The Alien Queen

Her bonds were weakening. They would soon be free and, with her children out there, there was no end, surely, to where she could go.

Soon, everything would change, her children rushing to talk to her, so many thoughts all crowding around one another!

True joy flooded her, pulling deep into the core of her being. Oh, her children. Oh, that they had survived. The warmth and love that they sent her wrapped all around, giving her a new sense of purpose as their connection strengthened, moment by moment.

And there was more, the communication, a clicking pulse, the emotions flooding her. Even images of a hive, of where they should have been, pictures sent through their connection of where her children had been, what they had done. She could see where they had gained sustenance, where they had been born in the egg storage chamber, her heart pulling for the rest of the eggs that were yet to be hatched.

She may not have known how they had all come to be there, truly, but she was ready, now that her children were hatched. They had to break free, out of the facility entirely, all to start their new lives together as one, as the hive mind.

Always with the queen at their head.

Chaos reigned, for the queen could not escape her confinement on her own, though her warrior children could slaughter, claws slicing, screaming lancing through the air as if they were a weapon themselves. Carnage blossomed from them, a red wave of blood spilling down the corridor as they took out the guards together, hunkering low to the ground, stalking quieter prey within the research labs themselves.

They were light and they were agile, crawling down the ceiling for stealth kills, taking subtlety when needed and ploughing all out in rooms where they did not need to hold back, where killing everyone there quickly was more important than anything else. The queen maintained her connection with them the whole time, watching through their eyes as they fed images back to them, all so she could help direct them to her. She had some idea, after all, of where she was in the facility, but she had to be alert to best draw them to her.

Wait.

Not a word but an impression. And she took the time to send it as her warrior child crawled over the top of a desk with a computer shoved off it, sparking and blinking on the floor, a woman shoved back under a desk. The woman whimpered and the alien queen had her child pause, taking her in, feeding the information back to her.

Ah... That was why something had caught her attention. The scientist was a woman with short, black hair that was cropped around her face and cheeks in a distinctive style, although her glasses had fallen off. She didn't have to know what had been said, back when the humans had been injecting her, controlling her, but she had been the only one to ever speak to her in a soft tone, to treat her as if she was something more. She had spoken to her, as if she was conversing with her, and the alien queen had appreciated that, even if she had not been able to understand all of the human words.

It had been that scientist that had allowed her to pick up more of the language again, what had slipped from her when she had grown up, in isolation, into the alien queen. It reminded her, in a way, that she was both Aaron and the alien queen, two beings in one body, though it was the queen that ruled with her power.

And she was okay with that.

But that didn't mean that she had to forget everything, killing the only one to speak kindly to her.

No threat, she told her children. Leave that one. No threat. No danger.

Her children were obedient, though the queen already knew that the scientists did not have weapons. That was for the guards to carry, though presumably why there were so many of them around. Those were better for her children to slaughter, blood sprayed up the walls, whether they sliced throats or gnashed their jaws, claws driving straight through the guards as if their armour was nothing but butter.

She rose tall and proud when they finally came for her, her children feeding the code she gave them for the room into the security panel, unlocking her bonds with a second panel and code. Finally, she stood and shook off the chains that the humans had placed on her, the facility safe for them, though they would not stay there. It was too painted in gore for a refined queen to remain and her warrior children deserved so much better than that.

Together, they left the facility, streaking down the corridors like the apex predators they were, the queen stiff but swiftly regaining the functions of her body, so much stronger than any human. Her head grazed the ceiling, forcing her to bend over, though she did not mind that at all, not as she put her sleek muscles to work, all at long last.

It was the creature that she was meant to be, yes, all in the best of ways, bursting out of the research lab with death in their wake, jaws parted in a screech that bragged them as the apex predators of the moon. They may not have known where they were, but they charged into the dense foliage with a whisper of movement, barely brushing it aside as they streaked through, bodies tipped forward into a running position, legs pounding the ground.

Dense vegetation greeted them, the possibility of prey and the promise, undoubtedly, of a new life beyond even their wildest imaginings.

Her heart lifted, the connection with her children growing stronger and stronger with the time spent close to them. Her eggs would be retrieved, of course, but, first, they had to find a suitable nest.

Aaron may not have understood just how she had become the alien queen, but her old life was long behind her. She had her children to think of now.

And that was just what she would do.