"I wonder what Iris and the others are up to right now?" Sapphire mused as she leaned back in her seat.
"Who knows." I shrugged, my claws scraping rhythmically against Alpha's head as I rested my back against her side while she lay behind me. "We could always call them if you're curious."
I was currently sitting with various electrical cords strapped to my body, my Warp Conversion gift working to convert the energy flowing into me into warped ether. I was saving up to finish upgrading the last of my gifts, although converting that much was taking quite a while. Not that I didn't have a bit of time to burn, but you get my point. Sapphire was doing the same thing across from me, although she had been a bit nervous about this whole thing when I suggested it to her, not that I could really blame her.
Just then, however, a familiar voice spoke through the hivemind. <
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I sat up straighter and asked back, <
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"Well, seems a certain bitch has become aware of our presence," I sighed outwardly once the link was cut.
Alpha let out a low growl as she felt the atmosphere around me shift slightly. "It's all right, I'm fine," I mused soothingly, noticing her glaring around for any potential threats.
"Anything I should be worried about?" Sapphire asked, pulling my attention back to her.
"It seems that Sofia Lamb has sent some of her brainwashed pets to investigate our activities," I explained in annoyance.
"C-can you free them? I mean, you said that the hive-mind thing you have might be able to help them, right?" Her question made me pause and think for a second.
"Maybe..." I thought that over while looking back on the events of the last few days. A lot has happened recently, and now this.
It had been about two or three weeks since we took over the building we first entered, and a lot had happened since. For one, we had massively expanded our sphere of influence, taking over dozens of structures along the edge of Rapture, something that had clearly been noticed by the rest of the wider city. Of course, at this point I didn't care even if everyone suddenly found out, mainly because our foothold was large enough now that forcing us out would be nearly impossible. Not that I planned on actually revealing ourselves for as long as possible, but still.
Jonas, Roseanne, and the reacher teams had been having a blast during this time as well, with even some of Sapphire's Kenaras joining in the "fun," so to speak. Simply put, once a building is fully secured, I send in engineers and more soldiers to not only lock down the place but also strip it bare. Any plasmids found lying around or within Gatherer's Gardens are immediately transferred to the research teams for testing and analysis. Add in the fact that Sapphire and her people actually managed to find several live Adam slugs a while back and, well, Jonas was in a frenzy, to put it mildly.
We had also made progress in our side quests, mainly with the discovery of the songbird who was finally found a bit ago by ???. Unfortunately, it was far from our current location; as such, it would probably take some time before we could reach it. While we had made significant progress in most of them, the quest called "Get Back Here!" was proving difficult, as actually finding the damn teleporting plasmid was a pain in the ass, not that this really surprised anyone, but still.
"The thing is, we would need to capture one alive first." That was true; I couldn't indoctrinate them while they were jumping around and tearing shit up after all.
"A-and that... that would be difficult..." she mused, realization dawning on her.
"Right." I nodded, crossing my arms. "These girls won't just lay down and surrender the moment we surround them; they will fight to the death if they realise we're trying to capture them."
"Do you think it's p-possible to capture them? N-now that we've managed to get such a tight grip on the area we have influence over?" She asked with a thoughtful look. I couldn't blame her for wanting to save them, considering the fact that they weren't monsters but victims.
"Possibly. If we can find a way to knock them out or weaken them, it might be achievable. I could also just order hundreds of xenomorphs to pile on top of them until they can't move anymore." I said the last part half-jokingly.
"Y-you know, I'm honestly still finding it a little hard to p-process, you being the mother of thousands and all. And with those new three also making eggs as well..." she admitted, causing me to cough awkwardly.
"Don't... don't even get me started on that."
Ah right, there was also that. You see, I was a grandma now, apparently. It was a fact that would have made me feel uncomfortable months ago, but now I was just numb to it. And yes, I know you're going to say that I was technically a grandma the moment Navara's first ovomorphs were born, but what I mean is that the three royal facehuggers have successfully reached maturity. And thanks to the pathogen, well, they weren't like any queen that had come before them.
Nekcar was actually the first to emerge from her host and was by far the most aggressive of the three, a trait her offspring seemed to have inherited. The pathogen had definitely had an effect; the mutagenic properties of the gas had altered her physiology in multiple ways. She was far bigger than your average queen, standing about eleven to twelve metres tall and over double that in length. Her exoskeleton was thicker in places and had a more jagged appearance. Most notably, her head crest was far more rigid and looked as if several serrated horns had been entangled with one another, almost like a mangled crown.
Her brood, while by far the largest of the three, was also made up of the more normal variety of xenomorphs I was used to seeing. Despite this, they were insanely aggressive; in fact, I had to physically wrangle them in to stop them from overextending themselves with how rapidly they were expanding. I was genuinely nervous that they would reveal too much of our presence to the larger community of Rapture before we were ready. Thankfully, however, Nekcar and her offspring still listened to me when I gave them instructions, even if they could be incredibly headstrong and violent at times.
Nevu was the second to have emerged, and the changes that afflicted her were more subtle in most cases. Actually, the most surprising difference between her and her two siblings was her height: she was only slightly taller than your average queen, about six metres give or take. Her body was also far slimmer overall, built more for speed and manoeuvrability than for direct physical combat. Her exoskeleton itself was smoother, far more streamlined and angular in specific places.
Despite her smaller stature compared to her siblings, she made up for being the smallest with two main things. Firstly, she was incredibly tactical and cautious compared to Nekcar, allowing her to slowly build up her numbers without losing dozens of her offspring in suicidal charges. The second reason was her brood, which was the strongest of the three despite actually being the smallest. Her swarm had the largest number of Adam-infused xenomorphs of them all, something that gave her an edge.
In fact, some of her brood had even developed plasmid-like abilities, which honestly surprised me; up until this point, xenos born of splicers only came out with incredibly enhanced regeneration. As for what kind of abilities they had, some could generate and control flames or a white fog that froze targets; there were even some that had gained the power to spawn swarms of flying insects from their bodies.
Anyway, lastly we have Nerash, and she was the one that had initially concerned me the most. This was mainly because the changes to her physiology were so... well, dramatic. Mentally she was the smartest of my descendants so far, even outclassing Alpha and Navara, the most inquisitive of my children up until this point.
Despite this, it was the physical part of her mutation that had really caught my attention. For one, she had three tails, yes, three of them, each ending in jagged, hooked like blades. She was also larger, around nine to ten metres tall and by far the longest of the three. The spines along her back had become both more numerous and more grim-looking, to say the least. Additionally, her head crest, mouth and inner jaw had also changed far from the norm: her head crest had become far larger with sharpened ridges, her maw was now wider with three rows of teeth, and her inner jaw was longer and far more serpentine like in appearance.
The most eye-catching change about her, though, was that unlike normal queens that look more like an alien version of a trex, she was different in that aspect. She walked permanently on all fours, her primary set of arms thickening and elongating to allow for this change in mobility. Her smaller set of arms, which I honestly sometimes forget I have, had also grown slightly and become far more flexible, allowing them to be used to interact with the environment more efficiently.
Her brood was... well, different, to say the least. She had apparently taken up residence in some of the structures that had been heavily flooded, something she used in order to gain access to the outside. Simply put, while she did have the normal assortment of drones and warriors, she had also been capturing large numbers of deep-sea creatures to use as hosts. How exactly? Well, when I said she was the smartest of the three, I wasn't kidding. It hadn't taken her long to figure out how the structure's airlock system worked; she had even instructed her children on how to get in and out of the building without flooding the whole thing. So yeah, we had xenomorph sharks now, and from the way things were going with her I wouldn't be surprised if she managed to infest a colossal squid, or even a whale at some point down the road.
"Anyway, it's probably best if we have a meeting about this with the others," I said after several long seconds of thought. "We should talk it out with everyone instead of just the two of us."
"Y-yeah, you're probably right," she mused, nodding in agreement.
(I have a feeling things are only going to get more interesting from here.) I thought with a sigh, before turning my attention back to the process of converting energy into warped ether.
(((A/N. Sorry for any mistakes, i was up all night with pain in my throat while finishing this, so there might be a few, I don't know.)))