{Oh, come on. We can take ‘em!}

  {It’s a long way...}

  *Snarling and swords clashing*

  The raccoon wearing a Viking-style helmet with an axe on his back peers around the corner.

  {Toss me.}

  {What?}

  {I cannot jump the distance, you’ll have to toss me!}

  Three sword-wielding raccoons in a trench coat grab their friend and prepare to throw.

  {Ah- Don't tell the fox.}

  {Not a word.}

  {AAHHH!!!}

  *Thud*

  --A scene from Lord of the Raccoons: The Two Trash Heaps, P.A.W: channel #02.

  I slip my hand into a pocket at my thigh, pulling out a small plastic wrapper covered in cartoon raccoons throwing peanuts at each other like snowballs as we run through the pipe system with our stealth inactive.

  Tearing the plastic open, I take a bite of the nutty, chocolatey goodness inside. There’s a slightly odd, powdery substance in the centre of the bar that clings to my sensitive tongue.

  “Uck, what’s that?” I complain, sticking my tongue out as I scrape it against my teeth to try and clean it. “Did you spike my snacks?!”

  Cyon’s chittering laughter rings in the back of my head as my free hand whips out, throwing a knife into the forehead of another Three as it rounds a corner ahead of us.

  You’re approaching the waste processing plant now and, given the fact that it threw a Thirteen at you earlier and your siblings’ clones are currently engaged in an extended siege against its horde trying to flood the undercity, I thought it would be sensible to redose you with stimulants.

  “Okay,” I reluctantly nod as five more Threes charge around the corner with a few Tens backing them up, moving at a crawling pace in my perception. “Just don’t put it in nougat in the future. That did a horrible job covering the Zoomie’s texture.”

  I spring forward to meet the alien dogs and monkeys head on, dancing between them and lashing out with my razor-sharp claws, shredding their flesh before my siblings even get a chance to join in. They don’t bat an eye, running past as the last Ten falls in two halves and fading from sight before vanishing around the corner ahead of me.

  I can hear the dense patter of clustered alien footfall on damp metal around the corner turning erratic as my siblings throw themselves into a fight and, as I activate my own stealth and join them, my eyes widen at the veritable flood of Xenos filling the massive chamber the pipe opens out into.

  The room is taller than it is wide, with the ceilings looming at least fifteen metres above my already suspended position. The walls are covered in twisting roots and vines and lined with quickly growing seed pods that burst every few seconds, releasing new small Models before shrinking down and restarting their growth phases.

  There are Fours and Nines crawling across the ceiling en masse, packed together so tightly that the gaps between them blur and the entire surface seems to writhe with motion. There’s a large circular chute in the centre of the ceiling, leading towards the surface, with a tree-like pillar of twisted roots stretching up through the middle of it.

  Some Tens are using the squishy fishies’ tentacles to swing themselves around, and I can see several of them rearranging the corpses being dropped into the chamber from a bunch of connecting pipes. They pile them up against the roots and branch-like extrusions protruding from the walls and spreading across the floor, which are constantly spreading to consume the biomass.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Several of the pipes around the room have a few of the chunky worms, that I think are Model Eights if I remember correctly, hanging out of them and regurgitating a sickening blend of half-chewed people and excrement. The other pipes have plants going both ways, bringing in new resources and letting out their army at the same time.

  Most of the room’s remaining floor-space not being used to grow new fodder for the hive is taken up by Threes and Fives, with a bunch of tiny worms, Sevens, wriggling around under their feet in the thin layer of waste still left being processed.

  ‘Holy shit!’ I exclaim wordlessly as my eyes lock onto three large growth pods hanging from the central tree. One of them is tiny and only just starting its growth phase, while the other two both hold the faint outlines of sleeping eldritch squids. ‘Is this the main hive?’

  Part of it.

  My tail twitches into a slow sway behind me as my excitement starts to build.

  This would appear to be the main processing chamber, but according to the schematics in the city’s public records, there are four secondary waste storage vats connected to it.

  ‘That’s… a lot of plants.’

  My mouth stretches into a wide grin, and I begin moving before Cyon can even respond, leaping down onto a Five trying to smother the flames eating through its two left legs. My hand plunges into its skull, and I bat my tail once, spraying it and a few nearby plants with a nasty mix of bacteria and digestive enzymes before I spring away.

  It is. However, you certainly have the means to deal with them. You’re now near the purchasing range of your lab again, and you and your siblings have gathered a sizable collection of points. I would like to recommend increasing your clone production capabilities first.

  ‘Sure, sounds like a plan.’

  I slash open a Three’s throat and stomp on a few Sevens, frowning as a bunch of nearby plants turn towards the dead worms, focusing in on me despite my invisibility.

  They can tell when the worms die? Let’s fix that.

  I quickly change my R.A.B.I.E.S from producing DogEater to SerpentBite and dip my tail into the slush around my ankles, letting my productive organ pump bacteria directly into it.

  An unequipped B.I.N L.O.R.R.Y will set you back two thousand five hundred points, and you’ll need another set of culture solutions and accelerating compounds. That will be a total of two thousand eight hundred and seventy points for six more raccoons and symbiotes as quickly as possible.

  The waste sludge at my feet churns with motion as every worm within five metres of me dies a quick, painful death.

  At least, I assume it’s painful with how much they’re wriggling.

  The SerpentBite continues to spread further from me slowly, so I take advantage of the distraction to stop ripping plants to pieces and slip out of their encirclement. I drop them a little present before I go though, and the crackling Jacob’s Ladder Ball does its job holding their attention and frying their synapses in a two-for-one surprise!

  ‘I can afford that already? Buy it! Also, refill the other lab if it needs it.’

  Of course, I would love to.

  Her playful tone should probably worry me, but I’m enjoying myself too much to care as I leap over an unsuspecting Five, planting my clawed fingers in its face and using them to flip myself onto its spined back, ripping its head apart in the process.

  ‘There’s a but coming, isn’t there?’

  But.

  “Haha,” I laugh aloud, immediately drawing the attention of most of the plants near me.

  You’ll need to go higher to get within purchasing distance.

  A few of the pests on the ceiling start detaching themselves, dropping and using their many tentacle-like limbs to break their falls. As the impact thuds ring out though, I’m already long gone from the Five’s corpse, jumping away using doggos’ backs as my spring pads.

  I touch down a dozen metres from that mess, landing on a raised root dotted with growth pods instead of the slushy metal floor. One of my hands lashes out to tear open one of the birthing bubbles as the other slips into my snack pocket, pulling out a handful of pocket noodles.

  ‘How high,’ I ask, silently this time, while munching on my salty snack and glancing at the pod that didn’t start rotting from my bacteria.

  Kinda hard to die to something that isn’t there, turns out pumping all of it through my tail means there’s none for my claws!

  Cyon’s avatar blinks into existence before me, pointing up with a manic grin on her face that matches my giddy mood, flashing her unnaturally pearly whites.

  Into the hole!

  My eyes follow her paw towards the gaping hole in the centre of the room, where I see the two Cthulhu spawners hanging from the big tree quaking with motion. My tail picks up speed as my eyes dilate. My ears twitch to attention, focusing in on the faint sounds of movement within the large growth pods.

  Everything else fades away around me, from the faint gunshots echoing down the pipes above, to the thuds of dying plants as my invisible siblings carefully sneak between them.

  The only things on my mind are my two… six new toys.

  ‘More speed and regen please. Also, give me something to help close the distance in the air.’

  You already redosed on Zoomies with that pasta, so you only need a Re: Gen X injector. How do symbiote whips sound?

  ‘Sold!’

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  New Purchases!

  Class II Re: Gen X – 35 points

  Type-L3 Symbiote Combat Upgrade Sample – 85 points

  Total: 120 points

  Remaining points: #####

  _____