“So, once we clear up the remaining antithesis here we move into up mode?” I asked as I struggled to lift Bob’s rept arm into pce. It was a good thing that I’d received a share of the Forty-Four’s bounty, because his arm e as much as the Kodiaks. It was five grand to repce the two limbs, and another fifty points to clear the remaining bacteria off his frame.

  “Pretty much. We did discover there’s a lower level, where the digestion pools and nutrient delivery systems are located. Bright-Eyes sent her squirrels through it earlier, and only found Tens down there, but we o clear it properly.”

  “Right…” I felt the arm clito pce, and the naarted fusing the new arm to his frame, so I leaned back. “Try to hold onto your limbs going forward,” I said as I watched the bear test his new fingers. “I ’t afford to repce them on a regur basis.”

  “No problem,” Bob replied, throwing an awkward thumbs-up my way.

  “Sihe others have things under trol up here, shall we check out the lower level?” I asked Sharron as I stood up.

  “That sounds fun! Mind if we follow you?” a familiar voice asked from behind me. I spun around, only to find Magpie and Dreamer standing a couple feet away, he back of the Kodiak.

  “Why is everyone sneaking up ooday?” I muttered quietly, befng at Shannon. She just shrugged, so I raised my voice. “Sure… I don’t know what to expect down there, so the more the merrier, I guess,” I replied. “Just let me run it by the others.”

  I flipped over to the team discussion, and tried to ighe fact that the partit list was signifitly shorter than before.

  [Teddy: Yo! If you all have the situation under trol, Humboldt, Dreamer, Magpie, and I are going to start sweeping the lower level. That's okay?]

  [Whisperer: You’re up? Ummm… I think we have everything under trol here.]

  [GreyGoo: As long as you leave most of your bears in pce, we’ll be fine.]

  [Teddy: I mao get Bob up again, so we should be fihout the backup. I’ll let you know if we find anything.]

  I closed the chat, only to realize everyone was looking at me. “Do any of you ime to prepare, or are we ready to go?” I asked.

  “I have two arms again, so I’m good!” Dreamer decred as she waved her hands wildly.

  “And I have everything I need in my bag,” Magpie added as she reached towards her side. When she failed to find what she was looking for she filed about for a sed, until she found what she was looking for oher side. “Right here,” she said happily.

  If I hadn’t seen those two fighting previously, I might have been a little ed with their antics, but as it was, I just sighed.

  I pulled my LCARS off my bad checked that it was loaded before turning to Sharron. “How do we get to the lower levels?” I asked.

  “Easiest way is to jump through the remains of one of the satellite hives. They all fed from that lower level, a gaps in the floor after colpsing,” Sharron replied.

  “Time for some exploration!” Magpie decred as she twirled around, pulled a pith helmet out of her bag, and immediately started marg towards the hive remains. Dreamer just casually skipped a couple steps behind her, leaving Sharron, Bob and I rushing to catch up.

  “Did you have that in y the eime?” Sharron asked as Magpie pced the pith helmet overtop of her existi.

  “Of course! You never know when you’ll o go on an expedition,” Magpie answered. I expected her to stop at the edge of the hive, so we could evaluate the situation, but she only paused for a sed before jumping down. I rushed up to the edge, half expeg to see her in a huge melee, but she and Dreamer were just standing at the bottom, waving up.

  “I think we chose the wrong exploration partners,” I whispered to Sharron once she caught up.

  “It’s too te tret it now,” she whispered back before jumping down after them. Uhe others I was a lot more careful in my dest, grabbing the edge of the crumbling hive and hanging down before dropping down. I probably could have easily taken the full drop with my muscle improvements, but I wao be cautious. As soon as I hit the ground, Bob plummeted into the hole, nding just a foot or two away from me, and smashing the floor. “Perfeding!” he decred.

  Normally I would have berated him for his antics, but I’d already been heavily distracted by the surrounding area. It was like a mixture of jungle, and an uy power distributioer. Thick tree-like roots filled the area, they covered the ground in a rough carpet, with offshoots that grew up to roof level every couple feet. They were so uniform they actually reminded me more of supports than trees, which t because all over the roof there were hundreds of vines, and living tubes pumping strange fluids. It looked like the entire mess had inally bee up to support the hives on the upper level, but without anything to ect to they were just dumping their slurry-like tents onto the floor.

  “Fasating!” Magpie said, iing one of the anic pipes. “This must be how they distribute biomass to a distributed root work. Most plexes tend to grow out of a single massive tral structure.”

  “That’s great… we kill it?” I asked as I stalked further into the undercroft, careful to avoid stepping in anything.

  “Easily. We just o drop a few flesh melters into the tral digestion pool, and the system will do the rest,” Magpie replied. I noticed she was bottling some of the ooze, but decided not to say anything, she probably knew what she was doing.

  “It’s pretty! Like springtime!” Dreamer decred as she prahrough the area.

  “Right, pretty,” I heard Sharron grunt behind me. “It reminds me more of a digestive system.”

  “I REALLY didn’t hat mental picture, thanks,” I grumbled as I followed one of the nutrition tubes back towards its source. I was a little surprised by the ck of antithesis in this part of the plex. We did catch glimpses of Model Tens trying to tend to, or repair some of the work, but very few bat models. “Was this pletely cut off from the upper level?” I asked as we explored.

  “Looks like it. sidering that we didn’t find this se until we broke through the hives, the entrances must have been hidden quite well,” Magpie expined.

  “But it would have to be a high traffic area in order to receive biomass deliveries,” Sharron pointed out.

  “Indeed! It’s quite a mystery,” Magpie replied.

  “It’s not a mystery to me. Based ohing I experienced down here I tell you that Model Seventeens are both smart, and assholes. They probably had the entrances pletely closed off, and hidden once we got close enough. Why search for a hidden tunnel when a stant stream of antithesis was leading us elsewhere?” I said.

  Dreamer paused, cocked her head, then nodded. “Makes sense! We thought we were pying follow the leader, while they were pying hide and seek,” she said.

  “Yeah… just like that,” I said hesitantly.

  We tio wander for a few minutes more when Bob, who was ‘scouting’, shouted back to us. “Hey Boss, look what I found!”

  It wasn’t hard to find him. He left a path of destru where he smashed through the supports, instead of stepping around them. What he found was impressive.

  It was a deep pit, about half the size of a football field. It was sunk about te into the floor, and had a number of tunnels and shallos leading up to the edge of it, and there were a number anic growths slowly stirring the acidic slurry. The area around the digestion pool was covered in some sort ravel, and there appeared to be metallic particles within the slurry, this seemed to be where they dumped everything.

  “That’s one huge digestion pool,” Sharron said as we got close.

  Bob was standing on the ramp, slowly rolling a dead Model Fourteen down towards it. “Don’t do that!” I yelled. “That’s what they want!”

  “I thought we were going to destroy it anyways?” he called back.

  “He’s got you there,” Magpie ughed as she poked the leathery bark of the structure.

  “I don’t think a single melter is going to hahis,” Sharron said as she crouched down before the pool. “Ideas?”

  “So many! I have a lot of devices that I could try tossing into the pool,” Magpie replied, digging int.

  “Any ideas that have a high probability of w?” I asked.

  “No!” she replied, as she chucked a der into the sludge. It made a small spsh, but failed to do anything else.

  “Great,” I grumbled. “Guess I found something to spend those tokens on already.”