The Battery

Silas woke to the sound of a heartbeat.

It was slow. *Thump... thump... thump.* It vibrated the wet, fleshy floor he was lying on.

He gasped, sitting up. His mask was cracked. He ripped it off. The air was hot, humid, and thick with the smell of iron.

He was in a cavern. But the walls weren't stone. They were organic. Pulsating, gray-pink matter that looked like intestine lining, veined with glowing blue capillaries.

"Elara?" he croaked.

"Here," she groaned nearby. She was holding her bleeding shoulder, staring up at the ceiling.

Silas followed her gaze.

The cavern was vast, stretching for miles. And lining the walls, embedded in the flesh of the entity, were people.

Thousands of them.

They were encased in translucent membranes, like eggs. Tubes ran from their bodies into the wall, pumping glowing blue fluid out and dark, sludge-like nutrients in.

Most of them were fully transformed—scales, elongated limbs, unhinged jaws. They were dreaming, their eyes moving rapidly under closed lids. The Hive Song was loud here, a constant, psychic drone.

"The Sanatorium," Elara whispered, horrified.

Silas stood up, stumbling on the soft floor. "Node 7. The file said Node 7."

He walked along the wall of bodies. He checked the metal tags bolted into the flesh next to each membrane.

*Node 4... Node 5...*

He found Node 7.

He stopped.

The woman in the membrane was unrecognizable as human, but he knew her. He knew the ring on the clawed finger. He knew the shape of the face, even distorted by the golden scales.

"Nora," Silas wept.

Her eyes were open. They were solid gold, blind and seeing everything at once. She was fused to the wall, her lower body merged with the Broodmother's flesh.

She turned her head. She looked at him.

*...Silas...*

It wasn't spoken. It was pushed into his mind. It wasn't Nora’s voice. It was the voice of the Hive. Cold. Ancient. Hungry.

*...join us... be whole...*

"She’s... she’s a battery," Silas choked out. "They’re using them as batteries."

"No," Elara said, limping up beside him. "Batteries just store power. Look."

She pointed to the tubes. The blue liquid—the Dragon Oil—was being pumped *up*.

"They are the organs," Elara said. "The city isn't just feeding the Broodmother. The infected *are* the Broodmother. They are becoming part of it. The Ministry is farming a god."

Silas looked at Nora. He raised his hand to the membrane. She hissed, snapping her jaws at him. There was no recognition. Only the hunger of the reptile.

His wife was dead. This was just parts.

Something snapped inside Silas Vane. The fear of germs, the fear of contamination—it vanished, replaced by a cold, burning hatred that was cleaner than any disinfectant.

"Burn it," Silas said.