AN: If you're enjoying Marvel: King of The Swarm and think more people should read it a few reviews would really go a long way toward promoting the book and I would be extremely grateful. But regardless thank you for the support that's been coming through and I hope whether you leave a review or not you like the book. You guys also hit fifty power stones so expect a bonus chapter after this!
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"N-no s-stay back! G-get a-away, get away!"
"W-what the hell is that thing!?"
"O-oh g-god, p-please d-don't-"
A loud crunch echoed through the hallway as bone splintered like dry timber and blood cascaded to the floor in a crimson waterfall. A second later a headless body dropped to the floor, the savage jagged wound around the stump of its neck clearly showing the body hadn't been decapitated by a blade.
Walking up from behind Harry felt a strange sense of pride as Betty looked back at him in what Harry had dubbed as her Primal form. She looked almost the same as when he transformed himself, though her symbiote was a lighter shade of purple with black accents instead of gold and was overall a pit slimmer.
Betty's tongue flicked out running around the rim of her mouth and cleaning the blood that had stained her face, 'What? I'm a messy eater.'
Harry let out a series of clicks the equivalent of chuckling, 'It is fun witnessing you enjoy your new-found strength, though I didn't think you would be quite so eager to bite someone's head off.'
'I wanted to know how what it tasted like,' Betty replied matter of factly as she reached down and placed her hand on the lifeless body covering it in a thin film of symbiote that started to shrink condensing the body down with a series of nightmarish snaps and pops.
'And?'
'Didn't care for it, probably an acquired taste,' Betty answered as she stood back up and offered Harry the dense lemon-sized ball of symbiote containing what used to be a two-hundred-pound man, 'That should be enough biomass correct?'
Harry nodded as a tentacle emerged from his back and swallowed the offered sphere before retracting back into his body, 'We lucked out that New York City's underworld seems to be tearing itself apart, otherwise, I wouldn't have been so liberal with our hunting.'
Betty clicked in agreement before her body morphed and shifted as she adopted her human form ending up standing naked as the day she was born in a hallway where the walls were still dripping with blood.
Harry followed suit and watched as Betty's eyes roamed over his naked body with visible hunger, "Is it strange that I'm horny after killing so many people?"
"No the parts of your brain that control libido and the fight or flight response are closely connected," Harry informed as he used his symbiote to cover his body in clothes.
Betty frowned but did so as well giving herself a revealing set of daisy dukes, a crop top, and a leather choker, "You know I can read your emotions if you don't hide them from me. I know that watching me turned you on, though I admit the metallic smell does put a damper on everything."
"Don't forget I can read your emotions as well, which I why I know you're goading me," Harry droned as he turned around, "Now stop being a brat, and let's go, the NYPD has no doubt found our last two cullings so they're going to be on high alert."
Betty clicked her tongue in disappointment as she moved to follow Harry, "Fine, but can we do it one last time before I go back to my parents, I need something to distract me so I don't kill them while they scream at me for disappearing without telling them."
"You already know my answer to that, and if you're going to kill them just make sure Nyx takes over their bodies before they start to rot," Harry replied as they reached the elevator and started to descend.
"She can do that?" Betty asked in surprise.
'Yes, though It takes a considerable amount of effort and spreads my mental energy quite thin. Until we find a way to reliably increase our telepathic capacity I would prefer that bodily possession remains very low on the list of options,' Nyx replied her voice echoing in Harry and Betty's minds.
"Then I'll avoid killing my parents," Betty declared with a reluctant sigh, "Though no promises if they try and ground me."
---
Yuriko Watanabe or simply Yuri by those close to her, paced next to her squad card outside of the abandoned apartment complex which as of just yesterday used to be a front for Diamondback's crew. Now the building was completely void of any sign of life, beyond the cop cars surrounding the building.
Just as Yuri was beginning to question where her wall climbing friend was, there was a soft band and Yuri turned around to find Spiderwoman crouched atop the roof of her car, "Took you long enough."
"I told you I was in Brooklyn," The masked vigilante muttered before glancing at the taped-off apartments, "Let me guess...a shit ton of blood but no bodies?"
Yuri couldn't conceal her expression of shock before letting out a disgruntled sigh, "Does that mean you know what we're dealing with?"
Gwen shook her head, "No, but I stumbled across something similar a few nights ago on a boat."
"Really...and no one reported it?" Yuri asked in slight disbelief, unable to imagine how such a bloody scene could go unnoticed.
"Seeing as it was a cargo ship carrying a bunch of illegal firearms paid for by the Kingpin I assume not," Gwen grunted as she hopped off of Yuri's car and landed soundlessly on the ground, "I assume this is the first time the NYPD has come across it."
Yuri nodded with a grim look on her face, "What do you think we're dealing with? There were at least thirty people in there when it down but there aren't any bullet holes, scorch marks, or acid burns that can give us a clue about how all these people died without the bodies."
"Then we're dealing with something or someone so deadly that can kill thirty people before they can put up a fight," Gwen muttered as she felt another headache coming on, "The real question is how they disposed of thirty bodies without leaving a trace?"
"Unless...Maybe they didn't dispose of them," Yuri suggested as she glanced at Gwen who stared back at her through the unblinking lenses of her costume, "What are you talking about?"
"I mean we haven't established a motive...I originally assumed it was revenge or another Punisher copy cat but maybe...maybe the bodies were the motive," Yuri thought aloud and after listening to her Gwen couldn't find a reason to reject the detective's theory, "Alright, but that still leaves the question of why and how? If they're keeping the bodies that proves even more of a challenge...and where would they even store them all."
"I don't know...but I think that's where our investigation begins."
---
'I thought you said that the nest was in its infancy?'
'I did, but you have to understand that a fully grown nest would probably cover this entire landmass.' Harry explained as he and Betty swam down towards the alien structure sitting on the bottom of the river. In only a couple of days, the nest had expanded greatly and now consisted of a central chamber and several offshoot tunnels leading to smaller rooms that were still being shaped and formed.
The central chamber was a large dome of purple symbiote speckled with transparent circular windows made out of a thick golden film. The chamber stretched nearly fifty feet across and nearly twenty feet tall in the center.
As they approached the nest reacted forming an entrance that behaved like an airlock, closing behind Harry and Betty before draining itself of water leaving them standing on dry creep.
A short walk later they stood within the chamber itself which was dominated by the massive spawning pool now large enough to swallow an entire big rig truck. Thick golden vapors wafted into the air from the pool but neither Harry nor Betty hesitated to approach.
Holding out his hand a toothy mouth appeared in Harry's palm which started to spit out the gains of their hunt, tiny concentrated spheres of biomass providing all the fuel the nest would need to complete its coming transformation.
Meanwhile, Betty eased herself into the spawning pool, the acid strong enough to melt through steel didn't even make her skin tingle. Floating on top of the dense liquid Betty let out a gasp as her stomach contracted though it was hardly the painful hours-long process that she had previously expected, 'I guess being an alien queen, does have some benefits.'
Reaching down between her legs Betty's hand emerged a second later holding a grapefruit-sized egg with a thick mucous shell the same color as polished gold.
The nest immediately reacted to the egg's presence as countless tentacles emerged from the walls and the floor both excited and ready to eliminate any threat that presented itself.
Offering the egg Betty watched as the nest's appendages swarmed over the egg cradling it before absorbing the golden sphere into the floor.
The reaction was instantaneous as in front of the spawning pool an entirely new structure emerged, it was shaped like an inverted flower, wide at the base with a thin film of creep stretched over an alien skeleton. At the narrow top of the nest structure, a series of tentacles sprouted, currently at rest but ready to carry out the Hatchery's primary function.
A function that it began carrying out immediately as from twelve tunnels laid out at even intervals around the Hatchery's circumference a set of eggs emerged, each nearly a foot tall and covered in a thick layer of protective mucus beneath which was a hard leathery shell.
Climbing out of the pool Betty gazed at the eggs and felt a strong maternal instinct to protect them, after all every single Swarm that the Hatchery would produce had been formed from her own eggs.