The medical assistant dropped the tricorder in horror, trembling as he did so. As the lights returned to normal, he began flapping his hands all across his body, trying to knock the invisible spiders off of his body. The other security guards and Commander Ariele looked at him in confusion. “What is it? What’s wrong?” they asked him.
“Get them off…get them OFF!!” he said, panicked.
In an instant, he fell to the ground, and the security guards could see two puncture wounds on the back of his hand. The guards began to realize what was going on and started swatting their own bodies as well. Occasionally, they could feel the spiders being swatted off by their hands, which only reinforced their suspicions that ‘something’ was crawling on them, and elevated their level of panic.
Ariele thought quickly. She knew that they would not have much more time before they all became victims of the spiders. “Lieutenant! I need you to help me prop this thing!”
“…I can’t…th..they’re all over me…I can feel them…”
“Lieutenant!” Ariele yelled. “GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF!!”
The security officer shook it off, and quickly helped her to prop the weapon. “Th…the attack is two-pronged…” he said, still terrified that he might become the next victim of the spiders. “But you only have to hit the button once…the delay is only a half-a-second, and it is automatic…”
Distracted, the officers didn’t notice that the massive ‘arms’ that radiated from the Annecta core were still after them. One swooped in and grabbed the other security officer by the leg, and pulled him up high and dangled him by the vines. He screamed and screamed as a massive cloud of green butterflies, now ‘detached’ from the vines, began to swarm him. The pain he was feeling became unbearably intense as the butterflies released their digestive enzymes onto his skin.
The lieutenant that helped Ariele stood by paralyzed as ever as he watched his teammate get devoured.
Ariele wasted no time in targeting the Annecta core. She felt the powerful pushback from the recoil of the warhead leaving her weapon. When the first blast hit a blast ensued that blinded them, and threw the team ten feet back and onto the ground. The blast was sufficient enough to crack its outer shell and expose the now naked Annecta to the chemical toxin that hit them only a moment later. They squirmed and they fell to the ground, hundreds at a time. There were tens of thousands of them.
“Report, Commander,” Santiago yelled from the bridge. “What’s going on there? Is the situation under control?”
Santiago waited eagerly for an answer, but received only a long pause.
“Commander? Are you all right?” Santiago asked. “COMMANDER!!”
All he could hear was silence.
