Green finished speaking and waited another minute.
But the Hive still gave no response, as if Green had been talking to a wall.
Green frowned slightly. "Are you going to make me do this the hard way?"
He signaled to Talaga. The ravenous young woman, who had been waiting for this, rushed forward. She revealed the eerie mouth on her belly and began to feast.
The Hive was enormous, but Talaga ate just as fast.
In the blink of an eye, she gnawed a hole two meters wide in its surface, exposing the body cavity and complex biological structures within.
As she bit into it, the Hive began to writhe faster, twitching faintly as though it were enduring pain.
Green ordered Talaga to stop and asked again, "Well? Are you still going to hold out?"
The Hive remained silent.
Green cursed its stubbornness.
Talaga lunged back in, and crunching sounds rang out...
Three or four minutes later, the enormous Hive was riddled with holes.
Talaga patted her belly in satisfaction, but Green looked grim. The Hive had never given him the response he expected, not even at the very end.
Was I wrong? Green began to doubt his judgment.
By all rights, every living creature had an instinct to survive. Few could face death calmly while still thinking clearly.
Or is something preventing this Hive from communicating with me? Green considered another possibility. Is that why it stayed silent no matter how I tortured it, right up to the end?
Still troubled by the question, Green set off for the next location.
He soon found another swarm. But after several days of development, it had already grown to a considerable size, and he saw no larvae turning directly into Hives.
Green guessed that the Towers had released a batch of