The Gender End by Bella Forrest (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📕

short seconds later, and I moved to the door, cranking the hand wheel. The door swung open, revealing an interior just as foggy as the airlock, and I stepped in.

Even though the suits regulated our temperature, I could tell the room was warm and humid. I stepped out of the airlock, my gun out but lowered, and was surprised to feel that the floor was… soft. Looking down, I frowned when I saw a blanket of thick green moss.

Everyone followed me out of the airlock, and as Thomas closed it, I realized this side of the inside door was covered in moss too.

This is… This is The Green, Violet whispered, her silver eyes darting around, searching the mist for any sign of life. Why is this here?

Who knows, Ms. Dale said, her voice containing a brittle edge. It does no good speculating. Thomas? Do you detect cameras in here?

No, and I doubt they would put cameras down in these areas.

Why bother? asked Amber, seeming to understand. If they’re just studying the ecology, then they wouldn’t care. Maybe they were trying to figure out what was causing the poison or changing the atmosphere?

At that moment my ears caught something, and I turned, taking a few steps forward with my flashlight held high. There was lighting overhead, but the mist obscured a portion of it. It was difficult to see how large the room was or what could be out there just a few feet beyond us, so I was relying mostly on my ears to tell me that things were safe… and this didn’t sound quite safe. The mist roiled angrily as I passed through it, following the sound.

It was so soft at first, I couldn’t be sure I had heard it, but as I drew nearer to the source, I frowned at the familiarity. I waited for my brain to find the memory—and then, in a flash of adrenaline, I realized why the buzzing of thousands of wings was all too hauntingly familiar.

I stepped forward, trying to wave tendrils of mist out of the way. There couldn’t be… Surely not here…

I managed to blow some of the mist away enough to see the source of the noise: a huge glass tank filled with thousands of familiar insects, their red bodies pushing up against the glass toward us. Violet let out a surprised sound from behind me, and I turned to see her drawing close.

Red flies? she whispered as she stared at the tank, and I could see the shudder running down her spine. She shook her shoulders, trying to clear the feeling, and I couldn’t blame her. The things had nearly killed me, Ms. Dale, and her more than once. How are they still alive?

I swallowed, wondering if I should even mention it. Alejandro told me that they cannibalize their own when they lack food. The females target males first, mate with them, and then consume them, lay eggs, and tear each other apart. The new generation arrives to finish off the old, and the process continues again.

Her eyes drifted down to the bottom of the tank, and I followed them, seeing there what was clearly the cannibalized remains of thousands of flies as Violet’s mouth turned down in disgust.

Oh, she said after a moment. Are we safe?

Perfectly safe, Thomas assured her through the comms. Except that their cage’s functions are controlled by a master computer.

I’ve got another tank of red flies over here, but there are animal remains at the bottom of it, announced Ms. Dale from somewhere off in the mist.

There’s another one down here, but these flies aren’t red. They’re green, added Logan.

Green? I asked, turning around.

Yeah. There aren’t very many of them, though. I can only see about seven of them in this thing.

That’s nothing, said Morgan, her voice soft and low with something that sounded like awe. I just found the river.

What? asked Violet, turning around and heading back into the mist toward where we’d last seen Morgan. I followed behind her, making sure not to lose her in the mist as we slowly pushed through it. And then suddenly the mist parted, revealing a tiny stream of the familiar bright blue, glowing water as it fed through a channel carven in the cave ground, flowing at a moderate rate. I saw Morgan standing a few feet away, moving up and following the small trickle.

She disappeared into the mist, and a moment later, her voice was back on the line. It’s being fed in through a hole in the wall.

They probably have it hooked up to a pump, Thomas mused.

Let’s move on, Ms. Dale said brusquely, and I reluctantly admitted to myself that she was right. We couldn’t let our curiosity about this bizarre place keep us from the mission. Thomas, where are we going?

Now that I’m down here, I can finally orient this map. I can’t believe they didn’t include a compass on this. One second. There was a pause. Okay, check your compasses and head northwest. Only one way in and out of this cavern.

The horrible buzzing of the flies continued as we moved, growing louder as we approached more of the vats and quieter when we moved away from them, and I ignored it, focusing on the path ahead. This place was creepy, and I had a thousand questions about it, but we had a lot of ground to cover if we were going to get into the palace.

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30

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Viggo

Violet followed me closely, and every time I turned to look at her, I saw her eyes darting around, taking everything in just as I was, not missing a detail. The buzzing faded away after a while, and the passage narrowed considerably, until we were moving through it in single file. I was in the lead, with Owen bringing up the rear.

The tunnel continued narrowing, forcing me to duck low to avoid scraping the top of my head, and then widened up again, admitting us to a new area—I assumed we’d found