I didn’t shoot Hive scouts of the air or tear them apart with my bare hands on the battlefield, but I caused the death of more than my share, right here in a room designed to heal. And the real mind-fuck was every single one of them would probably thank me if they could.
Someone handed me a pair of surgical gloves and I slipped my hands into them as another placed the ion-blade on a waist-high tray to my left. Cutting was barbaric, beyond cruel, and the only way to remove the foreign objects the Hive implanted in our warriors, our women, our fucking children.
“All right, let’s get the damn thing out of him.”
“He’s stable.”
I nodded and reached for the ion-blade. Lifting the device to Myntar’s back, I cut him open slowly, layer by layer until the bones that lined his spinal column came into view. But I knew that wouldn’t be enough. I kept cutting away the bone until I saw what I hunted, the silver orb attached to his spinal cord, countless microscopic tendrils working their way through his nerves, working their way up and down his spinal cord, weaving themselves into his system. Taking him over.
We called the strange device their core processor, for any Hive, from the lowest scout to their fiercest soldier classes, ceased to function without it. Once removed, the minds of the individuals became their own, the constant buzzing chatter they suffered as part of the collective, silenced.
There was no easy way to remove it. Over the centuries we’d tried everything. Cutting. Tearing, Ripping it free. Melting the metal. It didn’t matter how gentle or unforgiving our method, the result was the same.
The man either lived or he died in a matter of minutes, a self-destruct sequence activated by the remaining implants that had been spread throughout the rest of the victim’s body. It wasn’t pretty, nor free of pain for the victim.
“I see it, Doctor.”
“Yes.” I set the blade down and dug my fingers deep into the warrior’s exposed flesh, wrapped my fingers around the metal orb that was a quarter the size of my fist. “Everyone ready?”
A chorus of yeses sounded around me as I gritted my teeth and pulled. Hard.
Chapter Thirteen
Amanda
Grigg’s arm was the only thing keeping me on my feet. Mara’s mate. Little Lan’s second father. Her family was about to shatter right before my eyes and I couldn’t help but imagine the wrenching pain of losing one of my mates, of seeing Grigg or Rav so helpless and broken on that table.
I didn’t know exactly what they were doing to the Prillon warrior, but by the tension in the air and grim faces around the room, I knew it wasn’t anything good. I ignored the sounds of the second medical team working across the room on another warrior who probably had a family. Loved ones. I didn’t want to know. I had all I could deal with right here.
That the man was a Prillon warrior was obvious by his golden hair, sharp features and dark gold forehead. But below that his skin had been altered to a strange, shimmering silver. Before they’d knocked him out his entire left arm had looked like something out of a robot horror movie, strange little devices emerging from his flesh to click, or grasp, or buzz into empty space like a lost fly repeatedly bashing its body against a clear window trying to get back outdoors.
The whole thing was so strange and sad. “What did they do to him?” I whispered my question to Grigg as Rav was completely focused on his patient and I did not want to distract him.
“They consume other races, implant us with technology that regulates our bodies. The core processor Rav is removing from his back integrates with the spinal cord. It’s a biosynthetic that continues to grow and expand with time until it infiltrates the brain. After that, there’s no hope at all.”
“I don’t understand.” I refused to look away as Rav cut open the warrior’s back. I even leaned closer as the light silver shimmer of a foreign object became visible where it had somehow attached itself to the man’s spine. The core processor. It looked wholly alien, so much more sinister than anything I’d ever seen.
Grigg’s hand came to rest on the back of my neck and I crossed my arms over my chest, bracing for the revulsion I knew was coming.
“Rav is going to remove it. Once he does that, we’ll know in the next few minutes.”
“Know what?”
“He’ll either wake up from his stupor and remember who he is, in which case he’ll be rushed to a ReGen pod to repair the damage to his spine.”
“Or?” I nudged Grigg with my shoulder, even as I leaned into the strong fingers massaging the base of my neck.
“Or he’ll self-destruct.”
I gasped. “What?”
What the hell did that mean? I opened my mouth to ask another question but all thought fled as I watched Rav’s muscles bulge and flex as he braced himself against the edge of the table and yanked the silver orb from the warrior’s back with one violent twist of his forearm.
“Containment!” Rav barked the order and one of his helpers in gray rushed forward with a small black box. Rav dropped the silver orb inside, the hairlike tendrils waving in the air as if searching for another host, another body to invade.
That thing was creepier than the worst of the monster-sized cockroaches I’d found under the sink of my crap apartment in college.
The officer closed the lid and rushed to an S-Gen station in the center of the medical station. He hurriedly placed his hand on the scanner and I sighed with relief when the bright green light flared and the box, and the creepy silver orb, disappeared, I had to hope, forever.