Chapter 85| Divided
"All available Hunters to the northern coastal sector, immediately," Farrow’s voice cut through the coordination channel with urgent, unmistakable command authority. "Whatever that specimen is, it’s covering ground faster than our containment perimeter can adjust to intercept it. We need bodies on that ridge now."
The chamber erupted into rapid, urgent motion, the Strike Team’s earlier exhaustion giving way to fresh, adrenaline-fueled readiness as Damon began organizing immediate deployment.
"Fallen Crown, Stoneheart primary force — move out toward the coastal sector," Farrow continued. "Extraction craft will redirect to pick up the wounded and non-essential personnel separately."
"I’m coming with the primary force," Allen said immediately, already moving toward the chamber’s exit.
"Negative, Hunter Veton." Farrow’s voice carried unusual, firm insistence. "Your presence is required here briefly. The Canadian specialist Everlyn treated requires proper stabilization protocol before evacuation, and Association procedure requires the operation’s ranking officer on-site to formally authorize his medical transport given the severity of his earlier injury. That’s you, given your party’s current combat leadership status."
"That can wait," Allen said, frustration mounting.
"It cannot," Farrow said, voice carrying quiet, unmistakable authority. "Protocol exists for good reason, Hunter Veton, even during crisis. Your wives and the primary strike force are more than capable of establishing an initial defensive perimeter without you for the roughly twenty minutes this will require. I need you here, briefly, then you’ll be cleared to rejoin them immediately after."
Allen felt every instinct rebel against the delay, Guardian’s Instinct already prickling with vague, unfocused unease, but the weight of protocol, and the genuine, practical necessity of the wounded specialist’s care, left him little room to argue.
"Twenty minutes," he said tightly.
"Twenty minutes," Farrow confirmed.
Myria approached quickly, expression carrying visible reluctance despite the operation’s urgent momentum. "We’ll establish perimeter and assess the situation before engaging directly," she promised. "We won’t take unnecessary risks before you’re able to rejoin us."
"Be careful," Allen said, pulling her into a brief, fierce embrace. "All of you."
"Always," Myria said, though something in her voice carried the same faint, unspoken unease he felt building in his own chest.
Irene, Everlyn, and Vivian each offered similarly brief, urgent farewells, and within minutes, the primary strike force had departed the central chamber, leaving Allen alone with a handful of support personnel and the wounded Canadian specialist, the chamber’s earlier triumphant atmosphere replaced entirely by tense, isolated waiting.
The stabilization protocol proved straightforward, if agonizingly slow given his mounting impatience — proper documentation, confirmed vital signs, careful authorization procedures that felt, under the circumstances, almost absurdly bureaucratic given the crisis unfolding elsewhere on the island. Allen completed each requirement with barely restrained urgency, watching the minutes tick past with mounting, unfocused dread.
It was during the final stretch of paperwork that Guardian’s Instinct flared with sudden, violent intensity, considerably sharper and more urgent than any previous warning he’d experienced.
He staggered slightly, hand pressed against his chest as an overwhelming, visceral wrongness settled through him — not a physical threat directed at himself, but something considerably worse, a bone-deep, instinctive certainty that something had gone catastrophically wrong, somewhere he couldn’t yet see.
"Hunter Veton?" one of the support personnel asked, alarm evident at his sudden, visible distress.
Allen didn’t answer immediately, focus entirely consumed by the mounting, overwhelming certainty building beneath his skin. He’d marked all four of his wives for Shadow Transposition before the operation began, standard precaution given the mission’s danger — a precaution he’d never actually needed to invoke in genuine emergency until this exact, terrifying moment.
He reached for that connection instinctively, and felt something that made his blood run entirely cold.
Silence. Not the reassuring quiet of a stable, unremarkable bond, but something considerably more ominous — faint, weakening resonance, the unmistakable signature of a connection under severe, active strain.
"Something’s wrong," Allen said, voice tight with rapidly mounting panic. "Something’s very wrong."
He didn’t wait for further confirmation, didn’t wait for proper authorization or careful protocol. He gathered every ounce of focus he possessed, locked onto Myria’s weakening resonance signature, and activated Shadow Transposition with desperate, urgent intensity.
The world dissolved into shadow and instantaneous transition, and when it reformed around him moments later, Allen found himself standing amid a scene of such devastating, immediate horror that every ounce of the day’s earlier triumphant relief shattered entirely in a single, breathless instant.
The coastal ridge, moments earlier presumably a defensible, orderly perimeter, now lay in ruins — scorched earth, shattered equipment, the acrid smell of blood and battle hanging thick in the humid air. Bodies lay scattered across the devastated terrain, several unmistakably Hunters, their equipment and stillness carrying grim, unmistakable finality.
His wives lay crumpled amid the wreckage, considerably closer to the devastation’s epicenter than any of the others, and Allen felt something inside him break entirely at the sight — Myria unconscious against a shattered outcropping, Irene sprawled nearby with visible, severe injuries, Everlyn curled protectively over an unmoving form that might have been Cole, Vivian struggling weakly to rise despite clearly overwhelming pain.
Standing over them, impossibly larger than the footage Farrow had shared mere minutes earlier, was a creature that defied every expectation Allen had carried into this fight — considerably more refined than any standard colony member, its chitinous form carrying subtle, disturbing echoes of the Queen’s own massive silhouette, multifaceted eyes gleaming with unmistakable, calculating intelligence as it regarded the devastation surrounding it with what could only be described as satisfied, patient menace.
Fragments of the Queen’s own distinctive coloration marked its otherwise sleeker form — evidence, sickening and unmistakable, of exactly what this creature had done in the brief window since its hatching.
"No," Allen breathed, the single word carrying the full, devastating weight of everything he was witnessing. "No, no, no—"
The creature’s gaze shifted toward him the moment he materialized, something almost like recognition flickering behind its calculating, multifaceted eyes, and Allen understood, with sudden, visceral clarity, that whatever intelligence had allowed this creature to devour its own mother’s remains and evolve within mere minutes of hatching, it had been waiting, patiently, for exactly this confrontation.
Ashfall Talons blazed to sudden, furious life along his forearms, Guardian’s Instinct screaming with an intensity he’d never before experienced, and Allen felt something cold and absolute settle into place beneath his overwhelming grief and terror.
"Whatever you are," he said, voice shaking with barely contained fury, "you picked the wrong family to hurt."
The creature’s mandibles clicked together with a sound that carried, unmistakably, something almost like amusement, and it began, with slow, deliberate menace, to advance.