If you take a bird's-eye view of the first forty-eight hours of an invasion, you'll be surprised to see how they spread. We imagine this spread as a kind of flood that emanates from the center and spreads outward, but in reality, just like they are almost plants, the movement of opposites is much more organic.

The initial invasion and spread were relatively limited, but concentrated in a few areas. In the first ten hours, the hive swarm was highly concentrated, with five or six square kilometers. They then roll out in a ring and usually begin to expand massively the day after the initial landing.

The cycle of expansion stops, new foundations are consolidated, and then the third wave leaves.

Some people compare it to breathing, and they're not entirely wrong. The process has its ups and downs, but it is not constant. The amount of resistance they encounter often determines the speed of propagation. ”

—Professor Heinlein, excerpt from a lecture on knowledge gained from early oppositional studies (later called extraterrestrial anthropology), 2028.

***

I came down and found a dozen office drones, Elisa, and Sto

m are waiting. They are listless, as I imagined, and people who knew they were dead would see the world.

When I pushed the door open with my shoulder, they turned to me.

I got a lot of stares, and that's nothing new. I'm a one-armed cyclops with some weird scars and a bit of a problem with my attitude. Being stared at is already routine. "Are you still kicking?" I asked.

The storm pushed away the pillar he was leaning on. "We are," he said. "How's the above going?"

"There's a whole bunch of aliens out there. I was an important person there. If we are in a hurry, we should be able to make up for it without difficulty. I pointed my thumb to the ceiling. Are you ready for a jog? ”

They're not keen on physical activity, who can blame them, but they don't need to look like I just asked them to take part in a puppy kicking contest.

"Come on, you either go away, or stay here and turn to the aliens."

This makes them more agile. A large group of us struggled up the stairs and ran to the back room to go up to the next floor.

I love it when they look at the dozens of smashed, melted, torn aliens in the cafeteria with wide eyes. Less pleasant was seeing knee-high birds pecking at some carcasses, occasionally taking a bite with their sharp beaks.

"What's that?" I muttered.

Model monsters, I call them models, ha, of course, easy to distinguish by prefix numbers.

They became fairly common a few hours after the start of the invasion and will undoubtedly soon become the most populous antithetical variant in the region. They are negligible in threat, but they are still dangerous in large numbers.

"Can I shoot them?" I asked.

Of course. This may scare them away.

I took my trench machine out of my holster and stopped to aim. I knew to put my feet just right, aim at the target, I did try a little, but I thought it would be better to do something that felt comfortable.

Or I've weakened my ability to actually hit anything.

I squinted my eyes and aimed the reticle at a larger crow-like bird, then bit the tip of my tongue and pulled the trigger.

Model One exploded, leaving only viscera, strange feathers, and flames.

"Oh yes," I said.

Everyone else flinched, but all the other models took off and flew away in a hurry.

The target is destroyed!

Reward... 1 point

"It's kind of sad," I said.

Models can be killed by hundreds, and it's easy. Giving more than one point per person will encourage the bad habits of the vanguard.

"Hmm," I said, then looked at the survivors. "Woo, let's move on."

"Tempest" nodded, and soon the group set off again, circling around the corpses along the way.

The next stairwell was originally to lead to the parking lot. This is the final sprint. None of the people I was with seemed ready to step in. Through the glass on the door, you can see the security lights, and everything is bathed in red. I opened the door and looked around and found nothing.

"I'll go first." I say.

The climb is ...... Anti-climatic. Just a few stairs are needed to reach the platform at the top. No aliens, no corpses.

"It's sunny!" I yelled loudly before I walked to the door of the next floor. There is a barricade next to it, boxes stacked on top of each other, and chairs and tables behind it.

I opened the door and waited by the door, away from the line of fire. "Who's there?" Someone called.

I felt a sigh of relief on my shoulders. "I'm a cat," I said, waving. "Lovely, one-armed. Warrior. I hope you know me. ”

I turned my head to see a young man in his twenties, dressed in the security uniform of the Moore Police, looking nervous, looking out of a hole in the garbage wall. "Oh, yes, okay. Uh, we can move something. ”

"Cool," I said. "We have a dozen more people here. And the storm man. ”

"Did Stormgirl and Jeff succeed?" He asked. "Good. I'll tell Simmons and get some help with this wall. Give us a minute, please! ”

I sighed. To be honest, I can't complain too much either. I almost got to see Kitten and Lucy again. Then we will find a way to escape from the center of the invasion.

When others started to show up, Simmons appeared on the other side of the barricade. Some of them pulled some chairs out of a pile of chairs and sat down, others quickly complained of not being able to get over.

"Captain," Simmons said. "You brought my men back."

I cringed a little. "I got one of them back," I said.

Simmons and I met eye to eye. "It's better than nothing. Come in, we have a few things to discuss. ”

"I'm sure I'm going to enjoy the conversation," I said with a blank face.

Save Humanity: Added 11 points

New total: 226