Chapter 202: Only Way Out
"We don’t have a choice. This time we need to do it quietly. How many bullets and grenades do we have left?"
The three of them counted their remaining supplies in silence, and honestly, the result was depressing.
Otis let out a long sigh. "I’ll save one bullet for myself, so I have two magazines and two grenades left. As for the C4, there are only two charges remaining."
Jace nodded. He was in an even worse situation, with only half a magazine and a single grenade left.
Arthur, surprisingly, had the most ammunition since he had spent most of the time reading the situation instead of fighting, constantly calculating which ants they needed to kill to maximize their chances of survival.
Without hesitation, he handed over two magazines and two grenades, leaving only one of each for himself.
"You sure?" Jace raised a brow. "You won’t be able to protect yourself."
Arthur simply smiled and took out the C4 controller from his pocket.
"I don’t need to. I trust both of you to protect me, and if we end up dying here..." He raised the controller slightly. "At least we still have this. I don’t want to end up like those ants or whatever happened to the Eagle Union members."
After hearing that, none of them spoke again. The only sounds left were their breathing and the distant movement of ants that still hadn’t discovered their location.
Arthur slowly took off his backpack and spread a folded blueprint he got from the general room on the damp floor before shining a flashlight over it.
"The General’s office should be here." His finger moved across the faded lines before stopping near the edge of the map.
"We escaped through a collapsed wall and kept moving down instead of following the main corridor. If my sense of direction is still right, we should already be close to the main logistics sector."
He looked around at the broken concrete and white membranes covering every surface before comparing them with the blueprint once again.
"The emergency exit should be somewhere behind this section. It’s connected to the vehicle garage and maintenance tunnel."
Otis immediately looked relieved. "So we just need to keep moving?"
Arthur shook his head. "Not exactly."
His finger slowly traced another area near the center of the map.
"The deepest part of the headquarters should be here. Normally it would be the underground warehouse, but if my theory is correct and this Groove expanded from below... that’s the most likely place for the Queen to settle."
Jace folded the map without another word. "So we avoid the center."
"We avoid it at all costs," Arthur corrected. "Ant colonies naturally protect their Queen above everything else. The closer we get, the more Majors we’ll encounter, and I don’t think we have enough ammunition to survive that."
Otis looked at the remaining magazines hanging from his vest and immediately nodded. "Then let’s pray your sense of direction is better than mine."
Even Jace let out a quiet laugh before adjusting his rifle. "Let’s do this. I’m bringing all of us back alive."
Otis snorted quietly. "If I survive this, I’m confessing to Danielle. Fuck it, I’ll marry her. I don’t want to die a virgin."
Arthur rolled the blueprint back up and returned it to his backpack. "That motivation is surprisingly acceptable."
Even Jace couldn’t stop himself from laughing, while Arthur quickly covered his own mouth to keep the sound low. In a place where death could appear around every corner, Otis somehow still managed to make terrible jokes.
They continued forward by following the broken wall of the room, which gradually turned into a long passage sloping deeper underground as if someone had intentionally carved it that way.
The deeper they went, the more humid the headquarters became. Mushrooms completely replaced the broken furniture, white membranes covered every corner, and even the ceiling disappeared beneath layers of living tissue.
Liquid continuously dripped from above, but through the night vision goggles they could clearly see it wasn’t water. It slowly flowed through the white membranes before disappearing into the walls as if the entire structure possessed its own circulatory system.
"This place is becoming part of the Groove," Arthur murmured while observing the walls.
"Those membranes are probably the mycorrhizal network created by the mutated fungi. Strangely enough, they don’t look rotten anymore."
"We don’t even know their real color," Otis replied. "We’re looking through night vision, remember?"
Arthur nodded. "True... but I don’t smell any decay anymore either."
As if responding to his words, the membranes suddenly pulsed. The liquid inside them moved all at once, flowing deeper into the passage like nutrients traveling through veins.
Jace took another step before something cracked beneath his boot.
The sound immediately made all three of them stop. They lowered their flashlights almost simultaneously.
The ground was full of dead ants, hundreds of them. Their bodies completely filled the hallway, piled on top of one another until the floor itself was no longer visible.
Otis instinctively looked toward Arthur for an explanation, but Arthur’s expression was just as confused.
Then he felt something wrap around his boot. The white membrane beneath the corpses slowly tightened around his ankle, making it difficult to move.
"Back!"
The three of them immediately stepped away. The ground suddenly split open, revealing a pool of liquid that rapidly swallowed every dead ant in the hallway.
The bodies dissolved almost instantly before the liquid disappeared back into the opening, which quietly closed as if nothing had happened.
Arthur stared at the restored floor for several seconds before finally understanding. "It’s cannibalism. The parasite isn’t just controlling the colony. It’s recycling every nutrient inside the Groove, even the ants themselves."
Otis frowned. "Why would it do that? What is a Queen without her colony?"
Arthur remained silent for a moment before answering in a voice so low that it almost disappeared into the darkness.
"It doesn’t want a colony anymore. It wants to evolve."
The three of them instinctively tightened their grip on their weapons before continuing deeper into the headquarters.
The three of them continued moving while Arthur occasionally compared the surroundings with the blueprint while the tension between them didn’t ease. It getting worse even as if what was in front of them was even more fucked up than before.
The white membranes became thicker the deeper they went until almost the entire hallway was covered by them, connecting the walls and ceiling together like countless blood vessels.
"We should already be close to the backdoor." Arthur suddenly stopped and pointed at the blueprint. "If we keep going straight, we should arrive at the maintenance tunnel and from there reach the garage."
Otis finally let out a relieved sigh. "So we are actually going to survive this shit?"
"Don’t jinx it, Otis..."
Arthur shook his head and continued walking. The passage gradually became wider while the floor started to slope downward until it suddenly disappeared.
There wasn’t another hallway in front of them but a gigantic opening. The headquarters seemed to have collapsed from the inside as every floor below connected into one enormous space.
The white membranes they had been following all this time gathered below like roots, continuously carrying transparent liquid toward the center.
The three of them instinctively lowered their bodies and looked down.
"What should we do?" His face was clearly pale, his voice was so low even it was hard for them to hear it. "There isn’t any hallway anymore, just this hole!"
Arthur didn’t answer immediately. Half of the giant ant body had already fused with the mushroom colony, making it impossible to distinguish where the fungus ended and the Queen began.
Thick membranes connected directly to its abdomen while its mouth continuously swallowed the liquid flowing from every direction.
"It doesn’t even move. Maybe she is in a slumber and we still have a chance."
"I don’t think it needs to." Jace’s eyes moved somewhere else.
Around the Queen were piles of skeletons. Most belonged to worker ants while some were obviously mutated aberrants judging from the horns, giant skulls, and oversized claws that still remained.
Arthur also searched the piles one by one. "No human skeleton."
Otis looked at him. "So the Eagle Union members aren’t food."
Arthur nodded. "For now. Let’s put the explosive near here."
Jace quietly took one of the remaining C4 charges and looked at the thick membranes connected to the Queen.
"If we destroy these, the nutrient flow should stop."
Arthur thought for a moment before nodding. "It should work. At least enough to damage the network."
Now everything was done, but another problem immediately appeared.
The only way out was through the giant hole. The maintenance tunnel Arthur had been looking for no longer existed, its location completely swallowed by the Queen’s network. The hallway they came from had also changed, turning into a living tunnel of white membranes that continuously pulsed with nutrients.
Jace checked the walls one last time while Otis looked up at the ceiling, hoping to find a vent or another hidden passage. They couldn’t even see the wall and ceiling anymore.
Below was their only way out.
Arthur gulped and tightened his grip on the C4 controller. "We don’t have a choice... we need to go down."
