Riven crept to the very edge of the steel girder, his toes hanging over the precipice. Below him, the layer of purple smog rolled like a story ocean. Within, the shadows of Flyers darted around like sharks.

  Whump.

  A Flyer breached the surface, arcing into the sunlight like a leathery dolphin before diving back down into the gloom. Another popped out on his left, snapping its jaws at a rival that flew too close.

  He watched the rhythm of the ocean below. It was a chaotic, churching mess of wings and claws. If he missed, he was dead. If he timed it wrong and hit the wing instead of the back, he was dead. If the bug just decided to roll over, he was dead.

  “This is such a terrible idea,” Riven told himself. “Maybe the worst I have ever had.”

  The Behemoth took another step. The steel beam under Riven’s feet groaned and tilted five degrees.

  “Okay! Never mind! Great idea! I love this idea!”

  He watched the smog. A dark shape rose rapidly, pushing the purple mist upward in a bubble. It was larger than the others and was slowing down near the top of its arc.

  “Here goes nothing,” Riven whispered.

  He jumped.

  The wind hit him like a physical wall. He fell toward the smog layer, his eyes locked on the leathery back of the monster beneath him.

  Damn it.

  The Flyer had banked slightly and Riven was drifting wide. He was going to miss. He was going to plummet past it into the purple mist until he hit the pavement at terminal velocity.

  “No, no, no!”

  Riven swung his lance, shifting it to rifle mode in mid-air. He pointed the barrel down and away from the bug and pulled the trigger.

  THUD, THUD, THUD.

  The recoil of the high-caliber rounds kicked him backward. It shoved him just enough to correct his drift.

  Riven slammed onto the flyers back. He twisted the lance into a baton and let it magnetize to his hip in a fluid motion, slamming one hand onto each of the creature’s horn-like ridges.

  “Gotcha.”

  With the newfound weight, the creature began a dive. Riven’s stomach tried to exit through his mouth as they punched through the smog layer. The world turned purple, then suddenly burst into the grey tone of the destroyed city below as they broke through the bottom of the cloud.

  The ground was rushing up. Fast. Too Fast.

  “Pull up!” Riven screamed, yanking back on the creature’s horns. “Pull up, you oversized pigeon!”

  The Flyer banked hard left, swooping over the rooftops, but it couldn’t shake him. The head twisted around just enough to see Riven. Riven could swear it smiled, if a bug could truly smile.

  Then it barrel rolled.

  The centrifugal force ripped Riven free. He was flung sideways toward a crumbling office block. He engaged his thrusts to get him upright a split second before impact.

  He slammed into the side of the building. He dug a hand into the concrete, but the wall couldn’t take the kinetic missile called Riven. The masonry gave way, and the entire face of the wall began to collapse backward with a sickening crunch.

  Riven jumped off the falling debris before it could crush him. He fell another four stories, flailing, and slammed into the hood of a crushed car.

  [ARMOR INTEGRITY: 40%]

  Riven lay there, groaning. The groan slowly morphed into a chuckle, then a manic giggle. The suicidal jump had somehow worked. He was alive, and Phillean hadn’t succeeded in killing him yet.

  He rolled off the hood of the car, his bones groaning in protest, and looked around.

  The Queen, or the Hive Mother’s Hive was closer now, looming like a pulsating sore at the end of the street. But between him and the prize – and probably the most important part of what he saw – was the plaza. It was covered in Ravagers.

  Hundreds of them stopped moving. Hundreds of heads turned to look at him.

  “Hi,” Riven wheezed, slowly sliding off the car hood. “I’m looking for the gift shop?”

  The Ravagers apparently all wanted to tell him up close and personal as they all roared and surged forward.

  Riven looked back. There was nowhere to run. There were Ravagers on every side of him. So he did the only thing he could do and snapped his baton into his lance mode.

  A Scout reached him first. Riven charged forward, rolling under the talon, spinning around, and piercing it straight through the back of the head. He turned as a Warrior lunged at him, holding the lance horizontally to block the blow.

  The impact pushed him back hard, stumbling into another Scout.

  Riven turned with the momentum. He slid under a talon and jumped onto the Scout’s back. In one motion, he switched to rifle mode, balanced the barrel on the Sout’s shoulder, and fired a point-blank tungsten round into the charging Warrior’s eye.

  The Warrior dropped instantly. The Scout whipped around, trying to throw Riven off.

  Riven vaulted off the Scout, using it as a springboard to flip over a very confused Warrior. As he flipped, he placed a well-timed bullet between its many eyes.

  He landed, flipped again, rolled, and blocked what he couldn’t dodge. It was a battle on a knife’s edge. Every block jarred his bones through the suit. Every Ravager that he didn’t hit in a weak point took three strikes when it should have taken one.

  He simply couldn’t keep this up. He could barely get a breath in.

  A claw raked his chest, getting past his guard. Sparks showered his faceplate.

  [ARMOR INTEGRITY: 10%]

  The armor honestly was barely holding on. Yes, the nanites could regrow it, but that took time. Time that the Ravagers were ungratefully not providing. One more solid blow and Riven would be dealt a mortal wound.

  “I’m filing a complaint!” Riven yelled to the air, kicking a Scout in the mandibles and using the leverage to jump over a charging warrior to buy himself a second of breathing rom. “This is a hostile work environment!”

  He landed and blocked another slashing attack, the force sending him crashing into a wall.

  There were hundred in front him. And they were learning. The easier to kill Scouts had faded to the back, the Warriors pushing to the forefront. The Flyer he had used to get to safety had brought back friends to deal with its non-consensual rider.

  Riven looked at the corner of his HUD.

  [ALERT: (560) RAVAGERS DETECTED (MIXED]

  Then the ground shook.

  [ALERT: (561) RAVAGERS DETECTED (MIXED]

  BOOM.

  The horde scattered as the wall to his left exploded outward. A few of the Warriors were simply smashed into paste because they were too close.

  A biological bulldozer had emerged. A massive hulk of muscle and armor that stood twice as tall as a Warrior. Its body was covered in overlapping plated of grey chitin so thick they looked like slabs of concrete. It didn’t have any arms, but its head was crowned with a singular, jagged horn that could probably puncture a starship hull.

  It roared, from an unseen mouth, the sound vibrating the dust in the air. It was a Tank Class Ravager.

  Riven froze. There was no way for his bullets to pierce the armor. Considering how it destroyed a building, he wasn’t sure even dropping a building on it would work.

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  The Tank turned its massive, armored head toward him. It scraped its hoof against the pavement, lowering its horns.

  “Oh, great,” Riven panted, wiping bug blood from off his faceplate as best possible. He whipped his head around. How could he kill this thing.

  To either side was rubble and half standing buildings. The tank was in front of him. The only way to run was behind him. Where there was a long, straight avenue, where the Hive Mother Nest lay. Between Riven and the Queen was a sea of smaller bugs.

  A lightbulb went off in Riven’s slightly concussed brain. What if he didn’t fight the tank.

  “Hey!” Riven shouted, waving his arms. “Hey, Ugly! Over here! I’m soft and chewy!”

  The Tank roared in agreement to Riven’s plan. Then it began to pick up speed. It shot forward like a bullet train. Within moments he was approaching him at almost sixty miles an hour despite the bugs in between them.

  Riven maneuvered to the middle of the road, dodging out of the way of Warriors and waiting for the Tank. He waited until the ground was shaking so hard his vision blurred.

  “Come on,” Riven whispered. “Don’t miss.”

  At the last possible second, Riven triggered his heel thrusters and jumped up and leaned back. The Tank thundered underneath just beneath him, barely missing him.

  Riven twisted in mid air, grabbed a jagged spike on the Tank’s armor, and slammed onto the monster’s back. The impact nearly rattled his teeth loose.

  “Okay!” Riven screamed and slammed the lance against the Tank’s backside. “Go on now! Move it or lose it!”

  The Tank agreed with his sentiment and didn’t stop. It plowed straight ahead, down the avenue.

  Riven held on for dear life as the Tank smashed into the horde of smaller Ravagers. It was a bowling ball hitting pins made of meat. Scouts went flying. Warriors were crushed underfoot, their armor cracking like dry twigs under the weight of the charging behemoth. The Tank carved a path of destruction straight through the swarm, doing Riven’s work for him.

  “Resonance, thank you so much for turning on friendly fire.” Riven whispered, his voice vibrating with the shake of the beast.

  A Warrior managed to leap onto the side of the Tank, its claws scrabbling for purchase inches from Riven’s boot. Riven jammed his lance into the creature’s face.

  BLAM.

  The Tank lowered its head and smashed through a barricade of wrecked cars, sending a sedan a few inches over his head. It never slowed down. Dead ahead, the Hive Mother’s nest pulsed, a massive wall of organic resin and hardened slime blocking the end of the street.

  The Tank was like a runaway train, but the wall looked thick. If they hit that solid organic barrier, the Tank might stop, and Riven would be turned into paste against the back of its neck.

  I need to make a hole. Riven said to no one in particular but himself, scanning the pulsing flesh ahead. How in the Resonance am I supposed to do that.

  To the right of the road, an overturned fuel tanker was half absorbed into the biomass. That was convenient. Thank you, oh Resonance. It was rusted, leaking a steady stream of something hopefully volatile onto the street.

  “That works.”

  Riven leveled the rifle. He didn’t have time to aim for weak point. He just dumped the magazine into the truck.

  KA-BOOM.

  Luckily it worked. The explosion was blinding. It tore a wet, ragged hold in the side of the Hive Mother’s defensive wall, weakening the structure.

  The Tank didn’t flinch. It hadn’t slowed down for a second since he hopped on the Tank. Maybe it had a personal vendetta against upper management, or maybe it was just too stupid to turn. Riven didn’t care; he just needed it to act like a battering ram.

  The wall of flesh and resin loomed large, filling his vision. This was going to hurt. So instead of getting hurt, Riven threw himself backward and triggered his thrusters to cushion the fall.

  Phut.

  [ALERT: THRUSTER FUEL: 0%]

  “Oh, come on!”

  Instead of a graceful glide, he dropped like a stone. He hit the pavement hard, tumbling in a mess of limbs and cursing, rolling to a stop just as the Tank collided with the newly weakened wall of the nest.

  The sound was sickening with a wet, crunching noise. The Tank plowed through the smoke and flames, shattering the resin wall and carrying the momentum straight into the belly of the best.

  Riven picked himself off the ground and sprinted into the nest after the beast and through the hole before any bugs could see him.

  He slid across a floor that felt suspiciously like a tongue. It was click, warm, and smelled of rot. He scrambled up, sliding behind a pillar of hardened resin, breathing hard.

  At least he was inside now.

  The hair here was hot, humid, and smelled like a locker room located inside a stomach. The walls were alive and pulsating with a rhythmic, wet thumping sound that vibrated in Riven’s chest.

  And in the center of the chamber, illuminated by the dying fires of the Tank’s entrance was the Queen of the nest, the Hive Mother.

  Riven had had nightmares that were prettier than what he looking at. The Hive Mother looked like the worst parts of every insect that he knew. Her lower body was a bloated, transluecent sac the size of a shuttle, pulsing with bioluminescent light as it pumped eggs into the resin floor. She had long tethers to the structure, stringing her up to the ceiling, almost like she was a prisoner of her own biology.

  Her upper body was encased with iridescent obsidian armor. Four massive scythe-limbs hovered around her torso. Her head was crowned with a crest of spikes, and was looking straight at the Tank who had barge in.

  The Tank, dazed and smoking, tried to stand.

  The Queen was completely silent as she flicked one of her upper limbs. It was a blur of motion. A bone spur the size of a telephone pole punched straight through the Tank’s armored head, went through the body, and pinned it to the floor.

  The Tank twitched once before it no longer moved.

  Mister bug. Riven thought, Thank you for your service.

  Riven stared from the shadows, sweat stinging his eyes. The Queen retracted the bone spur with a wet squelch. Her head silently scanned the surrounding area, and the fourth scythes around her torso adjusted along with her gaze.

  Two of the scythes were attached to her shoulders, massive and armored. But the other two… the other two were floating. They hovered in the air beside her, detached from her body, drifting fluidly around her in the air.

  Is that damn telekinesis? Riven thought. Isn’t that only accessible to Radiant Class Dragons?

  The Queen hissed, steam escaped from vents in her armor. She turned directly towards Riven and her eight obsidian eyes locked onto Riven’s hiding spot.

  Riven stepped out, leveling the lance. He opened his mouth to make a joke about the Homeowners Association, but the words died in his throat. The pressure in the room had dropped and the silence was heavier than any roar.

  With barely a movement, one of the floating scythes shot forward like a missile. Riven didn’t even think. He didn’t have time to think. He threw himself to the right, but he wasn’t fast enough. It clipped the side of his head, shattering the left side of his visor and sending a spiderweb of cracks across his HUD.

  The impact act threw him into the wall and Riven his the ground hard, gasping. His display was flicker, red warning obscuring his vision. He couldn’t see.

  [AR..O.. IN….GRITY: 0%]

  “Get off,” Riven snarled, his voice slurring slightly.

  He slammed his fist against the hammer symbol on his chest plate. The helmet collapsed, the nanites steaming back down his neck and forming back into the suit rapidly.

  The smell hit him instantly. Rot, raw meat, and an intense heat that felt suffocating. Everything his armor guarded against hit him hard.

  But the pain was worse.

  The scythe hadn’t even touched him directly. But his skull felt like it had been split open. A spike of nausea rolled through his stomach, and the room tilted dangerously to his left. His vision swarm, double-images of the resin pillars dancing before him. He tried to focus, but his brain felt like it was floating in static.

  Get up, he told himself. Move or die.

  He dragged himself into a crouch behind the pillar, waiting for the killing blow. He waited for the second scythe to take his head off.

  It didn’t come.

  Riven blinked hard and peered around the edge of the resin.

  The Queen was standing perfectly still. She was unharmed. I mean the tank hadn’t scratched her, my bullets hadn’t touched her. She was pristine like a statue of obsidian death.

  But she wasn’t looking at him.

  Her eight block eyes stared at nothing. They were angled toward him, but she didn’t seem to perceive anything. She titled her head, first left, then right. The floating scythe that had nearly taken his head off drifted near the spot where Riven had hit the wall, slicing tentatively before drifting back to the queen.

  She can’t see me? Riven realized, the thought cutting through the fog of his head. Why.

  She had reacted to the tank and had just perceived him moments ago. Why was she blind to him all of a sudden.

  It didn’t make sense. But he didn’t have time to figure out why it was ignoring him

  Riven looked at her again. She was terrifying, but at least she was anchored. A web of fleshy tubs connected her armored upper body to the tall, stationary egg sac suspended from the ceiling, but there was one thick, pulsing column of chitin that seemed to be the main support.

  All I have to do is break the anchor and she’ll fall and die.

  He leveled the rifle slowly, forcing shaking legs to cooperate. Riven quietly set the barrel against the resin pillar, using it as a brace to stabilize his aim against the pounding in his skull.

  One.

  He fired and the tungsten round hit the tissue, and a white crack appeared in the dark chitin.

  Something shook the very air around him, a sudden drop in pressure that popped in his ears. It was silent, but the psychic weight of her rage hit the very air hard. His headache spiked, blinding him with white light for a split second.

  Two.

  He stepped to the right, ignoring the dizziness. A nanosecond later, a floating scythe pierced the exact spot where he had just been standing, slicing through the resin pillar like it was smoke.

  He had hit the exact same spot on the tether and the crack widened.

  Riven rolled, coming up into a kneeling stance. He knew he should move. He knew he should reposition. But he was close. He was so close.

  Three. Four. Five.

  He poured three shots into a space the size of a dinner plate. Black ichor began to weep from the wound. He heard a whistling sound from behind him. It was the only warning he got.

  He rolled, but he was too late. He had been too greedy.

  The second floating scythe caught him. It grazed his flank as the blade sliced through the DAIR suit’s armor like it was wet paper carving a deep furrow into his side.

  The impact sent him to the floor. Riven hit the floor gasping, but used the newfound prone position to aim.

  An immense, cold shock hit his side, followed instantly by a fire that seared through his nervous system.

  Six. Seven Eight.

  Riven gritted his teeth so hard he felt his teeth cracking and he held the trigger down towards the tether. He poured fire at the tether through a haze of red agony.

  Nine. Ten.

  The last round finally punched through.

  There was a sickening, wet tearing sound and the heavy connected was severed. The massive egg sac slumped to the floor like dead weight.

  The Hive Mother fell to the floor as the main tether was severed, the rest of the tubes fell away as well as she landed hard on the ground.

  Riven grabbed the pillar and hauled himself up, clutching his bleeding side. His vision was tunneling, greying at the edges. But he managed a weak, bloody grin.

  “Ha,” Riven wheezed, his lance slipped from his numb fingers. “Gravity… is a…”

  The Hive Mother vanished from his sight. Riven thought that with the tether gone, her legs would be too weak, or that she herself would be less capable.

  But he had gambled wrong.

  And all Riven saw was the world spin sideways and then in a moment of confused clarity, he saw his own legs standing five feet away from him.

  Then, darkness.

  [SIMULATION FAILED]