ST26 Yellow Swarm (by HOT)

<h2>BRIEFING</h2> The facility went dark six days ago. Meridian Biotech, sublevel research station, built into a hillside in rural Romania. Forty-two personnel. They were developing something called Apis-7: a neural synchronization compound derived from insect pheromone chains. The last transmission was creepy. Someone screaming about the walls moving. Your mission: locate Queen specimen, terminate, plant detonation package on the hive structure, extract. "This should be easy for you, Agent Yellow." //It will,// you think. After all, your record is impeccable. You saved the President, you took down a counterfeiting operation and multiple drug rings, you saved the world from new, deadly chemical weapons, and so much more. And there was that time when you raided that bizarre island and saved so many children from a satanic cult. The facility is smaller than you expected. The lobby smells like wax and copper. The emergency lighting pulses red. Something moves at the far end of the corridor. [[Draw your weapon and move forward.|Corridor]]

<h2>SUBLEVEL ONE</h2> It used to be a person. It walks in a straight line toward the far wall, stops, turns, walks back. Three more behind it do the same. Their skin has gone yellow-grey and the surface of it shifts slightly, like something pressing from inside. Their eyes are white, opaque. <em>One of them has a lab coat with a name tag still on it. Dr. Florea.</em> You've seen the files. Apis-7 doesn't kill the host. It rewires them. Hive logic. Individual reasoning drops out and something collective fills the space. They're still alive. Stairwell B is fifty meters ahead. [[Move through carefully, stay quiet.|StairwellB]] [[Take out the infected blocking the stairwell.|TakeOut]]

<h2>COLLATERAL</h2> You raise the suppressed pistol and put down the two nearest hosts. The others don't react. They just reroute around the bodies like water around stones. You step over Dr. Florea and take the stairwell. <em>The smell gets stronger going down. Honey and rot.</em> [[Continue to sublevel two.|SublevelTwo]]

<h2>QUIET APPROACH</h2> You wait for a gap in their circuit and slip through. Flat against the wall, weapon up, breathing steady. The infected don't twitch. Their patrol pattern has no variation. Whatever is running them doesn't bother with peripheral awareness. "Seems like the Queen should pay her employees more." You take the stairwell down. <em>The smell hits at sublevel two. Sweet, but disgusting.</em> [[Continue to sublevel two.|SublevelTwo]]

<h2>SUBLEVEL TWO</h2> The research wing. The comb starts here. It grows out of the walls in thick grey-amber ridges, filling the spaces between doors, sealing some of them entirely. The hexagonal cells are the size of fists. A few are sealed with a dark membrane. Something moves inside one. A live host stands in the center of the corridor, facing the comb. Perfectly still. Its back is partially open, and the tissue there has restructured into something segmented. It breathes in long, slow cycles, synchronised with the hum in the walls. You check your map. Sublevel three is through the lab at the end of this corridor. There's a security room to your left with a camera feed. Might be useful. Might cost time. [[Check the security room.|SecurityRoom]] [[Go straight through the lab.|Lab]]

<h2>SECURITY</h2> Eight monitors. Two still work. One shows sublevel three. The Queen is visible. She's large, partially attached to the primary hive structure, trailing tissue connections into the comb. The hosts in the room move around her in slow orbits. There are six of them. The second feed shows the east corridor on this level. Clear. You look at the Queen for a long moment. "It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen," you say to yourself. You also spot the ventilation shaft above sublevel three. Wide enough to move through. The hatch is accessible from the east corridor. <em>You can come in from above, or go through the lab entrance head-on.</em> [[Use the ventilation shaft.|VentShaft]] [[Go through the lab entrance.|Lab]]

<h2>VENT SHAFT</h2> You pop the hatch and go up. The shaft is warm and the air is thick. You move on your elbows, weapon in hand, and come out over sublevel three. Through the grate you can see the Queen below. The six hosts are slow, predictable. <em>You have the high ground. You have a clean angle.</em> One shot to do this quietly before the room reacts. [[Take the shot from up here, then drop in.|QueenFight]] [[Drop in first, create distance, then engage.|QueenFight]]

<h2>THE LAB</h2> The lab is a wreck. Tables overturned, equipment destroyed. A centrifuge still spinning, somehow. The comb has broken through the far wall in a bloom of hexagonal mass, thick. Two infected stand near it. Both are in late-stage conversion. Their arms have thinned and the joints have multiplied. They move in small synchronized circles. You pass through. Neither reacts. At the far door you pause. <em>You can hear the Queen from here. A sound like a sustained organ note, low and wet.</em> [[Push through.|QueenFight]]

<h2>SUBLEVEL THREE</h2> She is enormous. The Queen spans the width of the back wall, partially submerged in comb, trailing thick white tissue filaments into the structure around her. Her face is almost recognizably human. One of the early researchers, you'd guess. Subject zero. Her eyes are open. Gold and faceted. They find you immediately. The six hosts in the room turn. <em>The hum becomes a scream.</em> You move. You put down two hosts fast. You take a hit on the arm from a third, something between a sting and a punch. Two bullets to the head. Down. [[Take care of the three infected remaining, then hit the Queen center mass.|QueenKill]] [[Go straight at the Queen. End it fast before the arm gets worse.|QueenKillReckless]]

<h2>PATIENCE</h2> Two more from the left. You take a second hit, this one across the back of the hand, and put them both down in three shots, then take cover and reload. The sixth takes you by surprise and almost infects you. Your knife never failed you. Yellow, thick blood gushes when you cut and stab. A new magazine is ready. Now, the Queen. You empty the magazine into her thoracic cluster, reload, and do it again. She screams. The sound goes through the walls. <em>You walk up to her. Her gold eyes track you.</em> "Nothing personal. Never been a royalist is all." You put the pistol to her head and empty your last magazine. She is weakened, but she prepares to transform. Her body starts shifting. That's when the pins fall on the floor. You stuff two grenades into her mouth, then backflip to safety. BOOM! She explodes. The hum stops. The silence after it is the loudest thing you've ever heard. [[Plant the detonation package.|PlantBomb]]

<h2>DIRECT</h2> You empty the magazine into the Queen's center mass and she screams and a filament catches you across the chest and slams you into the wall. You hit the floor. <em>The remaining hosts close in.</em> Your arm is bad. Your shoulder is bad. The compound from the first hit is already moving. [[Try to get up. Reload. Finish it.|QueenKillHard]] [[You can't get up. It just hurts too much.|BadEnding]]

<h2>ON THE FLOOR</h2> You get up. You reload on the way to standing. Put down the last three hosts. The Queen is still alive, barely, her thoracic mass punctured and leaking. "Nothing personal. Never been a royalist is all." You put the last three rounds through her skull. She is weakened, but she prepares to transform. Her body starts shifting. That's when the pins fall on the floor. You stuff two grenades into her mouth, then backflip to safety. BOOM! She explodes. The hum stops. The silence after it is the loudest thing you've ever heard. [[Plant the detonation package.|PlantBomb]]

<h2>THE PACKAGE</h2> The hive structure is everywhere down here. Floor, walls, ceiling. The densest mass is directly behind where the Queen hung. You find the comb cluster and set the package at its base. Twelve-minute timer. You arm it. Your arm is burning where you got hit. You look at it. The skin around the impact point is flushed and warm. A single welt, raised and circular. <em>You look at it for a moment longer than you should.</em> You pull your sleeve down. [[Head for the exit.|Escape]]

<h2>EXTRACTION</h2> You take the stairs two at a time. Your arm is getting worse. You pass through sublevel two. The infected don't react. The Queen is gone and whatever was directing them has gone with it. They stand, brain dead. On sublevel one, near the lobby, you stop. The infection has reached your shoulder. Your vision is narrowing at the edges, going amber. Eight minutes left on the timer. Maybe four minutes before the compound reaches critical neurological conversion. [[Push for the exit.|GoodEnding]] [[You're not going to make it. Use the time you have left.|NeutralEnding]]

<h2>OPEN AIR</h2> --- You run. "The swarm ain't getting me." The lobby, the corridor, the keypad door. Cold air outside, night sky, the hillside and your car sixty meters down the gravel path. You get in and drive, and at the two-minute mark on the detonator remote you pull over and hit the button. BOOM! A column of amber light, briefly, then dark. You sit in the car and watch smoke rise against the stars. Your arm stopped burning. You don't know if you got lucky with the dosage or if the Queen's death disrupted the compound's activation chain. You're not a scientist. You'll let the debrief figure it out. You roll your sleeve up. The welt is still there. Circular. Perfectly hexagonal at the center. <em>You roll it back down and start the car.</em> --- ''//QUEEN TERMINATED;// //HIVE DESTROYED;// //YELLOW DIDN'T JOIN THE SWARM//'' [[▸ Try again|Start]]

<h2>SACRIFICE TIME</h2> --- You sit down on the lobby floor. Your vision is gold at the edges. The hum is back, but it's inside your skull now. You can feel it in your hands, your teeth, the place where your thoughts used to be. You still have the detonator. You look at it. Your arm has stopped hurting. That's the worst sign. You set the detonator in your lap and watch the timer. Three minutes. Two. The hum tells you to put it down. It's very calm about it. Very reasonable. It explains, in a way that has no words, that you could be part of something larger. That the isolation you've always felt is just a design flaw, and the design can be updated. You find this very persuasive. You can feel yourself starting to agree. You press the button at ninety seconds. --- ''//QUEEN TERMINATED;// //HIVE DESTROYED;// //YOU EXPLODED WITH THE SWARM//'' [[▸ Try again|Start]]

<h2>THE QUEEN WINS</h2> --- The Queen is faster than she should be. One of the tissue filaments catches you across the chest and pins you to the wall. Your weapon skitters across the floor. The remaining hosts converge. "Guess I'm not a good beekeeper." <em>The hum rises.</em> The compound enters through the wound on your arm. It takes forty-seven minutes. You are aware for most of it. The last thing that is entirely your own is the thought that the detonation package is sitting in your bag, armed, timer unset, doing nothing. Then even that thought belongs to something else. By morning, you have joined the swarm. --- ''//QUEEN SURVIVED;// //HIVE INTACT;// //YELLOW JOINED THE SWARM//'' [[▸ Try again|Start]]

SENICA THING 2026 Entry Title:''Yellow Swarm'' Author: ''//by HOT//'' /18 years, Romania/ Experience: ''no publishing history'' [[Play->Start]]