When the sound returned, they both sighed in relief. The bees were starting to wiggle through the door, so Olivia returned to packing dirt against it. Squishing the few that got in, she turned and offered him one. Shrugging, he put one in the port.

(GENETIC MATERIAL ACQUIRED. ANALYZING. POSSIBLE EVOLUTION OPTIONS: WINGS-REQUIRES REDUCTION IN BODY MASS FOR FLIGHT, ULTRAVISION, ULTRAHEARING)

“I’m not interested in any of the things it offers me,” he said, turning to the last PMS device.

“Me either,” she said glancing at her PED.

“Ready for the next upgrade?” he asked, pausing before he opened the access panel.

“I guess,” she said, a little angrily. Sitting down next to him, he popped the access panels open and started swapping the same parts he had swapped on his own device, adding some and taking others away. She sat there, patiently, as he focused on making sure he didn’t break anything.

“How did you learn to work on them?” she asked, as he shut the panels.

“I worked at a job where we tried to reverse manufacture alien tech. With all the new races we’ve encountered over the past twenty years, they pay good money for people to do that.”

“So, if we didn’t head back to the human sector, we could settle down somewhere else and be just fine.”

He looked at her for a moment, wondering if she was serious about staying with him.

“Do you want kids?”

“I already said no, didn’t I?”

“Then why are you talking like you want to stay together when we leave here?”

She sat there thinking, as he moved over to the door, to look outside. The buzzing of the bees had receded and he was still thirsty.

The porcupine deer at the door was dead, stung to death by the bees as they swarmed. The ground was littered with dead bees. He shuddered to think about how many bees there must have been for there to be so many dead on the ground. Picking one up, he examined it. It had the same basic body shape as a bee, but each foot ended with a claw. Its mouth looked more vicious, and the stinger didn’t retract.

Flicking it back outside, he started to move the door. Bees that weren’t dead yet, but were definitely on the way out, started trying to fly and attack him. He easily brushed them aside. Stepping out, he stretched, and a swarm of arrows bounced off his body. They hurt when they hit, but none were able to actually stick.

“Dustin!” she exclaimed, scrambling out of the burrow, and experiencing her own hail of arrows.

He snarled and charged into the trees, not hesitating to grab and bite every hunter he could find. There were so many of them! He never knew they could fight in such groups before. Falling back, when they pulled out projectile guns, he jumped on his bike.

Olivia darted from the bushes where she had followed him on his killing spree, grabbing PMS devices from the dead hunters. She jumped on the other bike, and they flew off into the forest. He led the way, heading towards the vine tree that he remembered.

As they got close, he felt like facepalming. He had killed the tree by crashing a bike into it. Flying over the top of the dead tree, he spied the stick guy, wrapped in a cocoon, hanging from a branch high in a tree. Its arm was sticking out, and that was the only way he recognized it.

Flying on, he hoped to find something to distract the hunters he could hear behind them.

Suddenly, ahead of him, there was a huge chasm. Water poured in, as waterfalls, in multiple locations, and his bike decided to start sputtering. Reaching for the pouch at his seat, he found it empty. Could something have stolen them, or were they all used up? He wasn’t sure, but without them, he was going to crash a very long way down.

Steering downwards, he tried to turn the bike around. Rocks glistened far below, and caves peppered the cliffside. Looking up to see Olivia still following him, he had to make a decision. Ripping off several scales, he gritted his teeth in pain.

“Initiate wings with flight.”

(BODY MASS MUST BE REDUCED, CONTINUE?)

“Initiate!” he screamed as the engine finally died and he started to plummet.

(EVOLUTION INITIATED)

The world suddenly became a much larger place. He felt pain as wings erupted from his back. He wondered if he could change their look, and decided that could wait for a later time. Clinging to his scales, he flew up to meet her, and pointed to one of the caves. They managed to get to the edge of one, just as her bike began to sputter and die.

(EVOLUTION COMPLETE)

“Push it off the ledge, so the hunters think we fell with them!” he said.

She threw the bracers further into the cave and hurriedly pushed the bike into the abyss. Neither of them waited to see if the hunters were tricked or not, rushing to grab the bracers and flee further into the cave.

They hadn’t gone ten feet, before a tentacle wrapped around her ankle, tripping her and dragging her towards a worm hole. She dropped the bracers again, clawing at the tentacle, unable to get a grip well enough to bite anything.

Dustin flew to rescue her again, biting the tentacle, just as another grabbed him, crushing his wings. It immediately let him go, as it belonged to the same worm, he had just bit. They sat for a moment, catching their breath. Taking a piece of the tentacle, he shoved it into his port, and she followed suit. They kept glancing back towards the entrance to the cave, knowing that the Josagn were close.

(GENETIC MATERIAL ACQUIRED. ANALYZING. POSSIBLE EVOLUTION OPTIONS: DIRECTIONAL AWARENESS, ENHANCED HEARING, BRISTLES)

“I don’t want bristles, but give me the others.” He looked over at her, and she nodded in agreement.

(EVOLUTION INITIATED)

She picked up the bracers and he landed on the ground in front of her.

“I’ll test the ground to make sure it won’t collapse into a deeper tunnel.”

“How far do you intend on going?” she asked, quietly, glancing back towards the light.

The hunters were flying from cave to cave, searching for them.

(EVOLUTION COMPLETE)

“Far enough, come on.”