The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

‘Pierced’

(mc, f/f, nc, sf)

DISCLAIMER: This material is for adults only; it contains explicit sexual imagery and non-consensual relationships. If you are offended by this type of material or you are under legal age in your area, do NOT continue.

Synopsis:

Alien bioweapons are unleashed on an human colony world.

* * *

‘Pierced’

Chapter Six ‘Cliffgarden’

Part Two

* * *

No one said anything for a moment.

Stone had her gun out, pointed at the Administrator. Margot stood still, hands slightly raised—to do what, she didn’t know. The Administrator, nude, transformed, watched both of them with her inscrutable black eyes.

Then, the Administrator exhaled, sat back in her chair, and folded her hands in her lap.

“Captain Stone,” she said, in her perfectly normal voice, “please holster your sidearm.”

“We’re leaving,” Stone said.

“No,” the Administrator replied. “You may not leave. Yet. First, we’re going to have a little chat. I must say, I’ve been looking forward to your arrival.”

Stone waggled the pistol a bit. “If you make any attempt to—”

The Administrator leaned forward and rested her hands on her desk. She let them slide idly side to side. Her fingernails—no, they weren’t fingernails any more, they were claws, black and hard like the tips of a crab’s legs. They scraped quietly along the polished wood surface.

“Please, Captain stone. Don’t be antagonistic. I certainly do not wish to die, but I will not give you anything to prevent my death. And I don’t see any way in which this standoff will benefit you. You shoot me, my guards shoot you, and where does that leave us? Please, let’s have a civilized discussion. When we’re done, if you like, we can all go out guns blazing.”

Stone hesitated. Then her arm rotated at the elbow and the gun was pointed at her own temple.

“I won’t let you take me. If I smell gas or start feeling... anything—I’ll die first.”

The Administrator sighed. “I suppose I should have expected something dramatic. It’s not irrational, I guess.” She looked away, then back at Stone and Margot. “Have we tried to capture you, Captain Stone?”

There was a pause.

“No, no,” the Administrator said, “that wasn’t a rhetorical question. Have we tried to capture you? Did we chase you as you fled down the road from Naigurh? Did we blow out your tires at that travel store on 29? Did we rush the farmhouse at the Velcado farm?”

Margot and Stone stared at her.

“Yes, I know about your trip. If we had really wanted to get you, we would have. So please entertain the idea that this meeting is not, in fact, a trap. Please,” the Administrator said, “holster your gun. It’s distracting. If you must kill yourself, go ahead, I suppose, although it would be a waste. Otherwise...” She let the tips of her claws roll on the desk. Click-click-click-click. Click-click-click-click.

Stone hesitated, then slid her pistol back into its holster.

“Thank you,” the Administrator said. “Now then.” She leaned back in her chair again, wrapped her left hand over the right. “You’ve had quite a trip. Welcome to Zhuetia.”

“How do you know... where we’ve been?” Margot asked.

The Administrator gave a soft chuckle. “Telecommunications. Our satcoms work just fine. I’ve been on the phone with Savoy, Naigurh, Arc of Sands... all the way back to Helenni.”

“You have satellites?” Stone asked.

She nodded. “Oh yes. Surely you didn’t think that... well... I don’t know what you thought. I can’t read your minds. But an orbital insertion like we delivered had to have come from somewhere. We don’t just have satellites, we have ships in orbit. And we’re bringing the Imperial sat network back up right now.“

Margot’s head swam. “But... where are you from?”

“Which me?” the Administrator asked, then laughed again. “But I’m being cruel. We’re from here, of course. Both the brood and the human parts of me were born right here on Strand. Mm. And we met here, as well.”

“You say this isn’t a trap. So what are you going to do with us?” Stone demanded.

The Administrator’s head turned to her. “Ah. Well, that’s what we’re discussing, isn’t it?” She waved her arm in a broad gesture. “You know, you are both welcome to have a seat. It seems rude to keep you standing.”

Margot looked down at the chair next to her. She remained standing. If Stone weren’t there next to her, she might have sat down, but it was obvious that Varra was close to her limits and Margot didn’t want to push her.

Stone didn’t move.

“Suit yourself,” the Administrator said. “Well. Like I said, we’ve been following your progress with great interest. First you escape from Helenni in a blaze of gunfire; then you abduct Doctor Vanderbruk and, I guess you would say, ‘rescue’ Miss Belangier here from Arc of Sands, and run off into the jungle.”

The infested woman leaned forward, placing her elbows on the desk. “And then, completely unexpectedly, you turn up in Naigurh, and seriously disrupt our mop-up operation there.”

She stopped, as though expecting a response. When one didn’t come, she sighed. “Please, this is supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue. Why did you go to Naigurh?”

“You were trapping people,” Stone said.

The Administrator nodded. “True. But... dozens. A few hundred. Why would you risk yourself to stop that, compared to the thousands that you knew were lost?”

Stone’s mouth twitched, but she said nothing.

“Because we could,” Margot said. “Because we could.”

“Hm,” the Administrator replied, her eyes now on Margot. “Fair enough. Could, and did. But, to be honest, do you know what I’m really curious about? Why didn’t you kill Marina Yao?”

She was looking intently at Margot; her black eyes were deep, demanding. Margot licked her lips. “Well,” she said, uncertainly, “I didn’t know... she was... or might have been... still a person.”

“Mm,” the Administrator said seriously, nodding. “That’s true. We are still people.”

“The fuck are you getting at?” Stone snapped. “You’re not a person, you’re a fucking xeno. You look like the woman you infested, but you’re not her. Did she have a family? Xu-Silva? What happened to them? Did the xenos kill them? Do you even care?”

The Administrator swung her attention back to Stone. Her wet black eyes considered the captain. For a moment her glossy black lips remained pursed. Then: “A reasonable question. Of course. Of course I had a family. Parents, a husband, sisters. No children. But you’re a soldier, Captain. What happened in Verdis was an invasion. What happened here... mm, was different. I serve the brood now. It... changes your priorities.”

“And you don’t miss them.”

“I don’t,” the Administrator replied, “though for different reasons than you might expect. But we’re getting off-topic. We aren’t talking about me, we’re talking about you. So after you escaped from Naigurh, you headed down here. Why?”

“Surely you know why,” Margot said. “You can read Cora’s and Vanderbruk’s minds. They’re brood. They said as much.”

The Administrator nodded slowly. “Mm. A shame they let that slip. Yes. Well then: Cliffgarden. You’d like to get there. And to do so, you’d like to have one of my aircars.”

“That’s right.”

The ends of the Administrator’s black lips curved down, as though she were considering something not unreasonable. “Mm. What will you give me for it?”

Margot looked at her, then at Stone. Stone looked back at Margot.

“We’re not giving you any of us,” Stone said.

The Administrator shrugged. “Okay. What then?”

Margot reached down for the chair, pulled it back, and sat down on it. She leaned towards the Administrator. “What is your game,” she demanded. “Why are you,” and she fluttered her hands, “doing all this? Talking with us? Acting as though we have any bargaining power, instead of just zapping us and popping crabs on our heads?”

The Administrator chuckled, let it turn into a laugh. Once again, Margot was struck by the contrast of the pale green interior of her mouth, her near-white tongue, with the wet black of her lips and deep grey of her face. “Ah, yes. Also a fair question. Well, you see,” she raised a hand and rolled her fingers around in the air, “you’re kind of... extraneous. To our plans. I mean, you’re just nine humans. We’ve just run an invasion and converted millions of you into millions of us. Your specific fates, though individually interesting, aren’t... aren’t that important. And that gives us an interesting amount of leeway in deciding how to deal with you.”

“Millions?” Stone said in a flat tone.

“Yes, we’ve taken the whole planet,” the Administrator said. “Years of planning, you know. Not much point in an invasion from orbit if you’re only going to take over part of a world.”

In a flash, Stone whipped up her pistol-

-but the Administrator was faster. Stone’s hand was trapped in the Administrator’s black grip, the pistol trembling just above the surface of the desk. Stone gritted her teeth, then gasped in pain as the Administrator squeezed.

With her other hand, the Administrator slowly reached forward and pulled the pistol from Stone’s grip.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” she said in a cool voice. “I can see that you’re not dealing with this well. If you don’t mind, I’m going to have my people escort you downstairs.”

“Fuck—you—” Stone gasped, as the Administrator released her hand.

Two of the uniformed guards came forward and put their hands on Stone’s shoulders. Their hands were human, but their eyes were liquid black.

“Margot—” Stone said.

“I’ll be all right,” Margot replied. “Go on.” Stone looked at her, tight-lipped, then let herself be walked over to the elevator.

Margot turned back to the Administrator. “How do I know you aren’t taking her off to be infested?” she demanded.

“You don’t,” the Administrator said, dropping Stone’s pistol into a desk drawer, then sliding it shut. “We’re not, but you really have no assurance of that beyond my simple say-so.”

Behind her, the elevator door closed, leaving Margot alone with the Administrator and half a dozen guards.

“You’re toying with us.”

The Administrator smiled. “A bit, yes. But honestly... there’s something we’d like from you, Margot.”

“Which is?”

“Join us.”

Margot frowned. “You don’t need to ask for that. You can just subdue me.”

“Yes, that’s true. But then we... no, I don’t want to scare you off. Let’s just say that would be distinct benefits for you, and for us, if you were to join us willingly.”

“So you want to swap the aircar for me?”

The Administrator chuckled. “Oh, surely. Would you? Will you make that trade?”

Margot hesitated.

The Administrator stood up. “Look at me, Margot.” She raised her arms slowly, with a dancer’s flourish. Slowly, she turned in place. Margot could not help but look, even if she not wanted to. The Administrator’s skin was black, shiny, and flawless, except where it was dark grey and equally flawless. Her breasts were average sized, high and firm; her ass was round and hard. From the back her skin was wholly black; only her face and the front of her torso, down to her upper thighs, was grey. Margot was surprised to see that she still had reddish-brown pubic hair, shaved close.

The Administrator finished her slow turn and looked down at Margot.

Margot felt heat in her cheeks.

“I feel wonderful,” the Administrator said. “I am strong, and fast, and I have great sex several times a day. I’d offer,” she said in a lower, conspiratorial tone, “but I suspect that would be too forward. I am smart and, what is more, I am useful. I serve the brood and serving the brood is all that I need to be perfectly happy.”

“I’ve heard this pitch,” Margot said. She swallowed. “Cora’s been saying something similar.”

The Administrator sat down in her chair. “We want you, Margot. I’ll be frank—your appearance here, your escape... basically the entirety of the last week. It’s all been happenstance. Freak accident. Series of coincidences. But it has presented us, the brood, with an opportunity: you.”

“How nice for you.”

The Administrator snorted, looked down. “Well. I suppose it would be too much to expect you to leap at the chance. But that brings us back to the point of our negotiation. You want my aircar. What will you give me for it?”

Margot considered. “Well. I’m off the table. The rest of my people are off the table. There’s no point in threatening you. What does that leave us?”

The Administrator wove her fingers together. “How about your AATGV?”

Margot blinked.

“Here’s my offer,” the Administrator said. “I’ll trade you not just one, but two aircars. Charged enough for, say... two hours of range. More than enough to get to Cliffgarden or, alternatively, well away from here, but not enough to get to anyplace outside of Verdis. In exchange, you hand over that AATGV and its nasty explosive turret.”

Margot hesitated. The Administrator rocked back and forth slightly in her chair. Margot was uncomfortable with how attractive she was—what would it be like to touch her? To run her hands over that smooth black flesh, to suck on those bumpy black nipples...

She swallowed. “I... I’ll have to talk to the others.”

“Of course. Tell you what. I’ll meet you, with the aircars, between here and Cliffgarden, at the road 329 turnoff. In one hour. If you decide you aren’t interested, you simply don’t show up.” She spread her hands, palms up. “Does that meet with your approval?”

Margot put a finger to her temple, closed her eyes. She opened them and looked at Xu-Silva’s face.

“How long have you been brood?”

“Three years. Almost.”

“So the brood has been in control of Zhuetia for... for years. That’s why Savoy wasn’t bombarded. You didn’t have to drop in from orbit—you just walked.”

The Administrator said nothing.

Margot leaned forward. “You’ve run the whole invasion from here. You said you’d been planning for years.”

“Astute,” Xu-Silva responded. “You’re only making me want you more.”

“Why do you want us to go to Cliffgarden? You have to have been there. You’ve controlled the whole peninsula for years.”

“I don’t,” the Administrator said. “You are the ones who want to go there. What I want is for you to agree to join the brood. And to that end, I’m willing to entertain your desires.”

“What is at Cliffgarden? What will we find, if we go there?”

The Administrator’s expression seemed colder, blank. “A lab,” she said. “The lab where the brood were born. More than that, I’m not going to tell you.”

Margot stared at her, at her wet, black eyes, but found herself being pulled in. She looked away.

“Do we have an agreement?” the Administrator asked. “My aircars for your AATGV?”

Margot nodded. “I’ll ask the others.”

“Very good.” The Administrator stood up, and held out her black, claw-tipped hand.

Margot looked at it, then hesitantly clasped it for a shake. The Administrator’s hand was no colder than Margot’s own.

“Oh,” the Administrator added, before releasing Margot’s hand. “I almost forgot. Marina Yao said to thank you. For her life.”

* * *

The elevator opened, and Margot stepped out alone.

The sound of her boots echoed around the empty lobby. There was no sign of the guards who had escorted Captain Stone downstairs.

“Thank you for coming,” the receptionist chirped from behind her desk. Margot turned her head and gave an insincere smile.

What did they really want?

Something was not right. The Administrator—Margot was momentarily distracted, picturing her body—was not telling the whole truth.

Cliffgarden.

What was at Cliffgarden?

She pushed open the door and stepped outside into a cold wind. Her hair flipped across her face.

The AATGV was still there, unmolested. Behind it were the other two vehicles, the patrol car and the big black Essex. Everyone was standing outside—well, everyone except for Cora and Vanderbruk. And Han-Irinov, still in the RKT turret. They all watched as Margot stepped out of the building.

Stone came forward as Margot descended the shallow steps.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. You?”

Stone shook her head. “I can’t believe I fucked up like that. I just... she was so... smug.“

“It’s all right. It’s...” Margot put a hand to her forehead. “It’s hard.”

“What did they want?” Cruzado-Liu asked.

They had all crowded around. Margot was still on the building stairs; she looked down at their faces, curious, relieved, worried.

“They want to make a trade. They’ll give us two aircars... in exchange for the AATGV.”

Everyone looked over their shoulder at the vehicle. Han-Irinov, suddenly under scrutiny, looked back at them, then shouted: “What?”

Their attention returned to Margot, then to Stone.

“Are we going to do it?” Junipero asked.

Stone shook her head. “Let’s get out of town, then we can discuss it. This place makes me crazy.”

* * *

They stopped at the ridge which divided the valley from the tumbled highlands of the Jade peninsula. Everyone climbed out of the vehicles (excepting Cora and Vanderbruk, again) and gathered around. Behind and below them were the straight, empty streets of Zhuetia. In front of them, the road back to Cliffgarden, and the sea.

Or back to the Zhaoze, or south, to Jade’s End.

The wind whipped at them. They stood in the lee of the AATGV, but it wasn’t large enough to block the gusts that whistled across the grasslands.

“She said that she’d meet us at the junction,” Margot said. “Where 29 meets... meets that other road that leads to Cliffgarden.”

“329,” Tsugerloi volunteered.

“Why would she do it?” Han-Irinov asked. “Give us aircars. Why not just ambush us or something. Uncle Bao’s smoking balls, why not just snatch you two while you were in there?”

Margot looked back at the town. “She told me that... that she wants me to join them.”

The women seemed taken aback. “What?”

“Apparently it’s important to them that I come willingly.”

“And you agreed to that?” Cruzado-Liu asked incredulously.

Margot shook her head. “No! No. But that’s why they’ll deal. Why they aren’t just grabbing us. She, or they, want me to come voluntarily. At least, that’s what she said.”

“What’s so special about you?” Han-Harris asked.

Margot spread her hands. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I’m just... I’m just a tourist.”

“They sent a minder with you when you jumped into the AATGV,” Cruzado-Liu said. “You’re the reason Cora came.”

“She’s always said she was with us to keep an eye on you,” Junipero added.

Everyone looked at Margot. She looked to Stone, but the captain didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know!” Margot shouted. “I’m just a saints-flensed staff sergeant!” She stepped back, away from the group, into the wind. “I’m not anybody! All I do is keep rebel planets running after we’ve murdered the shit out of anyone stupid enough not to doff their cap to whomever the Emperor is this week! I came to your shitty little hick planet to have a little time with my martyr-loved girlfriend before I was sent to build another functioning fucking society out of lickspittles and war criminals, and then, and then, all of this happened!” She was almost screaming now, her arms stretched wide to either side. “These fucking things rained down from the sky and murdered half the resort and turned the rest into, into fucking zombies, and they... killed my girlfriend, and now they want me! They want me, and I don’t know why, and I’m fucking terrified! Do you think I fucking like this? Do you think I fucking want to be here?”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Junipero said, “I’m sorry, I know—”

“You don’t know!” Margot said, pointing at her, and even as she said it she knew she was wrong. “You don’t under—No—no, I...”

She turned with a jerk and stumbled off, down the slope.

Everyone else looked at Stone, who hadn’t said anything. Stone watched Margot as she strode away.

“I didn’t mean to...” Junipero began.

“Should we follow her?” Cruzado-Liu asked.

“No,” Stone said. “She’ll be all right. Needs to get it out of her system.” Stone’s gaze hadn’t budged from Margot’s retreating back. “I’ll go talk to her. But she needs a few minutes.”

Margot sat down on a rock outcropping, and Stone nodded to herself. “Let’s give her some time.”

The other women huddled in the lee of the AATGV.

“Well, she’s over there,” Han-Harris said, “what do we think?”

“What do we think about what?” Cruzado-Liu said. “Do the crabs want her? Apparently so. Is there some special reason? Gotta be. Does she know what it is?” She shrugged. “It doesn’t look like it, but maybe she’s a real good liar. But here’s the thing: does it matter?”

Everyone was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t follow,” Lynn Thompson said.

“What the specialist is saying, is that it doesn’t matter,” Stone said. “Let’s say Belangier’s got a secret. Maybe she’s somebody important. Maybe she’s the Emperor’s fucking daughter.” She raised her hands. “So what? Has she played us? Does anyone think she’s going to play us? Fuck us over? Anyone?”

“No,” Han-Irinov and Cruzado-Liu both said. Helen Tsugerloi shook her head. “Unh-unh,” Calla Thompson murmured.

“I don’t think she’s going to fuck us over,” Junipero observed. “But... I’m just wondering—if the xenos want her, would they leave the rest of us alone?”

Everyone looked at her.

“Unh-unh. No way,” Han-Irinov said.

“We need not travel down that road,” Tsugerloi said. “They would not leave us alone. I suspect, rather, that Miss Belangier is in fact the only thing that has kept the rest of us uninfested and alive.”

“They want her, so they’ve not moved on us,” Han-Harris said.

“Precisely.”

They looked at Margot, sitting on a rock about fifteen meters away. She’d hunched her shoulders against the wind.

No one felt like adding anything.

“So what do we think about this deal?” Lynn finally asked. “Swap the AATGV for aircars?”

Han-Irinov shook her head. “We lose the RKT, we lose any real ability to fight the big fuckers.”

“Seems like our only shot at getting to Cliffgarden, though,” Cruzado-Liu pointed out.

“So what?” Han-Irinov replied. “The crabs have been here for years. On the way back here Margot said that the boss fucker in there said she’d been brood for three years. Three years! Anything worthwhile at Cliffgarden is long gone.”

“Three years?” Han-Harris said. She, Tsugerloi, and the Thompsons seemed incredulous. “I thought they’d just dropped out of the sky?”

“No,” Stone replied. “That’s what Margot learned from the Administrator. This is where the xenos are from. They’re from Cliffgarden itself. That’s where they grew them. Three years ago I guess they got loose; took over Zhuetia. They didn’t drop on Savoy—they just walked over.”

“Gods preserve,” Tsugerloi said. “That’s why the peninsula was off limits. It wasn’t the Empire—it was the xenos.”

Stone nodded. “Building up their numbers.”

“Then why by grandfather’s bushy grey pubes would we want to go there?” Han-Irinov demanded. “If that’s where they fucking came from?”

“To learn more about them,” Tsugerloi offered. “The Empire would not have designed a bio-weapon without failsafes, without countermeasures. It’s questionable if there’s anything useful still there, but... do we not want to find out?”

“Yeah, we’ll learn more about them,” Han-Irinov grumbled. “When we’ve all got those little shits fucking our faces.”

“Aircar could get us away,” Han-Harris said. “Not to the lab. Spraydrifts.”

“We won’t get that far,” Cruzado-Liu said. “Margot said they won’t have charged them for that sort of range.”

Han-Harris shrugged. “Could still get to southern Spine. Find someplace to fully charge.”

Everyone fell quiet, considering. A hawk cried overhead.

“What do you think, Captain?” Junipero asked.

Stone sighed. “I think it’s time I go speak with Belangier.”

* * *

“Sergeant.”

Margot turned to look over her shoulder. Her eyes were red, but dry. “Captain. Come to ask me if I can be hard?”

Stone ignored the question. “May I sit?”

Margot swept a hand over the rock. “Officer’s choice.”

Stone sat down next to her. “I know why they want you, Margot.”

Margot looked at her, said nothing.

“Skillset.” Stone shrugged. “They’ve taken Strand. What are they going to do with it? They need to rebuild. No, scratch that—they need to build. They’re a new thing, Sergeant. Xeno-human hybrids. How are they going to make that work? How are they going to build a... an economy, a society, a civilization, that can stand up for itself when the Emperor comes knocking? Because he sure as fuck will. One day the civil wars will be over. There’s no way a human Empire can let this sort of... thing live on. The xenos need an industrial economy if they are to have any chance to survive, and they need it ASAP.“

Margot made a soft noise, looked down at the grass between her feet.

“That’s why they need you. You know how to build a society. You’re an expert at it. I don’t think on this planet of tractor drivers and drink mixers there’s a single person with your sort of experience. No shit, they want you.”

The two of them watched the hawk circling in the air.

“For what it’s worth,” Stone said, “we discussed trading you to them. No one was in favor.”

Margot chuckled. “Well, that’s reassuring. Particularly after I snapped like that.”

“Look, Margot, forget it. Next time it will be Cruzado-Liu, or Junipero, or me. We’re all well past the breaking point. What you said was true enough, and what wasn’t true we all know.”

With a sigh, Margot rested her head against one hand. “I don’t know what to do, Varra. Part of me wants to jump in the AATGV and pretend we can drive until we find someplace safe. Part of me wants to jump off the cliffs into the sea. Part of me... Martyrs, part of me wants to join them. You weren’t there, at Arc of Sands. The way those women, they all... they loved it. Who wouldn’t want that?“

Stone didn’t reply. For a moment, they sat there, the wind rushing around them, sending waves rolling across the grass that stretched away from their feet.

“Well, Belangier,” Stone finally said, “I can’t advise you on that. Fuckers don’t want me. Assholes.”

Margot snorted.

“But we do need to decide what to do about the aircars,” Stone said. “And we need to decide PDQ. Hour’s almost up. What do you think?”

Margot shrugged. “Well, there can’t be anything dangerous to them at Cliffgarden, otherwise they wouldn’t let us go there. But even if we keep the AATGV, head for Jade’s End or try to skirt Zhuetia and reach the Southern Spine: then what? Nowhere on Verdis is safe.” She turned to face Stone for the first time. “I think... I think we should take the deal. Fly to Cliffgarden. We saw that the place still has power. When we get there, we stay just long enough to charge up the aircars and head for the Spraydrift Islands.”

Stone bent forward and rose to her feet. “Well. I’m glad that’s your opinion, because that’s what I decided on as well. And it’s a good thing I don’t have to change your mind,” she added, pointing towards the town. “Because here come the aircars now.”

* * *

The AATGV rolled slowly towards the aircars, and stopped.

They had flown overhead and landed at the road junction as promised. From the AATGV, Margot could see that there were three people standing in the road, the two aircars behind them. The center figure was the Administrator, now dressed in a black jacket, boots, and bright green pants. With her was another woman, human-looking with only the black eyes to mark her as a xeno, and a man, similarly almost human looking.

Margot opened the door and stepped down. She walked towards the three figures, small rocks on the road surface crunching under her boots.

Behind her, Han-Irinov was once again standing in the RKT turret. There were no obvious places to hide for an ambush, but they’d seen the big xenos rise up from the dirt alongside the road in Savoy. When your opponent picks the meeting place, it pays to be wary.

“Sergeant Belangier,” the Administrator said, stepping forward. Apparently being brood was not fatal to one’s fashion sense—her jacket was sleek leather, with a neat pale green shirt underneath, and her pants, though a much more intense color, matched it perfectly.

“These are the aircars?” Margot said.

The Administrator nodded. “They are. They’re both for you. We’ll take your vehicles back to Zhuetia.”

As she spoke, Margot had the odd realization that her clothes coordinated really well with the pale green color of her mouth.

Margot turned around and gestured to the convoy. Cruzado-Liu, who had parked the patrol car and now stood next to it, hurried forward to examine the aircars.

The three brood slaves watched her pass, then turned their attention back to Margot.

Margot looked at the man, who was dressed in work pants, a casual shirt, and a brown leather jacket. It was odd, seeing him; Arc of Sands—and then Naigurh—had convinced Margot that the brood only wanted women. Apparently that was not correct. He looked back at her dispassionately.

One of the aircars rose into the air, Cruzado-Liu at the controls. She guided it over to the convoy, and set it down next to the AATGV.

“I hope you’re not planning to double-cross me,” the Administrator said. “I’d hate to have gone out on a limb to accommodate you, and then be proven to have suffered a serious lapse in judgment.”

“It wouldn’t bother you,” Margot said, “because you’d have been gunned down right out here on this lonely country road. But no, we’re just moving the aircars to where we can load them up.”

“I see,” the Administrator said. “Will you be leaving Cora and Emilee with us?” she asked, as Cruzado-Liu walked by on her way to the other aircar.

Stone and Margot had hurriedly had that discussion themselves as they drove the handful of kilometers to the rendezvous point. It was an oddly difficult choice; leaving the two brood slaves behind seemed so obviously the right thing to do. Yet they had been companions for the entire journey. It seemed somehow wrong to leave them behind for the end game.

The end game? Margot shook her head. A pessimistic way to think about it. The next step, more like. They would land the aircars just long enough to recharge them—and then continue their flight.

The Administrator was looking at her. “Yes,” Margot said. “We’ll leave them with you.”

“Well, they can ride up front for once,” the Administrator quipped.

The second aircar rose from the ground and floated past them towards the convoy. Tsugerloi, Han-Harris, and the Thompsons were already seated in the first car. Junipero stood next to the patrol car; Margot could not see Vanderbruk or Cora through the windows. Han-Irinov remained in the AATGV’s turret.

“Well,” Margot said. “They both appear to pass muster. If you’d be so kind as to wait here until we have left, I would appreciate it.”

“It was enjoyable meeting you, Margot,” the Administrator said. “I look forward to seeing you again.”

Margot couldn’t bring herself to claim the same, so she gave a grunt of affirmation and turned away.

“Oh, one second,” the Administrator said behind her, as Margot began to walk. She paused, turned around. The Administrator gestured at the man behind her. “I meant to introduce you. This is my husband.”

The man standing behind the Administrator nodded. “Hello,” he said.

Margot hesitated for a moment, expecting something else. Some quip, some request, some exhortation. But the Administrator just stood there with her black-eyed companions, staring at her.

Margot turned and walked away.

* * *

“They couldn’t have given us one with six fucking seats?” Han-Irinov complained.

She was in the center of the rear seat, wedged between Cruzado-Liu and Junipero.

“Maybe if you had looted something other than junk food,” Cruzado-Liu replied, “you wouldn’t take up so much room.”

“Maybe if your mom... shit, I got nothing,” Han-Irinov said back. “But go fuck yourself anyway.”

It took all of fifteen minutes to reach Cliffgarden from the crossroads, Han-Irinov complaining the entire way. The facility was visible from kilometers away, standing prominently on its lone stack off the rocky coast.

True to the Administrator’s word, both aircars had about a quarter charge, enough for not quite two hours of flight, or just shy of three hundred kilometers. Stone said they could possibly make the Spraydrifts with that range, but there’d be no margin of error, no recovery if they were even slightly off course.

Cliffgarden drew closer.

From the air they could see it was like a walled compound, with a central courtyard containing several large trees. Surrounding the courtyard was either a single large building, shaped like a ‘U’, or several interconnected buildings, depending on how you wanted to look at it. On the ocean side was a small plaza, and what looked like a tall metal staircase descending to a landing.

They flew around the facility, scanning it from the sides. There were two rooftop landing pads, one on the tallest, six-story building, which stood at the southwest corner, one lower on a three-story one in the center of the northern wall. They could also land on the western seaside plaza, which appeared clear of obstructions.

Margot could see nothing moving, neither humans nor xenos. There were lights on in some of the windows, perhaps one in eight. Were there still inhabitants? Or had the lights just been left on when the facility was abandoned?

As they swung around the far side, the great switchbacking staircase down to the ocean was revealed to have been destroyed, now nothing more than three flights dangling over a thirty-meter drop to a giant pile of twisted metal on a wave-washed stone platform.

They continued their slow orbit of the facility.

“There,” Margot said, pointing. Adjacent to the lower landing pad there was a charging station. Impossible to tell if it worked, but it didn’t seem damaged.

“I don’t like the... fuck it, I don’t like anything about this,” Han-Irinov said, leaning out over Junipero.

“No charging station on the high platform,” Stone observed. “I’m putting us down there. If we don’t like it, we dust. Cruzado-Liu, Junipero, get ready to secure.”

They circled around the facility again. Fully staffed, Margot estimated it might have held... three hundred, possibly four hundred people. As they came down gently on the lower pad, dust blew off the concrete around them.

Cruzado-Liu hopped out, RCFR-88 at the ready. Junipero jumped out the other side with the other 88; they cleared to the edges of the platform, looked down, then checked the metal doors that opened from the buildings adjacent; there was one on either side of the pad, as each of the neighboring structures was slightly taller.

Margot had jumped out as well and cleared to the interior edge, overlooking the courtyard. There was a broad staircase from where she stood that led down to an interior rampart, a wide unroofed causeway surrounding the interior courtyard, connected to it by additional staircases all around the interior.

Behind her, Stone turned the aircar’s engine off.

There was no one, and nothing, in sight. The space seemed quite pleasant, with a half-dozen large trees shading an area of grass and abstract statuary. The grass was fully overgrown; the area was strewn with detritus from the trees. The walkway that encircled it had vines cresting the low railing.

Margot looked back. Han-Irinov was signaling the second aircar to land, which it did, blowing more dust from the rooftop. Cruzado-Liu was trying the metal door on her side; it opened, and she peered inside.

The engines of the second aircar cut out, and suddenly the only noise was the wind blowing across the tops of the buildings. The trees rustled gently; although the wind came off the ocean, the only unwalled side, the buildings blocked any through airflow and dampened its force to a gentle breeze.

“Door’s open but no one’s here,” Cruzado-Liu called out.

“Same here,” Junipero said from the other side.

“No one in the courtyard,” Margot shouted.

Han-Irinov was at the charging station. “We’ve got power,” she said, and began dragging one of the long cables towards the first aircar. “I’d say three quarters of an hour and we’ll be ready to go.”

“All right,” Stone said, “Junipero, Cruzado-Liu, you’re covering those doors.” She beckoned to Margot and Han-Irinov, and they jogged over to her. They met at the front of the first aircar.

“I want input,” Stone said. “Normally I’d say we watch the access points, charge up, and get out. But this is Cliffgarden. We can’t overlook the chance that there might be something here we can use against the xenos. I think we need to have some people scout around and see if there’s any sign that this cure of Vanderbruk’s or whatever might exist. Then again, that might be a fools’ errand, and my gut is telling me to skip it, stay safe, and get the hell out of here. What do you think?”

“I think we have to do it,” Han-Irinov said. “It’s why we came here. The place seems dead. We set the risk bar to no acceptable risk, send out a squad to look around. If they encounter anything, they bail back here.”

“I agree,” Margot said. “We have to know. If we leave without checking, we’ll always wonder.”

“Okay then,” Stone said. “Rank has its privileges. It’ll be me and Belangier. You three watch the aircars and the civilians.”

“Fuck,” Han-Irinov snapped. “Roger that.”

Han-Harris had taken another cable from the charging station and was plugging it into the second aircar. Stone went over to speak with them. Han-Irinov went to tell Cruzado-Liu about the plan. Margot walked over to inform Junipero.

“Wait, the rest of us don’t get to look around?” she objected.

“Not right now,” Margot said. “Don’t worry, if we find anything I’m sure the captain will make sure everyone gets to take a look.”

“Fucking guard duty,” Junipero said. “That’s what got me into this whole fucked-up mess.”

* * *

“So. Where do we go?” Stone said.

She and Margot stood at the edge of the platform, looking over the interior courtyard.

“Complex this size, there have to be scores of rooms,” Margot observed, “and that’s assuming that the rock beneath is solid and they haven’t put any basement levels in. I don’t think we want to walk through all of them.”

“What we need is system access,” Stone said. “Some sort of records we can skim.”

“Assuming their data systems are even online.”

“No reason not to. There’s enough power for the aircar chargers.”

“Reasonable enough. If I were an administrator,” Margot replied, “I’d want the nicest view.” She pointed at the single six-story building, standing on the opposite side of the courtyard, overlooking the ocean.

“Right.”

Stone gestured at Cruzado-Liu, then at the building opposite. The specialist nodded.

Margot and Stone descended the staircase to the causeway which surrounded the courtyard. Branches were scattered around; a set of patio chairs were overturned next to the low interior railing.

“You Impys make nice facilities for yourselves,” Stone said.

Margot nodded. It was a nice facility, even abandoned. Then she froze. Something moved—but it was just a bird, darting from the grass up into a tree.

The causeway ran all the way around the interior of the ‘U’, a low railing separating it from the courtyard a story below. There were doors and large windows all the way around the building side of the causeway.

“Let’s take the scenic route,” Stone indicated, “rather than cut across. Peek in some windows.”

“Sounds good.”

At first, the interior spaces seemed to be mostly offices. Desks with papers, computer terminals, desktop tchotchkes. The lights were off, though the interior corridor beyond the office doors appeared to be lit.

As they approached the land-side buildings on the eastern side, Margot paused.

“Do you feel that?” she asked.

Stone looked around. “I’d ask ‘what’,” she replied, “but... yes. There’s sort of a... not a buzzing, but a...”

“A feeling,” Margot said. “In the air. Like... not like the pressure changed, but...”

“Yeah,” Stone replied. “I feel it too.”

It was faint, intangible, inaudible—yet present nonetheless. A sensation of some sort of... faint energy.

“Think it’s dangerous?” Stone asked.

Margot shrugged. “No way of knowing. Doesn’t seem like it.”

“If my nose starts bleeding, let me know, eh?”

“Sure. You’ll know because I’ll be running away.”

Cautiously, they went forward. Margot looked back over her shoulder; she could see Tsugerloi and the Thompsons watching them from the edge of the landing pad. They had barely gone thirty meters.

The causeway turned to the right, to run along the interior side of the landward buildings. Ahead of them was a metal door; next to it was a long stretch of windows.

“Untended ancestors,” Stone breathed, gesturing at a window. “Look at that.”

Behind the window was a long room, kitted out as a chemical laboratory. Lab benches, sinks, racks of beakers and tubes. On the bench that ran down the center of the room were several torso-sized glass canisters. And in the very first canister, on the left...

“Crawler,” Margot said.

It was; the same creatures that had swarmed into the garage, that had clamped onto all those women’s heads. Moved them like puppets out into the heat of the pool deck.

It floated in some sort of solution, four legs dangling, tail curled against the bottom of the jar.

“They did make them here,” Stone observed.

“Looks that way.”

“Motherfuckers.”

Margot looked away. She felt a vague relief that they were still outside, rather than in the confines of the abandoned lab.

They walked further along the causeway. The strange feeling grew stronger—like a sound one could not quite hear, but felt. Although it grew in intensity, it remained only just perceptible, not something that rose to any level of discomfort.

“What is that?” Stone asked, looking around.

“I don’t know,” Margot replied. “I’ve never felt anything like it. On Imlerin we used to deploy sonic deterrence engines; they give off a noise that you can’t quite hear but annoys you anyway. Used them to keep people from gathering in the plazas. This is sort of like that, but different.”

“It would be redundant anyway; I already didn’t want to gather here,” Stone said.

They passed by a pair of double doors, marking the center of the building. Margot stopped and took a step back, squaring herself in front of the doors.

“Hang on,” she said, trying the door handle. It was open. Slowly, she pulled the door open, her other hand hovering over the grip of her pistol.

Inside was a wide hallway; at the far end of it was a window which let in light and a view of the Jade peninsula. Much closer to them, however, were the prone forms of two of the large xenos, lying on the hallway floor. Margot’s eyes widened.

“Big fuckers,” Stone said. “Are they dead?”

“They look like it,” Margot replied quietly. They did look dead, lying as though deflated, crumpled on the floor. There was no blood splash or sign of injury.

“Maybe there is a cure,” Stone said. “Maybe they got sprayed with it.”

“Maybe,” Margot replied. “Or maybe they starved to death. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Stone looked at Margot. “Check them out?”

Margot nodded. “Let’s.”

They entered the hallway. There were doors on either wall, which they passed as they approached the two xenos lying on the floor. Stone took out her pistol; Margot did likewise.

Behind them, the doors closed. Suddenly the sound of the wind was absent; the hallway seemed quiet as a tomb. Margot could hear her own breathing.

Neither of the black carapaced forms moved as they approached. Stone prodded one with a boot. Nothing.

“They are dead,” she said.

“It looks that way.” Margot knelt down. The softer underside, the squishy sacs she had seen at Arc of Sands, were dried-out and flat. “Hard to say for how long.”

Stone was looking around. She paused, and gestured with her pistol. “Look over there.”

Another dead xeno was slumped against the bottom of an open doorway. Of more interest was the doorway itself; it was no typical office door, but something more like an airlock. The frame was metal with inset bolts and painted poison-apple red. The door, propped open by the xeno’s corpse, was metal and at least twenty centimeters thick.

“Looks like a blast door,” Margot said.

“Well, it’s open,” Stone replied.

Margot looked up at Stone and rose from her crouch. Weapons at the ready, they approached the security door.

Beyond it was a short corridor leading to a descending staircase. On the open door were stenciled the words “RESTRICTED”, “Secure Area”, and “Class G or higher clearance required.” Taped to the door beneath that was a paper note, reading “No one allowed in alone! Groups of three or more only! See Director Hong for admittance.”

Stone stepped over the xeno’s dried body, into the secure area. Margot followed.

The staircase was metal, and descended a single flight before switching back the other direction. “What was that you said about basements and being down in the rock?” Stone half-whispered. Margot didn’t reply. Her boots sounded loud on the metal steps despite her best effort to move quietly.

They descended carefully. The stairs switched back again; at that landing there was yet another crumpled xeno corpse.

Down, and down. Two stories; then a third. Then the stairs ended at another security door, red-ringed. Margot was glad that the lights were all on. As an Imperial installation, the facility probably had a portable fission generator somewhere. Entering a cave that warned even authorized people not to come in alone would have been twice as nerve-wracking if they were finding their way by flashlight.

This door was also open, though not propped open by a body. The room inside was cavernous, the ceiling and walls naked rock, with cables and tubes running along the sides, held up by metal brackets bolted to the stone. The room itself was perhaps fifty meters long, and twenty wide.

Margot and Stone peered through the opening.

The room was not an open space; along both sides ran tables and cabinets and equipment consoles, many with illuminated indicator lights. Spaced evenly around the floor, about three meters apart, were clear-sided containment units, transparent panels set into metal frames, designed to hold test subjects. They were of various sizes, and attached to the floor; Margot estimated that there were at least a score spread evenly around the room.

Each of them contained one or more xenos.

The xenos were all dead.

After a quick confirmation look, Stone and Margot stepped over the security doorframe and into the room. The first case, just inside the door, held crawlers, eight of them. They lay on the floor with their legs in the air like dead bugs.

The two of them crept through the room. The feeling, the sensation of being pushed at, of some intangible force working upon them, was even stronger here. It was accompanied by actual sound, the low humming of machinery, emanating from the equipment consoles.

That feeling grew stronger still as they neared the center of the room, where, rather than another specimen tank, a large piece of equipment stood alone, the floor around it clear of specimen tanks or running cables.

“That thing,” Stone said, gesturing at it. “That’s what’s emitting that... that feeling,”

“Definitely,” Margot agreed.

They approached it. It stood taller than a man, perhaps three meters, and reminded of Margot of the business end of a drill—though huge and rising from the floor. The center was a stack of metal cylinders of varying diameters and compositions, smoothly fit together and surrounded by blocks of sensors and controls. Complicated consoles on opposite sides were festooned with buttons and toggles, and blinked with flickering lights.

“The fuck is it?” Stone hissed.

“Fucked if I know,” Margot said, “Some sort of field emitter, I’m guessing. But I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Stone was examining one of the consoles. “Looks like...” She walked around to the other side. “Yes, look at that. Two-person switch. You have to have two people here to turn it on.”

“Or turn it off,” Margot replied.

Stone looked at her. “Should we?”

Margot stared at the massive machine, and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Me neither.”

They turned their attention back to the rest of the room. From here it was apparent that the far end of the room, opposite the stairs, was segregated from the part they were in; a thick clear pane separated maybe ten meters of space from the majority of the cavern. Looking at the edges, where a metal lip attached the pane to the cavern walls, Margot estimated the pane was at least thirty centimeters thick.

Together, they advanced slowly towards the back of the room, circling around the giant specimen containers of dead xenos. They passed one with a big slug in it—what had Cora called it? A converter, that was it. This one was just a sack of black flesh puddled on the floor of its cell, like a deflated balloon.

Then they came to a larger, rectangular box, filled with sheets of rubbery black material. There were dozens of the sail-like things, stretching from the top of the container to the bottom, as though someone had hung a whole series of black sheets to dry.

“The fuck are those?” Stone whispered. Margot shrugged.

They edged around the large box, and stopped.

Behind the glass wall, at the end of the room, was...

A bedroom.

There was a bed, and a dresser, and a table; There was a comfortable-looking chair facing a standalone viewscreen across a woven rug. A small area on the left side was segregated by a head-height wall; behind the wall was a commode and a small shower.

In the center of the room, immediately in front of the wall—and so only about seven meters away from Margot and Stone—there was a second, larger, rug, red and blue with a complex pattern. Seated on that rug, her legs folded together, was-

-not human.

It had the shape of a woman. A head—hairless—two arms, two legs. Its skin was entirely black, as though it were an ebony figurine. But the proportions... Her limbs were too thick at the joints, and too narrow between them. Her shoulders rose oddly from her collarbone. The hands which rested on her knees were tipped with claws, like the Administrator’s had been. She had small breasts beneath which her torso almost seemed to have a seam across the middle, where the rib cage would have ended, like the overlapping plates of an insect.

Her face was equally alien, slightly broader in the middle than a human’s head. Her mouth was a narrow, not-quite lipless slit in her lower face. Her nose was just a peak on her face, with narrow nostrils below the tip. Her eyes were closed.

The figure sat motionless, like a statue of a person meditating, if the person were only vaguely human.

Stone exhaled quietly. “What do you think, Belangier? Is that a ‘she’ or an ‘it’?”

“Both,” Margot whispered back.

“You think it’s dead?”

“Gotta be,” Margot said, “it’s been three years. Everything else in here is.”

But the creature in the room did not look dead; although oddly shaped, she did not seem emaciated, was still curved at hip and shoulder, and even had a slight bulge to her stomach.

She had no belly button.

“I—” Margot began. Stone put a hand on her shoulder.

The creature in the cell moved.

She leaned back, lifting her hands from her knees, placing them behind herself on either side, reclining slightly backwards. She unfolded her legs and spread them apart; Margot’s eyes went to the creature’s sex, a perfectly even slit between her legs. It looked smooth and rubbery.

And was wet.

And... opening.

The creature had not opened her eyes. Between her legs, her pussy was spreading, and a glossy black surface appeared within. There was a twitch in her upper torso; her sex spread wider.

“She’s laying an egg,” Stone hissed.

She was. The egg, a wet black sphere, pushed forward, stretching the creature’s vagina wide. The two of them watched as the glossy wet circle grew, not smoothly, but in small increments. The creature did not seem to be in any discomfort—her eyes did not open, her mouth remained closed. Her breathing had become apparent, though, her chest capped with its small breasts rising and falling in quick motion.

For a moment the egg paused, then the widest part passed and it slipped quickly out, sliding onto the rug, a black near-sphere the size of a cabbage—or a baby’s head.

The creature opened her eyes.

They were black orbs, like the egg, like the eyes of Cora or the woman collecting cows at the Velcado farm or the of the Administrator. She looked down at the wet egg between her legs, then gathered it up in her hands.

She stood up—and did so in a way that caused Stone and Margot both to wince, bending her lower legs back at the knees, then rising straight upward from her sitting position.

Her gait was human-normal enough as she walked towards the side of the cell.

The glass wall had an aperture in it, a door much like the security doors which led to this area, ringed with a thick metal frame painted in red. The door itself was clear, made of the same material as the wall. It was closed, and lacked any handle or indentation. Margot realized instantly that it could only be opened via a console somewhere.

For a moment, Margot thought that the creature might be walking to that door, that she might be able to get out. Maybe it wasn’t locked, merely shut. But she walked past it, walking instead to the cavern wall, which had a pair of metal panels set into it.

The panels had handles on them. The creature took hold of the handle on the right and pulled it down, revealing a hole in the wall, perhaps twenty-five centimeters in diameter.

She held the egg in one hand for a moment, considering it. Then she pushed it into the hole, and it vanished.

She closed that panel, and opened the other. Behind it was a small alcove, and a thin tube, and below the tube, a ceramic bowl. The creature took hold of the bowl, withdrawing it from the alcove. She raised it to her chest level.

Her mouth opened and a long, thin, pale green tongue emerged. It slid down into the bowl and returned with a dollop of some greyish paste.

“Oh, shit,” Stone said, worry in her voice.

“What?”

“That thing has been here for three years. Right? Margot, there’s no way an automated food system would still have anything in it to feed her with.”

Margot looked at Stone.

“There’s someone else here,” Margot said.

The walkie-talkie at Stone’s waist crackled.

The creature froze. Her head turned towards them, directly towards them. Her liquid black eyes were wide.

The walkie-talkie crackled again, a burst of static.

The creature put down her bowl, and walked slowly up to the glass wall. She put her hand on it. Her black eyes stared directly at Margot and Stone. There was no question that she saw them.

“Zzztone,” the walkie-talkie cracked, Han-Irinov’s voice urgent even through the static. “zzz-tain. CKkkzzzitors. Repeat, zzzzkkk’ve got visitors.”

* * *

End Chapter Six, Part Two