The terrain opened up, a break in the trees exposing me to the midday sun and any eyeless faces below. I moved in bursts, crawling a few feet, then pausing, breathing hard. My face pressed to the dirt, I’d strain my ears. If I heard nothing above the breeze, I’d continue. It was brutally slow going. Every ten feet or so, I’d risk a peek to make sure I was staying on course.

Thump. Squelch.

Somewhere on the hillside up above, Patrick and Alex were in position waiting.

And somewhere down below, kids were being killed.

The gravel pile remained ahead, though it was only half the height it had been before. The Drones must have made use of the gravel in their construction or repairs. The sun inched its way up, baking down on me. My clothes felt itchy. The start of a sunburn tingled across the nape of my neck. The backpack straps chafed my shoulders.

It took me two hours to come into range of the storage warehouse, but at last I was safely behind the gravel.

I gave myself a minute to stretch my aching limbs, then peered around the edge.

The Queen was in her position at the end of the assembly line. Her squirming stinger rose, then plummeted into the midsection of the girl secured before her. Though a variation of this scene had been playing through my head on a near-continuous loop for day and nightmare-riddled night, it felt as fresh as a cut. My chest cramped, and I had to concentrate to slow my breathing. It wasn’t a sight you could get used to.

Nor was the sight on the foundation.

Countless floating slabs of sheet metal, each supporting a kid’s deadweight, now covered the majority of the vast concrete plain. The closer kids, those who’d been more recently implanted with offspring, looked like the ones I’d seen last time I was here. Their stomach and lower chest areas were swollen, the humps ranging in size.

But the kids at the farthest reaches of the foundation, those who’d first been turned into cocoons, were no longer recognizable as humans. The entire front sides of their bodies ballooned upward, in some cases even higher than the kids were tall. Their clothes had ripped, their skin stretching to conceal whatever was growing inside them. Broken ribs floated beneath the skin, visible like sticks pushed through latex. Worst of all, their flesh pulsed erratically.

As if ready to hatch.

Thump. Squelch.

From where I lay, the Queen was at least six hundred yards away, too far for me and the Hawkeye.

I had to move fast. And yet that was the one thing I could not risk doing.

Ignoring the sounds rising to me, I continued crawling cautiously down and across the hillside. Progress was slow, but I was able to pick up the pace a little as the trees thickened.