladin made it light enough to haul around, thankfully. I cradled it under my left arm, making sure I was holding it securely (Camille would’ve never forgiven me if I dropped it) and ran out of the Merlin into the harsh daylight. I stopped and looked around for the Prime, half-sure that it was about to jump out at me. The only thing that met my eye was an empty stretch of bridge. Maybe it was still recovering? I wasn’t sure, but I really, really didn’t like not knowing where the thing was.

There was no time to waste looking for it, so I took off down the bridge, skimming lightly over with the anti-gravs on my feet and legs. The sound of explosions and bullets were filling the air, along with some faint screams. I accelerated even more.

“So, I’m guessing they don’t know we have the larva, or else I’d have Worms crawling out my asshole,” I said as I sped towards the east.

“Correct. However, I believe if you let one Assimilator see the Matriarch, the rest will follow. Scanners indicate that there is still a group of Assimilators gathered at the eastern bridgehead.”

“Alright, I’ll pay them a visit. Calculate the impact point and tell me where and when I have to be there. I’ll do the rest.”

“Okay, Sam,” Adelaide replied, and then she went silent.

I rapidly approached eastern bridgehead, and the figures of the Assimilators were getting clearer. The group was composed of just a single bisonhead and a scattering of gorilladillos. They were standing stock still, facing towards where the horde had come from, ignoring the battle to the west. A rearguard, maybe? Whatever they were, it was perfect for me. As I ran, I drew one of my SMGs off my hip with my right hand. My shoulder was blessedly numb from the foam, so I could use my arm more or less normally.

I was spitting distance away from the Worm when they noticed me. In typical creepy Worm fashion, they all turned simultaneously, identical growls erupting from their throat. In response, I raised my SMG and sprayed them with bullets, taking out a few of the smaller Assimilators. I debated briefly whether to just run past them, but I decided that it would be better to make sure they saw the Matriarch before I kept moving. So I dove straight into the group, weaving between them like they were traffic cones, spinning and firing my SMG wildly. The stims coursing through me had sharpened my focus, to the point where it looked like the Worms were moving through molasses.

It was the M2 that saw the larva first. I swear I could see the beast’s eyes widen, and it bellowed so loudly that I stumbled in shock. The other Assimilators I was fighting froze for a moment, then rushed me desperately, all semblance of strategy gone. I skated backwards away from them, picking off the front runners.

Camille spoke in my ear suddenly, “Did you do that?” She sounded bone weary. I couldn’t blame her: mental control really took it out of you.

I grunted questioningly in response, keeping the majority of my focus on the Worms in front of me.

Her words were slurred as she responded, “All the Assimilators just turned around… They’re heading back across the river.”

Well, that was good. At least some of the pressure was off Sterling. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a coordinate appear on my map, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere directly east of me. A timer appeared in the top right-hand corner of my HUD. Five minutes.

I switched my SMGs to semi-auto. I lay into the remaining Assimilators, the heavy caliber bullets tearing through their hardened tendrils like they weren’t there. Instead of killing the bisonhead, I just blew off its cloven feet. I wanted one of them to be able to see where I went. To my astonishment, it completely ignored the crippling wound and crawled towards me, dragging itself with its terrifying racoon hands, completely fixated on the object I was holding under my arm. I stood a fair way away from it, waiting for the horde to enter my sight. I didn’t have to wait long.

Out of the foaming water of the river tore hundreds of Assimilators at once. They exploded up the banks, water dripping from their bodies. They poured out one after another, an endless tide of writhing bodies, stampeding much faster than I’d ever seen them move before. Thousands of glowing, ruby red eyes were focused on a single point.

Me.

“Oh fuck,” I whispered.

I turned, ignited my rear thrusters and blasted eastward, heading towards the point on the map Adelaide had marked. The wind whistled over the exposed skin on my body from where the Hive Lords had torn open my Paladin. Even though my feet only touched the ground for a brief instant while I skated, every time they did I could hear the vibrations of the mindless horde tearing after me. I was going as fast as I could without utterly depleting my power reserves, and they were still gaining on me, inch by inch.

A hail of projectiles fired from ranged Assimilators hailed down around me. A spike glanced harmlessly off the shield attached to my back. My armor was strong enough that the spikes wouldn’t harm me, but enough of them might slow me down. I moved in evasive zig-zags, avoiding as many attacks as I could. A cacophony of screeching was playing out behind me, getting louder by the second.

“Camille, what the hell is going on!? They’re going fucking crazy here!” I yelled, dodging another volley of projectiles that’d been fired at me, while planting a bullet in the brain of a panther-spider that had managed to catch up to me.

“I don’t know! I’ve never seen behavior like this before!” Her panicked voice came back immediately,

It made no fucking sense. When I was in an all-out straight-line dash, I should’ve outstripped them easily. But they were nipping at my heels, forcing me to divert from my path several times, slowing me down by making suicidal dashes right at me, only to be cut down by a burst of gunfire from my SMG. I found myself becoming encircled, and had to use the remaining anti-matter rockets to a clear path through a particularly fast group of bisonheads. After that I didn’t even bother to fight back, I just weaved through the Worms to avoid being swarmed. I ducked under attacks and leapt over clumps of tightly gathered Assimilators. Ahead of me, I saw an opening, a gap through the relentless press of bodies. I launched desperately towards it, lowering my shoulder like a linebacker and knocking Worms flying like they were bowling pins. I finally broke free of them, into a wide stretch of open grassland. I took off, gaining some distance from the chasing aliens.

I was gasping for breath as I neared the impact zone. Even though I was assisted by the Paladin, I was flagging, my stamina depleting rapidly. Luckily, it seemed the same was happening to the Worms. I threw a quick glance over my shoulder and saw a couple collapsing outright, kneeling over from exhaustion. The others were still chasing, but were slowing down. I’d never seen Assimilators get tired before. They must’ve sacrificed something for the speed they had been showing. I put my head down and kept moving. My eyes wandered up to the timer and my breath froze in my chest.

I was off schedule.

But I wasn’t too early. The impact wouldn’t miss the Assimilators.

I was going too slowly. I wasn’t far enough from the horde. And that meant that I would be right in the impact zone. The exhaustion was wiped away immediately as I surged forward, speeding frantically eastward. The world around me was a blur and I focused entirely on my movement, making sure that each footfall, each burst from my thruster was perfectly timed.

The timer was ticking down to just seconds now. I pushed myself even harder. I couldn’t be there when it hit. I wouldn’t survive. I didn’t even give a damn about the Assimilators chasing me. They were nothing compared to what was coming. My eyes were fixed on the circle outline on my map. I was so close to the edge, so close –

My thoughts were cut off as I saw it coming from in front of me. At first, it looked like a bright spec in the middle of the daylight. But it grew in size, bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter, and then I could make out a trailing tail of red and green and white. Suddenly, there was a massive boom, like the sky was being torn apart. I watched in awe as it streaked toward me, a massive spear of metal launched from a satellite orbiting high above Earth, falling down like the fury of God onto the aliens below.

I dropped my SMG, and in the same motion tore the shield off my back.

The spear from the heavens flashed above me. I launched myself into a twisting jump, and brought my shield up towards the west, keeping the Matriarch larva and as much of my body as I could behind it. My left shoulder was braced up against the back of my shield, and I tucked my head down firmly.

I was still in midair when it hit, right into the center of the horde.

The light came first, painting everything pure white, like the sun had come to Earth. The heat followed shortly after as the air ignited from the sheer kinetic energy of the impact.

I felt the shockwave next. Inch by inch it crashed into me, pulverizing every bit of my body. My left pauldron shattered from the shield smashing against it, and the inertia dampeners were the only thing that saved me, preventing my body from being destroyed from the inside out. Even still, I felt the force toss me backwards like a bullet from a gun, dozens of feet through the air. I smashed into the dirt, bouncing across it like a stone over water, curled into a ball around the matriarch larva, the sound of the explosion washing over me.

I lay on my back in the aftermath, my consciousness fading in and out. Slowly, I came back to myself, the stims the only thing keeping me awake. I realized that I was gasping for breath; the air had been completely knocked out of my lungs. I had landed on my back, and eventually I managed to pull myself up to a sitting position. My breath caught in my throat as I surveyed the devastation.

The world in front of my eyes was a barren hellscape of fire. The torn bodies of Assimilators were strewn all around me, but it seemed like the vast majority of the horde was just gone, vaporized by the blast. I tried to a run a scan, but my Paladin’s HUD was a mess of static. I looked down at my chest plate, and saw that the paint that covered it had been completely scorched off. I checked the Matriarch Larva next, and was astonished to find it right as rain, without even a nick on its surface. I was trying to get in contact with Adelaide and Camille when I heard something scraping against the ground. I raised my head slowly, dreading what I would find.

A nightmarish sight entered my field of view. A massive shape, twenty feet long, burning with bright flames, limping forward slowly. Its mouth was bared in a lopsided snarl, and six red eyes glowed with unadulterated anger. A sword stuck out of its chest.

“Why the fuck won’t you just die!?” I screamed at the Prime hysterically, my voice echoing in the emptiness.

It just kept walking towards me, getting closer bit by bit. I felt like crying and laughing and falling down right there, but instead I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. I shook my head, relishing the pain that jolted me back to awareness. Just one more thing. Just one more thing and I could rest. I let the Matriarch Larva slide from my grasp onto the ground. It would have to wait for me.

I rose to my feet unsteadily, my legs quivering under me. I straightened out the arm holding my shield and gasped from the strain. The blast had done a number on it. But it still moved, and I would find a way to cope. Miraculously, my right shoulder hadn’t torn open again, so I let the shotgun on my wrist pop out.

The Prime was a hundred feet from me now. I studied it, trying to determine how to kill the damn thing in my current state. The more I stared, the more I realized just how badly damaged it was. It looked like it’d taken the blast on one side of its body only, because that side was nearly entirely destroyed. It only had one arm; the other was a torn away completely. One of its leg was basically just a molten stump that was somehow bearing its weight. As far as I could tell, the tail had been burnt away. And the best part was that it wasn’t regenerating, at least not visibly. It looked like the damage that it’d been dealt over the course of the day was finally catching up to it.

“I’m going to put you out of your misery,” I growled under my breath, ignoring the dull spikes of pain that were starting to erupt throughout my body.

I started to stagger towards the grounded monster. It was so concentrated on the Matriarch larva that it barely seemed to notice me. Only when I got within fifteen feet of it did it look directly at me. The Assimilator tried to screech but all that came out was a horrible, pathetic gurgle. I took a deep breath, readying myself, and I started to run directly at the Prime, my steps getting more and more steady the more I took. The anti-gravs on my legs flickered to life again, the blue glow contrasting with the orange light from the fires around me.

The Prime swung its arm at my approaching shape, but it was moving slowly, much slower than when I’d previously fought it. I fired my thrusters on full and launched myself upwards, passing over the claws of the Assimilator. My jump carried me high into the air, above the monster’s head, which turned upwards to bite at me but only caught air. I soared past the Prime’s outstretched jaws, then landed in a slide down the back of its neck while stretching out my right hand. The electromagnet in my palm activated, and the Prime screamed as the sword that had been lodged in its chest tore through its body. I caught it in a reverse grip, the blade pointed downwards. As I slid, the sword sliced opened the Prime’s back along its spine. There was a sharp tug as the blade hit the ganglion, cutting right through it. I rolled off the werewolf’s back onto the ground behind it and popped up to my feet, facing the Prime. The Assimilator had seized up from the loss of the vital organ, and was hunched over in agony.

Suddenly, I was hit with a massive wave of nausea, and I barely avoided passing out. The sharp taste of iron rose into my throat. I gasped as bright white needles of pain started to stab into me from everywhere at once. A searing fire burned from my heart and radiated out to my limbs, and it was like everything that I’d suffered today had hit me all at once. The stims had worn off.

I was still trying to fight off the aftereffects of the stims as the Hive Lord clambered upright. It moved slowly, like just fighting against gravity was almost too much for it to bear. The Assimilator turned its body around to face me. Through the pain, I held my shield up and my sword at the ready, my hands shaking like leaves.

The Prime attacked first, swinging its arm at me feebly. I batted the blow aside with my shield, nearly falling over as I did so. The Assimilator lost its balance and pitched forwards, hitting the dirt with a crash. As it lay on the ground, I took a long step towards the arm I’d just smacked away. I unhooked my shield from my wrist then drove it down into the back of the Prime’s hand with all my might, cutting straight through the tendrils and into the dirt, pinning the hand to the ground. I ignored the pained howls of the Worm and stomped on top of the shield for good measure, making sure the Assimilator wouldn’t be able to pull free. I lurched backwards from the effort and dropped to one hand and one knee. The Prime snapped its jaws at me, seizing the opportunity, but it was met by a pair of slugs from the shotgun on my right wrist. They tore the front of its snout straight off the Worm’s face, sending a spray of gore through the air, but my aim had been slightly off. I’d meant for the blast to destroy the ganglion in the Prime’s head.

I stood up again, leaning heavily on my sword. The Prime was prone on the ground and panting through the hole in its head that used to be a mouth, the breath coming out in wheezing gasps. I limped slowly towards it while its eyes tracked my every move. It was struggling, trying to get up, the tendrils in its body spasming, legs scrabbling slowly to find purchase before falling still from exhaustion. I hefted my sword, taking it in both hands. My eyes met the Prime’s, and they stared back at me unwaveringly.

I collapsed forward, driving the point of my sword deep into the Assimilator’s skull, spearing it directly through the ganglion. Like a marionette with its strings cut, the Prime fell limp.